Food and Cities

An excellent video from the TED series.

The bold plan for electric cars

So how would you run a whole country without oil?

The bold plan for electric cars… is coming to country near you soon (or should that be not soon enough).

Fascinating, enlightening and though-provoking speech made at a TED conference by Shai Agassi about electric cars. He took apart the usual issues (physical and monetary) and developed a new way of thinking. It’s a way that reduces any countries dependency on oil dramatically and reduces vehicle-attributed carbon emissions to zero.

We need to get to zero emissions before the world ends

What to do with a Range Rover?

Back in 2006, Ryan bought a big car. He says it’s a “beautiful but totally excessive Range Rover Sport”. A big part of the motivation then was the huge tax write off for heavy SUVs (in the USA), combined with a short commute and weekly trips to go hiking with friends.

Since he moved back to San Francisco, Ryan doesn’t need a car, so he wants to take this SUV off the road for good. More

Are fossil fuels running out? Mercedes thinks so

Mercedes have made plans to make their whole car lineup fossil fuel free by 2015. Does this mean that fossil fuels will run out by then? Of course not, however Mercedes are clearly concerned that due to ‘Peak Oil’ the price of fossil fuels will only be going in one direction!

Mercedes (which includes the Smart Car) plan is just that, a plan and in reality they may not achieve their goals, but the key fact is that a major automotive manufacturer has set such a significant goal. More

Food miles, and miles, and miles

The New York Times reported on some startling examples of silly food miles. All made possible because of (relatively) cheap oil/transportations costs and lower wages in some parts of the world. Unfortunately whilst this may keep some people in work in china or wherever, it does mean that the local people who used to do the job are out of work, and all in the name of cheap food…

Here are some of the silly examples:

• Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale
• Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground
• Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya
• Britain imports -and exports- 15,000 tons of waffles every yea

Fuel used for international transport is tax-free, thanks to a treaty signed in 1944 to help the airline industry – so who is paying for the pollution and carbon dumped into the atmosphere? It’s about time that the governments of the world got together and put forward a unified ‘polluter pays’ policy that would help see an end to this ridiculous practice.

Hat tip to TreeHugger for reporting on the above article.

Think City on the way

Electric vehicles conjure up different emotions for people – some see them as having no place on the road (people like Jeremy Clarkson, although I think there is no place on the road for Jeremy Clarkson!), others see them as salvation to our modern congested cities.

Video from Danny’s Contentment (link at bottom of post)

They certainly work well in cities where their small size, zero-emissions, and in London, preferential treatment within the congestion charging zone all go in their favour. The most popular vehicle is G-Wiz, sold by GoinGreen and made in India by Reva. Although there has been a couple of recent upgrades (AC-Drive and different battery technology, improved brakes & safety etc) which have improved both the range and performance, in my own opinion, they do look rather quirkly – not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but they invoke memories of those little blue invalid carriages that were around in the 70’s.

One car that didn’t look so bad was the Norwegian developed Think City. Originally the company that developed it was bought by Ford, but shortly before the final development of the ‘Mark II’ version, Ford pulled the plug on the company – see earlier post for more. However, new investors were found and the Think City 2 is now in production.

Looking more like a ‘proper’ car (which helps it gain acceptance amongst the population at large), it has some innovative features.

• Built-in Telemetrics – you can text/sms your car to check battery status, pre-heat the interior and pre-start the engine
• Lithium Polymer batteries give 120 mile range and 50 mph top speed. The batteries will be permanently leased from the supplier which means they will be automatically changed when performance drops below a certain point.
• Fully homogenised – essentially means that it is classed as a proper car rather than a ‘quadracycle’. As such it has undergone crash testing etc like regular mainstream cars
• High quality production – it ‘feels’ like a mainstream car rather than a kit car

The new Think City is due in UK in RHD (right-hand drive) towards end of 2008

More Information:

Think City website

Danny’s Contentment has some video footage of driving the Think City (plus lots of other great stuff on the life and times of an Electric Vehicle owner in London)

Call for delay to biofuels policy

The UK’s chief environment scientist has called for a delay to a policy demanding inclusion of biofuels into fuel at pumps across the UK. Professor Robert Watson said ministers should await the results of their inquiry into biofuels’ sustainability. Some scientists think biofuels’ carbon benefits may be currently outweighed by negative effects from their production.

The Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) is to introduce 2.5% biofuels at the pumps from 1 April. Professor Robert Watson warned that it would be insane if the RTFO had the opposite effects of the ones intended. He said biofuels policy in the EU and the UK may have run ahead of the science.

His comments in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme appear on the day when a coalition of pressure groups from Oxfam to Greenpeace writes to the Department for Transport (DfT) demanding that the policy be delayed until after the review. More

Food crisis will take hold before climate change, warns chief scientist

As reported in The Guardian, the UK Government’s new Chief Scientific Advisor , Professor John Beddington gave his first major speech at the Govnet Sustainable Development UK Conference in Westminster:

“There is progress on climate change. But out there is another major problem. It is very hard to imagine how we can see a world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous increase in the demand for food which is quite properly going to happen as we alleviate poverty.”

He predicted that price rises in staples such as rice, maize and wheat would continue because of increased demand caused by population growth and increasing wealth in developing nations. He also said that climate change would lead to pressure on food supplies because of decreased rainfall in many areas and crop failures related to climate. “The agriculture industry needs to double its food production, using less water than today,” he said. The food crisis would bite more quickly than climate change, he added.

But he reserved some of his most scathing comments for the biofuel industry, which he said had delivered a “major shock” to world food prices. “In terms of biofuels there has been, quite properly, a reaction against it,” he said. “There are real problems with unsustainability.”

Some of the biofuels are hopeless. The idea that you cut down rainforest to actually grow biofuels seems profoundly stupid.

Hiliary Benn, the environment secretary commented that the relative wealth of people in developing countries is increasing, but this leads initially to an increase in demand for meat and dairy products, and ultimately processed and packaged foods – all of which are detrimental the the environment.

Moving forward with minimal impact

As unappealing as this may sound to some people, the message from Benn and others is that to help everyone around us, including the earth as a whole, humans should adopt a low or no meat diet, low or no dairy, avoidance of processed and over-packed foods and quickly remove our reliance on fossil fuels. What I’m describing will be a complete lifestyle change for many westerners, but there will be no alternative – things like biofuels only serve to give the green light for people to ‘carry on as before’, but with perhaps less guilt, whereas what is needed is a total re-think – it is no longer OK to carry on as we have been doing – that old way has clearly not worked.

In the UK, a new movement has been growing at grass roots level called ‘Transition Towns’. Started by Rob Hopkins, the purpose is to create a plan or framework to move a town or city towards oil independance by looking at the likely implications of ‘peak oil’ on the services and products a town uses. Doing this, creates resilience within the town to drastic change.

I have just bought Rob’s book ‘The Transition Handbook‘ and will be penning my thoughts on it in due course.

Peak Oil is almost here says Shell

Well it’s been an interesting time for the oil industry! Last week, Shell announced record annual profits of £13.9bn, whereas this week BP saw profits fall sharply to a ‘disappointing’ £8.76bn. These figures however have been dwarfed by Exxon Mobil, who announced profits of $40.6bn – a record for a US firm.

Of course, big profits for UK-based companies are a good thing for the government – Shell’s profits will land around $1bn into the lap of the treasury by way of taxation. All of this makes me a little skeptical about the real effort the government is putting into tackling climate change – with the treasury getting money from all fuel sales, plus the profits from the companies selling, extracting and refining the fuel, they really do need to look at alternative ways of funding from the taxation of oil if they are going to avoid a deficit whilst at the same time, encouraging people away from cars and our current carbon-consuming lifestyles.

This week, Shell also ‘acknowledged’ Peak Oil could be here within a few years. In an email sent to all Shell employees, Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell said;

“Regardless of which route we choose, the world’s current predicament limits our maneuvering room. We are experiencing a step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to population growth and economic development, and Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand”

He went on to criticise policy makers;

“Taking the path of least resistance, policymakers pay little attention to curbing energy consumption – until supplies run short. Likewise, despite much rhetoric, greenhouse gas emissions are not seriously addressed until major shocks trigger political reactions. Since these responses are overdue, they are severe and lead to energy price spikes and volatility.”

Heads up to TreeHugger.com for publishing the above information.

Whatever it takes for the government to react properly and urgently to address energy consumption and curb greenhouse gas emissions, it’s clear that the car lobby is not going to give up without a fight. Governments are pushing the car makers to improve vehicle efficiency, but these moves are being met with huge resistance. Car makers say that owners of less efficient vehicles are already paying their dues with increased road tax duty and high fuel prices.

Shell’s former chairman, Sir Mark Moody Stuart has joined the debate by saying that the rich should not be allowed to ‘buy’ their way out of responsibility for tackling climate change.

On the BBC website, he said; “Nobody needs a car that does 10 or 15 miles to the gallon. In my opinion, it simply shouldn’t be allowed.”

Sir Mark currently owns a Toyota Prius – the MPG is not stunning, but is better than most similar-sized vehicles, and the big bonus is in reduced CO2 emissions.

The SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders) naturally takes the view of motorists already ‘paying through the nose’ and how wrong it would be to take away the ‘freedom of choice’ for the motorist. I wonder whether freedom to breathe clean air is a more fundamental right?

Maybe the oil companies are in the last throws of high profitability before their fall from grace? I heard an interview on Radio 4 recently with Jeremy Leggett (a former oil-man who now champions the peak-oil reality and the ‘Transition Towns‘ movement), who said that oil companies need to embrace renewables properly and become ‘total energy’ companies. When asked about the work that BP did with renewables, he said this was pretty much a smoke screen, designed to get some positive PR but lacked any real commitment. Time will tell.

Stand your ground, then retreat

Climate change is a reality, and one that is creeping (or leaping) up on the world at an alarming rate. Last week, I read a report which stated that the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are rising faster than predicted due to less efficient use of fossil fuels and carbon sinks that are absorbing less carbon¹.

With this in mind, and with the weight of scientific evidence, it makes me wonder why drastic rather than piecemeal action is not being taken. I guess it comes down to wealth and selfishness. If you are earning a lot of money or gaining wealth (and power) through an activity, however climate damaging that is, people seem reluctant to give it up and change it. But big businesses will have to change – no longer will they be able to rely on growth year after year. It will become the age of the small, local business, but the big boys will doubtless fight for their corner until the end. More

1. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [↩]