One reason to be hopeful that positive action on curbing global warming might just be achievable is that the technologies required to build a low carbon future offer potentially huge economic opportunities.
And while the delegates at Copenhagen will be arguing, scratching their heads and wonder how on earth they will ever agree, MPs back in the UK will today be attending an energy and climate change committee session looking at the role low carbon technologies could play in a green economy.
And for practical, green applications of engineering common sense look no further than the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, which this week hosts a three-day conference investigating and promoting the many uses of natural fibres and materials. While days one and two will consist of a series of presentations designed to raise awareness of the diverse engineering properties of natural materials, day three will offer delegates a chance to visit the Building Research Establishment’s Innovation Park in Watford to see first hand the use of natural materials in construction.
Finally, the relationship between government and its scientific advisors will be under the microscope again this week. The snappily titled ‘Government’s review of the principles applying to the treatment of independent scientific advice provided to government’ follows the recent sacking of Professor David Nutt from his role as chairman of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Surely the irony of commissioning a bunch of scientists to advise the government on how it should treat advice from scientists can’t have been entirely lost on whoever commissioned this particular piece of research
Jon Excell
Deputy Editor
I agree it’s very easy to be pessimistic about global warming, but there is also plenty for Engineers to be doing. There are undoubtedly huge opportunites out there. We just need to start thinking along fresh sustainable lines. “Business as Usual” definitely won’t do!
I’m going back to my inventing shed to come up with some energy-saving ideas. There is at the moment a huge gap between what products are required and what are on the market. LED light fittings for the home and office and affordable PV solar installations are just two examples.
Agreed, there are huge engineering and commercial opportunities from green technology. The economic activity and thus job creation will be significant. However, this activity will require a huge influx of money that politicians will call “investment”. Unlike China, if there is no money to invest, and the country is heavily in debt, then the required funds must be forced out of the rest of the present economy. This will be done via feed in tariffs; grants; carbon trading; donations to developing countries; etc etc. The population will inexorably have reduced spending power so lowering the GDP related to consummerism and contentedness. Since green technology is not particularly cost effective the only result is the county becoming poorer; overall GDP lowered; reductions of CO2 in the atmosphere virtually unchanged and wealth gradually draining away. We will then be less likely to help those countries mitigate any effects from warming climates. We should stick to the cost effective basics of better insulation and efficiency.
Peter Field is right. Economists and politicians have conjured “targets” for CO2 emission reductions out of thin air. They have uniformly fooled themselves and everyone else about the delivery of those targets which required the endorsement of experienced engineers. Such an endorsement was never sought from, nor, worse, offered by the great engineering institutions.
The various institutions representing Engineers can be singled out for their extreme timidity and possibly, greed, in going along with politicians’ completely unrealistic aspirations.
Worse, the LCPD has been in force since about 1989. To keep the real cost of energy down, successive UK governments have done everything possible to postpone its implementation so that at this moment, while roughly 20 GW of CEGB era coal and oil plants are sulphur compliant, none of it is NOx compliant.
Even the best is only 36% fuel efficient. If these are still supplying significant power at the end of the next decade, a coach and horses will be ridden through the CO2 targets.
The real question on Dec 31 2015 (or hopefully long before) is whether whoever is so unfortunate to be in power must plead for a derogation on that part of the 20 GW coal capacity that is not NOx compliant or hope that gas plants now coming into service will be able to obtain the natural gas necessary to keep them running, from Qatar and/or Russia.
But at what price?
All British citizens will be impoverished and humiliated by these entirely predictable events.
Peter Field is right. Economists and politicians have conjured “targets” for CO2 emission reductions out of thin air. They have uniformly fooled themselves and everyone else about the delivery of those targets which required the endorsement of experienced engineers. Such an endorsement was never sought from, nor, worse, offered by the great engineering institutions.
The various institutions representing Engineers can be singled out for their extreme timidity and possibly, greed, in going along with politicians’ completely unrealistic aspirations.
Worse, the LCPD has been in force since about 1989. To keep the real cost of energy down, successive UK governments have done everything possible to postpone its implementation so that at this moment, while roughly 20 GW of CEGB era coal and oil plants are sulphur compliant, none of it is NOx compliant.
Even the best is only 36% fuel efficient. If these are still supplying significant power at the end of the next decade, a coach and horses will be ridden through the CO2 targets.
The real question on Dec 31 2015 (or hopefully long before) is whether whoever is so unfortunate to be in power must plead for a derogation on that part of the 20 GW coal capacity that is not NOx compliant or hope that gas plants now coming into service will be able to obtain the natural gas necessary to keep them running, from Qatar and/or Russia.
But at what price?
All British citizens will be impoverished and humiliated by these entirely predictable events.