London looks to clean energy revolution 17 March 06

I only found out yesterday ata FOE meeting but woking has already done when London wants to do.

In the early 90’s a global warming paper was written for the town council which they took to heart. They wanted to reduce CO2 emissions by decentralising power generation because we lose loads of energy over the grid.

They have built lots of mini power stations around the town, heating schemes and pv cells on roofs which have resulted in CO2 emissions down by a staggering 77%.

The same engineer Allan Jones that was involved at Woking has been hired by Ken.

Good on you Ken. As far as i can see it is the individual councils that are making the difference. The Government just talks.

See the links : http://www.lgib.gov.uk/case_studies/2005/woking.html http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=5234 and there are many others too.

If I were to give advice on a plan, this would be it! As I often have posted before, the waste heat of power plants is greater than the electricity produced by them. Utilizing this heat can double the benefits from the same fuel source.

Decentralized power has advantages in that the waste heat can be more easily utilized and it creates opportunities for the local storage of energy for adjusting peak loads. It also reduces the energy loss from the transmission of electricity over power lines which I “believe” is greater than the pressure loss of delivering natural gas by pipeline although I never worked those numbers. It would be good to know this precisely when making an assessment on decentralized options. I think that most centralized power plants of all types can be avoided though better efficiency utilizing decentralized power.

With regard to cycling, I am all for developing infrastructure to make this option easier for anyone to navigate in a city safely. Bike paths and sidewalks should be considered in most cases wherever a road for cars is built. In my mind, no road should be without an option for cyclists and pedestrians. Options for mass transit to take people and their bicycles over longer distances can help increase the range for cyclists. The main concern is that people should feel safe not to use a car and if this were so then more people would consider not driving when better options exist. We all need the exercise anyway.

Best Regards,

Dan

Mark,

I know some politicians are scoundrels – but there are also a lot of good people trying to do the right thing. I’ve just resigned from a Parish Council and was very impressed by the public spiritedness of the councillors – none of whom get paid.

My resignation letter is below – and the latter half of the letter is all about trying to get the village moving with renewable energy (& at lot of the info comes from this blog).

Still haven’t figured out how to do Dano’s hyperlinks!

All the best,

Peter

10 March 2006

It is with regret that I have decided that I should offer my resignation from the Parish Council. Although I remain strongly interested in the parish, it is now some time since I have actually lived in Amberley and I feel I am becoming too distant from the day-to-day affairs of the village. In addition, I have a growing family and new business to attend to. I also understand that there are other parishioners who are interested in serving on the Parish Council, and I feel I should step-aside for someone else.

It has been a pleasure to serve on the Parish Council since 2003, and a very interesting experience to see local democracy in action. The world continues to evolve and present fresh challenges to us all, and in its own way, Amberley is no exception. Effective democracy relies on the active and positive collaboration of all those within a community, and relies particularly on those who have the public’s trust to act in an ethical manner.

These days, people have a high level of cynicism of politics; much of it justified, in my opinion as too often government is compromised by vested interests, inappropriate lobbying and spin in place of genuine communication. In contrast, I have been very encouraged by the absence of these kinds of influence within Amberley Parish Council. There is tremendous public spiritedness in Amberley, both inside and outside the council, which I for one, did not appreciate before becoming a councillor. To my knowledge, apart from the Council Clerk, no-one is being paid for their time, or receive any other kind of tangible benefit.

One suggestion I have is that, although the parish is excellently served by the Parish magazine, the Parish Council better communicates its activities through the Amberley website such that local residents can know more easily what is going on. Hopefully this will lead to better participation at the council meetings and easier communication between residents and councillors. Indeed, I can imagine the Amberley website (http://www.amberley.info/) being developed to resolve many communication issues that are presented before the council; such as to indicate when helicopter flights are planned at the castle, when crop spraying is intended to take place and advice/discussion on micro-generation renewable energy options (more of which later in this letter). To make this happen, should Amberley Parish Council plan to make a greater financial contribution to the costs of running the Amberley website in future precepts?

Although resigning from the Parish Council, I would still like to support the community where I can. I think there is tremendous value in the 2002 Amberley survey which can be used to support local initiatives. In addition to helping develop the Amberley Long Term Plan, this survey has been used to help defend Amberley School from closure, help obtain a grant for the new bus shelter at Hurst Cottages – as well as support the anti-dog fouling campaign which communicated that “41% of residents are greatly concerned” about this issue! I was thinking recently that there is also a great deal of useful, and as yet unused, information to do with healthcare provision and the needs of the elderly which could be applied to support community initiatives.

I am currently working on a parking plan for Amberley and would be willing to continue with this for the Parish Council’s review.

My particular focus and interest has been on environmental matters, and it seems that such concerns have recently come to the fore in politics, both nationally and more locally. For example, the Cheshire village of Ashton Hayes (http://www.goingcarbonneutral.co.uk/) is currently aiming to become the first small community in England to achieve carbon neutral status to help stem Global Warming and encourages other communities to do the same. Could Amberley do something similar?

An important ongoing challenge for Amberley Parish Council is likely to be how to manage housing needs in a sensitive and environmental way. I have just been reading “The Government’s Response to Kate Barker’s Review of Housing Supply” (http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/F59/0D/prb05_barker_553.pdf) (December 2005) and it is clear that there is great demand for affordable housing in the South East, that the Government intends to support a large house-building programme, and that these houses are intended to be developed in an environmentally sustainable way. The Government believes that new developments “can provide a major opportunity for the introduction of renewable energy generation” (section 5.22) and that “heat pumps and solar hot water systems are already cost-effective” (section 5.23). It seems to me that ground source heat pumps (http://www.nef.org.uk/gshp/gshp.htm)hold particular promise for houses in Amberley (both new and old) and should be encouraged by Amberley Parish Council (such as for the Strawberry Villas project) as they should not affect the visual appearance of the community in a way that wind power and, to a lesser extent, some solar heating systems would likely do. Ice Energy (http://www.iceenergy.co.uk/)is one company that has already supplied a ground source heat pump to a house in the village.

Perhaps a sub-committee could be created to consider how best to provide residents with advice on the relative merits of various renewable energy options? I believe people would appreciate some guidance on this, particularly as the implementation of wind power is currently a matter of hot debate. The Energy Savings Trust (EST) has some excellent free publications to guide this, particularly a document called “Renewable energy sources for homes in rural environments” (http://www.est.org.uk/housingbuildings/publications/index.cfm?mode=listing&audtype=5&doctype=105) . Also, there are many sources of funding (http://www.est.org.uk/housingbuildings/funding/)for these projects, and perhaps this sub-committee could help access these funds; both for individual households in the parish and for community-based projects (such as with a new Parish Hall).

I have been very impressed with the community spirit of Amberley and how it has dealt with various threats in the past. The defence of the Wild Brooks, the village shop, PADS, the Amberley School campaign and the Strawberry Villas social housing project are good examples of this. I hope that the community will continue to be forward-looking and take action on the issues that makes Amberley special within an increasingly inter-connected and changing world.

Ken Livingstone alas is not so great or principled. His early retirement of beloved Routemaster buses has considerably increased emissions per passenger, according to a 2005 Policy Exchange report and see also www.guardian.co.uk/transport/story/0,,1635773,00.html. He did this last year in breach of an election pledge and with further lies and deceit.

His day- and night- bus schedules now leave certain nocturnal runs almost empty. He’s raised fares to finance the East London River Crossing (whatever happened to tolls?) and pay for fare evaders on bendy-buses, yet can’t find the money to lengthen tube running hours.

As regards combined heat and power, we should remember that consuming fossil fuels 3x more efficiently only has long-lasting benefit if it’s a step along the road to almost zero net atmospheric discharges compared with today. Our capital programmes should be aiming for around 90% emissions cuts by 2030 from total UK activities. So theoretically, only a modest amount of CHP beyond what could be powered by biomass would be a wise investment, if any.

That is, unless it were cost-effective to connect many of the CHP stations to a carbon capture and burial system, which I somehow doubt.

James, I do support Ken Livingstone because at least he goes ahead and does things, maybe not totally to your liking, but with the benefit of people in mind. And he doesn’t back down to sceptics and reactionaries. I think people tend to support his ideas in the end and find them practical, for instance the argument about Congestion Charging. I do remember seeing a documentary about how the London Public Transport system had a financial legacy of debt due to mismanagement from previous authorities. So maybe things have to be introduced gradually? I have noticed recently new hybrid buses on some routes.

Also, I wonder whether drivers find it easier to manouevre the new Mercedes bendy buses as opposed to the old tank like Routemasters? Statistics on heart disease are some of the worst in bus drivers!

But I’m definitely with Ken on this one.

I am something of a Carbon Capture and storage champion myself, but Carbon Capture and storage is no silver bullet and utilising a resource 2 to 3 times more effectively is a significant leap forward.

In fact it’s a leap back to where we had been 60 years ago – Battersea power station used to supply a large area of London – right out to Earls Court – with heat.

We now have the technologies to control the stack emissions to far surpass the standards for building in urban areas (I understand this is why Battersea was shut down) to the extent that I’d be much more concerned about living next to a busy road than to a CHP plant.

CHP, which utilises fossil fuels 2 to 3 times more effectively than conventional plant (when the heat is needed)- has had a bit of a hard time in the UK since power generation is under DTI and district heating is under DEFRA. It seems that Ken and Woking council are doing a bit of government join up.

Further, local CHP plant can burn local waste to produce energy, rather than have it rot and produce a much more potent greenhouse gas in landfill space we are fast running out of.

Regards Martin