Posts from — September 2007

green, not selfish

If the Kyoto Protocol forces carbon-intensive industries to move to the less-developed countries, will developed world policymakers be tempted to impose carbon standards on imports from those countries in an effort to level the playing field?

How would such restrictions affect economies such as China and India that are making a conscious tradeoff between higher economic living standards for their citizens at the cost of an increasingly degraded environment? As a related issue, to what extent will public and private environmental spending become for the industrialized economies an economic hedge–a new source of domestic demand?

In an increasingly globalized world, opponents of free trade–whether seeking to restrict wage erosion and the loss of jobs on behalf of labor or to guard markets from competition of behalf of business–are starting to see environmentalism as a valuable protectionist tooL

Is this true, and what should we do about it? Leading global economists and others give their opinions below: (more…)

Sober assessment of high risk

The leading international body responsible for formulating policy on climate change has dramatically upped the ante by announcing that climate crisis is looming several decades earlier than previously thought, requiring major infrastructure changes immediately.

Even if global warming is limited to the EU’s ‘difficult” target of a 2C rise, the world will still have to adapt to major consequences of climate change, the scientists warned yesterday, as they accused politicians of attempting to water down their findings.

Experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the effects of climate change were happening faster than expected and many were already apparent. “We are all used to talking about these impacts coming in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. Now we know that it’s us,” said Professor Martin Parry, a scientist with the British Met Office.

He added politicians had wasted a decade by focusing only on ways to cut emissions, and had only recently woken up to the need to adapt. “Mitigation has got all the attention, but we cannot mitigate out of this problem. We now have a choice between a future with a damaged world or a severely damaged world.” (more…)

One’s manly dream home

Nick Rufford, Associate Editor of the London Sunday Times (salary $270,000 a year), has come out as a secret, part-time off-gridder. Here is his story:

There comes a time in every man’s life when he needs a shack: something he can build with his own hands; somewhere to escape the daily rush. The Scandinavians have long acknowledged this need, and have elevated the shack to a magnificent construction – often made from whole logs and set in a pine forest, complete with sauna. Amid tranquil surroundings, the owner can shut the door on the outside world, contemplate important things and not answer the phone. (more…)

Running on empty?

In the excellent Penny Pincher’s Book seasoned savers John and Irma Mustoe share their innovative (and sometimes eccentric) tips:

1 Steam iron (or freeze) woollen clothes during winter to kill moth eggs. It’s the larvae, not the flying moths, that do the damage. And conkers make very good ‘mothballs’.

2 Extend the useful life of empty scent bottles or talcum boxes by putting them into drawers to perfume the contents.

3 Refrigerate candles for a few hours before using and they will burn more slowly, drip less, and give you better value for money.

4 Plant lettuce seeds. A 15g packet of seeds produces about 2,000 lettuces and costs about the same as a single lettuce in shops. (more…)

Renewables, please

OPEC is once again under pressure to boost production ahead of a winter supply crunch in northern Europe. The group decided to hike a small amount, an extra 500,000 barrels of oil a day, as of November. ” We don’t see sufficient evidence that there’s a need [for an output hike],” was how Chakib Khelil, the Algerian energy minister, explained the decision last week. “We still have a meeting [in November] and an extra meeting in December where we could make the right decision,” he added.

The market reacted as if nothing had happened: oil broke through the $80 mark on Thursday night.Speaking in Canada last week, Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, said he saw no fundamental reason why crude prices had breached such levels. “There is a lot of psychology in the price,” he said.

Van der Veer has a point, but he would no doubt admit that the era of cheap oil has been over for some time. (more…)

Retire early instead

For only $15, a busy shopper can pluck a wind-power card off the rack by the checkout counter at Whole Foods, good for 750 kilowatt-hours – the average amount of electricity sucked off the grid by an American family each month.

So, for about the cost of two tickets to a Friday-night flick, this environmentally savvy consumer has just become 100 percent wind-powered for the month, having the same effect as planting 13 trees or not driving 1,286 miles.

At least that’s what Boulder-based Renewable Choice Energy, which markets the cards, claims.

Sound too good to be true? A growing number of skeptics think so. Critics argue that renewable-energy credits – the commodity that the cards actually represent – are just a way for people to absolve their environmental guilt by throwing money at it instead of making any meaningful changes to their lifestyles. (more…)

Reputational issues

BP Solar this week tried to take us a step closer to mass-market off-grid living. The solar energy giant announced the availability of its home Solar kits through Home Depot stores in the metropolitan Denver and Boulder, Colorado, areas. The program enables customers to purchase complete, installed solar electric home power systems. Problem is, the notoriously bad service at Home Depot will deter many thousands of potential customers.

The service offers a licensed solar professional who visits you at home to assess your electricity needs and give a free consultation but the net is crawling with complaints about the outside experts provided by Home Depot. (more…)

Former tenants

Banks have foreclosed on six off-grid properties in Colorado Springs, but better hurry if you are interested. When real estate agent Craig O’Boyle was hired to sell two of the houses, he called to have the utility bills charged to his business

It was a routine call, but the response from Colorado Springs Utilities shocked him.

“They said they had no record of one of the houses,” said O’Boyle, of O’Boyle Real Estate Group. “They said the house was illegally connected to water, sewer and electric lines through the house next door. It’s a nightmare.” Potential buyers will be attracted by the lower prices an off-grid house fetches compared to one which is grid-connected. (more…)

Gilfilian: Carbon-busting research

A global price for carbon is likely to trigger an “explosion” of new industries, including major investment in carbon capture and storage and nuclear power, investment bank UBS said in a report released last week. It is the latest peak in the mountain of hype surrounding green investments, and the fact it comes from a respected bank shows there is an investment bubble looming in the field of renewable energy and clean technologies.

“A global carbon price will see an explosion of new industries profiting from atmospheric carbon abatement,” the bank said in a breathless new study on climate change and the implications for various sectors of the global economy. However the storage of carbon over time is a complete unknown. Researchers are still “determining if CO2 can be safely stored in the subsurface over significant timescales. This is the most critical issue confronting the acceptance of geological storage of man-made CO2 in the Earth’s crust,” says Dr Stuart Gilfillan of Edinburgh University (pictured investigating a CO2 geyser in Utah). And he is not expecting an answer any time soon. (more…)