When we talk about greenhouse gas emissions we do not always understand which greenhouse gases are most important and the sources of emissions. The following information comes from the World Resources Institute

Proportion of Greenhouse Gases emitted in relation to each other

Carbon dioxide         77%

Methane                    14%

Nitrous Oxide            08%

Others                        01%

It is always important to remember that different greenhouse gases have different global warming values and that carbon dioxide lasts the longest in the atmosphere – about a hundred years. The planet can naturally sequester about half the carbon dioxide being emitted.

Sources of Emissions

Electricity & Heat      24.6% – almost half of this is from residential buildings

Industry                      21%- almost half is from chemical, cement and iron & steel

Deforestation                        18.3%

Transportation          13.5% – mostly from vehicles

Agriculture                13.5% – nearly half of which is from livestock and manure

Waste                         03.5% – two thirds of which is from landfill

“It is realistic to say that in Copenhagen we will not be able to conclude a treaty,” said Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany recently. She is right to be realistic. Should we be depressed by her pessimism? I do not think so. A climate change treaty concluded in the next few months would hardly be worth the paper upon which it will be written. The developed world is not yet ready for the changes and sacrifices that a meaningful treat would require. The developing world is still playing “catch up” and inte3nds to continue this game until it has caught up.

I shall now commit what many will regard as an environmental heresy; I think it is better for the negotiations at Copenhagen to fail than it is for them to cobble together a poor climate protection treaty. It is better not to conclude a treat at all than to conclude a treaty which does not work. If we conclude a treaty which has the same failings and omissions as the treaty and protocol concluded at Kyoto we shall be giving the world false confidence. A poor climate protection treaty will simply be a way of that the people of this planet can get false comfort from the delusion that something is happening about climate change when in reality it will be business as usual for that section of the world’s population that emits greenhouse gases without control.

On the other hand, failure at Copenhagen will possibly galvanise the leaders of the world into real action and may well cause them to look at the problem differently. Perhaps instead of using complicated mechanisms to protect the climate they can outlaw simple things, like building new coal fired power stations, vehicles emitting more than so much instead of creating targets which bear no relationship to actual greenhouse gas emission.

Many large companies have “sustainability” or “environmental departments. For example the large supermarkets and all of the oil companies have such departments which they see as an important part of their corporate governance and social responsibility. However, the first responsibility of a company is to its shareholders. There are many ways in which all of these large companies could act and do business in ways that are more environmentally friendly  but to do so wholeheartedly would stand in the way of profits so most of them simply do what they think they can afford provided it does not impact on the bottom line.

Grainger plc is a large residential investment company. Tim Nicholson was head of sustainability at Grainger plc. Grainger has a sustainability policy of reducing their adverse environmental impacts. It is fairly modest as sustainability and environmental policies go – reducing emissions from travel, recycling paper, waste recycling and energy monitors in their homes, as well as delivering energy advice to tenants. They could do more – for example fitting properties with microgeneration such as solar water heating, but no doubt this would impact on the bottom line.

Mr Nicholson was dismissed from his employed and wanted to argue in unfair dismissal proceedings, that he was dismissed because of his belief in climate change and was unfairly under the Employment Equality Regulations. If the regulations cover climate change as a “belief” and the case is proved, Mr Nicholson would be entitled to significantly higher damages than he would get if simple unfair dismissal was proved.

The relevant regulation provides (not in the clearest language) that you must not discriminate against an employee on the grounds of religion or belief and specifies:

Discrimination on grounds of religion or belief
3. - (1) For the purposes of these Regulations, a person (“A”) discriminates against another person (“B”) if -

(a) on grounds of religion or belief, A treats B less favourably than he treats or would treat other persons; or

(b) A applies to B a provision, criterion or practice which he applies or would apply equally to persons not of the same religion or belief as B, but -

(i) which puts or would put persons of the same religion or belief as B at a particular disadvantage when compared with other persons,

(ii) which puts B at that disadvantage, and

(iii) which A cannot show to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

(2) The reference in paragraph (1)(a) to religion or belief does not include A’s religion or belief.

(3) A comparison of B’s case with that of another person under paragraph (1) must be such that the relevant circumstances in the one case are the same, or not materially different, in the other.

My ordinary reading of the regulation leads me to query the decision of the court; the word “belief” is coupled with the word “religion”, and I think that it is in this sense that the regulation ought to be interpreted.

However, at a preliminary hearing the court ruled that the word “belief” in the regulation includes a philosophical belief in climate change. I understand that Grainger will appeal this preliminary ruling.

I do not think that belief in climate change is in any sense philosophical. Many climate change “believers” do have a particular philosophy of consuming less and acting in modest simple ways following a traditional series of philosophical ideas and beliefs that may be traced back thousands of years. Climate change is not based upon a philosophy but is based on science.

The judge ruled that in Mr Nicholson’s case his belief went beyond the science and was a philosophical state of mind, beyond mere opinion. I have not read the full judgment but it may well be that the case has been misreported, and was about Mr Nicholson’s philosophical beliefs rather than his belief in climate change.

I think that taking “belief” as a separate topic (technically construing the “or” in religion and belief” disjunctively rather than conjunctively) takes employment legislation into an area where it ought not to travel.

I have no knowledge as to whether Mr Nicholson’s case against Grainger will succeed or fail – a tribunal will decide that – but I am concerned about a tendency to elevate climate change into a religion. Doing that does the planet no favours. In order to cope with climate change and to protect our client we have to found our knowledge upon science, which is provable to an extent that belief is not.

On the last day of October this year I took this picture of an oak tree in a London Park. Oaks usually seem to be among the first trees to shed their leaves, but the autumn has been gently with no frost and little wind, so the mighty oak has most of its leaves still green. Its leaves will turn and fall over the next few weeks.

When I was young by November 5th all the trees had lost their leaves and the bonfires we made could be filled with dead wood fallen from trees, if there were any trees where you lived.

Have the seasons really changed in character or have they merely changed in my memory? Summer seems to linger longer now, and the trees seem to hold their leaves longer.

When I was a child we celebrated Guy Fawkes Night on the 5^th of November each year. Then it was not a moveable feast, as it seems to be these days. That was a time of year for coats scarves and gloves because it was bitterly cold. Today in London I do not need a coat or a scarf or gloves, and so it has been for some years.

For me, this is evidence of a changing climate.

You will see headlines and hear news items to the effect that there is only so many days (just over a month now) to get a climate protection “deal” at Copenhagen. There the nations of the world will meet in order to try and reach agreement as to the best way to protect the climate and how to divide the burden of protecting the climate between themselves. The leaders of the world’s nations, particularly those that are democratically elected, will put in an appearance in order to try and reach some kind of an agreement. They will in fact reach some kind of agreement and no doubt Mr Obama, Mr Brown and the rest will claim credit but I doubt whether the agreement they reach will be judged by history as being important or significant.

Climate change is not of immediate danger and because there is no perceived immediate peril nations of the world will be content to fudge the issues and treat Copenhagen as simply another small step along the road that gets us to climate protection.

It is clear that the leaders of the world will not be brave enough, or long sighted enough or secure enough to make those very hard decisions that need to be made to protect the climate.

If you take a small example from the United Kingdom you will see just how reluctant leaders are to make the hard decisions.

In the United Kingdom the maximum speed limit for cars is 70 miles an hour. However on roads where a maximum speed limit is allowed the average speed is around 50 miles an hour and I expect that the mean speed would be around 55 miles an hour. Virtually every car consumes far less fuel at 50 or 55 miles an hour than it does at 70 miles an hour.

It therefore seems to be logical and cost effective to reduce the maximum speed to around 50 or 55 miles an hour, thereby saving fuel which will in turn save emissions of carbon dioxide. It will not cost anything to carry out this measure and will not make much of a difference to journey times by road, although it will be inconvenient to some that like to drive fast.

Yet the United Kingdom government – along with governments in Germany France and Italy – have no plans to reduce maximum speed limits on roads. If governments cannot make decisions like this to protect the climate how can we hope that they will make the much harder decisions that they need to make at Copenhagen?

I wrote about Professor David MacKay’s nuclear vision in http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=2002 but I did the Professor an injustice, because I ascribed views to him which are not his own. He has commented on my blog that his views, which were widely reported in The Sunday Times as well as in the trade magazine “Heating & Ventilation”, were in fact misreported. He was giving a talk and in the course of it posited “Plan M” as an illustration of one of the choices that we could make about energy policy. He did not recommend Plan M, but used it to illustrate the choices available.

I owe Professor MacKay an apology, which I unreservedly make now.

I must say that I am very pleased to be wrong on this occasion, and as the good Professor points out I must not believe everything that I read in the newspapers. I have seen so many examples of newspapers misunderstanding the complexity of energy and in doing so seizing on a “sexy” aspect and misreporting it that i really ought to have made more enquiries before rushing into print.

Getting the right energy policy for the future is complex. We must cover policy in the short term (that is the next few years), create a viable low carbon policy in the medium term, (the next decade) and plan for a long term low carbon energy policy covering the next thirty or forty years.

Concepts of massive wind power and power from solar in deserts will, like a policy of building many more nuclear powers take at least a decade to achieve, and we should be considering these policies now, as Professor MacKay holds.

When these ideas are misreported as recommendations it becomes very easy to criticise them. But as I have always believed and the reason why I started this blog, we need to explore ideas, exchange information about them and try to foresee not just the advantages of the ideas about future energy, but also the down side of all ideas, in environmental terms.

It strikes me that in terms of energy policy we are perhaps concentrating on the long term at the expense of the short term. It seems that long term projects which may or not become feasible like the Severn Barrage and Carbon Capture and Storage are being promulgated at the expense of what we can actually do today to reduce emissions by using less fossil fuel energy and using more renewables.

Professor MacKay advises the Government on energy. His job in proffering advice is to offer alternatives for the future. The Government’s job is the make hard decisions for the present and for the short term, as well as planning for the future. It strikes me that the Government seems to regard climate change and energy policy as something best tackled in the future, but by then it may be too late.

Next April, when no doubt the United Kingdom will be distracted by the noises and excitement of a General Election, the photovoltaic industry will be hoping for a boost as a result of a new feed in tariff incentive. This incentive is very similar to the incentive that has been operating in Germany for several years, but in Germany the tariff has had its problems and I expect problems to arise when the tariff will be operated under United Kingdom conditions.

In simple terms, if you have an array of photovoltaic panels you will have a right and an obligation to feed the electricity generated from it into the national grid. The grid will pay you fro your electricity at a much higher rate – possibly three times the rate – that you have to pay the electricity supplier for your own usage. That way, the theory goes, people will be encouraged to invest in photovoltaic systems and generate plenty of free electricity.

There are three problems that this will cause; one problem relates to the structure of the grid, the second relates to intermittency and the third relates to the financial incentives that PV investors will receive.

Structurally the grid has been designed to deliver electricity around the country from relatively few generating stations. It is a centralised system with the current flowing from the generating stations to the end user. It is not designed to be “fed into” and in many places until the grid is restructured much of the current being fed in will be wasted.

The second problem relates to the intermittency of PV; obviously PV only works in daylight hours and in the United Kingdom, where there is not much air conditioning, long daylight hours mean there is relatively little demand for electricity. Much of the long daylight hours’ demand is made up of nuclear base load current. There will be some use for PV made electricity in the summer, but its predictability of availability can make it hard for the PV generated current to be used effectively on a large scale.

The third problem is that I suspect the investors in PV may be disappointed with the return on their investment. PV modules will be sold by reference to their kilowatt peak ratings (kWp). Most people will think that this is the output of the PV, and will probably calculate the daylight hours, multiply those by the KWp and then by the amount of the feed in tariff to estimate their annual return on investment from their PV.

Like many Germans are already, many UK people will be disappointed because no one will be explaining the science and the nomenclature to them. The KWp is based on an optimal solar radiation of 1000 watts per square metre. You might get this level of optimal radiation in the UK around 2pm on a sunny summer’s day for an hour or so, but the mean output of electricity after you take night time and non optimal conditions and other factors (like the PV becoming less efficient in very hot conditions) will be about a tenth of the so called rated KWp.

So looking at the KWp label on a PV system and using that to figure out how much money your electricity will earn you from the grid, will leave you disappointed. In Germany the disappointment has been such that some lawsuits have been started.

Now it is clear to me that PV is extremely useful and will represent an important part of the energy matrix. However, encouraging its use with feed in tariffs strikes me as overcomplicated. It is also unfair because the subsidised feed in tariff is taken from all energy users by ba flat rate levy. So if you invest in PV you still have to pay the flat rate levy hidden in your electricity bill.

The fair way to encourage PV complying with thr principle of the polluter paying and rewarding behaviour and expenditure that helps climate protection is to reverse the present tariffs by abolishing standing charges and making the tariff incremental so that the more energy people use the higher unit rate they pay. That way PVusers would be rewarded at their highest marginal rate of expenditure, not by some artifical and misleading feed in tariff.

The European Union has announced that the world must spend a hundred billion Euros a year on climate change, and that the EU would pay its fair share subject to the proviso that other nations would do likewise.  It is a bit like a thief promising to stop stealing if all the other thieves stop stealing. The concept of the European Union doing the right thing for its own sake seems lost on its leaders.

The money will be collected by passing the hat around amongst EU member states. No one has yet dared to explain which nations would be responsible for which amounts or on what these amounts would be spent by the poorer nations outside the EU which will receive it for climate change measures. Indeed, I am not sure whether the hundred billion Euros include expenditure within the EU. If so, then all the EU is saying is that it will pay for cleaning up its own emissions, if other nations also clean their acts up.

The announcement is supposed to be a precursor to the climate change conference at Copenhagen. It will we are told make a deal more likely. I find it illogical.

Pressure groups like Greenpeace claim that the money is not enough; we need to spend more. I am puzzled by several points:

1. How can anyone predict climate protection costs?
2. If the climate is worth protecting then it is not a matter for budgets, is it? Surely we have to spend what is necessary, or allow humans to be wiped off the planet.
3. How will the money be spent? The saving of the planet will be in the detail.
4. The publicity is all about a possible amount of money to be spent at some stage in the future, rather than anything real. Where is the reality?
5. Why not start the climate protection expenditure at home, from whence the chief climate dangers emanate? Emitters (direct and indirect) should pay to stop emitting greenhouse gases.

Perhaps someone at the EU could give me an answer.

No one quite knows precisely what the job of President of the European Council will be or into what it will develop. Theoretically it is no more than a Chairmanship. Being a Chairman is an important job and it is influential; agendas are set, milestones are proposed and a Chairman must aim to achieve consensus among the members of the Council. Being a President is a different role. Not only do you set agendas but you formulate policy and lead others. I suspect that many politicians think that the Presidency of the Council will morph into a Presidency of Europe, and certainly that seems to be the thinking of the United Kingdom Government, who is touting Tony Blair for President of the European Council.

The arguments advanced for Mr Blair’s candidacy are that he is qualified for the job, he is a well known figure that is internationally respected especially in the USA and China, and that it will serve Britain’s interests to have a British politician leading Europe. The last argument, of British self interest, is not going to appeal to the other 26 European Union member states. It is in their interest that the President is neutral and will not favour any single nation, especially his own.

The argument that we need a famous charismatic figure to lead Europe implies that Europeans are not confident enough to catch the attention of the USA without such a leader. Frankly I think this is nonsense. The European Union is a powerful economic block with more economic power and a greater population than the United States. The USA understands this and will not ignore a European President.

The arguments against Mr Blair doing this job are that he comes from the United Kingdom, which is not part of the Eurozone and also did not ratify the Schenken treaty, which provides for free movement in Europe so that there is no passport control between those states that adhere to the treaty. These are important features of Europe. It is clear now that not joining the Eurozone was a mistake. Since it was established the euro has been a disciplined currency with even the small participating states following its rules. The pound has declined in value against the euro and has become a smaller, less important currency, more susceptible to speculators influence than the euro.

The Schenken Treaty has improved travel within Europe without increasing security problems. When I visited Slovakia a few months ago I flew to Vienna where I met some guests from South Korea. We travelled to Slovakia without border controls and if we wanted to could have gone further west right into France without having to stop at a border once.

It is quite difficult to understand why European nations that have signed up to the Euro and to Schenken would want, as a leader, a person who when Prime Minister of the United Kingdom did neither.

An argument that has been advanced for Mr Blair’s candidacy is that he has environmental credentials. This argument is pure fiction. The United Kingdom’s record on climate change is among the worse of the largest economies in the European Union with less investment and less tight climate change regulation than most other European union states.

Another reason why Mr Blair will not find favour is many suspect that his judgment is faulty. He took the United Kingdom into the war with Iraq on an assurance that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. We know this to be entirely wrong now, but Mr Blair’s belief in these non-existent weapons of mass destruction indicates an inability to sift through data and arguments to discover the truth. When an expert, Dr David Kelly, had the temerity to leak against the weapons of mass destruction theory, Mr Blair’s government went into overdrive in an attempt to discredit Dr Kelly, with tragic consequences. It will also be hard to understand how he will be able to do a decent job as president while having to give evidence and be cross examined at the forthcoming inquiry into the Iraq war.

I listened to Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday. It is a ritual at which the leader of the opposition and other members of parliament ask the Prime Minister questions, which the Prime Minister usually fails to answer. Instead he uses the question as an opportunity to criticise opposition policies or statements by way of an answer. This procedure is in the worse traditions of the British constitution. No one is held to account or made to answer questions.

A good illustration of this nonsense was when Mr Efford commended Mr Brown on his decision to attend the Copenhagen Summit. Mr Brown answered by complaining about the opposition MPs being against wind turbines, which as far as I know they are not.

Members of Parliament try to ask questions of the prime Minister which affect things in their own constituency. One MP asked about Green Energy Supplies of Leominster facing extra costs from Microgeneration’s “gold plated” scheme.  I understand the point perfectly. In the past few years the Government has forced the microgeneration industry to undertake certifications as a condition of their end users, the customers, being able to access grants from the Government.

In principle it must be right to ensure that public money is given by way of subsidy to those installers of microgeneration who can prove that they know what they are doing. However, many installers, perhaps the vast majority of them, are very small businesses and the costs of these certification programmes are indeed gold plated.

It can cost a small installer a significant amount to get certification. These way in which these certifications are structured are complex, time consuming and expensive to operate. It is odd that the government imposes such expense and regulation on a tiny but important industry that hardly has a foothold in the United Kingdom, while it allows credit card companies and banks to rip off the public with excessive and usurious rates of interest and fees far in excess of reasonable fees.

This question was directed to placing unnecessary financial and administrative burdens on those in the microgeneration industry but Mr Brown replied:

“No government is doing more than we are doing to help the low carbon industry in this country… I am convinced that we are doing as much as we can to help the development of low carbon industry”.

On the first point he is wrong. If I listed those governments that are doing more than Mr Brown’s government to help the low carbon industry you would find included every other member of the European Union, the United States, many countries in Latin America and many countries including China and South Korea, and others in the Far East. Of course Mr Brown’s Government is doing more than any other UK government is doing to help the UK’s low carbon economy, but that is because Mr Brown’s government is the only government in the country.

In fact i can cite many practical examples of the past ten years where the government has hindered, rather than helped the low carbon economy.

On the second point, if Mr Brown is convinced that he is doing as much as he can to help the low carbon economy, then he needs to re-examine the logical basis for his conviction that he is doing as much as he can to help the low carbon economy. If his conviction that government is doing all that it can, turns out to be true then heaven help the planet.