Air Unfit for Purpose

London has the worst air quality of any European capital, to our shame. It air is contaminated by diesel particulates, nitrous oxide, in some places heavy concentrations of carbon dioxide and all sorts of other pollution caused by burning. Londoners burn fuel to power their vehicles, gas to provide heat and hot water, and coal and gas to provide the electricity that the city uses. Considering that there are no power stations in London, no heavy industry in London and very little light industry in London it is astonishing just how much the air quality is made bad by what is basically a city where most of the working inhabitants are providing services of one kind or another, rather than being manufacturing workers.

There seems to be a strange reluctance by the national or local government to do anything to improve London’s air quality. The United Kingdom is bound by European legislation to keep air quality within certain limits and the regulations that have created these limits have been in force for many years. It is not just London that suffers from poor air quality; the UK government has applied for exemptions from complying with the air quality regulations for Aberdeen and north-east Scotland, Belfast, Birkenhead, Brighton, Bristol, Liverpool, Preston, Sheffield, South-West England; South Wales, Swansea and Tyneside and the exemptions have all been refused by the European Commission.

The refusal to do anything substantive about air quality except apply for exemptions will mean that in addition to bearing the £20 billion a year additional health costs caused or contributed to by poor air quality, the UK taxpayer will have to cough up substantial fines for the Government’s failures on air quality. It is a lose-lose situation. Everyone loses except the European Commission which will gain some fines and no doubt use the fines as purposefully as it uses its other income.

The health care costs are significant. Some years ago I was asked to umpire a cricket match played by twelve year olds in South Wales. I was astonished when four of the children came up to me before the start of the match and ask me to look after their inhaler devices for asthma. I had not understood that air quality was affecting the very young so badly.

There are three main government measures about London’s air quality and the air quality of the nation:-

1. The Clean Air Acts, brought into being in the early 1950s which prohibit the burning of coal and smoke type fuels

2. The Low Emission Zones, under which polluting vehicles are charged because they pollute, but not prohibited from being on the road because they pollute beyond levels that are acceptable.

3. Subsidies for electric cars, which simply displace the emissions and pollution from the city to the power stations.

To improve air quality we have to change people’s behaviour. My suggestions are:-

1. Free public transport, which will take many cars off the road

2. Improved public transport which will take even more cars off the road

3. More solar water heating which will reduce particulates from burning natural gas

4. Tighter smoke washing controls on fuel burning power stations.

These measures will be costly, but we can pay for the costs out of the savings of health expenditure and out of taxation. After all the air is free, but there is a cost to keeping it clean. The air we breathe must be rendered fit for its purpose.

 

Road Works in London – a new Olympic Event?

If you live in London and have to travel around the city to get to and from work or on business or to see friends you will have noticed that travel is becoming longer slower and less pleasant, whether you go by bus, car, underground or taxi, particularly if you live north of the river. The reason is that there has been a plethora of road and tube works which has seen many roads being closed, many tube lines being disrupted by engineering works and many roads having temporary traffic lights to divert traffic around road works. It is not very pleasant.

London’s Low Emission Zone and its high emissions

London has a Low Emission Zone, which might come as a surprise to those of you who experience the poor air quality in London. It is one of the most polluted places in Europe, according to air quality monitoring. The European Union has an air quality standard which forbids the exceeding of certain levels of pollution for more than thirty five days and London regularly exceeds this. It may be heavily fined by the European union if the air quality continues to be bad.

The air that I breathe…

“Sometimes, all I need is the air we breathe and to love you” the Hollies sang, but although we need a bit more than air, we do need air to be clean, free from pollution and of high quality. In the United Kingdom, in the face of the fresh westerly winds that gather moisture and discharge moisture and particulates into the Atlantic Ocean, we should have cleaner air than many places, but our air quality is declining and our people are increasingly suffering from disease and mortality caused by poor air quality.

London’s air quality

Air quality is terribly important. There are various ways in which air can be polluted and various ways to test that the air quality is of a sufficiently high standard so as not to present a hazard to human health. One of the most important ways of measuring air quality is to measure pollution particles in the air that have an aerodynamic diameter of less than ten micrometres. If the particulate matter in the air at a given place is less than ten micrometres the measurement of this particulate matter is referred to as PM₁₀.

The rationale for a renewable heat incentive

Consumers often ask why they should pay for renewable heat. The funds allocated for this over four years may be around £850 million, which is a great deal of money in these hard times. Renewable heat in effect comprises biomass, solar thermal panels for heat and hot water and heat pumps. There are two main reasons for encouraging renewable heat. The first is to provide a measure of energy security, lessening the dependence on imported fuel. The second reason is to help alleviate rapid climate change because, biomass aside, these technologies emit significantly less carbon dioxide than traditional fossil fuel and in the case of solar panels they emit virtually no greenhouse gases.

Is it right that these installations should be incentivised by the taxpayer? I think so.

London’s air quality a “fine” problem

These are times of great financial difficulty. Most nations have spent more than was prudent and in this field the United Kingdom has been one of the leaders. It will face a few years of severe cutbacks, many of which will be deserved and necessary because they related to matters which have drained the public purse and wasted money. Some of the expenditure has only been incurred in order to please or reward some of the supporters of the Labour Party; that will have to end.

Electric cars – part of the solution

In China there are plans to launch a new electric car which can hold five passengers and travel 250 miles on a single charge. It also might be fully charged in an hour. If the claims are justified the E6 will transform the automotive market and the technology I am sure will be adopted by all the major car manufacturers. For the environment this is good news, as the electric car will not produce dust, soot and particular emissions.

The by-products of burning coal

I have written about the copious amounts of carbon dioxide that coal fired power stations push into the air – far greater amounts per unit of electrical energy than any other form of electrical generation. However, the coal pollution is not limited to carbon dioxide, which warms up our planet. There are other dangerous by products of coal burning.