Prosperity Without Growth
Posted on April 30, 2009
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At the end of March, just before the G20, the Sustainable Development Commission released a provocatively titled report: “Prosperity Without Growth“. I didn’t actually hear about it when it first came out but only stumbled across it later via an email newsletter.
At first I thought, ‘Well, I must not have read the paper properly that day.’ But a retrospective search turns up only two Guardian articles (one news, one opinion), a cranky opinion piece in the Times, and nothing in the Telegraph, Independent, or Economist.
This is disappointing. The report asks serious questions about how our society seeks to improve the lives of its citizens and it’s been almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media. And while the blogs do take up some of the slack, the debate isn’t always as rigorous as one might hope.
Having now read some comments from around the web, and re-examined the original report, I think part of this apathy is because of the definitional baggage and misunderstanding that surrounds the concept of economic growth. Let me explain what I mean.
Sellafield
Posted on April 20, 2009
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From yesterday’s Observer:
In fact, Sellafield is a classic illustration of the failure of British industry. We were pioneers of nuclear power but in our desire to build our own atomic weapons, failed abysmally when it came to developing and managing our own civil reactors and reprocessing plants.
As a result, we have been left with a multibillion-pound clean-up bill and the prospect of buying either American or French reactors for our next generation nuclear plants. The lesson of Sellafield is not so much that nuclear power is dangerous but that Britain seems incapable of implementing any long-term engineering plan that comes its way, from high-speed trains to wind turbines or rocket launchers.
Crazy idea of the week
Posted on November 9, 2008
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Three words: backyard nuclear power.
To be honest, I can’t tell if this is crazy good or crazy bad. On the one hand, compact self-contained nukes would give better output – more of it and more predictable – than similarly distributed renewables. But still, the units are buried underground and every 7 to 10 years, a lorry full of fresh uranium comes round to your house (well more realistically your local factory, industrial estate etc.), digs up the reactor to refuel it, and takes away the old waste. Although the transportation of nuclear materials has been relatively safe to date, I wonder how things change when you start shipping around lots of little containers rather than a few big loads (ignoring medical isotopes).
The first units are scheduled for delivery in five to ten years to a Czech utility company.
A promising start
Posted on October 16, 2008
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It looks as though the new Energy and Climate department is getting off on the right foot. Buried part way down this article is a quote from the minister saying that the Energy Bill will be amended to incorporate a feed-in tariff for microgeneration. Finally.
For years, microgeneration advocates have looked at the rapid deployment of solar and wind in Germany and called for similar incentives, which pay microgen owners for exporting their electricity to the grid, here in the UK. But in 2005, my research found that the UK government was fundamentally opposed to this option as an unnecessary intervention in the market. Obviously, market intervention has become a little more fashionable of late but there have also been serious economic analyses published to say it is in fact more economically-efficient to promote renewables and microgeneration using a feed-in tariff, rather than the current renewables obligation mechanism.
Of course the details haven’t been announced yet. But that the fact that a feed-in tariff is now being considered, alongside the government’s new commitment to a 80% – not 60% – reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, suggests that things may be changing in Whitehall. Let’s wait and see.
No longer the bridesmaid
Posted on October 3, 2008
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After years of being shoehorned into BERR and Defra, the BBC is reporting that energy and climate issues are to be tackled by a new ministry led by Ed Miliband. Very sensible move and I’ll be keen to see how effective it will be in tying together the different policy threads.
Update
Posted on September 1, 2008
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After a relaxed summer, I’m currently in the process of reworking the website. I’ve decided to wind down the Small is Beautiful section as I’m not working on microgeneration issues as much now. Also I’m blogging much more at AcademicProductivity.com: click here for a list of my posts there.
The new site will be a fairly static page, archiving the old material while providing space for occasional posts. With luck, it will be live sometime in the new year.