Last week the Low Carbon Kid attended a seminar at the Energy Saving Trust as he is one of about 30 'Green Ambassadors' for energy efficiency.
Its director Philip Sellwood (an unusual bloke, previously director of off-licence chains Threshers and Victoria Wine, and a Home Office advisor) was offloading all sorts of gripes about goverment attitudes to energy efficiency. Here are three titbits:
1. Does The EST Support New Nuclear Power?
Not as such - but in practice it works out that it doesn't.
This is because the Trust argues that all means of both saving and generating energy should be looked at for cost-efficiency and ranked accordingly.
You then proceed up the hierarchy until you've met everyone's needs. They've worked out that everyone's needs would be met before there's a need for nuclear new build.
(This chimes with CAT's analysis - Zero Carbon Britain.)
So, given that investment in energy efficiency is always more cost-effective than building new generating capacity, this comes first.
Then comes microgeneration - solar water heating, heat pumps, water power, wind power, biofuels (wood boiler), solar electricity (in that order and if available).
Then we have combined heat and power - still on decentralised energy. Gas for electricity and heat supplied locally.
Then clean coal.
Then large scale renewables (wind farms), then tidal and other marine energies.
Finally nuclear power stations. The total life cycle costs - including looking after that waste for thousands of years - make this the least cost-effective.
Unsexy Cavity Filling
The most cost-effective energy efficiency measure if you have a cavity wall in your house is to fill it with insulation. It takes a day for a contractor and pays for itself in about nine months.
Despite this, millions of homes have yet to be treated and yet it would go a long way to reducing our carbon emissions.
Philip has tackled the Treasury several times on providing funds to support this.
Treasury bright boffins: "Obviously it's perfectly the rational and obvious thing to do, so people will do it."
Philip: "But people aren't rational. They prefer to spend money on sexier things."
Treasury: "Then they should be more rational. Sorry, we've got a military machine to support."
So lots of money and carbon continue to be wasted.
Non-eco Schools
The government is committed to rebuilding every secondary school in the country. A massive undertaking.
Several schools are now eco schools and have solar panels and wind turbines to educate the pupils. This is, you would think, (rationally?) a perfect opportunity to make every school an eco-school.
Clearly, if we teach children energy efficiency, it's the best we can do for our energy future. And what better way than for the schools themselves to demonstrate what it means?
But Philip has found out that:
a) No energy-efficiency or renewable energy features are in the specifications for the buildings
b) He asked all government departments to cooperate with energy efficiency week next week - they all signed up to help out - except the Department for Education and Skills. It said it had too many messages already to get across to schools.
I wonder how Philip keeps from tearing down the walls with his fingernails. Perhaps he has a few bottles left over from Threshers to calm his nerves.
Reference: clean-energy-technologies.blogspot.com
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AIRPORT AIMS TO ADOPT A FLEET OF HYDROGEN-POWERED FORKLIFTS TO REPLACE ITS BATTERY FORKLIFTS
Japan's Kinsai International Airport has plans to become a hub for hydrogen fuel in the coming years. The airport is taking steps to incorporate fuel cell-powered forklifts, which will replace the battery-powered forklifts that the airport had used in the past. The first forklift will be delivered to the airport on February 23. Over the following months, the airport will be replacing all of its 400 battery-powered forklifts with those using hydrogen fuel cells.
AIRPORT MAY BECOME A PROMINENT HUB FOR HYDROGEN IN JAPAN
Keiichi Ando, president of the New Kinsai International Airport company, notes that he wants to turn the airport into a massive hub for hydrogen fuel. In order to support the adoption of the new hydrogen-powered forklifts, a small hydrogen station is expected to be built at the airport. This would allow the airport to access hydrogen fuel without having to also deal with shipping costs associated with fuel transportation.
Fuel Cell Forklifts May Be Better Than Their Battery-powered Counterparts
The forklifts that the airport will be using have been developed by Toyota Industries. Each vehicle can lift loads of more than 2.5 tons and will be able to operate for eight hours on a single tank of hydrogen fuel. The fuel tanks can be refilled in under three minutes, which is a benefit that fuel cells have over batteries. Conventional batteries have shorter operational lifetimes and must be recharged frequently, with the recharging process taking several hours to complete.
Hydrogen Fuel Is Gaining Momentum In Japan
Japan is quickly becoming a major market for hydrogen fuel and fuel cell technology. The Japanese government is investing in the establishment of a hydrogen infrastructure, hoping to foster the transition toward a hydrogen society. The country is also supporting hydrogen fuel and fuel cell technology because of its environmental benefits. According to Toyota Industries, the introduction of 200 fuel cell forklifts at the Kinsai International Airport will offset some 300 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.
For more alternative energy news headlines today.
"By Graham Readfern, crossposted from DeSmogBlog."
A billionaire "vulture capitalist" and major backer of the US Republican Party is a major funder of the think tank of Danish climate science contrarian and fossil fuels advocate Bjorn Lomborg, DeSmogBlog has found.
New York-based hedge fund manager Paul Singer's charitable foundation gave 200,000 to Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) in 2013, latest US tax disclosures reveal.
The grant to Lomborg's think tank is revealed in the tax form of the Paul E. Singer Foundation covering that foundation's activities between December 2012 and November 2013.
Singer, described as a "passionate defender of the 1%", has emerged as a major force in the Republican party in recent years and was a key backer and influencer during Mitt Romney's failed tilt at the Presidency.
The 200,000 grant represented almost one third of the 621,057 in donations declared by the Copenhagen Consensus Center in 2013.
A spokesperson for the think tank told DeSmogBlog that "not one dollar" of the Singer grant had been spent.
Lomborg, a Danish political scientist, is often cited on lists of the world's most influential people.
He writes extensively on climate change and energy issues with his columns appearing in many of the world's biggest news outlets.
The CCC think tank produces reports that consistently argue that cutting greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the roll-out of current renewable energy technologies should be low priorities for policy makers.
Most recently, Lomborg wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal arguing climate change was not the urgent problem that many thought.
He wrote that "the narrative that the world's climate is changing from bad to worse is unhelpful alarmism".
Lomborg argues the poorest countries need fossil fuels to lift themselves out of poverty - a position that gained support from the world's richest man, Bill Gates.
At a G20 side event in Brisbane last year, Lomborg appeared at an event sponsored by the world's largest private coal company, Peabody Energy, where he again argued that the world's poor needed fossil fuels.
The CCC's keystone project is the Post 2015 Consensus that is trying to influence the formulation of the next set of global development goals being discussed by the United Nations. Those goals will replace the millennium development goals.
Lomborg's CCC think tank was registered as a not-for-profit in the US in 2008 and has attracted almost 5 million in donations since then. In 2013, the CCCpaid Lomborg, its founder and president, 200,484 for his work. The previous year Lomborg was paid 775,000.
The think tank has insisted that its funders, most of which are anonymous, do not influence its research. The think tank says it does not accept funding from the fossil fuel industry.
Despite being registered in the US, Lomborg has admitted that all but one of the think tank's seven staff are based elsewhere. The think tank's address is aparcel service in Lowell, Massachusetts.
The discovery of support from Paul Singer comes after a DeSmogBlog investigation last year found that CCC's early funders included conservative think tanks with links to the network of organisations funded by the Koch brothers, who have pushed millions into organisations denying climate science and blocking action to cut fossil fuel emissions.
In the 2014 US political spending cycle, data presented by OpenSecrets shows Singer spent 9.4 million influencing Republicans - the biggest disclosed individual spender on the conservative side of US politics.
Singer, whose Elliott Management hedge fund manages about 25 billion in assets, has been branded a "vulture capitalist" enterprise due to investment strategies employed by his firm that targets foreign economies in trouble.
A 2011 summary of "vulture funds" in The Guardian said Elliott Management's "principal investment strategy" was "buying distressed debt cheaply and selling it at a profit or suing for full payment".
Greg Palast, the author of Vulture's Picnic, documented in The Guardian how Singer's firm had managed to pocket 1.29 billion from the US Treasury after a "brilliantly complex" financial manoeuvre in 2009 that saw Singer lead a consortium to buy the parts supplier of General Motors and Chrysler before claiming cash from a government bailout of the struggling auto industry.
Singer, who according to Forbes is personally worth 1.8 billion, remains in conflict with the Argentinian government over debt bought by an Elliott affiliate and other investors.
As well as the generosity shown to Bjorn Lomborg's think tank, Singer's foundation gave 500,000 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where Singer is chairman of the board of trustees.
The Manhattan Institute is also known for downplaying the impacts of climate change while promoting fossil fuels.
In October 2014, Manhattan senior fellow Robert Bryce wrote a report Not Beyond Coal arguing that the future for the coal industry was bright and the fossil fuel was "essential" for addressing poverty in developing countries - a position identical to that pushed by Lomborg.
Bryce also attacks the wind industry claiming it cannot cut emissions, describing wind turbines as "climate change scarecrows". In testimony to the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in February 2014, Bryce said wind turbines were "slaughtering wildlife" and killed 600,000 birds every year in theUS.
A review of studies and data into US bird deaths has found about 600 million birds are killed annually in collisions with windows and buildings, but even this high number was only a quarter of the birds killed annually in the US by feral cats.
Another large donation from Singer's foundation went to the Moving Picture Institute - an organisation that says it produces films that promote understanding of "individual rights, limited government, and free markets".
The MPI helped fund the 2004 pro-mining documentary "Mine Your Own Business"by Irish filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.
The two would go on to make the 2009 climate science denial film "Not Evil Just Wrong", which was partly funded through a grant from DonorsTrust - a fund which stockpiles cash from conservative philanthropists and that has pushed millions into organisations promoting climate science denial while fighting action to cut emissions.
Roland Mathiasson, Executive Vice President at the Copenhagen Consensus Center, told DeSmogBlog: "Not one dollar of this grant has been spent. It's for a potential future project, pending support from a broad range of political perspectives to underline the non-political nature of the project.
"It is a project for the public conversation, so obviously there will be a lot of communication once broad support is secured, and the project is launched."
Mathiasson declined to provide further details.
DeSmogBlog attempted to contact the Paul E Singer Foundation to ask about their donation to CCC, but email requests went unanswered.
The post Bjorn Lomborg Think Tank Funder Revealed As Billionaire Republican 'Vulture Capitalist' Paul Singer appeared first on Greenpeace Blogs.
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