Sunday, July 4, 2010

Zero Carbon Britain is a project of the Centre for Alternative Technology in North Wales, and in June 2010 they released their second report, detailing how the UK can reduce its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2030. In an ambitious and radical re-think of the way in which we use energy, land and resources, the report explains why it is necessary to do this, and goes on to examine every sector of the economy, highlighting the areas where our carbon footprint can be reduced. From transport to agriculture, from land use to the built environment, from behavioural change to national and international policy, from electricity generation to the impact on employment, and running to 384 pages, the report must surely be described as "rigorous".

Tim Helweg-Larsen, one of the authors of the report, can be seen here speaking in December 2007 about the Zero Carbon Britain project.

The recommendations of the report are many, although the key points are

  • Proper exploitation of our potential for generating electricity from offshore wind power, which amounts to 40% of all the potential available to the EU nations, increasing the contribution of offshore wind power to our energy mix to nearly three quarters of the total.
  • Promote and develop, within the UK, the industries needed to supply the components needed for the expansion of offshore wind power, creating jobs within the UK as a result.
  • Decarbonising the transport sector by replacing petrol and diesel vehicles (cars, buses, freight and trains) with vehicles powered by electricity, and also reducing the weight of vehicles and therefore the amount of energy required to move them. This provides some reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in its own right, but maximum benefits are realised when the electricity generation sector is decarbonised.
  • Reducing the amount of energy used for heating buildings by a programme of retrofitting existing buildings with better insulation, and by improving building standards for new buildings.
  • A change in land usage, shifting away from livestock, particularly sheep and cows which are the largest sources of methane in the agriculture sector, and towards plant crops for human consumption and biomass for carbon sequestration and as a source of fuel to generate electricity for when electricity demand exceeds the supply from other renewable energy sources.
  • Preservation of areas where the soil acts as a carbon sink, to ensure that they continue to do so, and do not release the carbon that they have captured.
  • Usage of biomass as a building material, thereby containing the carbon captured by plants within the structure of a building, and preventing its return to the atmosphere. This measure is carbon negative and is intended to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions which cannot be entirely eliminated from other sectors.
  • Conversion of biomass into biochar, a form of carbon which cannot be consumed by the microbes which break down other organic matter incorporated into the soil.

And on top of all this, Britain changes from a net importer of energy to a net exporter of electricity!