Tony Allwright
Halfway through the climate change conference in Copenhagen, and still nobody seems to be willing to address the Climategate science fraud scandal that is crumbling the foundations of the global warming narrative.
In their new book Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner also challenge that narrative. They suggest that warming isn’t caused by human-generated carbon dioxide, to the predictable outrage of numerous “global warm-mongers”.
The contribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) to (alleged) global warming has become such an accepted piece of conventional wisdom that few seem to question it any more. “The science is settled,” we are admonished. We must curtail our CO2 emissions — or else. So cars are taxed according to their emissions; carbon levies and taxes are imposed; carbon-trading schemes are created; green ministers spend taxpayers’ money to “offset” CO2 emitted jetting around the world; the British government plans legislation to force people to reduce their carbon footprints; and we should all turn vegetarian.
Yet science, unlike some scientists, screams out that man’s CO2 cannot possibly cause global warming. Consider the molecular physics — it’s not that difficult.
Carbon dioxide forms only 0.04% of our atmosphere, so its molecules are widely dispersed. The space between them is almost 200 times their diameter. As altitude increases, air density decreases, which scatters them still further.
CO2 molecules warm our atmosphere by giving off heat when they vibrate. What makes them vibrate is electromagnetic radiation in the infrared range, which reflects off the Earth’s surface. However, spectrometry shows that only 8% of the infrared spectrum can actually do this. Moreover, the radiation excites CO2 molecules only if they collide. Thus, CO2 can cause global warming only to the extent that just 8% of infrared rays can hit tiny, widely distributed targets. You don’t have to be a physicist to see that this can be a pretty long shot. But it gets longer.
Of that 0.04% of CO2 in the air, 97% comes overwhelmingly from the oceans, but also volcanoes, rotting plant matter, burning forests and, interestingly, gases that animals emit (hence that call to vegetarianism). Human activity contributes only 3% of the 0.04%, or 12 parts per million. This pushes the spacing between these CO2 molecules to some 600 times their diameter, and wider still at higher altitudes.
So, for man-made global warming to occur, 8% of infrared rays must bull’s-eye onto the few man-made, widely dispersed, minute CO2 molecules. To turn this into a practical analogy: suppose I start machine-gunning pinhead targets two millimetres across. I will find it very difficult to hit many of these pinheads if they happen to be scattered one to 1.5 metres apart. All the more so if all but 8% of my bullets are duds.
But that is, essentially, Al Gore’s hypothesis — that those infrared “bullets” are colliding with tiny, yet vastly spaced man-made CO2 molecules so consistently that they warm the earth. James Peden, a renowned atmospheric physicist, has written an excellent layman’s guide to the science (visit tinyurl.com/2zmvhl) that Gore would do well to study.
If the human CO2 global-warming hypothesis collapses at the first scrutiny of the science, as I maintain it does, and before we get into the contradictory observed evidence, how on earth can Gore become an Oscar-winning Nobel peace laureate multimillionaire simply by giving the same “inconvenient [un]truth” lecture over and over for an appearance fee believed to be $180,000 (€122,000)?
Perhaps it’s because that’s where the money is. In 2007, the US Senate committee on environment and public works observed that, over a decade, funding of $50 billion had gone to global-warming proponents, as against just $19m on the case for denial. Nevertheless, the warm-mongers in Copenhagen will eventually learn that they cannot alter the laws of physics.
What will the cost to the world be in wasted wealth and effort? Small and broke, Ireland is supposed to cough up €12 billion to meet spurious emission targets, but the biggest cost will be to the world’s poorest, in suppressed development opportunities. These are the very people the global warm-mongers like to pretend they are saving.
Tony Allwright is an engineering and industrial safety consultant who blogs at www.tallrite.com/blog.htm
Sunday, 13 December 2009
If climate change doesn’t grab you, meet its evil twin
Charles Clover
Whoever leaked that clutch of Climategate emails last month must be laughing his socks off. For he has unleashed upon the rest of us the phenomenon of the born-again climate sceptic, the kind of man (always a man, almost invariably wearing a tweed jacket) who now materialises beside me at parties and confides that he has been having second thoughts about climate change.
My first instinct is always to humour him. I say I would be absolutely overjoyed if in a few years’ time we were to find out that Richard Lindzen, the most distinguished sceptic among the academic meteorologists, has turned out to be right and that the early 21st century got itself into a hysterical panic on the basis of trends based on highly uncertain computer predictions. But, I add, there are reasonable odds that he is wrong. My follow-up question is this: “Do you know that climate change is not the only reason to be uneasy about carbon emissions?”
On each occasion I am met by a look of puzzlement, followed by a perplexed nod, and I realise the person in question hasn’t a clue what I am talking about. He hasn’t heard of the acidification of the sea, a phenomenon quite separate from global warming but just as alarming. The reason, I suspect, is that it does not rate a line in the bestselling sceptical books on global warming by Christopher Booker or Nigel Lawson — which seem to be all that my tweedy friends have read on the subject.
Ocean acidification has been quite scandalously left out of the reckoning in the past few weeks. I am not for a moment belittling the science behind man-made global warming. This still seems to me solid, despite the shenanigans at the University of East Anglia. That levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are rising is not disputed. We have known since the 19th century that carbon dioxide was a crucial greenhouse gas. Venus has a lot of it and is hot as hell. Mars has almost none and is cold as ice.
However, even if you happen to believe that everything we know about greenhouse gases is illusory — unlikely though that is — we would still need to agree at Copenhagen this week to cut our emissions of carbon dioxide because of what is happening to the sea, the source of roughly half our food and provider of other useful services that we tend to take for granted.
We know the ocean absorbs about 25% of the carbon dioxide we emit each year. This CO2 dissolves through wind and wave action to form carbonic acid. This is altering the chemistry of the seas in ways that are not disputed and are far simpler to understand than the effect the same pollutants are having on the atmosphere. I recommend the startling practical demonstration on YouTube of what acidity will do to the oceans given by Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to a congressional select committee this month.
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in about 1750, sea water acidity has increased by 30%. The speed and degree of this change are faster than anything that had happened for 55m years. The changes being observed are beginning to disrupt the ability of any organism to make shells out of calcium carbonate. Organisms that do this include corals, crabs, lobsters, small creatures vital to the diet of fish and plankton of the kind that die and form chalk deposits such as the white cliffs of Dover.
Projections show that by 2060, given the current rate of fossil-fuel emissions, sea water acidity could have increased by 120%. Lubchenco showed Congress a scary picture of what a shell would look like if it had spent a month in water as acidic as this. The shell had begun to dissolve.
Such an effect could trigger a chain of reactions through entire ecosystems, from whales to fish and shellfish, with huge implications for economies and wildlife. It could even stop the sea absorbing as much carbon dioxide as it does now, accelerating global warming. It is pretty scary stuff.
Predictably, the science of ocean acidification, which is accepted by governments on both sides of the Atlantic, does not go uncontested by the global warming sceptics. They say you can’t acidify the ocean because it washes over alkaline rocks. This process of weathering rocks is indeed how the alkalinity of the ocean will recover, but leading scientists say it will take hundreds of thousands of years. At the unprecedented speed that acidification is happening, the marine organisms will be knocked out before the rocks can dilute the acid.
There is plenty we still need to know about the acidification of the ocean. However, it looks as if unpleasant things start to happen if we go beyond 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (bear in mind we reached 390ppm earlier this year). That is, coincidentally, the threshold for holding the Earth’s average temperature rise down to a relatively “safe” 2C.
So ocean acidification, which people are beginning to call climate change’s “evil twin”, may be an even more pressing reason to move to a low-carbon economy than climate change itself. And that makes it doubly irresponsible for those people who scorn the need to cut carbon emissions to ignore what is going on in the oceans.
Whoever leaked that clutch of Climategate emails last month must be laughing his socks off. For he has unleashed upon the rest of us the phenomenon of the born-again climate sceptic, the kind of man (always a man, almost invariably wearing a tweed jacket) who now materialises beside me at parties and confides that he has been having second thoughts about climate change.
My first instinct is always to humour him. I say I would be absolutely overjoyed if in a few years’ time we were to find out that Richard Lindzen, the most distinguished sceptic among the academic meteorologists, has turned out to be right and that the early 21st century got itself into a hysterical panic on the basis of trends based on highly uncertain computer predictions. But, I add, there are reasonable odds that he is wrong. My follow-up question is this: “Do you know that climate change is not the only reason to be uneasy about carbon emissions?”
On each occasion I am met by a look of puzzlement, followed by a perplexed nod, and I realise the person in question hasn’t a clue what I am talking about. He hasn’t heard of the acidification of the sea, a phenomenon quite separate from global warming but just as alarming. The reason, I suspect, is that it does not rate a line in the bestselling sceptical books on global warming by Christopher Booker or Nigel Lawson — which seem to be all that my tweedy friends have read on the subject.
Ocean acidification has been quite scandalously left out of the reckoning in the past few weeks. I am not for a moment belittling the science behind man-made global warming. This still seems to me solid, despite the shenanigans at the University of East Anglia. That levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are rising is not disputed. We have known since the 19th century that carbon dioxide was a crucial greenhouse gas. Venus has a lot of it and is hot as hell. Mars has almost none and is cold as ice.
However, even if you happen to believe that everything we know about greenhouse gases is illusory — unlikely though that is — we would still need to agree at Copenhagen this week to cut our emissions of carbon dioxide because of what is happening to the sea, the source of roughly half our food and provider of other useful services that we tend to take for granted.
We know the ocean absorbs about 25% of the carbon dioxide we emit each year. This CO2 dissolves through wind and wave action to form carbonic acid. This is altering the chemistry of the seas in ways that are not disputed and are far simpler to understand than the effect the same pollutants are having on the atmosphere. I recommend the startling practical demonstration on YouTube of what acidity will do to the oceans given by Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to a congressional select committee this month.
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in about 1750, sea water acidity has increased by 30%. The speed and degree of this change are faster than anything that had happened for 55m years. The changes being observed are beginning to disrupt the ability of any organism to make shells out of calcium carbonate. Organisms that do this include corals, crabs, lobsters, small creatures vital to the diet of fish and plankton of the kind that die and form chalk deposits such as the white cliffs of Dover.
Projections show that by 2060, given the current rate of fossil-fuel emissions, sea water acidity could have increased by 120%. Lubchenco showed Congress a scary picture of what a shell would look like if it had spent a month in water as acidic as this. The shell had begun to dissolve.
Such an effect could trigger a chain of reactions through entire ecosystems, from whales to fish and shellfish, with huge implications for economies and wildlife. It could even stop the sea absorbing as much carbon dioxide as it does now, accelerating global warming. It is pretty scary stuff.
Predictably, the science of ocean acidification, which is accepted by governments on both sides of the Atlantic, does not go uncontested by the global warming sceptics. They say you can’t acidify the ocean because it washes over alkaline rocks. This process of weathering rocks is indeed how the alkalinity of the ocean will recover, but leading scientists say it will take hundreds of thousands of years. At the unprecedented speed that acidification is happening, the marine organisms will be knocked out before the rocks can dilute the acid.
There is plenty we still need to know about the acidification of the ocean. However, it looks as if unpleasant things start to happen if we go beyond 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (bear in mind we reached 390ppm earlier this year). That is, coincidentally, the threshold for holding the Earth’s average temperature rise down to a relatively “safe” 2C.
So ocean acidification, which people are beginning to call climate change’s “evil twin”, may be an even more pressing reason to move to a low-carbon economy than climate change itself. And that makes it doubly irresponsible for those people who scorn the need to cut carbon emissions to ignore what is going on in the oceans.
Greenhouse Effects: Food waste
Tony Juniper
Food security is set to become a big issue at a time when the population is rising fast, oil and gas prices are volatile and climate change is having an increasing impact. It also raises huge environmental questions related to chemicals and energy use, the demand for land, and emissions of greenhouse gases.
In the UK, we discard about a third of our food and drink — that is, about 8.3m tons, at an annual cost of about £12 billion. For the average family with children, this equates to £680 spent each year on food they don’t eat. Some of this is unavoidable: meat comes with bones, eggs have shells. Even so, about 5.3m tons of waste could be avoided.
More than half of this comes from not using food in time: often, it is thrown away untouched or unopened. Most of this ends up in landfill, where it rots, producing methane, the second most important greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. Doing away with food waste would have the same climate-change benefit as taking one in four cars off our roads.
One reason we waste so much food is that prices are relatively low. In the 1950s, food accounted for more than a quarter of the household budget. Now it is just 10%. Recently, however, prices have increased, and this is set to continue, so there are sound economic reasons to change our ways.
An excellent website called Love Food Hate Waste provides ideas on how to reduce your waste, as well as information on storage, recipes and useful tips for leftovers (see www.lovefoodhatewaste.com). The festive season is a good time to think about food waste. Last year, we spent more than £500m on Christmas dinner alone.
- Having backed a campaign for boiler-scrappage payments — similar to those for cars — I was especially pleased to see the chancellor announce a scheme last week. Householders will get £400 towards a new, more energy-efficient boiler when they trade in an old model. Up to 125,000 households are expected to be eligible.
Tony Juniper is an environmental campaigner and former director of Friends of the Earth; tonyjuniper.com
Food security is set to become a big issue at a time when the population is rising fast, oil and gas prices are volatile and climate change is having an increasing impact. It also raises huge environmental questions related to chemicals and energy use, the demand for land, and emissions of greenhouse gases.
In the UK, we discard about a third of our food and drink — that is, about 8.3m tons, at an annual cost of about £12 billion. For the average family with children, this equates to £680 spent each year on food they don’t eat. Some of this is unavoidable: meat comes with bones, eggs have shells. Even so, about 5.3m tons of waste could be avoided.
More than half of this comes from not using food in time: often, it is thrown away untouched or unopened. Most of this ends up in landfill, where it rots, producing methane, the second most important greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. Doing away with food waste would have the same climate-change benefit as taking one in four cars off our roads.
One reason we waste so much food is that prices are relatively low. In the 1950s, food accounted for more than a quarter of the household budget. Now it is just 10%. Recently, however, prices have increased, and this is set to continue, so there are sound economic reasons to change our ways.
An excellent website called Love Food Hate Waste provides ideas on how to reduce your waste, as well as information on storage, recipes and useful tips for leftovers (see www.lovefoodhatewaste.com). The festive season is a good time to think about food waste. Last year, we spent more than £500m on Christmas dinner alone.
- Having backed a campaign for boiler-scrappage payments — similar to those for cars — I was especially pleased to see the chancellor announce a scheme last week. Householders will get £400 towards a new, more energy-efficient boiler when they trade in an old model. Up to 125,000 households are expected to be eligible.
Tony Juniper is an environmental campaigner and former director of Friends of the Earth; tonyjuniper.com
Snort more cocaine and the rainforest dies
Marie Woolf
Don’t sniff: cocaine users are killing the planet. Every time they snort a line, part of the rainforest dies — or so say the police in a new campaign against drugs.
They hope that appealing to young people’s environmental concerns will prove more effective than urging them to “just say no” to drugs. Linking with Greenpeace, the police plan to spread the message that for every gram of cocaine made, four square metres of rainforest are destroyed.
Chris Pearson, drug analyst at the Metropolitan police’s intelligence bureau, said: “The cocaine trade is destroying the rainforest. Young people don’t tend to listen to the police, but they might listen to Greenpeace and they might listen to their peers.”
The move is backed by the government. Vernon Coaker, the schools minister, said: “Teaching young people about the devastating environmental consequences of the drugs industry is one way we can tackle drug usage, though we need to balance this with giving young people clear information and advice on the other effects of drugs.”
Virgin rainforest is cleared for illegal coca plantations while toxic chemicals are used to process the leaves. Discarded chemicals, which are dumped in the forest and its rivers, poison rare plants and animals.
Law enforcement agencies destroy fragile ecosystems when they target illegal coca plantations, often dropping more chemicals on them from the air.
Environmentalists hope that images of rainforest destruction will make cocaine use as politically incorrect as wearing fur from animals caught in the wild. “Just telling young people that using cocaine is bad doesn’t work,” said John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace.
“You need to change teenage culture and point out that it has all sorts of consequences. Then they start talking about it more loudly and you could get into that fur coat situation.”
The new approach follows evidence that cocaine use is increasing among young people in the UK, partly driven by lower prices.
Some MPs believe the “save the planet” message will also appeal to environmentally conscious middle-class cocaine users.
Don’t sniff: cocaine users are killing the planet. Every time they snort a line, part of the rainforest dies — or so say the police in a new campaign against drugs.
They hope that appealing to young people’s environmental concerns will prove more effective than urging them to “just say no” to drugs. Linking with Greenpeace, the police plan to spread the message that for every gram of cocaine made, four square metres of rainforest are destroyed.
Chris Pearson, drug analyst at the Metropolitan police’s intelligence bureau, said: “The cocaine trade is destroying the rainforest. Young people don’t tend to listen to the police, but they might listen to Greenpeace and they might listen to their peers.”
The move is backed by the government. Vernon Coaker, the schools minister, said: “Teaching young people about the devastating environmental consequences of the drugs industry is one way we can tackle drug usage, though we need to balance this with giving young people clear information and advice on the other effects of drugs.”
Virgin rainforest is cleared for illegal coca plantations while toxic chemicals are used to process the leaves. Discarded chemicals, which are dumped in the forest and its rivers, poison rare plants and animals.
Law enforcement agencies destroy fragile ecosystems when they target illegal coca plantations, often dropping more chemicals on them from the air.
Environmentalists hope that images of rainforest destruction will make cocaine use as politically incorrect as wearing fur from animals caught in the wild. “Just telling young people that using cocaine is bad doesn’t work,” said John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace.
“You need to change teenage culture and point out that it has all sorts of consequences. Then they start talking about it more loudly and you could get into that fur coat situation.”
The new approach follows evidence that cocaine use is increasing among young people in the UK, partly driven by lower prices.
Some MPs believe the “save the planet” message will also appeal to environmentally conscious middle-class cocaine users.
Don’t let West carry carbon burden, urge firms
Tricia Holly Davis in Copenhagen
BUSINESS leaders at the United Nations climate-change summit in Copenhagen are pushing European nations not to bow to pressure from developing nations to increase targets for greenhouse-gas cuts.
Executives at the summit say firms will be left at a competitive disadvantage if the European Union forces industry to slash emissions while competitors in China and India are given more leeway.
Business Europe, an industry lobby group, has warned against raising the target to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from 20% to 30% unless rival economies also commit themselves to similar targets. China has agreed to cut its emissions per unit of economic output 40% over the next decade, but this is not the same as actually limiting pollution.
“In the absence of a global agreement, the EU must not increase in any way its current carbon-reduction requirement,” said Business Europe.
This has infuriated green-interest groups. Oxfam has called on the CBI to dissociate itself publicly from Business Europe. The CBI said, however, that it agreed with Business Europe’s view. “It may be right to move to a 30% emissions cut, but the challenge is bringing other countries to match that level of ambition,” said the CBI’s Neil Bentley.
Progress in negotiations in the first week of the two-week event was painfully slow.
A draft agreement that proposes cutting global emissions roughly in half by 2050 emerged on Friday, but it contained no detail on the crucial question of how much rich nations would give to poorer countries to help them tackle climate change.
Delegates from developed nations welcomed the draft, but warned that they thought it was too soft on developing countries.
At a separate meeting in Brussels, European leaders agreed to pay $10.5 billion (£6.5 billion) over the next three years to help emerging economies, a move that they said should help to clinch a deal at Copenhagen.
The pace of the talks is expected to pick up this week, when many world leaders, including Gordon Brown and Barack Obama, arrive. The summit concludes on Friday.
Business leaders at the event said they had struggled to exert any influence on the main talks, taking place at the Bella conference centre. Most of the business events at the summit are being held at a separate location, and executives said the business lobby was divided on key issues.
“It’s difficult to imagine one voice [to speak for business],” said Jim Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy, the American utility group. “In truth, there are many voices.”
Global institutions, however, are using the event to try to thrash out side agreements on how business will pay for the shift to low-carbon technology. The World Bank, for example, on Thursday summoned business representatives to a low-profile meeting at a conference room at the Copenhagen opera house.
Businesses also see Copenhagen as a giant trade fair and networking event.
A former American climate-change negotiator who now runs a consultancy that advises firms on how to tap into the £3 trillion global low-carbon technology market said businesses were at the talks to make deals. “Really, this is just a great convention for businesses to meet customers. The policy part is almost a sideshow.”
Money is the barrier to progress in the main talks. Developing countries want the industrialised nations to pay for low-carbon technologies that will help nations such as China and India grow their economies in a sustainable way.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that by 2030 $15 trillion will have to be spent to move from fossil-fuel power to low-carbon sources.
Steve Sawyer, who represents the interests of business on the World Bank’s clean technology fund committee, said business would be responsible for 75%-90% of these costs. The fund was established last year to test low-carbon technologies and act as a demonstration project for the Copenhagen negotiations to show how rich nations could sponsor low-carbon projects in emerging economies.
The fund is now worth $5 billion — nearly equivalent to the entire finance package being offered by the EU delegation in Copenhagen to pay for green energy projects in developing nations. Sawyer said the World Bank’s intention was to use the fund to attract investment from businesses of up to $100 billion over the next decade.
“Whatever comes out of Copenhagen, ultimately it is businesses that will pay most of the costs, but if governments are going to get business to invest then they should be testing these technologies in the markets where they have the most commercial opportunities,” he said.
“We should be investing in projects where it makes economic sense to get these technologies to scale and then give them to developing countries.”
Martin Powell of the London Development Agency, the mayor’s economic development arm, agreed. “The climate-change negotiations shouldn’t just be about giving money to poorer nations. They should be about making the most efficient use of that money,” he said.
BUSINESS leaders at the United Nations climate-change summit in Copenhagen are pushing European nations not to bow to pressure from developing nations to increase targets for greenhouse-gas cuts.
Executives at the summit say firms will be left at a competitive disadvantage if the European Union forces industry to slash emissions while competitors in China and India are given more leeway.
Business Europe, an industry lobby group, has warned against raising the target to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from 20% to 30% unless rival economies also commit themselves to similar targets. China has agreed to cut its emissions per unit of economic output 40% over the next decade, but this is not the same as actually limiting pollution.
“In the absence of a global agreement, the EU must not increase in any way its current carbon-reduction requirement,” said Business Europe.
This has infuriated green-interest groups. Oxfam has called on the CBI to dissociate itself publicly from Business Europe. The CBI said, however, that it agreed with Business Europe’s view. “It may be right to move to a 30% emissions cut, but the challenge is bringing other countries to match that level of ambition,” said the CBI’s Neil Bentley.
Progress in negotiations in the first week of the two-week event was painfully slow.
A draft agreement that proposes cutting global emissions roughly in half by 2050 emerged on Friday, but it contained no detail on the crucial question of how much rich nations would give to poorer countries to help them tackle climate change.
Delegates from developed nations welcomed the draft, but warned that they thought it was too soft on developing countries.
At a separate meeting in Brussels, European leaders agreed to pay $10.5 billion (£6.5 billion) over the next three years to help emerging economies, a move that they said should help to clinch a deal at Copenhagen.
The pace of the talks is expected to pick up this week, when many world leaders, including Gordon Brown and Barack Obama, arrive. The summit concludes on Friday.
Business leaders at the event said they had struggled to exert any influence on the main talks, taking place at the Bella conference centre. Most of the business events at the summit are being held at a separate location, and executives said the business lobby was divided on key issues.
“It’s difficult to imagine one voice [to speak for business],” said Jim Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy, the American utility group. “In truth, there are many voices.”
Global institutions, however, are using the event to try to thrash out side agreements on how business will pay for the shift to low-carbon technology. The World Bank, for example, on Thursday summoned business representatives to a low-profile meeting at a conference room at the Copenhagen opera house.
Businesses also see Copenhagen as a giant trade fair and networking event.
A former American climate-change negotiator who now runs a consultancy that advises firms on how to tap into the £3 trillion global low-carbon technology market said businesses were at the talks to make deals. “Really, this is just a great convention for businesses to meet customers. The policy part is almost a sideshow.”
Money is the barrier to progress in the main talks. Developing countries want the industrialised nations to pay for low-carbon technologies that will help nations such as China and India grow their economies in a sustainable way.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that by 2030 $15 trillion will have to be spent to move from fossil-fuel power to low-carbon sources.
Steve Sawyer, who represents the interests of business on the World Bank’s clean technology fund committee, said business would be responsible for 75%-90% of these costs. The fund was established last year to test low-carbon technologies and act as a demonstration project for the Copenhagen negotiations to show how rich nations could sponsor low-carbon projects in emerging economies.
The fund is now worth $5 billion — nearly equivalent to the entire finance package being offered by the EU delegation in Copenhagen to pay for green energy projects in developing nations. Sawyer said the World Bank’s intention was to use the fund to attract investment from businesses of up to $100 billion over the next decade.
“Whatever comes out of Copenhagen, ultimately it is businesses that will pay most of the costs, but if governments are going to get business to invest then they should be testing these technologies in the markets where they have the most commercial opportunities,” he said.
“We should be investing in projects where it makes economic sense to get these technologies to scale and then give them to developing countries.”
Martin Powell of the London Development Agency, the mayor’s economic development arm, agreed. “The climate-change negotiations shouldn’t just be about giving money to poorer nations. They should be about making the most efficient use of that money,” he said.
Carlyle interest in Shanks shows waste is no longer down in the dumps
The recycling revolution makes Tom Drury's firm very attractive to buyers
Nick Mathiason
The Observer, Sunday 13 December 2009
Confirmation that private equity is a dirty business came last week when the Carlyle Group approached Shanks, the quoted British waste management firm, with an unsolicited bid of £536m.
Ask Shanks's well-regarded chief executive, Tom Drury, whether he shares the opinion beloved of conspiracy theorists that Carlyle, a US private equity firm, represents an extension of neo-conservative American foreign policy and he politely suggests: "They're your words. Not mine."
In the City office of Shanks's joint broker Investec, Drury is careful not to ratchet up hostilities in what could yet turn into a protracted bidding war that many believe will see his company taken over in the first quarter of next year.
Last Monday, shares in the Milton Keynes-based company leapt 40% after it revealed the approach. It is strongly believed that Carlyle will not be a lone bidder.
Drury's response to the situation typifies two attributes from his Yorkshire upbringing: a direct style fused with caution. "The approach is slightly opportunistic," he says. "The share price was relatively low and I guess the waste market has declined through the recession. It will pick up and when it does we'll be in a good position to grow. I suspect the private equity approach suggests it's not a bad time to buy into a company like Shanks."
Drury, a 47-year-old rugby fan and real ale drinker, responded to Carlyle that a 135p-a-share bid undervalued the company. But in a move that surprised the City, he suggested an offer pitched at 150p (£600m) or more would be well received. Crucially, Schroders and Legal & General, who between them speak for 25% of Shanks' share register, were on board with him.
Drury has in effect set a reserve price for Shanks, which could spark an auction. Other possible bidders include French industrial group Suez, which owns waste disposal business Sita, and AVR, another waste rival owned by private equity giants KKR and CVC.
"We wanted to indicate we don't have a closed mind to an approach," Drury explains. "But we didn't see the point of going through the normal 'dancing around the handbags'. We wanted to give a clear level to the market that at that [price] or more we would engage. We accept it's an unusual thing to do, but the vast majority of feedback is that it's a bold and sensible thing to do."
Shanks is reckoned to be valuable because under Drury it has tidied up its balance sheet and rid itself of its landfill holdings – a sector that will soon be obsolete thanks to tough environmental legislation. It is considered well positioned in Europe, and in particular the UK, to take advantage of growth in recycling and in creating power from waste.
The company suffered after it bought into waste businesses in Belgium and Holland in 2000 with a view to bringing advanced recycling technologies to the UK; the timing was wrong, because the UK failed to tax landfill at high enough levels to allow recycling to take off. That is why 56% of Britain's waste is dumped in landfill sites, against 3% in Holland and 1% in Germany. Shanks's recycling divisions failed to win enough business.
But this is changing. Any company or local authority dumping waste in a landfill site now has to pay a tax of £48 per tonne. By 2013 this will grow to £72. "If you add on what the landfill operator needs you're going to pay £90 per tonne by 2013," Drury says. "To their credit, this government has pushed landfill tax to a level where they are actively discouraging landfill as a solution [and] I think very clearly the Conservatives are aligned with the same approach."
It will allow Shanks to open its first anaerobic digestion plant in Scotland next year, taking food waste and turning it into electricity. Four more facilities are planned.
The tax increases are required to bring the UK into line with European regulation. To bring change about, Britain must also invest £10bn in new waste management facilities and local authorities are now offering 25-year PFI contracts.
"People see the UK as the fastest growing waste market in Europe because we have got a lot of people, we've got the biggest change to make – and that creates opportunities for this company," Drury says. That is why the waste sector, which for so long has been about burying rubbish underground, is now a very visible target.
Nick Mathiason
The Observer, Sunday 13 December 2009
Confirmation that private equity is a dirty business came last week when the Carlyle Group approached Shanks, the quoted British waste management firm, with an unsolicited bid of £536m.
Ask Shanks's well-regarded chief executive, Tom Drury, whether he shares the opinion beloved of conspiracy theorists that Carlyle, a US private equity firm, represents an extension of neo-conservative American foreign policy and he politely suggests: "They're your words. Not mine."
In the City office of Shanks's joint broker Investec, Drury is careful not to ratchet up hostilities in what could yet turn into a protracted bidding war that many believe will see his company taken over in the first quarter of next year.
Last Monday, shares in the Milton Keynes-based company leapt 40% after it revealed the approach. It is strongly believed that Carlyle will not be a lone bidder.
Drury's response to the situation typifies two attributes from his Yorkshire upbringing: a direct style fused with caution. "The approach is slightly opportunistic," he says. "The share price was relatively low and I guess the waste market has declined through the recession. It will pick up and when it does we'll be in a good position to grow. I suspect the private equity approach suggests it's not a bad time to buy into a company like Shanks."
Drury, a 47-year-old rugby fan and real ale drinker, responded to Carlyle that a 135p-a-share bid undervalued the company. But in a move that surprised the City, he suggested an offer pitched at 150p (£600m) or more would be well received. Crucially, Schroders and Legal & General, who between them speak for 25% of Shanks' share register, were on board with him.
Drury has in effect set a reserve price for Shanks, which could spark an auction. Other possible bidders include French industrial group Suez, which owns waste disposal business Sita, and AVR, another waste rival owned by private equity giants KKR and CVC.
"We wanted to indicate we don't have a closed mind to an approach," Drury explains. "But we didn't see the point of going through the normal 'dancing around the handbags'. We wanted to give a clear level to the market that at that [price] or more we would engage. We accept it's an unusual thing to do, but the vast majority of feedback is that it's a bold and sensible thing to do."
Shanks is reckoned to be valuable because under Drury it has tidied up its balance sheet and rid itself of its landfill holdings – a sector that will soon be obsolete thanks to tough environmental legislation. It is considered well positioned in Europe, and in particular the UK, to take advantage of growth in recycling and in creating power from waste.
The company suffered after it bought into waste businesses in Belgium and Holland in 2000 with a view to bringing advanced recycling technologies to the UK; the timing was wrong, because the UK failed to tax landfill at high enough levels to allow recycling to take off. That is why 56% of Britain's waste is dumped in landfill sites, against 3% in Holland and 1% in Germany. Shanks's recycling divisions failed to win enough business.
But this is changing. Any company or local authority dumping waste in a landfill site now has to pay a tax of £48 per tonne. By 2013 this will grow to £72. "If you add on what the landfill operator needs you're going to pay £90 per tonne by 2013," Drury says. "To their credit, this government has pushed landfill tax to a level where they are actively discouraging landfill as a solution [and] I think very clearly the Conservatives are aligned with the same approach."
It will allow Shanks to open its first anaerobic digestion plant in Scotland next year, taking food waste and turning it into electricity. Four more facilities are planned.
The tax increases are required to bring the UK into line with European regulation. To bring change about, Britain must also invest £10bn in new waste management facilities and local authorities are now offering 25-year PFI contracts.
"People see the UK as the fastest growing waste market in Europe because we have got a lot of people, we've got the biggest change to make – and that creates opportunities for this company," Drury says. That is why the waste sector, which for so long has been about burying rubbish underground, is now a very visible target.
Are energy efficiency measures mere greenwash?
The latest green initiatives are being dismissed as drops in the ocean
Alexandra Goss
Alistair Darling announced he was ploughing £200m into measures to improve energy efficiency in last week’s pre-budget report but critics have warned these are merely a drop in the ocean.
Top of the bill is a £50m boiler scrappage scheme — modelled on the existing car scrappage scheme — which the chancellor claims will help 125,000 households trade in their inefficient boilers. He also announced that anyone who generates their own electricity will get tax-free cashback worth £900 a year from April.
The additional £150m will be used to extend the Warm Front programme, which will provide better heating and insulation for an additional 75,000 of the most vulnerable households. We look at how the measures stack up.
Boiler scrappage scheme
This headline-grabbing announcement claims that 125,000 households could receive grants of up to £400 towards replacing their old, inefficient boiler.
Anyone with a so-called G-rated boiler, which uses up to 30% more gas than a new one, will be eligible for the scheme if they replace it with a more energy-efficient A-rated model, which can cost up to £2,000. G-rated boilers are typically more than 15 years old.
Such a measure could cut household energy bills by up to a quarter — a saving of £235 a year for an average family home, according to the Energy Saving Trust. Gas boilers also account for 60% of the carbon emissions from an average gas-heated home and the measures announced last week would save 1.26 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year for each affected household.
It sounds great in theory but the pre-budget report failed to provide details of how individuals could apply, when the scheme will start, or whether it will be extended once the £50m runs out. A representative from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which will oversee the rollout of the programme, said: “We will launch the scheme at the earliest opportunity next year.
“Residential households and privately-rented homes will be the main beneficiaries and it will not be means-tested, as far as I’m aware. As ever, the devil is in the detail.”
Indeed, it is not clear how the estimated 4.2m people in the UK with a G-rated boiler are going to benefit. Giving each of them £400 towards upgrading their heating systems would require funding of almost £1.7 billion — 34 times the £50m that has been set aside by the government.
Barbara Bell at KPMG, the accountant, said: “This measure may sound great on paper but it is merely a drop in the ocean when you look at the millions of people who have an inefficient boiler in the UK. With gas boilers accounting for such a huge proportion of the carbon emissions from an average gas-heated home, the government still has a long way to go.
“It will be interesting to see whether the scheme is extended once it expires. If it is, it could really begin to make an impact.”
Tax-free clean energy cashback
In July, Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, announced that households would be encouraged to generate their own power through a “clean energy cashback” system, under which they would be paid for any power they produce — whether they use it or not.
So-called “feed-in tariffs” will come into effect in April and will pay for the electricity households generate through solar panels or a wind turbine. Under the plans, homeowners will be paid up to 36Åp for every kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity produced using solar panels.
If electricity is exported back to the National Grid — when the homeowner is away, for example — an additional 5p per kWh is paid, while savings are still being made on electricity bills.
Darling added to this in last Wednesday’s pre-budget report, announcing that these feed-in tariffs, worth an average £900 a year, would become free of income tax.
The Treasury claims this will save households paying basic-rate tax of £180 in 2010 but this is nonetheless small beer compared with the cost of installing a solar panel, which can be as much as £10,000, according to Sharp Solar, the UK’s largest solar panel manufacturer.
It said that the “pay-back” time for solar panels — the time it takes to recoup an initial investment of £10,000 — would shrink from 14 years to 10 as a result of the measures.
The figures assume you pay £10,000 upfront but earn £828 a year from the feed-in tariffs and save £138 a year on your energy bill — a total of £966, recouping the installation costs in 10 years.
Douglas Watkinson at Deloitte, the accountant, said: “While the changes are welcome, they do add to the complexity of the various incentives available.
“The sheer number of measures makes it harder for investors to understand and take advantage of them.”
Warm Front
The chancellor said the £150m increase in funding for the Warm Front scheme would help an additional 75,000 vulnerable people to receive energy efficiency measures.
Warm Front operates only in England and offers people on benefits up to £3,500 to pay for central heating, loft insulation, draught-proofing, cavity wall insulation and water tank lagging.
Darling also pledged to help a million more vulnerable households with discounts on their energy bills by increasing the level of support that energy companies must provide from £150m to £300m by 2013-14.
Audrey Gallacher at Consumer Focus, the consumer watchdog, said: “The additional money will help to prevent thousands of low-income households from suffering cold, damp homes and fuel bills they can’t afford.”
HOMES HOLIDAY ENDS
The chancellor confirmed that the stamp duty holiday on homes worth up to £175,000 will end on December 31, with the threshold reverting to £125,000. This means buyers will pay 1% on homes between £125,000 and £250,000; 3% between £250,000 and £500,000, and 4% thereafter.
However, aspiring homeowners could benefit from the £150m boost to the Home Buy Direct scheme, which will help 3,000 more people. The Support for Mortgage Interest scheme, which helps those who suffer a sudden drop in income, will also be extended for another six months.
Alexandra Goss
Alistair Darling announced he was ploughing £200m into measures to improve energy efficiency in last week’s pre-budget report but critics have warned these are merely a drop in the ocean.
Top of the bill is a £50m boiler scrappage scheme — modelled on the existing car scrappage scheme — which the chancellor claims will help 125,000 households trade in their inefficient boilers. He also announced that anyone who generates their own electricity will get tax-free cashback worth £900 a year from April.
The additional £150m will be used to extend the Warm Front programme, which will provide better heating and insulation for an additional 75,000 of the most vulnerable households. We look at how the measures stack up.
Boiler scrappage scheme
This headline-grabbing announcement claims that 125,000 households could receive grants of up to £400 towards replacing their old, inefficient boiler.
Anyone with a so-called G-rated boiler, which uses up to 30% more gas than a new one, will be eligible for the scheme if they replace it with a more energy-efficient A-rated model, which can cost up to £2,000. G-rated boilers are typically more than 15 years old.
Such a measure could cut household energy bills by up to a quarter — a saving of £235 a year for an average family home, according to the Energy Saving Trust. Gas boilers also account for 60% of the carbon emissions from an average gas-heated home and the measures announced last week would save 1.26 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year for each affected household.
It sounds great in theory but the pre-budget report failed to provide details of how individuals could apply, when the scheme will start, or whether it will be extended once the £50m runs out. A representative from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which will oversee the rollout of the programme, said: “We will launch the scheme at the earliest opportunity next year.
“Residential households and privately-rented homes will be the main beneficiaries and it will not be means-tested, as far as I’m aware. As ever, the devil is in the detail.”
Indeed, it is not clear how the estimated 4.2m people in the UK with a G-rated boiler are going to benefit. Giving each of them £400 towards upgrading their heating systems would require funding of almost £1.7 billion — 34 times the £50m that has been set aside by the government.
Barbara Bell at KPMG, the accountant, said: “This measure may sound great on paper but it is merely a drop in the ocean when you look at the millions of people who have an inefficient boiler in the UK. With gas boilers accounting for such a huge proportion of the carbon emissions from an average gas-heated home, the government still has a long way to go.
“It will be interesting to see whether the scheme is extended once it expires. If it is, it could really begin to make an impact.”
Tax-free clean energy cashback
In July, Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, announced that households would be encouraged to generate their own power through a “clean energy cashback” system, under which they would be paid for any power they produce — whether they use it or not.
So-called “feed-in tariffs” will come into effect in April and will pay for the electricity households generate through solar panels or a wind turbine. Under the plans, homeowners will be paid up to 36Åp for every kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity produced using solar panels.
If electricity is exported back to the National Grid — when the homeowner is away, for example — an additional 5p per kWh is paid, while savings are still being made on electricity bills.
Darling added to this in last Wednesday’s pre-budget report, announcing that these feed-in tariffs, worth an average £900 a year, would become free of income tax.
The Treasury claims this will save households paying basic-rate tax of £180 in 2010 but this is nonetheless small beer compared with the cost of installing a solar panel, which can be as much as £10,000, according to Sharp Solar, the UK’s largest solar panel manufacturer.
It said that the “pay-back” time for solar panels — the time it takes to recoup an initial investment of £10,000 — would shrink from 14 years to 10 as a result of the measures.
The figures assume you pay £10,000 upfront but earn £828 a year from the feed-in tariffs and save £138 a year on your energy bill — a total of £966, recouping the installation costs in 10 years.
Douglas Watkinson at Deloitte, the accountant, said: “While the changes are welcome, they do add to the complexity of the various incentives available.
“The sheer number of measures makes it harder for investors to understand and take advantage of them.”
Warm Front
The chancellor said the £150m increase in funding for the Warm Front scheme would help an additional 75,000 vulnerable people to receive energy efficiency measures.
Warm Front operates only in England and offers people on benefits up to £3,500 to pay for central heating, loft insulation, draught-proofing, cavity wall insulation and water tank lagging.
Darling also pledged to help a million more vulnerable households with discounts on their energy bills by increasing the level of support that energy companies must provide from £150m to £300m by 2013-14.
Audrey Gallacher at Consumer Focus, the consumer watchdog, said: “The additional money will help to prevent thousands of low-income households from suffering cold, damp homes and fuel bills they can’t afford.”
HOMES HOLIDAY ENDS
The chancellor confirmed that the stamp duty holiday on homes worth up to £175,000 will end on December 31, with the threshold reverting to £125,000. This means buyers will pay 1% on homes between £125,000 and £250,000; 3% between £250,000 and £500,000, and 4% thereafter.
However, aspiring homeowners could benefit from the £150m boost to the Home Buy Direct scheme, which will help 3,000 more people. The Support for Mortgage Interest scheme, which helps those who suffer a sudden drop in income, will also be extended for another six months.
Officials cover up wind farm noise report
Jonathan Leake and Harry Byford
Civil servants have suppressed warnings that wind turbines can generate noise damaging people’s health for several square miles around.
The guidance from consultants indicated that the sound level permitted from spinning blades and gearboxes had been set so high — 43 decibels — that local people could be disturbed whenever the wind blew hard. The noise was also thought likely to disrupt sleep.
The report said the best way to protect locals was to cut the maximum permitted noise to 38 decibels, or 33 decibels if the machines created discernible “beating” noises as they spun.
It has now emerged that officials removed the warnings from the draft report in 2006 by Hayes McKenzie Partnership (HMP), the consultants. The final version made no mention of them.
It means that hundreds of turbines at wind farms in Britain have been allowed to generate much higher levels of noise, sparking protests from people living near them.
Among those affected is Jane Davis, 53, a retired National Health Service manager, who has had to abandon her home because of the noise.
It lies half a mile from the Deeping St Nicholas wind farm in south Lincolnshire whose eight turbines began operating in 2006.
“Our problems started three days after the turbines went up and they’ve carried on ever since. It’s like having helicopters going over the top of you at times — on a bad night it’s like three or four helicopters circling around,” she said.
“We abandoned our home. We rent a house about five miles away — this is our fourth Christmas out of our own home. We couldn’t sleep. It is torture — my GP describes it as torture. Three hours of sleep a night is torture.”
The HMP report was commissioned by the business department whose responsibilities for wind power have since been taken over by Ed Miliband’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
The decision to stick with existing noise limits became official guidance for local authorities ruling on planning applications from wind farm developers.
It has also been used by ministers and officials to support the view that there was no need to revise official wind farm noise guidelines and that erecting turbines near homes posed no threat to people’s health and wellbeing.
In 2007 Mike Hulme of the Den Brook Judicial Review Group, a band of residents opposing a wind turbine development close to their houses in Devon, submitted a Freedom of Information request asking to see all draft versions of the study.
Officials refused the request, claiming it was not in the public interest for them to be released. Hulme appealed to the information commissioner’s office, which has ordered Miliband’s department to release the documents. The drafts show the HMP originally recommended that the night-time wind turbine noise limit should be reduced from 43 decibels to 38, or 33 if they made any kind of swishing or beating noise — known as “aerodynamic modulation”.
The HMP researchers had based their recommendations on evidence. They took noise measurements at houses close to three wind farms: Askam in Cumbria, Bears Down in Cornwall and Blaen Bowi in Carmarthenshire.
They found that the swish-swish signature noise of turbines was significantly greater around most wind farms than had been foreseen by the authors of the existing government guidelines, which date from 1996. They also found that the beating sound is particularly disruptive at night, when other background noise levels are lower, as it can penetrate walls.
In their draft report the HMP researchers recommended that “Consideration be given to a revision of the night-time absolute noise criterion”, noting that this would fit with World Health Organisation recommendations on sleep disturbance.
However, an anonymous government official then inserted remarks attacking this idea because it would impede wind farm development. He, or she, wrote: “What will the impact of this be? Are we saying that this is the situation for all wind farms ... I think we need a sense of the scale of this and the impact.”
The final report removed any suggestion of cutting the noise limits or adding any further penalty if turbines generated a beating noise — and recommended local authorities to stick to the 1996 guidelines.
Hulme said: “This demonstrates the conflict of interests in DECC, because it has the responsibility for promoting wind farm development while also having responsibility for the wind farm noise guidance policy ... meant to protect local residents.”
Ron Williams, 74, a retired lecturer, lives half a mile from the Wharrels Hill wind farm in Cumbria. He has been forced to use sleeping pills since its eight turbines began operating in 2007.
“The noise we get is the gentle swish swish swish, non-stop, incessant, all night,” he said. “It’s like a Chinese torture. In winter, when the sun is low in the sky, it goes down behind the turbines and causes flickering shadows coming into the room.
“It’s like somebody shining car headlights at your window ... on and off, on and off. It affects us all. It’s terrible. Absolutely horrible.”
Lynn Hancock, 45, runs a garden maintenance business. She has suffered disruption since 2007 when the 12-turbine Red Tile wind farm began operating several hundred yards from her Cambridgeshire home.
“Imagine a seven-ton lorry left running on the drive all night and that’s what it’s like,” she said. “People describe it as like an aeroplane or a helicopter or a train that never arrives. It’s like it’s coming but it never gets here.”
Such problems are likely to increase. Britain has 253 land-based wind farms generating 3.5 gigawatts, but this is expected to double or even triple by 2020 to help to meet targets for cutting CO2 emissions.
Civil servants have suppressed warnings that wind turbines can generate noise damaging people’s health for several square miles around.
The guidance from consultants indicated that the sound level permitted from spinning blades and gearboxes had been set so high — 43 decibels — that local people could be disturbed whenever the wind blew hard. The noise was also thought likely to disrupt sleep.
The report said the best way to protect locals was to cut the maximum permitted noise to 38 decibels, or 33 decibels if the machines created discernible “beating” noises as they spun.
It has now emerged that officials removed the warnings from the draft report in 2006 by Hayes McKenzie Partnership (HMP), the consultants. The final version made no mention of them.
It means that hundreds of turbines at wind farms in Britain have been allowed to generate much higher levels of noise, sparking protests from people living near them.
Among those affected is Jane Davis, 53, a retired National Health Service manager, who has had to abandon her home because of the noise.
It lies half a mile from the Deeping St Nicholas wind farm in south Lincolnshire whose eight turbines began operating in 2006.
“Our problems started three days after the turbines went up and they’ve carried on ever since. It’s like having helicopters going over the top of you at times — on a bad night it’s like three or four helicopters circling around,” she said.
“We abandoned our home. We rent a house about five miles away — this is our fourth Christmas out of our own home. We couldn’t sleep. It is torture — my GP describes it as torture. Three hours of sleep a night is torture.”
The HMP report was commissioned by the business department whose responsibilities for wind power have since been taken over by Ed Miliband’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
The decision to stick with existing noise limits became official guidance for local authorities ruling on planning applications from wind farm developers.
It has also been used by ministers and officials to support the view that there was no need to revise official wind farm noise guidelines and that erecting turbines near homes posed no threat to people’s health and wellbeing.
In 2007 Mike Hulme of the Den Brook Judicial Review Group, a band of residents opposing a wind turbine development close to their houses in Devon, submitted a Freedom of Information request asking to see all draft versions of the study.
Officials refused the request, claiming it was not in the public interest for them to be released. Hulme appealed to the information commissioner’s office, which has ordered Miliband’s department to release the documents. The drafts show the HMP originally recommended that the night-time wind turbine noise limit should be reduced from 43 decibels to 38, or 33 if they made any kind of swishing or beating noise — known as “aerodynamic modulation”.
The HMP researchers had based their recommendations on evidence. They took noise measurements at houses close to three wind farms: Askam in Cumbria, Bears Down in Cornwall and Blaen Bowi in Carmarthenshire.
They found that the swish-swish signature noise of turbines was significantly greater around most wind farms than had been foreseen by the authors of the existing government guidelines, which date from 1996. They also found that the beating sound is particularly disruptive at night, when other background noise levels are lower, as it can penetrate walls.
In their draft report the HMP researchers recommended that “Consideration be given to a revision of the night-time absolute noise criterion”, noting that this would fit with World Health Organisation recommendations on sleep disturbance.
However, an anonymous government official then inserted remarks attacking this idea because it would impede wind farm development. He, or she, wrote: “What will the impact of this be? Are we saying that this is the situation for all wind farms ... I think we need a sense of the scale of this and the impact.”
The final report removed any suggestion of cutting the noise limits or adding any further penalty if turbines generated a beating noise — and recommended local authorities to stick to the 1996 guidelines.
Hulme said: “This demonstrates the conflict of interests in DECC, because it has the responsibility for promoting wind farm development while also having responsibility for the wind farm noise guidance policy ... meant to protect local residents.”
Ron Williams, 74, a retired lecturer, lives half a mile from the Wharrels Hill wind farm in Cumbria. He has been forced to use sleeping pills since its eight turbines began operating in 2007.
“The noise we get is the gentle swish swish swish, non-stop, incessant, all night,” he said. “It’s like a Chinese torture. In winter, when the sun is low in the sky, it goes down behind the turbines and causes flickering shadows coming into the room.
“It’s like somebody shining car headlights at your window ... on and off, on and off. It affects us all. It’s terrible. Absolutely horrible.”
Lynn Hancock, 45, runs a garden maintenance business. She has suffered disruption since 2007 when the 12-turbine Red Tile wind farm began operating several hundred yards from her Cambridgeshire home.
“Imagine a seven-ton lorry left running on the drive all night and that’s what it’s like,” she said. “People describe it as like an aeroplane or a helicopter or a train that never arrives. It’s like it’s coming but it never gets here.”
Such problems are likely to increase. Britain has 253 land-based wind farms generating 3.5 gigawatts, but this is expected to double or even triple by 2020 to help to meet targets for cutting CO2 emissions.
Russia Demands Its Credits
Moscow, to Keep Its Carbon Permits, Threatens to Block a Global Climate Deal
By GUY CHAZAN and JACOB GRONHOLT-PEDERSEN
A Russian demand that it keep its huge surplus of emissions permits after they expire in 2012 is overshadowing global climate talks now under way in Copenhagen, with some observers saying it could hamper efforts to reach a deal and upset the global carbon market.
Russia has warned it could reject any deal from Copenhagen that doesn't allow it to carry forward the unused carbon permits it holds as a result of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Those who argue against letting Russia keep the credits say Moscow could end up selling them abroad, leading to a collapse in the price of carbon.
That in turn could hurt efforts to green the world's economy. One principle behind promoting an international system of carbon credits -- the currency for buying and selling the right to pollute -- is that the price of carbon should be high enough to encourage investment in nonfossil-fuel technology such as nuclear, wind and solar.
In a bid to reassure leaders meeting at Copenhagen, Alexander Bedritsky, an adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, said Russia had no plans to sell its unspent permits abroad. But he stressed that Russia would endorse a global deal only if it allowed Moscow to bank its permits.
Observers say Moscow hasn't decided what to do about the surplus. "There is a chance that Russia could relinquish the permits if it will help the talks," says Vladimir Slivyak, head of Ecodefense, a Russian environmental group. "The authorities would like to be seen as saving Copenhagen if the talks get into trouble." He noted that Mr. Medvedev was due to join world leaders at the summit next week. Previously, Mr. Medvedev had said he would stay away.
The dispute dates to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, the first international treaty obliging countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases. Under Kyoto, a country that has difficulty meeting its emissions goal can buy credits from another country that has reduced them beyond its target.
Russia was required by Kyoto to maintain its carbon-dioxide output at 1990 levels, rather than cut them. But in the aftermath of the Soviet breakup in 1991 and Russia's subsequent economic collapse, its emissions plummeted, and it easily exceeded its Kyoto targets.
That left it with a surplus of carbon allowances equivalent to six gigatons of carbon dioxide, or roughly the same as China's annual emissions. In theory, Russia could sell the stockpile to other countries -- a potential multibillion-dollar bonanza.
The fate of the allowances is unclear once Kyoto expires in 2012. Russia wants them carried forward, in recognition of its achievement in cutting its CO2 volumes, which it says have fallen by 34% since 1990.
Mr. Bedritsky said Russia wasn't ready to curb its economic growth for the sake of reducing emissions.
Write to Guy Chazan at guy.chazan@wsj.com
By GUY CHAZAN and JACOB GRONHOLT-PEDERSEN
A Russian demand that it keep its huge surplus of emissions permits after they expire in 2012 is overshadowing global climate talks now under way in Copenhagen, with some observers saying it could hamper efforts to reach a deal and upset the global carbon market.
Russia has warned it could reject any deal from Copenhagen that doesn't allow it to carry forward the unused carbon permits it holds as a result of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Those who argue against letting Russia keep the credits say Moscow could end up selling them abroad, leading to a collapse in the price of carbon.
That in turn could hurt efforts to green the world's economy. One principle behind promoting an international system of carbon credits -- the currency for buying and selling the right to pollute -- is that the price of carbon should be high enough to encourage investment in nonfossil-fuel technology such as nuclear, wind and solar.
In a bid to reassure leaders meeting at Copenhagen, Alexander Bedritsky, an adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, said Russia had no plans to sell its unspent permits abroad. But he stressed that Russia would endorse a global deal only if it allowed Moscow to bank its permits.
Observers say Moscow hasn't decided what to do about the surplus. "There is a chance that Russia could relinquish the permits if it will help the talks," says Vladimir Slivyak, head of Ecodefense, a Russian environmental group. "The authorities would like to be seen as saving Copenhagen if the talks get into trouble." He noted that Mr. Medvedev was due to join world leaders at the summit next week. Previously, Mr. Medvedev had said he would stay away.
The dispute dates to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, the first international treaty obliging countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases. Under Kyoto, a country that has difficulty meeting its emissions goal can buy credits from another country that has reduced them beyond its target.
Russia was required by Kyoto to maintain its carbon-dioxide output at 1990 levels, rather than cut them. But in the aftermath of the Soviet breakup in 1991 and Russia's subsequent economic collapse, its emissions plummeted, and it easily exceeded its Kyoto targets.
That left it with a surplus of carbon allowances equivalent to six gigatons of carbon dioxide, or roughly the same as China's annual emissions. In theory, Russia could sell the stockpile to other countries -- a potential multibillion-dollar bonanza.
The fate of the allowances is unclear once Kyoto expires in 2012. Russia wants them carried forward, in recognition of its achievement in cutting its CO2 volumes, which it says have fallen by 34% since 1990.
Mr. Bedritsky said Russia wasn't ready to curb its economic growth for the sake of reducing emissions.
Write to Guy Chazan at guy.chazan@wsj.com
Naked Copenhagen
Temperature is increasingly at the mercy of the developing world.
By RICHARD MULLER
Imagine a "dream" agreement emerging from Copenhagen next week: The U.S. agrees to cut greenhouse emissions 80% by 2050, as President Barack Obama has been promising. The other developed countries promise to cut emissions by 60%. China promises to reduce its CO2 intensity by 70% in 2040. Emerging economies promise that in 2040, when their wealth per capita has grown to half that of the U.S., they will cut emissions by 80% over the following 40 years. And all parties make good on their pledges.
Environmental success, right? Wrong. Even if the goals are all met, emissions will continue rising to nearly four times the current level. Total atmospheric CO2 will rise to near 700 parts per milion by 2080 (the current level is 385), and—if the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models are right—global temperature will rise about six degrees Fahrenheit at mid latitudes.
The reason is that most future carbon emissions will not come from the currently industrialized world, but from the emerging economies, especially China. And China, which currently emits 30% more CO2 per year than the U.S., has not promised to cut actual emissions. It and other developing nations have promised only to cut their carbon "intensity," a technical term meaning emissions per unit of GDP.
China claims it is already cutting CO2 intensity by 4% a year as part of its five-year plan. President Hu Jintao has hinted that at Copenhagen China will offer to continue such reductions. By 2040, that will add up to a 70% reduction in intensity.
Sounds good, but here's the catch: With 10% annual growth in China's economy, a 4% cut in intensity is actually a 6% annual increase in emissions. India and other developing countries have similar CO2 growth. That 6% yearly increase is what is shown in the nearby chart.
True, China's CO2 per capita is only a quarter of the U.S. emissions rate. But warming doesn't come from emissions per capita, it comes from total emissions.
China's carbon intensity is now five times that of the U.S.; it is extremely carbon inefficient. By the time the Chinese cut emissions intensity by 45%, its yearly total will be over twice that of the U.S. And in the proposed Copenhagen dream scenario, by 2025 China's emissions will actually surpass those of the U.S. per capita.
If the issue is rising emissions in the next several decades, the bottom line is simple: The developed world is rapidly becoming irrelevant.
Every 10% cut in the U.S. is negated by one year of China's growth. By 2040 China could be the most economically dominant nation on earth. The West might be able to cajole it, but won't be able to impose sanctions on China. Temperature will be at the mercy of the newly powerful economies.
Moreover, an expensive effort to reduce Western emissions sets a worthless example. Only emissions cuts that provide measurable economic benefit to the developing nations will be adopted by them. If the 80% U.S. emissions cut winds up hurting the U.S. economy, it guarantees China will never follow our example.
Cheap green energy is not going to be easy. Coal is dirt cheap, and China has been installing a new gigawatt coal plant each week—enough to supply five completely new cities the size of New York every year.
Technological change can help a great deal. For now carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) from coal combustion is unproven, but so is cheap solar. I expect we can make CCS work. Perhaps the West can subsidize CCS in China or pay to make its plants CCS ready. A dollar spent in China can reduce CO2 much more than a dollar spent in the U.S.
There is another alternative: luck. Here's how it could help. Scientists are aware of a phenomenon that would counter the greenhouse effect: warmth evaporates water; water creates clouds; clouds reflect sunlight. A small cloud increase would significantly reduce predicted warming. The IPCC gives such cloud feedback only a 10% chance. My estimate is 30%. Clouds may already be kicking in, responsible for the negligible global warming of the past 12 years. Maybe, but we don't know. That's why we need luck.
Perhaps we could geoengineer a solution: Squirt a few million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight, emulating the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption. We'll certainly get pretty sunsets. Or we could foam up the oceans to increase reflectivity. Many people find such ideas scarier than warming because of the threat of unintended consequences.
Another option is that we could learn to live with global warming. Despite claims to the contrary, storms aren't increasing. The rate of hurricanes hitting the U.S. coast has been constant for a century, and the number of damaging tornadoes has been going down. Will Happer, a former director of research for the Department of Energy, argues that additional CO2 may have helped the agricultural revolution. And chilly Berkeley might be nicer with a few degrees warming.
But the bottom line is that 80% cuts in U.S. emissions will have only a tiny benefit. The bulk of our effort is best directed at helping the emerging economies conserve energy and move rapidly toward efficient solar, wind and nuclear power. Developing cheap carbon capture and sequestration is also a priority. Above all, we need to recognize that make-the-West-bear-the-burden Copenhagen proposals are meaningless.
Mr. Muller is professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of "Physics for Future Presidents" (Norton, 2008). References and a spreadsheet with the numbers for the chart are at www.mullerandassociates.com.
By RICHARD MULLER
Imagine a "dream" agreement emerging from Copenhagen next week: The U.S. agrees to cut greenhouse emissions 80% by 2050, as President Barack Obama has been promising. The other developed countries promise to cut emissions by 60%. China promises to reduce its CO2 intensity by 70% in 2040. Emerging economies promise that in 2040, when their wealth per capita has grown to half that of the U.S., they will cut emissions by 80% over the following 40 years. And all parties make good on their pledges.
Environmental success, right? Wrong. Even if the goals are all met, emissions will continue rising to nearly four times the current level. Total atmospheric CO2 will rise to near 700 parts per milion by 2080 (the current level is 385), and—if the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models are right—global temperature will rise about six degrees Fahrenheit at mid latitudes.
The reason is that most future carbon emissions will not come from the currently industrialized world, but from the emerging economies, especially China. And China, which currently emits 30% more CO2 per year than the U.S., has not promised to cut actual emissions. It and other developing nations have promised only to cut their carbon "intensity," a technical term meaning emissions per unit of GDP.
China claims it is already cutting CO2 intensity by 4% a year as part of its five-year plan. President Hu Jintao has hinted that at Copenhagen China will offer to continue such reductions. By 2040, that will add up to a 70% reduction in intensity.
Sounds good, but here's the catch: With 10% annual growth in China's economy, a 4% cut in intensity is actually a 6% annual increase in emissions. India and other developing countries have similar CO2 growth. That 6% yearly increase is what is shown in the nearby chart.
True, China's CO2 per capita is only a quarter of the U.S. emissions rate. But warming doesn't come from emissions per capita, it comes from total emissions.
China's carbon intensity is now five times that of the U.S.; it is extremely carbon inefficient. By the time the Chinese cut emissions intensity by 45%, its yearly total will be over twice that of the U.S. And in the proposed Copenhagen dream scenario, by 2025 China's emissions will actually surpass those of the U.S. per capita.
If the issue is rising emissions in the next several decades, the bottom line is simple: The developed world is rapidly becoming irrelevant.
Every 10% cut in the U.S. is negated by one year of China's growth. By 2040 China could be the most economically dominant nation on earth. The West might be able to cajole it, but won't be able to impose sanctions on China. Temperature will be at the mercy of the newly powerful economies.
Moreover, an expensive effort to reduce Western emissions sets a worthless example. Only emissions cuts that provide measurable economic benefit to the developing nations will be adopted by them. If the 80% U.S. emissions cut winds up hurting the U.S. economy, it guarantees China will never follow our example.
Cheap green energy is not going to be easy. Coal is dirt cheap, and China has been installing a new gigawatt coal plant each week—enough to supply five completely new cities the size of New York every year.
Technological change can help a great deal. For now carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) from coal combustion is unproven, but so is cheap solar. I expect we can make CCS work. Perhaps the West can subsidize CCS in China or pay to make its plants CCS ready. A dollar spent in China can reduce CO2 much more than a dollar spent in the U.S.
There is another alternative: luck. Here's how it could help. Scientists are aware of a phenomenon that would counter the greenhouse effect: warmth evaporates water; water creates clouds; clouds reflect sunlight. A small cloud increase would significantly reduce predicted warming. The IPCC gives such cloud feedback only a 10% chance. My estimate is 30%. Clouds may already be kicking in, responsible for the negligible global warming of the past 12 years. Maybe, but we don't know. That's why we need luck.
Perhaps we could geoengineer a solution: Squirt a few million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight, emulating the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption. We'll certainly get pretty sunsets. Or we could foam up the oceans to increase reflectivity. Many people find such ideas scarier than warming because of the threat of unintended consequences.
Another option is that we could learn to live with global warming. Despite claims to the contrary, storms aren't increasing. The rate of hurricanes hitting the U.S. coast has been constant for a century, and the number of damaging tornadoes has been going down. Will Happer, a former director of research for the Department of Energy, argues that additional CO2 may have helped the agricultural revolution. And chilly Berkeley might be nicer with a few degrees warming.
But the bottom line is that 80% cuts in U.S. emissions will have only a tiny benefit. The bulk of our effort is best directed at helping the emerging economies conserve energy and move rapidly toward efficient solar, wind and nuclear power. Developing cheap carbon capture and sequestration is also a priority. Above all, we need to recognize that make-the-West-bear-the-burden Copenhagen proposals are meaningless.
Mr. Muller is professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of "Physics for Future Presidents" (Norton, 2008). References and a spreadsheet with the numbers for the chart are at www.mullerandassociates.com.
Brown and Sarkozy move to fund climate aid with global banking tax
An EU summit in Brussels sought to boost the chances of a deal further by also pledging €2.4bn a year from January
Ian Traynor in Brussels
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 December 2009 16.58 GMT
An international campaign to force the financial sector to pay for saving the planet from global warming was boosted yesterday when France joined Britain in championing a new global regime of so-called Tobin taxes on financial market transactions. The billions in potential proceeds would be earmarked for long-term measures to tackle global warming.
Days before the Copenhagen climate change conference reaches its finale with the arrival of Barack Obama and more than 100 other world leaders, an EU summit in Brussels sought to boost the chances of a deal further by also pledging €2.4bn a year from January in "fast-track" funds to help the world's poor countries cope with rising seas, floods and famines.
The figure agreed saw Gordon Brown almost double Britain's pledge from £800m to £1.5bn, apparently making the UK Europe's single most generous donor.
The figure was higher than expected and part of a broader package from the industrialised countries around the world tipped to total €7bn a year for the next three years.
Financial transfers from rich to poor are a make-or-break issue in Copenhagen and the EU move was described as "hugely encouraging: by the UN climate chief Yvo de Boer. "One of the things that has been holding this process back is lack of clarity on how short-term financial support is going to be provided to developing countries," he said.
European leaders fear that beyond the short-term funding, there could be gridlock over the scores of billions needed for transfers to the poor countries in the longer-term, condemning Copenhagen to failure, triggering unrest in the developing world and an international crisis.
Amid such fears, the Brussels summit for the first time combined action on climate change with moves to fashion a more stable global financial regime as the response to recession sparked by meltdown in the markets.
The prime minister, Gordon Brown, and French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, jointly spearheaded the campaign after weeks of scrapping between the pair over the allocation of top EU jobs. In a joint statement, they said London and Paris would collaborate on proposals for a new global levy on financial transactions: "To ensure predictable and additional finance to 2020 and beyond, we should make use of innovative financing mechanisms, such as the use of revenues from a global financial transactions tax."
"Nicolas Sarkozy is one of my best friends. We work closely together on all the major issues," said Brown standing alongside the French president. "Don't tell us about the need to get on together," responded Sarkozy. "It's years since we've seen such entente."
On Thursday Paris announced it was emulating Chancellor Alistair Darling's announcement 24 hours earlier of a windfall tax of 50% on bankers' bonuses of more than £25,000.
Sarkozy stressed yesterday that no country could act alone in imposing such penalties and called on others to join in. "We can only tax them if we tax them both sides of the Channel," said Sarkozy
The banker-bashing is seen as a popular move to punish those most identified with the financial crash, and who benefited from colossal taxpayer bail-outs. But a bonus tax will not produce fiscal returns that match its political impact.
A global levy on financial transactions, however, would generate vast sums. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany supports the levy and the EU summit of 27 government leaders also voiced tentative support for the policy. In language inserted at the last minute, they "encouraged" the International Monetary Fund to examine the feasibility of the levy.
Brown claimed the credit for initiating the idea and rejected objections it was a non-starter because of opposition from the US Treasury. In order to work, the financial transactions levy would need to be global. Brown, Sarkozy and other European leaders are pushing for the policy to be discussed and refined at international financial meetings in the spring in South Korea.
"People are saying we need a better relationship between the banks and the societies they serve," said the prime minister. "There has been a growth in support for this idea."
Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission, said that the scale of the sums involved in paying for climate change is so huge that it is well beyond the scope of traditional national budgets. "You need to look at innovative financing. This is an issue of global governance."
Brown and Sarkozy reiterated estimates that climate change policies will cost €100bn a year from 2020 in transfers from the rich to the poor worlds. But Obama has told European leaders that he cannot accept the €100bn figure as he would never get it passed in the US Congress.
The EU also emphasised its willingness to cut greenhouse gases by 30% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, if the rest of the world signs up to a sufficiently ambitious package in Copenhagen. The EU is currently committed to 20% cuts by 2020 but Brown told the Guardian this week he favoured the higher target.
While the fast-track fund agreed yesterday was bigger than anticipated, it was unclear where all the money was coming from and whether existing aid budgets would be raided and recycled into climate change money.
Tim Gore, Oxfam's EU climate change policy adviser, said: "EU leaders only offered small sums of short-term cash. Worst of all, this money is not even new — it's made up of a recycling of past promises, and payments that have already been made."
Brown appeared to concede that some of the short-term funding would be diverted from aid and development budgets, but added that in the medium-term "we don't want this to be at the expense of our international development goals."
Ian Traynor in Brussels
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 December 2009 16.58 GMT
An international campaign to force the financial sector to pay for saving the planet from global warming was boosted yesterday when France joined Britain in championing a new global regime of so-called Tobin taxes on financial market transactions. The billions in potential proceeds would be earmarked for long-term measures to tackle global warming.
Days before the Copenhagen climate change conference reaches its finale with the arrival of Barack Obama and more than 100 other world leaders, an EU summit in Brussels sought to boost the chances of a deal further by also pledging €2.4bn a year from January in "fast-track" funds to help the world's poor countries cope with rising seas, floods and famines.
The figure agreed saw Gordon Brown almost double Britain's pledge from £800m to £1.5bn, apparently making the UK Europe's single most generous donor.
The figure was higher than expected and part of a broader package from the industrialised countries around the world tipped to total €7bn a year for the next three years.
Financial transfers from rich to poor are a make-or-break issue in Copenhagen and the EU move was described as "hugely encouraging: by the UN climate chief Yvo de Boer. "One of the things that has been holding this process back is lack of clarity on how short-term financial support is going to be provided to developing countries," he said.
European leaders fear that beyond the short-term funding, there could be gridlock over the scores of billions needed for transfers to the poor countries in the longer-term, condemning Copenhagen to failure, triggering unrest in the developing world and an international crisis.
Amid such fears, the Brussels summit for the first time combined action on climate change with moves to fashion a more stable global financial regime as the response to recession sparked by meltdown in the markets.
The prime minister, Gordon Brown, and French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, jointly spearheaded the campaign after weeks of scrapping between the pair over the allocation of top EU jobs. In a joint statement, they said London and Paris would collaborate on proposals for a new global levy on financial transactions: "To ensure predictable and additional finance to 2020 and beyond, we should make use of innovative financing mechanisms, such as the use of revenues from a global financial transactions tax."
"Nicolas Sarkozy is one of my best friends. We work closely together on all the major issues," said Brown standing alongside the French president. "Don't tell us about the need to get on together," responded Sarkozy. "It's years since we've seen such entente."
On Thursday Paris announced it was emulating Chancellor Alistair Darling's announcement 24 hours earlier of a windfall tax of 50% on bankers' bonuses of more than £25,000.
Sarkozy stressed yesterday that no country could act alone in imposing such penalties and called on others to join in. "We can only tax them if we tax them both sides of the Channel," said Sarkozy
The banker-bashing is seen as a popular move to punish those most identified with the financial crash, and who benefited from colossal taxpayer bail-outs. But a bonus tax will not produce fiscal returns that match its political impact.
A global levy on financial transactions, however, would generate vast sums. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany supports the levy and the EU summit of 27 government leaders also voiced tentative support for the policy. In language inserted at the last minute, they "encouraged" the International Monetary Fund to examine the feasibility of the levy.
Brown claimed the credit for initiating the idea and rejected objections it was a non-starter because of opposition from the US Treasury. In order to work, the financial transactions levy would need to be global. Brown, Sarkozy and other European leaders are pushing for the policy to be discussed and refined at international financial meetings in the spring in South Korea.
"People are saying we need a better relationship between the banks and the societies they serve," said the prime minister. "There has been a growth in support for this idea."
Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission, said that the scale of the sums involved in paying for climate change is so huge that it is well beyond the scope of traditional national budgets. "You need to look at innovative financing. This is an issue of global governance."
Brown and Sarkozy reiterated estimates that climate change policies will cost €100bn a year from 2020 in transfers from the rich to the poor worlds. But Obama has told European leaders that he cannot accept the €100bn figure as he would never get it passed in the US Congress.
The EU also emphasised its willingness to cut greenhouse gases by 30% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, if the rest of the world signs up to a sufficiently ambitious package in Copenhagen. The EU is currently committed to 20% cuts by 2020 but Brown told the Guardian this week he favoured the higher target.
While the fast-track fund agreed yesterday was bigger than anticipated, it was unclear where all the money was coming from and whether existing aid budgets would be raided and recycled into climate change money.
Tim Gore, Oxfam's EU climate change policy adviser, said: "EU leaders only offered small sums of short-term cash. Worst of all, this money is not even new — it's made up of a recycling of past promises, and payments that have already been made."
Brown appeared to concede that some of the short-term funding would be diverted from aid and development budgets, but added that in the medium-term "we don't want this to be at the expense of our international development goals."
Copenhagen climate summit: eight greenhouse gases and what they do
Several greenhouse gases contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the lower layers of the atmosphere. The top six below have been recognised by the IPCC as man-made causes of climate change, but water vapour and ozone also play major roles.
By Matthew MoorePublished: 11:00AM GMT 11 Dec 2009
Carbon dioxide is the gas with the greatest influence on climate change Photo: PA
1) Carbon dioxide (CO2)While composing just 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide is the focus of efforts to counter global warming because levels have increased significantly since industrialisation, through the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
2) Methane (CH4)Tonne for tonne, methane is around 30 times more damaging to the atmosphere than CO2. Produced mainly through agriculture – from burping cows to rotting vegetable matter – its levels have also shot up in the last 250 years. Generally considered a secondary threat to CO2 as it is found in smaller concentrations.
3) Nitrous oxide (N20)Emitted by animal manure, synthetic fertilisers and some industrial processes such as the production of nylon, nitrous oxide is considered the third most influential greenhouse gas in terms of its contribution to global warming. More commonly known as laughing gas because of its anaesthetic properties.
4) Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)Widely used in air-conditioning and refrigeration systems since CFCs were phased out in the 1990s because of their effect on the ozone layer, HFCs are now responsible for one per cent of human-caused warming. The chemicals' potency as greenhouse gases has led to legislation to limit their use and trade.
5) Perfluorocarbons (PFCs)Primarily released through aluminium production and semiconductor manufacture. They are largely immune to the processes that break down most pollutants in the atmosphere, where they can remain for thousands of years.
6) Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6)The most potent greenhouse gas studied by climate change scientists, Sulfur Hexafluoride is used in small quantities in various industrial and electrical process such as the manufacture of circuit breakers.
7) Water vapour (H20)Gaseous water is the single largest contributor to the greenhouse effect, amplifying the warming caused by other gases because it occurs in greater quantities as temperatures rise. But water vapour is rarely discussed in debates about climate change because human activity has little impact on its overall levels in the atmosphere.
8) Ozone (O3)Scientists now believe that the destruction of the ozone layer by CFCs, long lamented by environmentalists, has actually helped counteract global warming as the gas is a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect. As the hole is repaired, climate change is expected to speed up.
By Matthew MoorePublished: 11:00AM GMT 11 Dec 2009
Carbon dioxide is the gas with the greatest influence on climate change Photo: PA
1) Carbon dioxide (CO2)While composing just 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide is the focus of efforts to counter global warming because levels have increased significantly since industrialisation, through the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
2) Methane (CH4)Tonne for tonne, methane is around 30 times more damaging to the atmosphere than CO2. Produced mainly through agriculture – from burping cows to rotting vegetable matter – its levels have also shot up in the last 250 years. Generally considered a secondary threat to CO2 as it is found in smaller concentrations.
3) Nitrous oxide (N20)Emitted by animal manure, synthetic fertilisers and some industrial processes such as the production of nylon, nitrous oxide is considered the third most influential greenhouse gas in terms of its contribution to global warming. More commonly known as laughing gas because of its anaesthetic properties.
4) Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)Widely used in air-conditioning and refrigeration systems since CFCs were phased out in the 1990s because of their effect on the ozone layer, HFCs are now responsible for one per cent of human-caused warming. The chemicals' potency as greenhouse gases has led to legislation to limit their use and trade.
5) Perfluorocarbons (PFCs)Primarily released through aluminium production and semiconductor manufacture. They are largely immune to the processes that break down most pollutants in the atmosphere, where they can remain for thousands of years.
6) Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6)The most potent greenhouse gas studied by climate change scientists, Sulfur Hexafluoride is used in small quantities in various industrial and electrical process such as the manufacture of circuit breakers.
7) Water vapour (H20)Gaseous water is the single largest contributor to the greenhouse effect, amplifying the warming caused by other gases because it occurs in greater quantities as temperatures rise. But water vapour is rarely discussed in debates about climate change because human activity has little impact on its overall levels in the atmosphere.
8) Ozone (O3)Scientists now believe that the destruction of the ozone layer by CFCs, long lamented by environmentalists, has actually helped counteract global warming as the gas is a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect. As the hole is repaired, climate change is expected to speed up.
Turn your house green and cash in
The Pre-Budget Report revealed new money is available to encourage households to save energy
James Charles
If the clunky old boiler in your house needs replacing or installing a wind turbine on the roof appeals, you may be able to claim hundreds of pounds from the Government to help you to realise your goal.
A package of green incentives in this week’s Pre-Budget Report is aimed at helping households to cut energy bills and combat global warming. The Government hopes that 200,000 homeowners will be helped by a range of measures that is worth £200 million.
However, if you want to benefit, you may have to act fast because the money available will be capped.
Scrap your old boiler
The Chancellor Alistair Darling announced plans for a new boiler scrappage scheme similar to the programme launched last year to encourage drivers to trade in their old cars.
Households will be able to apply for a £400 incentive towards the cost of installing a new condensing boiler. Such boilers are usually A-rated — A is the most energy-efficient rating — and it is estimated that installing one will save a typical household £210 a year in energy bills.
Only households with the most inefficient G-rated boilers will qualify for the scrappage scheme, but competition for funds could still be fierce. About 4.5 million homes are believed to have a G-rated boiler but, with £50 million earmarked, only 125,000 will be able to upgrade their boilers at a reduced cost when the scrappage scheme is launched early next year. Details are still to be finalised by the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
David Weatherall, from the Energy Saving Trust, says: “We expect the scheme to be considerably oversubscribed, so homeowners should apply at the earliest opportunity.”
You can find out the efficiency rating of your boiler at www.sedbuk.com, which has a database of information on most boilers in the UK.
As well as helping householders to achieve valuable savings on their energy bills, switching to efficient boilers is also good for the environment. Replacing all G-rated boilers with A-rated models would save almost 4.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, equivalent to the emissions from 830,000 households.
However, homeowners have been warned not to pay for a new system without checking out the potential savings first. Even if you qualify for the scheme, you will still have to shoulder most of the expense.
The total cost of changing your boiler can vary between £1,500 and £3,000. Radiators and pipes may need to be replaced, so it is recommended that householders get a range of quotes from local contractors.
Annie Shaw, of the consumer personal financial help website CashQuestions.com, says: “The boiler scrappage scheme looks attractive, but consumers should beware of hidden costs unless their old boiler is actually on the point of packing up.
“Modern condensing boilers can be more expensive to fit and maintain than older less fuel-efficient models. While you will find that your gas bills will go down with a modern boiler, don’t underestimate the potential cost of repairs and parts.”
The British Gas website has a calculator which provides information on how much you can save by upgrading your current boiler. Visit britishgas.co.uk for details.
For more information on the boiler scrappage scheme, homeowners should contact the Energy Saving Trust on 0800 512012 or visit energysavingtrust.org.uk.
Make money from wind power
Homeowners who generate their own power from wind turbines and solar panels will be able to earn hundreds of pounds a year tax-free under plans outlined on Wednesday.
Under the proposed new Clean Energy Cash Back tariff, which is scheduled to launch on April 10 next year, will see homeowners paid by their local energy company for every unit of renewable energy they generate at home. Homeowners will be paid about 36.5p for every unit of electricity generated that they use in their home, although this will vary depending on how the electricity is generated. The average household could be paid up to £900 tax-free, according to the Department for Energy and Climate Change.
Those who generate more than they need can sell the surplus energy back to their local supplier, picking up a second payment of about 5p per unit in return. Both payments will be tax-free.
The new scheme simplifies the rules for homeowners who generate their own power. Under the current scheme, homeowners receive cash payments for selling energy to the national grid, but the administrative burden of registering for the scheme is high while the price paid for the electricity by some companies can be low. Under the terms of the new energy feed-in scheme, the Government will establish a standard price per unit for generating electricity at home, which all local suppliers must pay.
The scheme will cover only renewable technologies, such as wind turbines or solar (photovoltaic) panels, which are used to generate electricity. Renewable heat generators, such as ground-source heat pumps, which heat water but don’t generate any power, will be covered by a separate scheme, which will be launched in 2011.
Under current government proposals, homeowners who installed renewable energy devices before the middle of July this year will not qualify for Clean Energy Cash Back, but will be transferred on to a similar tariff allowing households to sell back energy at a rate of 5p per unit. However, the standard rate that these households will be paid for generating electricity will be lower.
The cost of installing a solar electricity system is typically between £8,000 and £14,000, but can vary depending on the size and type of equipment used, according to the Energy Saving Trust. Wind Turbines cost from £1,500 for small roofmounted units to £20,000 for mast mounted systems.
For more information on generating energy at home and the new Clean Energy Cashback tariff, contact the Energy Saving Trust on 0800 512012.
Insulate your home
The Chancellor provided a big shot in the arm to the Warm Front scheme, which is aimed at helping pensioners, families and the disabled to make their homes more energy-efficient. He promised an extra £150 million next April to provide improvements in heating and insulation for 75,000 households. The Warm Front budget was set to plummet next year as the scheme ran out of cash.
Under the terms of the scheme, established in 2000, homeowners can apply for grants of up to £3,500 to make improvements to heating systems and insulation. Households that are not connected to the gas network can apply for grants of up to £6,000. The grants are available to those on means-tested benefits over the age of 60, living with children under 16, or homeowners claiming a disability benefit or allowance.
The scheme has been criticised in recent months for the delays faced by applicants seeking improvements to their home. It warns homeowners that insulation work can take between three and six months to complete and heating works may take up to six months to finish.
The scheme is administered on behalf of the Government by Eaga, an energy outsourcing company that specialises in renewable energy. For more information, visit warmfront.co.uk; call 0800 3162805.
Make money from wind power
Homeowners who generate their own power from wind turbines and solar panels will be able to earn hundreds of pounds a year tax-free under plans outlined on Wednesday.
Under the proposed new Clean Energy Cash Back tariff, which is scheduled to launch on April 10 next year, will see homeowners paid by their local energy company for every unit of renewable energy they generate at home. Homeowners will be paid about 36.5p for every unit of electricity generated that they use in their home, although this will vary depending on how the electricity is generated. The average household could be paid up to £900 tax-free, according to the Department for Energy and Climate Change.
Those who generate more than they need can sell the surplus energy back to their local supplier, picking up a second payment of about 5p per unit in return. Both payments will be tax-free.
The new scheme simplifies the rules for homeowners who generate their own power. Under the current scheme, homeowners receive cash payments for selling energy to the national grid, but the administrative burden of registering for the scheme is high while the price paid for the electricity by some companies can be low. Under the terms of the new energy feed-in scheme, the Government will establish a standard price per unit for generating electricity at home, which all local suppliers must pay.
The scheme will cover only renewable technologies, such as wind turbines or solar (photovoltaic) panels, which are used to generate electricity. Renewable heat generators, such as ground-source heat pumps, which heat water but don’t generate any power, will be covered by a separate scheme, which will be launched in 2011.
Under current government proposals, homeowners who installed renewable energy devices before the middle of July this year will not qualify for Clean Energy Cash Back, but will be transferred on to a similar tariff allowing households to sell back energy at a rate of 5p per unit. However, the standard rate that these households will be paid for generating electricity will be lower.
The cost of installing a solar electricity system is typically between £8,000 and £14,000, but can vary depending on the size and type of equipment used, according to the Energy Saving Trust. Wind Turbines cost from £1,500 for small roofmounted units to £20,000 for mast mounted systems.
For more information on generating energy at home and the new Clean Energy Cashback tariff, contact the Energy Saving Trust on 0800 512012.
Insulate your home
The Chancellor provided a big shot in the arm to the Warm Front scheme, which is aimed at helping pensioners, families and the disabled to make their homes more energy-efficient. He promised an extra £150 million next April to provide improvements in heating and insulation for 75,000 households. The Warm Front budget was set to plummet next year as the scheme ran out of cash.
Under the terms of the scheme, established in 2000, homeowners can apply for grants of up to £3,500 to make improvements to heating systems and insulation. Households that are not connected to the gas network can apply for grants of up to £6,000. The grants are available to those on means-tested benefits over the age of 60, living with children under 16, or homeowners claiming a disability benefit or allowance.
The scheme has been criticised in recent months for the delays faced by applicants seeking improvements to their home. It warns homeowners that insulation work can take between three and six months to complete and heating works may take up to six months to finish.
The scheme is administered on behalf of the Government by Eaga, an energy outsourcing company that specialises in renewable energy. For more information, visit warmfront.co.uk; call 0800 3162805.
Case study: Keeping warm — and saving on energy bills
Joan Wilson, from Daisy Bank, in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, applied for free loft and cavity insulation two weeks ago under a scheme run by her local authority.
The 75-year-old contacted her council after reading about Warm Front, the Government- funded programme to help homeowners to reduce their energy bills.
Although she does not qualify for Warm Front because she does not claim a benefit, Mrs Wilson is seeking to enrol in a similar scheme offering free improvements to those aged over 70.
She says: “I thought it was a good idea to apply for free loft insulation because you can save money on your energy bill. It would also help if we were going to sell our home.”
Mrs Wilson and her husband also receive the winter fuel allowance of £120 each, which goes towards reducing their fuel bill even further.
There are more than 100 schemes running across the country designed to improve energy efficiency and to reduce bills by providing funds to improve insulation in the homes of the elderly and those on benefits. Even if you are not a pensioner or claiming benefits, you can apply for a significant reduction in the cost of insulating your home.
Make way for electric white van man
The Chancellor announced that all electric vehicles would be exempt from company car tax for five years from next April, encouraging businesses to offer lower emission vehicles to employees.
Will Bush, of Ernst & Young, the accountant, says: “These incentives could persuade greener householders to sacrifice part of their salary in exchange for the use of a electric company car.”
Alistair Darling also promised that electric vans will be exempt from the van benefit charge for five years. He also offered a first-year capital allowance up to the full cost of a new electric van, which means that the purchase of the vans would be classed as an investment in the business rather than a company vehicle for tax purposes.
The Government hopes to raise the number of electric vehicles bought by businesses in the UK. Last year businesses purchased 900,000 vehicles, of which fewer than 50 were thought to be electric.
There will be future changes in the thresholds for company car tax, which are based on the level of a car’s CO2 emissions. The thresholds are to be edged down by 5g of C02 per km from 2012, falling to a new lower 10 per cent band of 99g/km.
The 10 per cent tax band currently stands at 120g/km and accountants estimate that the tougher limits will push thousands of company cars into higher tax bands. This could add up to £120 million to the tax bill of UK businesses from 2012.
There will also be a change in the figure used to calculate the tax paid on private fuel used in company cars. This will rise from £16,900 to £18,000 and for a company van from £500 to £550.
James Charles
If the clunky old boiler in your house needs replacing or installing a wind turbine on the roof appeals, you may be able to claim hundreds of pounds from the Government to help you to realise your goal.
A package of green incentives in this week’s Pre-Budget Report is aimed at helping households to cut energy bills and combat global warming. The Government hopes that 200,000 homeowners will be helped by a range of measures that is worth £200 million.
However, if you want to benefit, you may have to act fast because the money available will be capped.
Scrap your old boiler
The Chancellor Alistair Darling announced plans for a new boiler scrappage scheme similar to the programme launched last year to encourage drivers to trade in their old cars.
Households will be able to apply for a £400 incentive towards the cost of installing a new condensing boiler. Such boilers are usually A-rated — A is the most energy-efficient rating — and it is estimated that installing one will save a typical household £210 a year in energy bills.
Only households with the most inefficient G-rated boilers will qualify for the scrappage scheme, but competition for funds could still be fierce. About 4.5 million homes are believed to have a G-rated boiler but, with £50 million earmarked, only 125,000 will be able to upgrade their boilers at a reduced cost when the scrappage scheme is launched early next year. Details are still to be finalised by the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
David Weatherall, from the Energy Saving Trust, says: “We expect the scheme to be considerably oversubscribed, so homeowners should apply at the earliest opportunity.”
You can find out the efficiency rating of your boiler at www.sedbuk.com, which has a database of information on most boilers in the UK.
As well as helping householders to achieve valuable savings on their energy bills, switching to efficient boilers is also good for the environment. Replacing all G-rated boilers with A-rated models would save almost 4.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, equivalent to the emissions from 830,000 households.
However, homeowners have been warned not to pay for a new system without checking out the potential savings first. Even if you qualify for the scheme, you will still have to shoulder most of the expense.
The total cost of changing your boiler can vary between £1,500 and £3,000. Radiators and pipes may need to be replaced, so it is recommended that householders get a range of quotes from local contractors.
Annie Shaw, of the consumer personal financial help website CashQuestions.com, says: “The boiler scrappage scheme looks attractive, but consumers should beware of hidden costs unless their old boiler is actually on the point of packing up.
“Modern condensing boilers can be more expensive to fit and maintain than older less fuel-efficient models. While you will find that your gas bills will go down with a modern boiler, don’t underestimate the potential cost of repairs and parts.”
The British Gas website has a calculator which provides information on how much you can save by upgrading your current boiler. Visit britishgas.co.uk for details.
For more information on the boiler scrappage scheme, homeowners should contact the Energy Saving Trust on 0800 512012 or visit energysavingtrust.org.uk.
Make money from wind power
Homeowners who generate their own power from wind turbines and solar panels will be able to earn hundreds of pounds a year tax-free under plans outlined on Wednesday.
Under the proposed new Clean Energy Cash Back tariff, which is scheduled to launch on April 10 next year, will see homeowners paid by their local energy company for every unit of renewable energy they generate at home. Homeowners will be paid about 36.5p for every unit of electricity generated that they use in their home, although this will vary depending on how the electricity is generated. The average household could be paid up to £900 tax-free, according to the Department for Energy and Climate Change.
Those who generate more than they need can sell the surplus energy back to their local supplier, picking up a second payment of about 5p per unit in return. Both payments will be tax-free.
The new scheme simplifies the rules for homeowners who generate their own power. Under the current scheme, homeowners receive cash payments for selling energy to the national grid, but the administrative burden of registering for the scheme is high while the price paid for the electricity by some companies can be low. Under the terms of the new energy feed-in scheme, the Government will establish a standard price per unit for generating electricity at home, which all local suppliers must pay.
The scheme will cover only renewable technologies, such as wind turbines or solar (photovoltaic) panels, which are used to generate electricity. Renewable heat generators, such as ground-source heat pumps, which heat water but don’t generate any power, will be covered by a separate scheme, which will be launched in 2011.
Under current government proposals, homeowners who installed renewable energy devices before the middle of July this year will not qualify for Clean Energy Cash Back, but will be transferred on to a similar tariff allowing households to sell back energy at a rate of 5p per unit. However, the standard rate that these households will be paid for generating electricity will be lower.
The cost of installing a solar electricity system is typically between £8,000 and £14,000, but can vary depending on the size and type of equipment used, according to the Energy Saving Trust. Wind Turbines cost from £1,500 for small roofmounted units to £20,000 for mast mounted systems.
For more information on generating energy at home and the new Clean Energy Cashback tariff, contact the Energy Saving Trust on 0800 512012.
Insulate your home
The Chancellor provided a big shot in the arm to the Warm Front scheme, which is aimed at helping pensioners, families and the disabled to make their homes more energy-efficient. He promised an extra £150 million next April to provide improvements in heating and insulation for 75,000 households. The Warm Front budget was set to plummet next year as the scheme ran out of cash.
Under the terms of the scheme, established in 2000, homeowners can apply for grants of up to £3,500 to make improvements to heating systems and insulation. Households that are not connected to the gas network can apply for grants of up to £6,000. The grants are available to those on means-tested benefits over the age of 60, living with children under 16, or homeowners claiming a disability benefit or allowance.
The scheme has been criticised in recent months for the delays faced by applicants seeking improvements to their home. It warns homeowners that insulation work can take between three and six months to complete and heating works may take up to six months to finish.
The scheme is administered on behalf of the Government by Eaga, an energy outsourcing company that specialises in renewable energy. For more information, visit warmfront.co.uk; call 0800 3162805.
Make money from wind power
Homeowners who generate their own power from wind turbines and solar panels will be able to earn hundreds of pounds a year tax-free under plans outlined on Wednesday.
Under the proposed new Clean Energy Cash Back tariff, which is scheduled to launch on April 10 next year, will see homeowners paid by their local energy company for every unit of renewable energy they generate at home. Homeowners will be paid about 36.5p for every unit of electricity generated that they use in their home, although this will vary depending on how the electricity is generated. The average household could be paid up to £900 tax-free, according to the Department for Energy and Climate Change.
Those who generate more than they need can sell the surplus energy back to their local supplier, picking up a second payment of about 5p per unit in return. Both payments will be tax-free.
The new scheme simplifies the rules for homeowners who generate their own power. Under the current scheme, homeowners receive cash payments for selling energy to the national grid, but the administrative burden of registering for the scheme is high while the price paid for the electricity by some companies can be low. Under the terms of the new energy feed-in scheme, the Government will establish a standard price per unit for generating electricity at home, which all local suppliers must pay.
The scheme will cover only renewable technologies, such as wind turbines or solar (photovoltaic) panels, which are used to generate electricity. Renewable heat generators, such as ground-source heat pumps, which heat water but don’t generate any power, will be covered by a separate scheme, which will be launched in 2011.
Under current government proposals, homeowners who installed renewable energy devices before the middle of July this year will not qualify for Clean Energy Cash Back, but will be transferred on to a similar tariff allowing households to sell back energy at a rate of 5p per unit. However, the standard rate that these households will be paid for generating electricity will be lower.
The cost of installing a solar electricity system is typically between £8,000 and £14,000, but can vary depending on the size and type of equipment used, according to the Energy Saving Trust. Wind Turbines cost from £1,500 for small roofmounted units to £20,000 for mast mounted systems.
For more information on generating energy at home and the new Clean Energy Cashback tariff, contact the Energy Saving Trust on 0800 512012.
Insulate your home
The Chancellor provided a big shot in the arm to the Warm Front scheme, which is aimed at helping pensioners, families and the disabled to make their homes more energy-efficient. He promised an extra £150 million next April to provide improvements in heating and insulation for 75,000 households. The Warm Front budget was set to plummet next year as the scheme ran out of cash.
Under the terms of the scheme, established in 2000, homeowners can apply for grants of up to £3,500 to make improvements to heating systems and insulation. Households that are not connected to the gas network can apply for grants of up to £6,000. The grants are available to those on means-tested benefits over the age of 60, living with children under 16, or homeowners claiming a disability benefit or allowance.
The scheme has been criticised in recent months for the delays faced by applicants seeking improvements to their home. It warns homeowners that insulation work can take between three and six months to complete and heating works may take up to six months to finish.
The scheme is administered on behalf of the Government by Eaga, an energy outsourcing company that specialises in renewable energy. For more information, visit warmfront.co.uk; call 0800 3162805.
Case study: Keeping warm — and saving on energy bills
Joan Wilson, from Daisy Bank, in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, applied for free loft and cavity insulation two weeks ago under a scheme run by her local authority.
The 75-year-old contacted her council after reading about Warm Front, the Government- funded programme to help homeowners to reduce their energy bills.
Although she does not qualify for Warm Front because she does not claim a benefit, Mrs Wilson is seeking to enrol in a similar scheme offering free improvements to those aged over 70.
She says: “I thought it was a good idea to apply for free loft insulation because you can save money on your energy bill. It would also help if we were going to sell our home.”
Mrs Wilson and her husband also receive the winter fuel allowance of £120 each, which goes towards reducing their fuel bill even further.
There are more than 100 schemes running across the country designed to improve energy efficiency and to reduce bills by providing funds to improve insulation in the homes of the elderly and those on benefits. Even if you are not a pensioner or claiming benefits, you can apply for a significant reduction in the cost of insulating your home.
Make way for electric white van man
The Chancellor announced that all electric vehicles would be exempt from company car tax for five years from next April, encouraging businesses to offer lower emission vehicles to employees.
Will Bush, of Ernst & Young, the accountant, says: “These incentives could persuade greener householders to sacrifice part of their salary in exchange for the use of a electric company car.”
Alistair Darling also promised that electric vans will be exempt from the van benefit charge for five years. He also offered a first-year capital allowance up to the full cost of a new electric van, which means that the purchase of the vans would be classed as an investment in the business rather than a company vehicle for tax purposes.
The Government hopes to raise the number of electric vehicles bought by businesses in the UK. Last year businesses purchased 900,000 vehicles, of which fewer than 50 were thought to be electric.
There will be future changes in the thresholds for company car tax, which are based on the level of a car’s CO2 emissions. The thresholds are to be edged down by 5g of C02 per km from 2012, falling to a new lower 10 per cent band of 99g/km.
The 10 per cent tax band currently stands at 120g/km and accountants estimate that the tougher limits will push thousands of company cars into higher tax bands. This could add up to £120 million to the tax bill of UK businesses from 2012.
There will also be a change in the figure used to calculate the tax paid on private fuel used in company cars. This will rise from £16,900 to £18,000 and for a company van from £500 to £550.
Unilever Drops Palm Oil Supplier
By TOM WRIGHT
JAKARTA—Unilever PLC said on Friday it would stop buying palm oil from Indonesian producer PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources & Technology after fresh allegations emerged the company was destroying pristine rainforests to make way for plantations.
Unilever's decision comes after environmental campaigner Greenpeace alleged in a report that the company, one of Indonesia's largest producers of palm oil, was illegally cutting virgin rainforest in West Kalimantan province, home to orangutans, gibbons and other rare species.
A spokeswoman for Sinar Mas Agro said the allegations were "not accurate" but declined further comment, saying the company was preparing a detailed response. The palm oil market is fragmented, meaning the Unilever order cancellation won't make a material difference to overall sales, the spokeswoman added.
The spotlight on the damage to Indonesia's forests—an area half the size of Switzerland is lost to deforestation yearly—comes as climate-change negotiators meet this week in Copenhagen. Indonesia is the world's third-largest largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas, after the United States and China, due to forest destruction. The burning of trees and peat lands to clear land for palm oil plantations releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The Greenpeace report alleges the Jakarta-listed company cut forests without permits, failed to protect areas of high biodiversity and drained environmentally-valuable peat lands, violating Indonesian laws and the principles of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a green certification body set up by environmentalists and corporations. Sinar Mas Agro is a member of the group.
"The Greenpeace claims are of a nature that we can't ignore," said Marc Engel, chief procurement officer of Unilever, the world's largest single buyer of palm oil, which is used in products such as margarine and cosmetics. "We have no choice but to suspend our future purchasing of palm oil."
The company is owned by Indonesia's Sinar Mas Group, whose Asia Pulp & Paper Co. Ltd. unit, a major producer of photocopier paper, paper bags, and other stationery products, has lost key U.S. and European customers including Staples Inc. in recent years on concerns the company's operations have led to massive forest destruction in Indonesia.
Sinar Mas Group has in the past denied claims that it improperly cleared forest and said it is committed to protecting the environment.
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil was set up earlier this decade by Unilever, the environmental group WWF, Malaysian plantation companies and a Swiss supermarket chain to set minimum environmental standards amid rising pressure from consumer groups.
Today, 5% of the 45 million tons of crude palm oil produced annually, more than 90% of which comes from Indonesia and Malaysia, is certified by the RSPO as coming from production methods that don't destroy forests.
But critics say many RSPO members, such as Sinar Mas Agro, join to bolster their green credentials without getting any palm oil supply certified. The group has a procedure to kick out members that don't meet its standards—which include protecting biodiverse forest areas and respecting human rights—but has been lax in policing its own rules, critics say.
"The evidence clearly shows that buying palm oil from members of the RSPO does not protect consumer (goods) companies from buying a product connected to forest destruction and climate change," said Joko Arif, Greenpeace Southeast Asia's forest campaigner.
"The only solution is to demand a full moratorium on all forest and peat land clearances from all suppliers of palm oil."
Unilever said it remains committed to the RSPO and would reconsider its stance toward Sinar Mas Agro if it can produce proof it's not involved in unacceptable environmental practices.
Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com
JAKARTA—Unilever PLC said on Friday it would stop buying palm oil from Indonesian producer PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources & Technology after fresh allegations emerged the company was destroying pristine rainforests to make way for plantations.
Unilever's decision comes after environmental campaigner Greenpeace alleged in a report that the company, one of Indonesia's largest producers of palm oil, was illegally cutting virgin rainforest in West Kalimantan province, home to orangutans, gibbons and other rare species.
A spokeswoman for Sinar Mas Agro said the allegations were "not accurate" but declined further comment, saying the company was preparing a detailed response. The palm oil market is fragmented, meaning the Unilever order cancellation won't make a material difference to overall sales, the spokeswoman added.
The spotlight on the damage to Indonesia's forests—an area half the size of Switzerland is lost to deforestation yearly—comes as climate-change negotiators meet this week in Copenhagen. Indonesia is the world's third-largest largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas, after the United States and China, due to forest destruction. The burning of trees and peat lands to clear land for palm oil plantations releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The Greenpeace report alleges the Jakarta-listed company cut forests without permits, failed to protect areas of high biodiversity and drained environmentally-valuable peat lands, violating Indonesian laws and the principles of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a green certification body set up by environmentalists and corporations. Sinar Mas Agro is a member of the group.
"The Greenpeace claims are of a nature that we can't ignore," said Marc Engel, chief procurement officer of Unilever, the world's largest single buyer of palm oil, which is used in products such as margarine and cosmetics. "We have no choice but to suspend our future purchasing of palm oil."
The company is owned by Indonesia's Sinar Mas Group, whose Asia Pulp & Paper Co. Ltd. unit, a major producer of photocopier paper, paper bags, and other stationery products, has lost key U.S. and European customers including Staples Inc. in recent years on concerns the company's operations have led to massive forest destruction in Indonesia.
Sinar Mas Group has in the past denied claims that it improperly cleared forest and said it is committed to protecting the environment.
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil was set up earlier this decade by Unilever, the environmental group WWF, Malaysian plantation companies and a Swiss supermarket chain to set minimum environmental standards amid rising pressure from consumer groups.
Today, 5% of the 45 million tons of crude palm oil produced annually, more than 90% of which comes from Indonesia and Malaysia, is certified by the RSPO as coming from production methods that don't destroy forests.
But critics say many RSPO members, such as Sinar Mas Agro, join to bolster their green credentials without getting any palm oil supply certified. The group has a procedure to kick out members that don't meet its standards—which include protecting biodiverse forest areas and respecting human rights—but has been lax in policing its own rules, critics say.
"The evidence clearly shows that buying palm oil from members of the RSPO does not protect consumer (goods) companies from buying a product connected to forest destruction and climate change," said Joko Arif, Greenpeace Southeast Asia's forest campaigner.
"The only solution is to demand a full moratorium on all forest and peat land clearances from all suppliers of palm oil."
Unilever said it remains committed to the RSPO and would reconsider its stance toward Sinar Mas Agro if it can produce proof it's not involved in unacceptable environmental practices.
Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
