#efficiency
Why the ‘Energy Security Strategy’ won’t work / Nick Eyre
The Prime Minister’s #Energy #Security #Strategy will not work. It’s a strategy for boosting #UK energy #supply. Of course, the UK needs a plan for where our energy should come from. But any effective strategy also has to address how much energy we use and how to reduce it. Indeed, it should start from there. A “supply strategy” for energy is like a “medicines strategy” for health – it misses the key options.
This is not an academic debating point. Just building more supply has never worked as an energy strategy. And it does not need to – reducing #demand works. Over the last 30 years, energy #efficiency improvement has contributed more to our energy security than the nuclear and renewables programme combined. And the potential for reducing energy demand further remains very large. This week’s IPCC report confirms such changes can be very large and need to be central to an effective climate policy. CREDS research shows that we could halve UK energy demand by 2050, whilst still improving our quality of life.
Electrifying transport and heating alone will achieve a lot, as electric vehicles and heat pumps are many times more efficient than the fossil fuel technologies they replace. And our buildings could and should be better insulated. But the message from recent research is more fundamental – we need also to think more broadly about what we use energy for. Reducing car use can play a major role, as can the reuse and substitution of energy intensive materials.
Time and money
Of course, much of this will require investment and take time. But that is even more true of the measures set out in the PM’s strategy. Changes in the way that we use energy are generally quicker than major supply side investments, especially options like new nuclear reactors, which are the most expensive option and cannot make any contribution for well over a decade. Saving energy provides more diverse, resilient, cleaner and cheaper options. The proposed support for heat pump innovation is only a tiny fraction of what is required.
Sadly, the ‘strategy’ continues a trend of going in the wrong direction. Energy saving policies have been dismantled over the last decade. Vehicle efficiency improvements have stalled and new building standards delayed. In David Cameron’s haste to ‘cut the green crap’ in 2012, building energy saving programmes were reduced by 90%. This outcome was not an unfortunate accident; it was a deliberate choice by a minister, who then went to work for Russian oligarch. The result is that a typical household uses 10% more energy for space heating and now pays £100 per year more for household energy than if previous programmes had been continued.
Some households have high car dependency and therefore will be doubly disadvantaged. But most people on low incomes do not drive long distances, and so rising transport fuel costs are less regressive. The recent reduction in road fuel duty is a diversion from the key problem that, unless urgent action is taken, rising household fuel bills will mean people die from living in cold homes next winter.
Professor Nick Eyre, based at the University of Oxford, is the Director of CREDS and a Professor of Energy and Climate Policy.
Four Scientists, a Few Small Nations, and Making Unthinkable Climate Action Possible
#BOGA’s “core members” are Denmark, Costa Rica, Ireland, France, Sweden, Wales, Greenland and Quebec. “Associate members” are New Zealand, Portugal and California. Italy is a “friend of BOGA”.
#climate #action #scientists #barrymcmullin #johnsweeney #paulprice #kevinanderson #ireland #oireachtas #energy #efficiency #limits #BeyondOilandGasAlliance
Report: Massachusetts doesn’t have enough workers to meet its efficiency goals
Massachusetts needs 35,000 workers if it is to make significant progress updating its aging homes by 2030, according to a recent report.
https://energynews.us/2021/11/01/report-massachusetts-doesnt-have-enough-workers-to-meet-its-efficiency-goals/
#syndication, #news, #northeast, #massachusetts, #efficiency
Marianne Williamson, Peter Joseph ~ The Zeitgeist of this Moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DacbQDV3o-s
https://mariannewilliamson.substack.com/p/the-zeitgeist-of-this-moment
' #Williamson and #Joseph discuss the #economic and #social #systems prevailing in the #world today and what is needed to #heal #society, and some ideas from his #book, The New HumanRights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression.'
#mariannewilliamson #peterjoseph #zeitgeist #conversation #transcript #capitalism #neoliberalism #oppression #socioeconomics #free-market #growth #consumption #economy #ethics #morality #ecosystems #ecological #balance #humanity #compassion #cultural #equity #efficiency #harmony #demarketize #movement #humanrights
#voltex https://getvoltex.com/article4/uk?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7r7q8fiS8gIVl24bCh0zkQgiEAEYASAAEgJuMfD_BwE
sounds too good to be true, to start with... then you read on, and realise...
JinkoSolar launches Tiger Pro 415W solar module series
Increasing demands of the distributed generation market require unique solutions, both for commercial and residential customers. Meeting these is challenging when many PV modules aren’t compatible with the inverters, components, and mounting systems on the market. However, pv magazine’s Spotlight partner JinkoSolar Europe recently demonstrated how it is possible to take customer and developer considerations into account when designing products. In the following interview, Roberto Murgioni, Head of Technical Service & Product Management, discusses the company’s new Tiger Pro 415W high-efficiency module, and explains how stakeholders’ needs have been placed at the core of the design.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/05/26/jinkosolar-launches-tiger-pro-415w-solar-module-series/
#sponsored, #tiger, #efficiency, #magazine, #pv, #spotlight, #high, #jinkosolar, #module
Steven Pinker's Panglossianism has long annoyed me
A key to understanding why is in the nature of technical debt, complexity traps (Joseph Tainter) or progress traps (Ronald Wright), closely related to Robert K. Merton's notions of unintended consequences and manifesst vs. latent functions.
You can consider any technology (or interventions) as having attributes along several dimensions. Two of those are impact (positive or negative) and realisation timescale (short or long).
| Positive | Negative | |
|---|---|---|
| Short realisation | Obviously good | Obviously bad |
| Long realisation | Unobviously good | Unobviously bad |
Technologies with obvious quickly-realised benefits are generally and correctly adopted, those with obvious quickly-realised harms rejected. But we'll also unwisely reject technologies whose benefits are not immediately or clearly articulable, and reject those whose harms are long-delayed or unapparent. And the pathological case is when short-term obvious advantage is paired with long-term nonevident harm.
By "clearly articulable", I'm referring to the ability at social scale to effectively and accurately convey true benefit or harm. The notion of clear articuability itself not being especially clearly articuable....
For illustration: cheesecake has obvious short-term advantage, walking on hot coals obvious harms. A diet and gym routine afford only distant benefits. Leaded gasoline, Freon, DDT, and animal wet markets have all proven long-term catastrophic consequences.
As Merton notes, the notion of latent functions is itself significant:
The discovery of latent functions represents significant increments in sociological knowledge. There is another respect in which inquiry into latent functions represents a distinctive contribution of the social scientist. It is precisely the latent functions of a practice or belief which are not common knowlege, for these are unintended and generally unrecognized social and psychological consequences. As a result, findings concerning latent functions represent a greater increment in knowledge than findings concerning manifest functions. They represent, also, greater departures from "common-sense" knowledge about social life. Inasmuch as the latent functions depart, more or less, from the avowed manifestations, the research which uncovers latent functions very often produces "paradoxical" results. The seeming paradox arises from the sharp modification of a familiar popular perception which regards a standardized practice or believe only in terms of its manifest functions by indicating some of its subsidiary or collateral latent functions. The introduction of the concept of latent function in social research leads to conclusions which show that "social life is not as simple as it first seems." For as long as people confine themselves to certain consequences (e.g., manifest consequences), it is comparatively simple for them to pass moral judgements upon the practice or belief in question.
-- Robert K. Merton, "Manifest and Latent Functions", in Social Theory Re-Wired
Emphasis in original.
In the argument between those arguing for optimism vs. pessimism, the optimists have the advantage of pointing to a current set of known good states --- facts in the present which can be clearly pointed to and demonstrated. A global catastrophic risk by definition has not yet ocurred and therefore of necessity exists in a latent state. Worse, it shares non-existence with an infinite universe of calamities, many or most of which can not or never will occur, and any accurate Cassandra has the burden of arguing why the risk she warns of is not among the unrealisable set. The side arguing for pessimism cannot point to any absolute proof or evidence, only indirect evidence such as similar past history, theory, probability distributions, and the like. To further compound matters, our psychological makeup resists treating such hypotheticals with the same respect granted manifested scenarios.
(There are some countervailing dynamics favouring pessimism biases. My sense is that on balance these are overwhelmed by optimism bias.)
The notion of technical debt gives us one tool for at least conceptualising, if not actually directly measuring, such costs. As a technical project, or technological adoption, progresses, trade-offs are made for present clear benefit at the exchange for some future and ill-defined cost. At which point a clarification of natures of specific aspects of risk is necessary. The future risk is not merely stochastic, the playing out of random variance on some well-known variable function, but unknown. We don't even know the possible values the dice may roll, or what cards are within the deck. I don't know of a risk terminology that applies here, though I'd suggest model risk as a term: the risk is that we don't yet have even a useful model for assessing possible outcomes or their probabilities, as contrasted with stochastic risk given a known probability function. And again, optimists and boosters have the advantage of pointing to demonstrable or clearly articulable benefits.
Among other factors in play are the likely value function on the one hand and global systemic interconnectedness on the other.
For some entity --- a cell, an individual, household, community, firm, organisation, nation, all of humanity --- any given intervention or technology offers some potential value return, falling to negative infinity at some origin (death or dissolution), and rising, at a diminishing rate, always (or very nearly almost) to some finite limit. Past a point, more of a thing is virtually always net negative. Which suggests that the possible positive benefit of any given technology is limited.
The development of an increasingly interdependent global human system --- economic, technical, political, social, epidemiological, and more --- means both that few effects are localised and that the system as a whole runs closer to its limits, with more constraints and fewer tolerances than ever before. This is Tainter's complexity trap: yes, the system's overall complexity affords capabilities not previously possible, but the complexity cost must be paid, the cost of efficiency is lost resilience.
Pinker ... ignores all this.
Adapted from a comment to a private share.
#StevenPinker #DrPangloss #risk #JosephTainter #RonaldWright #RobertKMerton #complexity #resilience #efficiency #ModelRisk #interdependence #optimism #pessimism #bias #manifestation #UnintendedConsequences #LatentFunctions
Michael & Joyce Heusemann: Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won't Save Us or the Environment (book/video)
This is a lecture by Dr. Michael Huesemann based on the book he co-authored with his wife Joyce Huesemann, "Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won't Save Us or the Environment."
Huesemann addresses three questions:
- Can technology solve major environmental and social problems? What are the limitations of tech?
- Why do most people believe in technological progress and uncritically accept any technology?
- Are there simple and effective low-tech solutions, and what can we do?
His answers defy much of the conventional wisdom surrounding technology.
Continued at the dreddit.
#technology #sustainability #progress #environment #optimism #bias #efficiency