healthier, happier and richer

Yesterday, the UK Environment Minister gave a speech about the use of peat as compost. Peat bogs are an excellent sink for carbon dioxide, as peat is made up of partially decomposed plant material. In 1999, the UK government set itself a target that by 2010 peat would be eliminated from 90% of the compost sold in the UK. However, 2010 has arrived and almost half of UK compost still contains peat.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I attended a conference on renewable energy in Scotland, on the stunningly beautiful island Skye. I talked about how to dispel myths about climate change and renewables.

This morning, the Centre for European Reform (www.cer.org.uk) launched the report, which Simon Tilford and I have written, about what the EU should do about CCS. We argue that large-scale demonstration will require public money, and that widespread and rapid deployment will require regulation, ideally at European level.

This week, I went to a meeting called ‘The Big Reduction’ run by my local council, the London Borough of Islington. Islington has a reputation as a rich and posh part of London – it is where Tony Blair used to live and where New Labour was born. There are certainly some rich people living in Islington, but there are also poor people, many living in social housing, and middle-income people.

Later this week, a new Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, will be inaugurated. The word “Ukraine” means borderland and, to most outsiders, that is exactly how the country is regarded – The place between the EU and Russia or the place through which Russian gas travels to the EU – unless the Russians turn off the taps, as they did in 2006 and 2009. However, it is more important than that, and not only to Ukrainians.

In November 2009, 3% of OECD electricity was generated by renewables other than hydro. 14% came from hydro. And this was only 17% of what electricity was then used, not total energy used.

Robert Watson, the Chief Scientist at the UK Department of Environment, has been prominent in the media defending climate science. He accepts that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was wrong to include, in its Fourth Assessment Report, the prediction that Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035. However, he points out that, in other respects, the report was also cautious – some say over-cautious.

This month, the UK’s energy regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity markets, has published Project Discovery. This grandiose title accurately reflects the fact that Ofgem has finally ‘discovered’ that its previous approach – leaving as much as possible to the market – has not worked and will not enable the UK to meet the challenges of climate change and energy security, while also protecting consumers.

2009 is in danger of being remembered as the year of the Copenhagen ‘failure’ and Obama’s failure to get a cap-and-trade bill through the US Senate. However, it should be remembered as a year when, despite extremely difficult economic conditions, major polluting countries made substantial progress in expanding wind energy.

On Tuesday 2 February 2010, European Union member states agreed to European Commission proposals on how to distribute billions of Euros collected under the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to CCS and renewable energy projects.