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Comment by Darren Hill on June 9, 2010 at 17:17

Hello Paul,

I agree, the UK is faced with a huge looming energy problem that, I think I'm right in saying, most people are either blissfully unaware of or happy to ignore.

The way our society is organised is not conducive to dealing with this problem in a timely and meaningful fashion. Our economic system and government system more often than not act against a meaningful solution, failing to address, or even encouraging unnecessary energy consumption.

I think only with a huge rise in awareness of our situation, which I hope can come before we see to much pain, that this can be adequately addressed. We need ever greater numbers of people to come together and to create meaningful solutions to these problems.

I'm glad to see growing numbers of people around the country working in this direction.

I hate to be a cynic...... but I find it very hard to see any major progress coming from central government. Possibly with the right prods there may be some movement in the right direction, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that we need local, community led solutions and that prodding time is best spent promoting such community activities.

Comment by Paul Allen on May 18, 2010 at 5:24

Dealing prudently with deficit

As Britain braces itself to deal with some of the harshest public spending cuts since the Second World War, it is vital we consider the big picture, and ensure we create a more resilient economy.

The rules that determine the next two decades are going be very different from those that governed the previous two. Of the 98 oil producing nations in the world, 64 are thought to have passed their geologically imposed production peak, and of those 60 are now in terminal production decline. Our highest annual production was seen in 1999, with offshore oil production reaching 2,559 million barrels, by 2007 this had declined to 1,452 million barrels. This was the largest decrease of any other oil exporting nation in the world, and has led to Britain becoming a net importer of crude for the first time in decades.

Since the late 1970s the North Sea oil and gas reserves enabled the UK to be a net energy exporter. We quickly became very used to this making a significant contribution to the UK’s balance of payments, allowing us to fall into some very dozy practice. So the Britain now awaking from the long sleep of North Sea oil, is markedly different from the one that began dozing off in 1979. I am old enough to remember before the North Sea bonanza, when the balance of trade, and the balance of payments figured regularly in the headlines. Alerted by the 1973 oil crisis and the three-day week, Britain focused on producing goods it could export, in order to raise the foreign currency required to pay for the things we needed to import. We made TV’s bicycles aeroplanes and ships. We used the surplus we earned from this to pay for the things we needed to import, not least our energy. From the early 80s, our manufactured exports were allowed to decline, our industrial assets were stripped and replaced by a high-street retail economy, largely selling-on imported goods, paid for by a mix of re-valuing our housing stock, and cheap money brought in from overseas.

In 2005 the UK again became a net energy importer, as shown above. The principal reason for this is the decline in North Sea oil and gas production. Britain has been producing gas from the North Sea since 1967 and oil since 1975. The basin is now ‘mature’ (UK Oil & Gas 2009).

Now, as we awake to find ourselves an increasing energy importer, we find that this ‘retail economy’ is virtually useless at raising the money we will need to pay for the rising fuel bill from energy imports. It has been estimated that replacing North Sea extraction with imports would add £45 billion to the annual trade deficit; in addition, the Exchequer raised nearly £13 billion in tax from the offshore oil and gas industry in 2008. Unless we square up to this challenge, balancing the books will become an increasingly difficult exercise.

Even if we can beg or borrow the money to pay for it, importing energy from overseas can, for a while, substitute for our failing domestic production. But with an imminent peak in global production looming, this cannot offer a reliable solution long-term. And, to add to our balance of payment problems; rather than selling manufactured goods overseas, we have become a massive net importer of manufactured goods. If you extrapolate the decline of our indigenous energy supplies to 2030, with business as usual we have a massive foreign debt problem, and by then energy will be in much shorter supply and, I strongly suspect, that only those with the hard currency to pay for it will get their fuel.

Sadly we have not accumulated our oil revenues to prepare us for this transition. Norway, the other big North Sea oil nation, has however pursued a classically Scandinavian solution. It has viewed oil revenues as a temporary, collectively owned windfall that, instead of spurring consumption today, can be used to insulate the country from storms in the global economy and provide an endowment for the day when the oil wells run dry. The Government Petroleum (now re-named Pensions) was designed to ensure that petroleum revenues are available not only to the current generation but also to future generations. As of June 2007, this was the largest pension fund in Europe and the fourth largest in the world, and in March 2010 its total value reached $443 billion.

We must quickly face up to the fact that our 25 year energy export bonanza is almost over, and as we brace ourselves for the spending cuts needed to bring the annual deficit and accumulated foreign debt under control, we must recognise our long-term economic security is tied to reducing un-necessary energy use and the development of alternative indigenous sources of energy.

This transition is the cornerstone of a new economic approach that will move society on from doing the things that got us into so much trouble in the first place. Through learning the hard economic lessons of the past few years we can re-focus the ingenuity of the finance sector on the actual challenges at hand. Through this approach, we not only tackle climate and energy security, but also get the nation back to work, within a stable economy, driven by our indigenous renewable energy sources.

The challenge here is to translate this to actions at ground level!

Comment by Paul Allen on May 17, 2010 at 22:11

Thanks Darren, some interesting thoughts here. The key question it leads me to is how do we best integrate distributed and centralized generation. Even if we can power down demand by 50%, replacing fossil fuels requires a significant amount of energy. A good proportion of this can come from community funded distributed on-shore generation, but we must not forget the massive off-shore reserves, these too will be needed. Although they can still utilise community based funding, plus pension funds, local authority bonds etc, they will need some pretty big centralized infrastructure, planning and up-skilling. In my mind, it is not a matter of 'either / or', but how best we optimise the role for community-led distributed generation.

Comment by Darren Hill on May 5, 2010 at 13:57

I ran into an interesting looking dissertation posted on the discussion forum at FEASTA. I've yet to read it but the summary made me think of my last post here.

This passage appeared particularly relevant to Feiry Spirits.

"Distribution is a strategy used in information systems architecture to increase fault-tolerance and overall resilience. Decentralising or distribution of energy generation improves the resilience of electricity supply compared to centralised big power stations with losses due to
transmission lines. Distributed production can further increase the resilience of societal systems, while allowing cultural diversity and certain degree of self-determination. It could mitigate destructive patterns of large scale economies through concentrating on small to mid scale
applications. Community ownership as well as local control and management of resources and natural assets establishes stronger communities, streamlines supply allocation along local needs
and priorities while amplifying self-reliance and decreasing dependence on global markets and big business"

http://www.feasta.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=740

Comment by Darren Hill on April 27, 2010 at 16:22

I've been working with transportation biofuels for 10 years - largely with vegetable oil based solutions.

I have a passion for decentralised energy solutions - to my mind giving (both kinds of) power back to communities and offering a high level of resilience. I've been keeping an eye on developments in the renewables sector and a number of technologies appear to offer small scale local solutions that potentially offer many benefits.

(Somewhat simplifying the situation) These technologies often don't favour large scale investment/corporate involvement so they don't get promoted like the technologies that do.

I was disappointed to watch a video, here on Fieryspirits, last year where someone from CAT said, something along the lines of "CAT had moved away from championing decentralised energy and were looking at large centralised/national solutions" (I hope I've not skewed the message - no time to hunt out the video) The promotion of alternative, often decentralised, energy systems is why I have supported CAT over the years (I'm a member)... Why this move away from ideas of decentralised solutions, which, I think I'm right in saying were central to organisations outlook???

I should make clear that I advocate energy conservation as a very high priority - it is staggering how much energy we all use both as individuals and as a society. Over the last few generations coal and oil have got us used to having lots and lots of 'cheap' energy.

Decentralised stuff, to my mind, worthy of investigation - I guess you will at least have some of this covered.

Pure plant oil (PPO) fuel was very large in Germany - hundreds of small oil mills pressed and filtered locally grown oil seed producing a fuel which was used in modified engines for transport and electricity (and heat) generation . I've got lots of facts and figures on how this market progressed. There have also been a number of projects providing small rural electrification in non industrialised nations. If there is interest I could point to a number of interesting projects.

Biogas - I saw Petes sustainable dairying post (above) about farm based anaerobic digestion (AD) producing gas which would then be burnt in a generator to produce electricity.
I've seen examples of co-firing diesel generators with vegetable oil and gas to achieve very good efficiencies and allowing all the fuel to be produced 'on-farm' the press cake (stuff left over after pressing edible oilseeds) is also very useful in getting the AD process working well - and is also great animal feed.
This gas can also be used for transportation (although I think liquid fuels are generally better suited)
It can also be piped into houses/other buildings and used instead of 'natural' gas for cooking and space and water heating

Also there is support for small scale alcohol production in America see - http://www.permaculture.com/

Combined heat and power. Burning a fuel to produce electricity and also using the heat is a very efficient use of fuel. It is also suited to small scale solutions where heat and electric power can be distributed efficiently.

Wood Fuels-
pellets, chip and logs for heat (and sometimes electricity)

Also woodgas - Did the powerplant at BedZed ever get working?

There is now much criticism of biofuels and the damage they cause. The current method of large scale worldwide feedstock production (lots of palm and soy) is proving to be a disaster. But isn't that true of all internationalised markets - the winner of the game is the one who reduces the financial cost of production as much as possible. Avoiding payment for the social and environmental costs is a standard tactic.

Comment by shan Ashton on April 20, 2010 at 10:11

Whilst Sara Ashton is on maternity leave, the person to contact with Y Dre Werdd in Blaenau Ffestiniog is Iona Price (IonaPrice@gwynedd.gov.uk)...the whole activity there is lively to say the least! They'd be a good case study of grass roots process and social inclusion.

Comment by shan Ashton on February 23, 2010 at 18:43

Hi Paul..I really think chatting to Sara and team at Y Dre Werdd in Blaenau ffestiniog would be worthwhile...they are not big fans of these sorts of sites but you could try and encourage them by contacting sararhiannonashton@yahoo.co.uk...she is on maternity leave but would be interested in your plan and can give you all the links for the rest of the team. Shan

Comment by Jude Cumiskey on February 9, 2010 at 12:27

This is a great idea, will spread the word..

Comment by Paul Allen on January 26, 2010 at 17:32

Hi Pete,

The transition movement has done wonders in galvanising both urban and rural communities into action. This project aims to create a practical handboook in community scale technologies to meet the needs of transition towns energy sub-groups, to help them move quickly up the learning curve. It will also include real-life case studies telling the human stories behind the technology and lifestyle transitions ....