Hillary Clinton’s climate change plans

Hillary ClintonThe US presidential contenders are laying out their plans for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mrs Clinton’s proposals are noteworthy for their commitment to re-engage with the global negotiations over future emissions caps and for her ambitious acceptance of the need for an 80% reduction in US emissions by 2050. The 80% target is rapidly becoming the preferred option of world politicians, a more ambitious target than the UK’s 60% figure. (The UK’s Climate Change bill will allow the new Climate Change Committee to recommend an increase to 80% if appropriate.) Mrs Clinton espouses a cap-and-trade system for US emissions. Unlike the EU’s approach, she proposes to auction the permits. She will continue the disastrous US policy of encouraging the conversion of corn to bioethanol. She looks to renewable electricity to provide 25% of US power.

She will add to federal expenditure on R+D, but the number proposed is insufficient to have much effect. She stresses the high cost of energy (gas, motor fuels and electricity) to American citizens but not does mention that the impact of her measures will be to increase energy costs, not reduce them.

Mrs Clinton’s plan is calm and measured. Contrast her statesmanlike tone with David Crane, the CEO of a large electricity generating company, in a 14 October article in the Washington Post. Crane writes, ‘We are not running out of time, we have run out of time’ [his italics]. He argues that the US government should put an immediate price on carbon emissions to incentivise a rapid switch to carbon capture and storage in the US power sector. His tone is desperate: ‘I am a carboholic’ but I want to stop, he writes. We could all do with a similar sense of urgency from Mrs Clinton.

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Public opinion on climate change

BBC World ServiceTwo pieces of market research published in the last week give some more support for the view that opinion is moving towards accepting that climate change will require lifestyle changes. BBC World Service interviewed individuals across the globe. Power company E.ON produced its segmentation of British consumer attitudes. The BBC survey suggested that over 80% of UK people are ‘ready to make significant changes in the way I live to help prevent global warming’. Nearly 90% think that changes in lifestyle will be necessary to address the problem. These numbers are approximately the same as among urban Chinese and only marginally higher than the US.

E.ON’s segmentation has over 20% of the UK already taking serious and possibly costly personal action related to climate change. Less than 15% actively reject any need to act now.

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The rebound effect

Energy efficiency improvements often do not deliver reductions in energy use. For example, when a householder installs better insulation, the energy savings are sometimes much less than would have been predicted. Sometimes this is because the insulation was badly fitted, but it is often because the householder runs the heating at a higher temperature when the house is better insulated. This is called the ‘rebound’ effect: when it becomes cheaper or more effective to use energy, people use more of it. The many studies into this effect have produced a wide variety of different estimates for the size of this effect. Most cluster between 10 and 30%. This means that energy efficiency improvements generally result in a large net benefit. But these studies only capture the direct effect on consumers and businesses. A study from the UK’s Energy Research Centre shows that the economy-wide impact may be much larger. For example, lower heating bills may mean that householders are rich enough to take more flights. At an even higher level of abstraction, better economy-wide energy efficiency (through, say, improvements in steel-making technologies) may encourage more rapid economic growth, which in turn raises energy use.

Some economists think that the economy-wide rebound from energy efficiency gains is very large – perhaps over 100%. A figure over 100% suggests that total energy consumption rises after energy efficiency improvements. The tentatively stated view of a new report by the UK Energy Research Centre is that the true number is somewhat lower than this and may be around 50%, although it could be a great deal higher.

Government projections for the impact of energy saving measures never take the rebound effect into account. Policy-makers trying to reduce global emissions need to adjust their thinking to reflect the much lower than expected efficacy of energy saving programmes.

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Biochar can sequester carbon cheaply

Amazonian topsoil enriched with charcoalOrganic matter, such as agricultural waste, heated in the absence of oxygen splits into two types of material: a charcoal (biochar), and hydrocarbon gases and liquids. When added to soils, the charcoal can provide a powerful fertiliser. The hydrocarbons can be burnt, either to generate electricity or to power an internal combustion engine. Biochar is exciting growing attention around the world. Charcoal’s ability to improve soils can sometimes be spectacular. But more importantly from a climate change perspective, charcoal is almost pure carbon and is strangely stable in soils. It seems to persist for centuries. Charcoal can therefore offer substantial opportunities for long-term sequestration of carbon. The valuable fuels from the biogases and liquids are also carbon-neutral since they contain CO2 previously captured during photosynthesis. As a third major benefit, soils fertilised with charcoal seem to need less artificial fertiliser, thus saving fossil fuels. Fewer applications of fertiliser would reduce the level of emissions of nitrous oxide, a particularly dangerous greenhouse gas.

Biochar manufacture represents a way of productively storing large amounts of carbon. But the carbon in the charcoal could be burnt to generate electricity instead of being stored in soil. Current emissions trading schemes, such as the European ETS, do not allow sequestered carbon to be considered as equivalent to a reduction in greenhouse warming emissions. This is a mistake that will need to be rectified. It make more sense to use agricultural land to make biochar and biogases/bioliquids than to burn the biomass in power stations. Power stations burning wood benefit from buying fewer emissions certificates and from the renewable energy subsidy, but there is no comparable benefit from storing carbon in the soil. This is an anomaly that should be removed.

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China is keeping the UK within the Kyoto limits

Post-industrial countries like the UK import an increasing fraction of their manufactured goods from China. The carbon emissions from the Chinese factories making these goods are not included in the UK’s totals. How much greater would the UK’s emissions be if we included the impact of goods manufactured in China?

In this article, we make some estimates based on a briefing note recently produced by the Tyndall Centre. The numbers I use are imprecise – and I am using them for reasons not envisaged by Tyndall – but I believe that the increase in the imports of Chinese goods has probably reduced UK emissions by about 6% below what it would have been. Perhaps more dramatically, the trade deficit is rising so fast that it is depressing UK emissions by a further 2% a year.

Without the safety valve of Chinese imports, the UK would be very likely to breach its Kyoto targets, which only measure domestic emissions. This is important in itself, but a more striking conclusion is that the trade with China has disguised a failure to cut emissions growth below the growth of British GDP. The UK government, and others around the world, regularly claim that CO2 output has been ‘decoupled’ from economic growth. The analysis contained in this note suggests that the apparent decoupling is actually an artefact of the growing deficit in trade with China.

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Taking risks with the brand

The Goodall household is well-trained. Compostable products get put on the compost heap. Plastic bottles end up in the recycling bin. Where should Innocent’s new smoothie bottles made from bio-degradable corn starch go? Surprisingly, the answer is into landfill. Innocent, the company with one of the purest brands in the UK, has made a mistake. For the last year it has used a new material called PLA for one of its ranges of drinks. It admitted last week that it would cease to use this bio-plastic later this year. But on its website it was still making some surprising claims. It says that the bottles made from this bio-plastic break down in garden compost heaps. They will not. PLA needs to be heated for several days to temperatures far greater than those in a domestic compost bin before it begins to rot. The bottles would break down in a commercial composter, but very few local authorities operate one of these plants. Innocent’s ethical consumers are going to find a large number of plastic bottles at the bottom of their compost heap next spring.

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Peak Oil

The Peak Oil question is beginning to become a central part of the daily debate on energy matters. On one side is an increasing number of independent scientists and oil engineers who note that world oil production is barely rising. Existing fields are running down and new reserves are found rarely. On the other side of the debate are the major institutions of the global oil industry. The International Energy Agency sees world oil supply rising from about 88 million barrels a day now to about 116 million barrels in 2030.

This last week saw another analysis (from Germany’s Energy Watch Group) suggesting that world oil production actually peaked in 2006. From now on, the group says, we can expect rapid declines. Many people worried about climate change see Peak Oil as a good thing. They believe that a shortage of oil and natural gas will slow down the rise in energy consumption and therefore help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The argument is actually more complex – it may well be that Peak Oil will tend to increase CO2. We will not be saved from ourselves by running out of oil.

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Video conferencing: at last a good alternative to travel?

Video conferencing has been around for a surprisingly long time. AT&T ran the first call in 1927. Since then, pundits have been consistently predicting that video conferencing was just about to take off. They have been wrong for eighty years. Why should we believe the techno-optimists now?

In the last year, several companies have launched video conferencing products that provide an experience similar to real meetings. The quality is surprising and even sceptics have begun to see the advantages of using a meeting room for an hour rather than spending three days going to Hong Kong and back. Cisco’s Telepresence product is generating enthusiasm that is tempered by the enormous costs of setting up the equipment and providing the bandwidth. But the company says that prices will fall dramatically over the next few years.

Is this going to be enough to get people out of planes? The signs are good. Even low bandwidth alternatives suitable for home use are getting praise from the experts. So if Cisco doesn’t make video conferencing work, Bay Area start-ups like VSee will probably start eating into the market for lower cost products.

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Food packaging and climate change

A recent Henley Centre survey suggested that 86% of people were eager to buy goods with less packaging, up 20% in the last two years. Nothing arouses as much spontaneous anger among British householders as the ‘over-packaging’ of foods. Recent newspaper headlines conveyed righteous indignation about the policies of UK retailers, in particular the failure to make all packaging recyclable. The newspapers completely missed the point. Three issues need to be emphasised:

  • Food packaging is a vanishingly small fraction of UK waste. Waste food is far more important.
  • Good packaging is vital: it helps protect food from damage and helps lengthen its shelf life.
  • Recyclable food packaging may actually be bad for climate change.

Making these points too loudly can get you lynched in some middle-class areas of Britain. Nevertheless, it needs to be said repeatedly that packaging, particularly of food, is not the environmental disaster it is made out to be.

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Rising trends in atmospheric CO2

CO2 output is accelerating, the ocean and land sinks are getting less effective at absorbing it. So the rate of growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing. (Canadell, Le Quéré, and others, 'Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 25 October 2007; URL: http://tinyurl.com/yqew8o [accessed 27 October 2007].)

The pre-industrial CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million. It was 381ppm in 2006. The growth rate between 2000 and 2006 was 1.93ppm, a significant increase on growth rates in earlier periods. Many policy-makers see it as vital to keep below concentrations of about 400ppm of CO2. The increase in the rate of rise of CO2 makes the achievement of this target more difficult.

Increases in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere reflect the volume of global emissions and the effectiveness of the oceans and land mass in absorbing greenhouse gases. This paper contains evidence both that emissions growth is speeding up and that the greenhouse gas sinks are capturing less CO2.

The growth rate in emissions between 2000 and 2006 was 3.3% a year compared to 1.3% in the 1990s (please see the article on Chinese exports in this issue of Carbon Commentary for corroboration of this finding). This increase reflects fast economic growth, particularly in China and India and a worrying increase in the amount of CO2 produced per unit of global output. It cannot be stressed enough that this second cause of emissions growth is unexpected. We thought we were going to see energy use fall in relation to economic output.

By contrast, models have predicted a decline in the effectiveness of ocean CO2 ‘sinks’. This paper shows that we can have a strong suspicion (but not near certainty) that this process has started. The authors point to increasing wind speeds in the Southern Ocean as a primary cause. This turbulence ‘ventilates’ the carbon dioxide contained in the surface of the sea. Droughts in mid-latitude regions have contributed to the decreased efficiency of land absorption.

The paper concludes that – with large margins of error – economic growth generated 65% of the increase in atmospheric CO2; the decrease in the efficiency of the sinks generated another 18% and caused a rise in the carbon output required to generate a dollar of world GDP.

The authors summarise by saying that their results ‘characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing’.

The Soil Association and air freight

Only 1% of imported organic food comes by air. But the Soil Association says that air freight ‘can generate 177 times’ the CO2 of shipping. Air transport is necessary for some fruit and delicate vegetables which provide a vital source of income in some poor countries. The Association was caught in a dilemma. It didn’t want to give its valuable imprimatur to foods that caused climate damage but neither did it want to impoverish poor tropical communities.

It carried out a detailed and thoughtful consultation with stakeholders. It seems a model of its kind. The consultation produced a consensus that air freight was only acceptable if the products were farmed in a way that brought development to the local community. In essence the Association is saying that only ‘Fairtrade’ products will be able to carry its valuable label. It won’t be enough just to meet the ordinary standards for organic agriculture.

Peter Melchett, the policy director of the Association, said that the ‘results of our very widespread consultation show that most people in the North and the South say that they only support air freight if it delivers real environmental and social benefits. The linking of organic and ethical or Fairtrade standards does that’.

The Soil Association will now move to ratify this decision, which went against central government advice, at least as expressed in a recent speech by a minister.

In the same press release it also announced a move to involve the Carbon Trust in providing a ‘footprint’ for organic foods (please see the article on organic food and carbon emissions in Carbon Commentary Newsletter #1). It said it would move towards carbon labelling of organic foods (please see the article on Tesco and Wal-Mart in Carbon Commentary Newsletter #2 for reasons why we think this is a mistake).

In a slightly surprising move, it also announced that it would seek to ‘actively encourage people to eat less meat’. Since beef cultivation is an important source of emissions, this makes good sense, but the Association is taking a risk by suggesting people should change their diet.

It also intends to review whether heated glasshouses are appropriate recipients of organic labels. This last point is well overdue. The carbon footprint of a food from a Dutch heated glasshouse is likely to be far greater than an air-freighted equivalent grown in the tropics.

BT’s wind farm proposals

BT uses over half of 1% of the UK’s electricity and is the single largest purchaser of green electricity in the UK. It buys over 10% of the country’s total supply of renewable electricity. It now seeks to develop wind turbines on some of its own sites. It intends to invest in about 120 2MW turbines to produce about a quarter of its own electricity or between 0.1 and 0.2% of the UK’s total need. This is an impressively large plan. The cost is about £250m. The financial return will depend on how much of the electricity replaces power BT would have bought from other suppliers and how much is ‘exported’. Assuming very little is used by BT itself, the return will be approximately £50m a year, yielding a return of about 20% on the initial investment. These figures assume that BT gets a yield of about 28% of the rated capacity of the turbines, which is about the UK average.

These figures depend entirely on finding sites. I think that BT may well have substantial difficulties finding as many 120 places where it can capture enough wind to average 28%. Perhaps more importantly, at many of those sites which do have enough wind, I think it will have problems getting connections to the local distribution network. Two of the three initial sites identified by BT are in the Scottish Islands. Although a typical 2MW turbine is not a huge generator to add to the local network, the islands have quite limited electricity needs. Scottish and Southern may not easily be able to add these turbines to their network.

When I asked BT whether it had approached the local distribution companies to check on this point, I was not given an affirmative answer. This raises the possibility that BT announced these plans before detailed consideration of whether its aspirations are technically feasible. So it may be a great idea to erest wind turbines, but it looks like it will be much more difficult than BT realises. Companies like Ecotricity have been developing wind turbines on industrial sites for years. Though planning permission is easier, there are still huge obstacles to overcome. BT needs Ecotricity's expertise immediately, but it will still struggle to meet its aspirations to grow its wind power capacity.

Is Kyoto dead?

(Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner, ‘Time to ditch Kyoto’, Nature, 449, 973-5 (25 October 2007); URL: http://tinyurl.com/ys8flx [accessed 27 October 2007].) This short article has attracted attention around the world. Its thesis is that Kyoto is a dangerous distraction. It hasn’t worked, and its successor will not succeed either if it follows the same principles. Kyoto’s proponents have ignored its failures and exaggerated its effectiveness. It is worse than useless because it has stifled discussion of alternatives. However, their thesis is buttressed by two observations which are not accurate. They say that the International Energy Agency is predicting that world energy demand will double by 2030. It does not; it predicts a rise of just over 50%. Second, the paper states that the BP annual Statistical Review says that a likely global carbon price will not be high enough to induce major change. It does not; BP might think this, but its latest Statistical Review (referenced in the text) does not say this.

Like generals fighting the previous war, Kyoto’s originators based its design on the successful treaties on ozone depletion, acid rain and nuclear weapons. These problems were much more amenable to global regulation and the sharing of burdens was much more politically feasible. The authors of this paper suggest that policy makers should move away from treaties that try to put a cap on world emissions.

Prins and Rayner say that we need new techniques for getting a grip on the carbon problem. And, second, we need to work out how we need to adapt when severe climate changes arrive.

Their proposals for replacements for Kyoto are short and unspecific. In summary, they believe that the world needs ‘genuine’ emissions markets, not artificial constructs like Kyoto, and these markets must evolve gradually from local experiments. They mention approvingly some of the voluntary carbon markets that have grown up in the US. I think this faith in small informal markets is wholly misplaced. What possible reason would persuade a major polluter to participate?

The authors tell us we need to invest more in public R+D in clean technologies. In this they mirror Bjørn Lomborg (see the discussion of his book Cool It in Carbon Commentary Newsletter #3). They support messy public policies rather than ones that go for what they disparagingly describe as ‘elegant’ solutions. They see a role for measures such as mandatory technology standards (perhaps such as mile per gallon regulation on cars). The ideas they present are sketchy and unconvincing.

Many of us think that Kyoto and its successor are worth supporting as one of a package of measures. It is, after all, the only measure that we have currently got other than European ETS. Does it distract from finding other tools? I don’t see any evidence for the authors’ pessimism. Can it be merged with other global and local measures? Yes it can. No one pretends Kyoto is perfect, but because it tried to distribute the pain of emissions reduction reasonably fairly, it was a start. We can build on it; we need not destroy it.

E.ON and tidal stream technology

It is adventurous of E.ON to decide to invest in tidal stream generator farm. The announcement in the last few days confirmed that the company intended to put a tidal plant off the coast of Wales in a partnership with Lunar Energy. The Severn barrage scheme (see Carbon Commentary Newsletter #3) is a ‘tidal range’ scheme. The electricity is generated by damming the river at high tide and then letting the water flow out through turbines as the tide falls. Tidal stream technology captures the energy of the tide as it flows through constricted channels. The UK has many potential sites for tidal stream power stations, but the best locations are off the north coast of Scotland and around Alderney in the Channel Islands.

Why then has E.ON chosen Wales? Perhaps the company doesn’t want to test the technology in the toughest conditions. An attempt to use similar underwater turbines in New York’s East River has been frustrated by the breaking off of the tips of the turbine blades in the fast flowing tides. The UK’s offshore conditions will be far tougher. Or it might be that E.ON knows that it would be expensive or impossible to connect the turbines to the distribution grid in the locations of highest energy potential (see the news story in this section on BT’s plans for wind turbines in Orkney and Shetland). Previous rumours have suggested that the eventual site chosen will either be off the coast of Pembrokeshire or off Anglesey.

The recent report into the Severn barrage noted that there at least 24 different technologies for capturing tidal stream energy in the UK. The device promoted by Lunar Energy sits on the sea floor, is about 20m long and has a turbine diameter of about 12m. The blades sit within a case which focuses the tidal flow. As a Venturi device, the speed of the water flow within the case is greater than the flow outside, adding to the amount of energy that can be captured.

Is wave power economic? It is probably too early to say. The UK has excellent tidal streams around the country, but even this advantage may not be enough. Lunar Energy optimistically quotes figures of around 2.5p to 5p per kilowatt hour, which would make the technology extremely attractive, but these figures appear only to be based on some guesses made in the US. The Carbon Trust’s recent report suggested figures at least three times as much for the first implementations of tidal stream power plants. On the other hand, informal figures from the New York project have suggested figures close to the Lunar Energy estimates.

E.ON has been working with Lunar Energy for some time. It had been thought that the generator would not commit until after sea trials of the first Lunar device in Scotland next year. Last week’s announcement suggests that E.ON’s confidence in the technology and Lunar Energy is high.

The Severn barrage

Nobody expects a Severn barrage to be built soon. But government opinion appears to be swinging in favour of the idea. The independent Sustainable Development Commission has just brought out a report that broadly supports a barrage. Though the environmental costs will be high, it says that mitigation measures will counterbalance some of the damage. We now also have a better feel for the economics of the scheme or, more correctly, for both of the two main options for blocking the Severn. The bigger scheme blocks the estuary between Cardiff and Weston-super-Mare. It will cost about £15bn and deliver just under 5% of the UK’s electricity. The smaller – just downstream of the Severn bridges – will cost a tenth as much, or £1.5bn, but will provide a sixth as much power as the bigger project.

£15bn to build a barrage that decarbonises less than 5% of the UK’s electricity supply is a high price to pay. Scaled up to the whole of the electricity business, this is about 20% of one year’s GNP to replace coal and gas power stations. Even over twenty years, this cost is similar to Stern’s estimate of the cost of reducing the UK’s emissions for the economy as a whole. The smaller barrier delivers much less electricity, but at a capital cost per kWh of little more than half its larger cousin.

The Sustainable Development Commission acknowledges that private financiers are unlikely to put up the cash for the bigger scheme. The report doesn’t really discuss the viability of the smaller barrage but it is much more financially attractive. In terms of total capital cost and expected yearly output, the upstream barrage is very similar to the huge wind farm development called the London Array. The Array will be constructed with private capital. I believe that if the current renewable electricity support scheme remains in place a barrage across the upper Severn can be built with risk capital.

The Sustainable Development Commission thinks that the bigger scheme should be built with public funds. I am not convinced by this. The offshore wind resources around the UK are orders of magnitude greater than the useful energy of Severn tides. If the larger Severn barrage has construction costs of nearly twice the typical figures for offshore wind, wouldn't it be better simply to speed up the licensing of wind farms?

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Bjørn Lomborg's new book Cool It

Bjørn Lomborg, a professor at Copenhagen Business School, is the most formidable critic of those who think that cutting climate-changing gases is the most important problem the world faces. He made his name with 'The Skeptical Environmentalist' and his new book continues his drive to get the world to see global warming as just one of the world's important problems. Lomborg believes climate change is happening, and that mankind’s activities are responsible. But he tells that we shouldn’t do much about global warming because the costs are very high and the benefits low and far-off. Like most books written by partisans in this impassioned debate, much of what he says can be questioned.

Nevertheless, this is an extremely valuable polemic: it stresses repeatedly that taking action to stop climate change may have very high short-term costs. If by clumsy attempts to hold down emissions we stunt the prospects for global economic growth, we may do more harm to the world’s poor than would be inflicted by climate change. It needs to be said time and time again that disease and malnutrition are killing far more people today than climate change. We are making progress diminishing the impact of these scourges. Despite what you sometimes read in the newspapers, world food supply and life expectancy are improving. Panic-stricken action on climate change must not be allowed to halt this progress. We need a rational assessment of whether it is best to spend money on slowing climate change or to whether we would achieve better effects from focusing resources elsewhere.

Bjørn Lomborg is an able debater with a passionate interest in his subject. But he overstates his case, focuses on only parts of the issue and avoids any discussion of a possible future acceleration of global warming. Even with these weaknesses Cool It needs to be part of the continuing debate on how to respond to the climate threat without crippling the poorest economies of the world.

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The Treasury's Pre-Budget review

The Pre-Budget review in early October disappointed green activists. Environmental measures formed a small fraction of the government’s initiatives. It doesn’t look as though Alistair Darling sees climate change as one of the priorities of this administration. But there were two important commitments: a revision to Air Passenger Duty (APD) and (via BERR) a competition to run a commercial-scale carbon capture project. The APD proposal attracted most attention. The government intends to change the duty so that it is levied on aircraft movements and not on individual travellers. Commentators, and the two main opposition parties, have long suggested that this would be a sensible change. Carbon Commentary disagrees. The proposed revision cannot be implemented without infringing international treaties on the taxation of air travel. The chancellor’s proposed consultation will eventually conclude that APD should remain substantially as it is now.

In the article, we briefly analyse the effects of APD and also show that the duty imposes an effective tax on airlines that is greater than would be levied if air travel were fully included in the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

The BERR Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) announcement was worryingly unspecific. It did not even bother to mention a figure for the value of the financial support. It also upset some major companies by only allowing entries for the competition from a limited range of technologies. The government is extremely vulnerable to the charge that it is back in the business of picking winners.

CCS is an extremely important part of any strategy for national reduction of emissions. The UK should be throwing far more money at research and development into the various forms of CCS. The simplest and quickest way to get innovation in CCS would be to include carbon storage as a technology that qualifies under the renewable obligation rules. We need to remove the difference between the financial treatment of renewable power generation and carbon capture. Both achieve the same outcome and both should have the same reward.

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26m servers in data centres use 2% of world electricity

BT’s green credentials are well established. It is the largest commercial buyer of renewable electricity in the UK, emphasises the importance of carbon reduction across the organisation, and pushes voice and video conferencing at an unconvinced customer base. In any international ranking, BT’s sustainability measures get high marks. But BT has the same problem as many other organisations: its server farms are growing in number and size. The increased power consumption in its data centres explains why the organisation’s electricity demand is growing. Eventually, its brand image will suffer as critics suggest that its public stance on green issues is not matched by its internal behaviour.

BT’s electricity use is about half a percent of the UK’s total, and its server farms represent over 10% of its energy consumption. BT says that data centre use is rising at 40% a year, and the company’s emphasis on growing video businesses, such as BT Vision, is likely to increase data storage and transmission demands into the foreseeable future.

BT’s response has been to attack the power use of the server with radical measures that set best practice elsewhere in the world. Its new data centres use fresh air cooling, not air conditioning, and the company runs its machines at much higher temperatures than used to be considered possible. Since cooling servers uses at least as much power as running them, this is an important step. The second major innovation is to run the farms on DC power, cutting the very significant losses in the multiple AC to DC conversions in a conventional centre. Better ‘loading’ of the computers helps as well. A well-utilised machine uses only a little more power than an intermittently under-employed server. BT claims that these measures can reduce the typical power consumption of a server farm by 60%.

Across the world, data centre energy consumption is becoming a bigger issue. The world has about 26m servers pumping out data day and night. Estimates suggest that they use about 2% of all electricity produced and global growth is probably around 15% a year. BT’s innovations may be a useful model for others to follow. But the unfortunate fact is that at current growth rates the maximum efficiency gains will be wiped out in less than four years.

In an intriguing trend, some companies are dealing with apparently unquenchable growth in data traffic by beginning to move away from thousands of servers based on PC technology towards huge single computers with lower total energy costs. Who said the mainframe was dead?

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If biofuels are the answer, we are asking the wrong question

Many agricultural crops can be turned into fuels. Diesel substitutes can be made from the oil in seeds. The sugars in cereals and tubers can be fermented into ethanol. At first examination, biofuels look as though they might significantly reduce carbon emissions. An agricultural crop takes carbon from the air through the photosynthesis process. When the harvest is processed, and the output used as a fuel, the carbon returns to the atmosphere. Proponents sometimes said that agricultural crops make ‘carbon-neutral’ fuels.

Over the last two years, this simple optimism has been eroded. Two further blows have fallen in recent weeks:

  • Nobel winner Paul Crutzen and his team showed that we may have been underestimating greenhouse gas emissions from using fertiliser. The work suggested that emissions of nitrous oxide may be far higher than previously thought.
  • Richard Doornbusch, who is attached the OECD, wrote a paper which said: ‘The conclusion must be that the potential of the current technologies of choice – ethanol and biodiesel – to deliver a major contribution to the energy demands of the transport sector without compromising food prices and the environment is very limited.’

The balance of evidence is that biofuels produced from crops grown in temperate climates save very small amounts of emissions. Moreover, the land used for biofuel crops could be used for food or biomass for energy. In tropical lands, biofuel crops may save carbon emissions. But the energy policies of richer countries may be incentivising tropical farmers to cut down forest to grow fuel crops. The effect of this almost certainly outweighs any emissions reductions.

Despite the increasingly prevalent view that biofuels are little or no improvement on fossil fuels, both the EU and the US are obliging retailers to increase the percentage of motor fuels derived from agricultural sources. This is a mistake.

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