Vocal Voices

The new three word slogan from the government.

Its plan to do so is here.

It is a long read of 368 pages so the BBC has skimmed it for us, as have other media.

It is a utopian fantasy dreamscape that can never be achieved. There is no such thing as net zero, never has been and never will be, but if it is sold hard enough the daydream believers will lap it up.

Few journalists, politicians or others will challenge it.... at least not in public. To do so would be seen as worse than using non-approved language (the new fad) and career ending. Another reason is that many of them do not have the technical know how to look behind the buzz words and phrases.

To approach anything like net zero we would all have to live naked in unheated caves and eat raw berries, nuts, leaves and shoots..... and even then we would be adding CO2 with every breath we take.

Just saw a news item on TV about CO2 being punpmed back ino the sea.

ow much CO2 is produced by the plant which is needed o transfer it to the sea? No mention of this in the news item.

How many new houses and buikdings being planned and built will be heated solely by electricity. No oil or gas allowed in any planning appications.

cruiser2 wrote:No mention of this in the news item.

Nor will they mention any other hidden CO2 in the plan. There is lots of it on the journey.

They have to accentuate the positives you see.

Lots of Co2 produced in the manufacture of cement. And we have built an awful lot of houses recently.

That is a very interesting document and proves that the Government is actually getting some decent advice.

Whether it is feasible or not is another matter.

I suppose the entry on page 190 was missed? I was looking for their suggestions for under sea. I've been aware of the deep storage for a while, the sediment calcifier was new to me.

However this paragraph is important.

GGR is Greenhouse Gas Reduction.

Biomass policy is highly interdependent with GGR deployment. Sustainable biomass is
a unique renewable organic material, and the future availability of sustainable biomass
directly influences the scale GGRs such as BECCS and biochar can deploy to

It occurs to me that the government is looking to take a bite out of each end. As has been long known, trees are a fast and scalable method for removing carbon from the atmosphere. In short you plant small and it removes BIG. The issue has always been that unless you cut that wood and then turn it into product which is then used for hundreds of years, without being burned or buried, then it returns that captured CO2 back to the atmosphere.

This paragraph above seems to encourage sequestration in trees, or other biomass, burning that biomass and capturing the carbon and storing it. This is a very strong negative CO2 approach which takes carbon out at both ends allowing the biomass to absorb (literally), the carbon from the air, then to use that biomass to generate clean electricity and then take the CO2 from the burning and lock it away back in the earth.

I won't comment on viable or fairytale, but the approach is at least viable.

Other comments from the article

this one under key commitments.

Secure a final investment decision on a large-scale nuclear plant by the end of this
Parliament whilst taking measures to inform investment decisions during the next
Parliament on further nuclear projects as we work towards our net zero target.

Explore the system need and case for further market intervention for long duration
storage and hydrogen in power.

This document covers a LOT of bases and has, on the surface, a reasonable approach to the whole solution. It is by no means a bit of "fluff" churned out in 2 months.

Nobody said it was "fluff"

It is certainly comprehensive with more than a few 'ambitions', 'hopes' and 'visions'. Whether it can all be delivered in the next 27 years and on budget remains to be seen. I suspect that there will be gaps and revisions to delivery dates. We shall see.

There are some parts I do like, though.

The push to get the small modular (nuclear) reactors (SMRs) up and running sits well. We could even see working prototypes towards the end of the 20s.

Another is the reforesting / planting, rewilding some underused farmland and uplands, and repairing some long-suffering peat lands. I would gladly volunteer to spend a few weeks in a tent city helping to plant saplings. I actually think that volunteering will be crucial to fulfilling these ambitions.

Then there is the talk about insulation....

My home has solid brick walls outside and in. It is double glazed with no trickle vents in the frames. It has full cavity wall insulation and 260mm loft cladding. When the outside temperature drops below about 17 °C, as it is now doing regularly, the indoor temperature slowly tends to drop with it. However, when the outside temps get very low during autumn and winter, especially at night, the indoors never gets below about 13 °C due to the thermal capacity of the walls - they act a bit like storage radiators. Saying that, those are not bad figures and many homes will be better or similar. There is not a lot to be done here, insulation wise. However, compared to the house I was brought up in, where we would awaken to frost on the inside of the single glazed windows, it is a furnace. Unfortunately there are still millions of truly cold homes out there and they need doing pronto.

I have seen several responses so far.

It varies from "too cautious" to "reckless and far too fast".

I've also seen fairly poor headlines. Like the independent.

All cars must be ‘zero-emissions capable’ by 2035

All cars? Surely all new cars and not just "capable" either. They must be Zero emissions at the point of use. But then I never rated a lot of the press with understanding much of anything. The guardian is one of the best on climate and they think it's not tough enough.

Also your issues about whether budgets or timelines will be met, I agree. Especially with potential government changes. With a flip flop between parties, expect this one to become a pig to the slaughter come budget allocation times. Well until around 1m people are working in the industry and businesses have grown up around it. Then it will magically become "ringfenced".

It is a start and I see it as a positive one. It at least asks all the correct questions. Poses many answers and sets out a position, a direction and a plan.

I don't think we could have asked for more at this stage.

As I said the other day, I do not mind some parts of a plan not being met by some 'plucked out of thin air' date so long as we are on the journey. I would rather it be seen through and done properly.

Some parts, such as rewilding etc, could be substantially completed well before the end date. My cousin and her hubby are tenant farmers running a small dairy herd north of Skipton. The animals graze one area in plots and are then brought in over winter. The next year they are moved to a different area for grazing and last years plots are left to rest and go to hay. The hay is then harvested to supplement the winter feed, and on it goes. The problem is that the hay is not of good quality and itself needs supplementing.

They would like to scatter wildflower seeds in the hayfields, but there is a problem - Mr and Mrs Landowner. They are traditionalists and do not like all the new fangled ideas, "Flowers in t' Dales, lad. Give over." so permission is not given. It's all very Downton Abbey. A shame, really, as the flowers would bring in the birds and pollinators - biodiversity - and increase the nutritional value of the hay. Everybody wins.

Maybe the new focus on nature in the plan will put these decisions back in the hands of the farmers.

We can only hope so WM.

What I have seen, over the last 25 years or so, is that almost everyone is entrenched in what they do. It literally takes a grenade to blow them out of their trench and that grenade is usually legislation. As soon as legislation is written everyone howls it down. The environmentalists about how it's simply not enough, not thought through enough, needs to be better. The entrenched howling about how they are being forced to change, it won't work, they haven't been handed a full solution and every penny to pay for it, etc.

I hope, like you, that the nature components will help a lot and can be incorporated relatively easily. I'm going to be positive about the plan until we see where successive governments take it. It won't be comfortable, but then comfort is no longer an option, we burned the ability to do it with comfort by doing nothing. Or at least next to nothing.

This is, as should be obvious, only the first step. To get us there with CCS is one goal. To remain there without CCS is the end goal. That will require a lot of changes, one of which may be the expectation that people can simply own a vehicle because they want one. I'll probably hate that, but buying and having a vehicle, for driving 2,500 miles a year, replacing it every 2 years, is likely to become something which is no longer tolerated. Solutions will have to be developed to make that 2,500 miles by other means. But I can see it coming.

The solutions, however, may also enable things which are now very constricted. For instance, if you live alone, in the country, off a bus route; you either don't go to the pub and have a good drink or you drink at home. This will change with the solutions which remove those 2,500 miles.

I look forward with hope. I expect it won't be that good.

CCS (CCUS) Catch 22.

If we are not using carboniferous fuels to generate power, heat our homes and for cooking, then the need for CCS is diminished - certainly in our plan.

So, step forward the engineers from MIT.

Current CCS is, in itself, energy intensive (about 30% of output) and needs high concentrations of CO2 at highish pressures to work effectively. It has been like that for years.

If MIT's ideas can be scaled, as is claimed, and because they work at room temperature, normal pressure, and present atmospheric concentrations, we could see them dotted about the place actually scrubbing the air clean(er) and not simply maintaining current levels. The CO2 would still need to be sent for storage, but we have sort of got that bit covered already.

Another thing woke me up - electric combi boilers. If we are going to go CO2 free electricity generation and gas free home heating via renewables then these things make as much sense as heat pumps. Well worth a look.