Scenarios

On Friday I attended an excellent workshop organised by the University of Cambridge Centre for Sustainable Development to progress some scenario work they are doing for Grosvenor Estates on energy management in the property and development sectors to 2050. They currently have four scenarios mapped out:
- Steady Progress (sort-of business as usual but with stronger green values)
- Comfort withoiut concern (climate change? What climate change?)
- Growing Divide (an apocolyptic future of social inequality and unrest)
- Transformational change (the really green option).
These are arranged about two axes concerning values oriented (or not) towards the collective good and the cost/availability of energy.
Developing these scenarios was great fun but I was reminded again how such scenario work depends on the immediate reactions of those present to quite specific questions, questions which they might not have spent much time thinking about. The process assumes that wisdom will arise from the input of many voices at these workshops. In CLUES we are trying to tackle this issue by using scenarios that have already been developed by such processes of engagement but quantifying them and adding detail through a careful process of interrogation over time, looking at the interconnections and complexities. This will hopefully mean that the narratives of the scenarios will have been tested out by the modelling process and be more robust. The scenario work within CLUES starts in Easter 2011.

Yvonne Rydin

Raising the cost of energy and carbon is regressive and difficult to compensate

I went yesterday to Professor Ian Gough’s talk at the LSE on the potential tensions between climate change policy and more traditional (welfare state) policies: Climate Mitigation Policies, Distributive Justice and Social Policies. He is working on a two year ESRC grant which looks at climate change and social policy, trying to rethink the political economy of the welfare state. I found his talk extremely interesting and very relevant to our work – he focused on trajectories to 2050 in the context of government’s current targets (34% reduction in gas emissions by 2020), looking at both private (from households) and public (from welfare services such as NHS and education) contributions as well as direct (coming from production or direct consumption of energy) and indirect (coming from embodied energy) CO2 emissions.

After setting out some general facts, predictions and dilemmas, he concentrated on the UK and its ambitious targets for carbon cuts in the 2008 Climate Change Act. He then posed two questions. First, he asked whether the necessary climate mitigation policies threaten state funding for traditional social policies. The current answer to this question was ‘no’: climate mitigation was to be achieved using ‘mandated market’ mechanisms and the direct impact on public finances was tiny. Second, he asked what the likely distributive consequences of climate mitigation programmes were. The evidence to date was clear that the impact was to be regressive and that it was difficult to compensate low income losers. However, all analysis thus far has concentrated on households’ direct emissions stemming from fuel, electricity and petrol, which account for only 20% of the total. He then presented new analysis of all emissions, including those embodied in the consumption of food, consumables, private services, public services and imported goods. The analysis showed that income was the main driver, with household type and employment status also significant. Again, however, emissions per pound of income were regressive, falling as income rose. Thus all conceivable programmes to raise the cost of energy and carbon were to be regressive and difficult to compensate.

Finally, he considered two alternative policies: personal carbon allowances and a big programme of ‘eco-social investment’. These appeared to be the only viable alternatives. However, they have their limitations, would challenge traditional social policy goals and engender severe fiscal competition with the traditional welfare state.

Catalina Turcu, UCL

Michael Rann, Premier of South Australia sets out low carbon vision

During his visit to London, Michael Rann gave a public lecture to UCL students and staff and also a talk to Australian business interests in London. He presented a fascinating eco-modernist vision for how South Australia could support its local economy while contributing to a low carbon future. Part of this concerned extensive investment in renewable energy generation - particularly wind and solar but also 'hot rocks' or geothermal - together with distribution to other states. The aim is for South Australia to be the renewable energy hub for eastern seaboard of Australia. Already over 50% of the country's installed wind power capacity is in the state. This is in addition to a target for 33% of the state's power needs coming from renewables by 2020. The other half of the strategy is based on mining, particularly uranium mining. This interprets 'low carbon' as including nuclear power. There are massive uranium reserves in South Australia: 40% of the worlds known recoverable reserves. The strategy sees the exploitation of these reserves making an important contribution to decarbonising China, who is keen to import uranium for its nuclear power programme. The pair of talks spoke to an energetic and coherent energy/economic development vision for South Australia but also reminded me of the inevitable tensions and conflicts in the environmental agenda. Nuclear energy and uranium mining remain controversial. They raise a host of issues about land rights, local degradation, safe transit and waste disposal. So are all eco-modernist agendas necessarily environmentally friendly?

Yvonne Rydin