2015/16 UK energy supply crunch

I normally keep my 'doom and gloom' posts to my other blog, but the recent news made me think I ought to post a link to my latest post here. It's about what OFGEM have been saying about the future of the UK electricity and gas supply, and how much it is going to cost us if we want to keep the lights on: peakoilupdate.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/ofgem-ceo-speaks-on-201516-uk-energy.html

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Ring-necked parakeets in the wild - in Surrey, UK!

We've known these parakeets have been living wild for years in London and further afield, but this is the first time we got a video of them! They're in an apple tree in a garden in a housing estate:

Of course, our cockatiels demanded to have a new video for themselves too...

Mike

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Engineers Without Borders build us a bridge!

Last weekend a group of students and graduates from Engineers Without Borders (who I know through my work at the Ashden Awards) came and camped in our wood, the aim being to have a bit of fun, do some team-building and build a bridge. Being engineers, they didn't just bring a normal tent - they had a geodesic dome they'd built themselves!
Here it is with the cover off:
They did have a couple of more conventional tents as well:
Anyway, like any camping trip a lot of time was just doing stuff like cooking:
and trying out new tools:
So, the bridge.... Well, here's the original bridge (over in Sweep Wood), which could only take one person at a time, and you had to be pretty steady on your feet!
We built this bridge about 18 months ago, but never really did enough to make it very good.

The engineers got to work testing scale models for a new one, some of which did not exactly inspire confidence!
But not to worry, designs were adapted for the types of wood and tools available, and we all set off back to the stream. A couple of chestnut stems were selected to provide 5m straight logs, and I felled them with the chainsaw. The nice bit was I didn't have to carry them anywhere, as I had a whole team of willing engineers! :-) They were soon installed across the stream:
Then posts were driven into the ground to secure them:
Someone came up with the idea of using split pieces of chestnut to make rungs:
and by the end of the first day the bridge was in a state to walk on, although not finished. Also, unlike the old bridge, it could take more than one person at a time:
The next day saw a lot of drilling and nailing of the rungs:
and by that afternoon the bridge was done, with the added feature of hand rails at two different heights!
I ran over some of the rungs with the chainsaw to roughen the surface so it doesn't get slippery in the rain:
and then everything was done.

I'm told everyone had a great weekend, and I'd like to thank everyone who came, and EWB-UK, for all their hard work! Some people worked so hard they fell asleep at lunchtime. Or perhaps that was to do with beer round the campfire the night before?
Mike

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UK government holds summit on Peak Oil

As announced in The Guardian on Sunday, the UK government recently held a summit on Peak Oil:

Lord Hunt, the energy minister, is to meet industrialists in London tomorrow in a bid to calm mounting fears about the disruption that could follow a sudden shortage of oil supplies.

In a significant policy shift, the government has agreed to undertake more work on whether the UK needs to take action to avoid the massive dislocation that could be caused by the early onset of "peak oil" – the point that marks the start of terminal decline in global oil production.

Jeremy Leggett, the executive chairman of the renewable power company Solar Century and a leading figure in the UK industry taskforce on peak oil and energy security, said the meeting, to be held at the Energy Institute, showed a welcome new sense of urgency. "Government has gone from the BP position – '40 years of supply left, the price mechanism works, no need to worry' – to 'crikey'," he said.

The event was held behind closed doors, but fortunately one of the participants, Rob Hopkins from Transition Towns, has published a write-up, respecting the Chatham House Rule under which the summit was held. Here's a little bit of it:

...it was fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. Fascinating that it represented the first time the UK government has created a space to explore the peak oil question, what the Guardian that morning called a “significant policy shift”, how it overlaps with climate change and what policies they might make in response. Fascinating that Transition Network is seen as worthy of an invitation to such an event, that our work is recognised at that level.

Frustrating in that every time the question of economic growth and whether or not the idea had any mileage in a world of depleting energy reserves was raised it was largely glossed over. Frustrating in that so often the question of what we might to do in response to peak oil focused almost purely in transportation and on the timely and complete creation of an electric car fleet, with a recharging network and sufficient electricity to keep the whole thing going, with no consideration as to how a nation which is the second most indebted in the world, which has become a net energy importer at a time of increasing price volatility and little remaining indigenous energy, is actually going to pay for such an infrastructure. Frustrating because the techno-fix mindset was prevalent, and the idea that part of a response might include the intentional refocusing of the scale of economic activity, the application of the Proximity Principle to economics didn’t really register with people.

Anyway, who knows, perhaps nothing will come of it, but it certainly felt like a pretty historic occasion to me, and although it was only attended by a small number of people, I hope that this garbled account offers some sense of what went on behind the closed doors of the Energy Institute.

You can read the full report from Rob here.

Mike

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