Resource

I’ve just spent the last three days presenting the IEMA approved Internal Auditor course to seven delightful delegates from various sectors. I love presenting in-house courses where everyone knows each other and they have lots of experience and requirements in common but courses based in ECUS with randomly selected delegates can be wonderfully enlightening. They may sometimes be more difficult because you may be trying to meet the needs of a delegate from a major manufacturing company whilst not neglecting the needs of a delegate from an office based company but the synergies you get can be marvellous. On this course we had some real experts in their fields who were very generous in sharing their knowledge and not only was it enlightening, it was fun.

I’m often surprised by how much people already know but I’m also occasionally disconcerted about what they are not aware of. On most of our courses we link waste and resource use, and sometimes quality as poor quality management can lead to a lot of waste.

On this particular course we talk about major resource issues that we are or will soon be facing. Some resources are, of course, renewable, but only if we manage them sustainably. Examples might be timber, soil, fish and so on. Some things are not renewable except in geological time scales, for example, metals and minerals. Some are not renewable at all and will eventually be exhausted, for example helium, oil and coal. All of these things, to one extent or another, are essential to our way of life. Rare earth metals, for example, are used in tablet computers, hybrid cars, wind turbines, catalytic converters and the more efficient solar PV panels.

Many of the resource issues are exacerbated by where the deposits of the materials are and the environmental impact of their exploitation. The vast majority (~97%) of rare earths are now sourced from China and with this effective monopoly comes increasing concerns for availability. Every time I have googled ‘China, rare earth’ in news over the last several months there have been stories about this issue. Today the news is of a huge increase in taxes making the cost per tonne more than $100,000. The availability and price of oil is also very much affected by the location of most oil reserves.56% of world oil reserves are in the Middle East, currently suffering from a period of unrest.

My big surprise was that when I asked my training group who was aware of the idea of peak oil no-one said yes. Resource depletion is a massively important issue that will affect us all in many different ways and peak oil is one of the most urgent and important. With reference back to my resilience post of a few weeks ago, imagine how we would live without cheap fossil fuels. Our whole complex society depends on each complicated component being sourced from wherever it can be made most cheaply and delivered Just In Time to wherever it is needed. This can only work in an era of cheap oil. Currently oil is not as cheap as it was, bouncing around $100 per barrel.

At the same time that there is a global problem with oil, there is a national problem. The UK was, for a good amount of time, energy self sufficient thanks to the North Sea oil and gas fields. This is no longer the case. Last year we had to import more than 40% of our gas. 40%!! No wonder the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) produced The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan in 2009. It wasn’t just about climate change. To a large extent it was about keeping the lights on for all of us.

I spend a fair amount of time keeping up with what is happening with resource issues and I occasionally read through the comment threads as well. When I’m feeling strong. More often than I care to remember there are major skirmishes about how best to deal with these, whether governments should try to legislate to bring down consumption and hence protect out current comfortable lives for longer or whether the market should be allowed to operate without control. The argument is that as prices increase due to scarcity the almighty market will step in and cause the production of more of the important commodity. This only works if there is more of the commodity available to be extracted within a workable timescale. With oil it takes around ten years from discovery of a resource for an oil well to become fully productive. Oil wells are also no longer being drilled in easily accessible places where the return on investment is high so prices have to be consistently high for a long time for new well to be worth developing. If this does not work then the market is supposed to rush out and produce hyper-efficient vehicles, power supplies and the associated infrastructure. Also, presumably, people will be induced, by the cost, to look at minimising their own energy usage.

This is a wonderful idea as was the idea of taxing pollution sources with a tax escalator on fuel prices. The recent UK budget has, again, dealt a blow to the theory. Oil prices are rising so the chancellor has stepped in and instead of raising tax by the expected 3p/litre has reduced it by 1p/litre. I know that all drivers and transport companies are struggling at the moment with high prices but how is the omnipotent market supposed to save us all if the government steps in whenever we reach a level where it should start to work?

Refurbishing our tired & leaky old houses

A new post from Alison:

Yvonne and I went on a very interesting training course at the Building Research Establishment (BRE) the other day on Sustainable Refurbishment. It really made us think not just about the implications on the clients that we work with (particularly those that do refurbishment of social housing), but also about the refurbishment of our own houses.

We both live in houses that are at least 100 years old and as such they are pretty energy inefficient however tight we both are with the use of our heating! They are basically like sieves in terms of the heat and carbon emissions that leak from them! There were 3 main things that I took away with me from the course that we thought may be useful to share:

1. the Building Regulations apply to ALL properties undergoing refurbishment - the implications of this are potentially huge, although it became apparent that local authority building control teams do not always have the resources and understanding to police this. That is a real shame - the regulations are changing again next month and the requirements for energy efficiency (i.e. air tightness and use of A-rated equipment) are increasing - it is only through encouragement (e.g. grants and incentives) and policing that we can actually help implement the new requirements which will ultimately reduce real carbon emissions from the significant older housing stock we have in the UK

2. it costs money - refurbishing housing to meet Decent Homes standards costs money. Refurbishing them to Decent Homes standard + getting them to a point where they are energy efficient costs lots more.

3. but the technology is readily available to help improve the energy efficiency of older homes. What is missing are the skills and information to use and know about the new technology. Aerogel, external and internal insulation, photovoltaic panels, phase-changing materials....the list goes on. The new technology is really exciting. But we do not yet have a construction industry that has the knowledge and skills to implement it. This will of course change over time.

Maybe this is a classic case of demand and supply. Until the demand for new technologies is there on a large scale then the supply of them will remain expensive. It may be that the private sector moves quickly on this itself, or it may require Government intervention to help things happen more quickly. Either way it's exciting (if not challenging) times ahead.

Reporting the environment

I recently came across an interesting report on the Register. It's a fabulous example of bad reporting, drawing conclusions that are unwarranted from the information.

The piece is titled, 'People have NO BLOODY IDEA about saving energy' and subtitled, 'Those keenest to be green are most ignorant - survey.' I guess they provide fair warning in their titling that this is not an objective report. It is, however, based on a fairly interesting piece of scientific research and the Register were good enough to provide a link to the original paper.

Having read both the Register's article and the original paper, 'Public perceptions of energy consumption and savings', I can agree what the Register reported was not incorrect but the spin they had imparted to a sober little paper was so strenuous it is probably still reeling.

What the original article says is that people are not fully aware of the energy used by their various activities, appliances or embodied in the products they use. From the information presented this is true.

I will even admit, sheepishly, that the contrasting embodied energy costs for glass and aluminium surprised me. I hadn't really thought about it but it seems fairly obvious that this would be the case once I had given it some thought. The melting point of aluminium is around 660C, for glass it is at least 1400C, depending on constituents. From this the Register concludes that 'as a true eco-person, you shouldn't be recycling glass, you ought not to be using it at all.' Well, yes. And no. Unfortunately, at present I am unable to find the sort of wine I want to drink in aluminium cans. Given that I am unlikely to stop drinking wine in the immediate future it is still better for me to send my glass bottles for recycling than not*.

The article continues, 'Again, when asked what the single most effective thing they could do to save energy, the most popular response in the survey was to turn off lights. In fact lighting accounts for a relatively small proportion of the average person's energy use and almost all of us could save far more juice (and carbon) in other ways - for instance by turning the heating down as little as a single degree, something which many extremely keen lightswitch nazis** refuse to do.'

I have an issue with this paragraph. I am not disputing that turning the heating down will save more energy than turning off lights, but there is also no reason not to turn lights off in a room not being used. The Register seems very keen on either/or choices. It might surprise them but it is quite possible to turn the heating down by one degree and turn lights off in unused rooms.

They go on to quote the original paper that states 'participants estimated that line drying saves more energy than changing the washer's settings (the reverse is true)'. My concern with this statement is twofold. One is that I always wonder when I hear such loose phrasing. 'Changing the washer's settings' could mean anything from reducing the temperature by 10 degrees to reducing it from 90C to 30C or more. Looking at the paper's Figure 1 it is quite possible that, depending on what that phrase means, line drying may be a better saver. Difficult to tell; the graph is small with a logarithmic scale. My other concern again is, what does it matter? Both of these are potentially high energy saving. Change the washer settings and line dry.

Never mind though, the Register goes on from this paragraph to state, 'Perhaps the killer revelation from the survey is that it is, in fact, the very people who are keenest and most active about reducing their energy consumption who are the most ignorant.' Despite the exaggeration and emotive language this is, in fact, the conclusion of the paper. People are optimistic that what they are doing is having a positive effect. Their perceptions are not as accurate as they could be. This is a problem if for example, you comfort yourself that the impact of your flight to Australia will be offset by turning the lights out and recycling your wine bottles. It may also be a problem if, as a Register reader, you can only take one action at a time so rather than turn your thermostat down, line dry your clothes, boil only as much water as you need and cycle to work you unplug your phone charger.

The lesson the Register takes from the information contained within the paper is, 'In other words, ignore that earnest friend of yours who recycles religiously, turns off the lights all the time, and unplugs the telly every night... They quite literally have no idea what they are talking about.' Well no, that's not what the paper said. The original paper suggested that better and more accurate information would help to reduce emissions and public information campaigns should focus on behaviours that could have a greater effect - forget the phone chargers and turn down the heating. They conclude, 'It is therefore vital that public communications about climate change also address misconceptions about energy consumption and savings, so that people can make better decisions for their pocketbooks and the planet.' The Register, on the other hand, concludes that we should 'ignore the many worth organisations - for instance the Energy Saving Trust here in the UK, which you pay for through your taxes - which have made us all so ignorant.' I took a quick look at the EST website. The top ten tips did indeed include the admonition, 'Don't leave appliances on stand-by and remember not to leave laptops and mobile phones on charge unnecessarily'. It also, however, suggested sorting out dripping hot water taps, fully loading our washing machines, boiling only as much water as needed, changing to low energy bulbs, turning lights off, closing curtains at dusk and draught proofing, turning your water thermostat down (also reduces the risk of scalding small children) and turning your central heating thermostat down. The information on the site would be improved if each tactic was rated on energy saving effectiveness but the tips given were all generally good and do not seem to me to be making us ignorant. The worst that could be said is that it is not as informative as it could be.

I wonder what the Register gains by subverting a worthy piece of research. It makes no sense to me.

*Ideally glass bottles should be reused. My milkman very kindly takes my glass milk bottles back for reuse. It doesn't need vastly more energy to take them back because he was coming to my house to deliver anyway.


**As a rule of thumb, use of the word nazi in an article not talking about the german fascist movement of the mid 20th century is an indicator of a lack of objectivity.

Cool tech

I'm always interested in advances in technology which minimise environmental impact. There is an interesting new piece of air conditioning technology reported at engadget. Not only is it 90% more efficient but doesn't use f-gases with their high global warming potential, instead using a salt solution as a refrigerant. I tend to think that much of the UK could do without aircon but there are places in the world that are almost unliveable without cooling. Speaking of uninhabitable areas, there is another story that Nevada is set to become the Saudi Arabia of geothermal power. These two technologies are made for each other. Las Vegas, one of the least sustainable cities on earth, can now be a little bit greener! Finally, in the realms of greentech, a potato powered battery has been developed. This technology s being made freely available to the developing world.

Oil use statistics

There are some fascinating snippets around regarding the increasingly appalling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. After the Exxon Valdez disaster Greenpeace ran an advert that said:

It wasn't the Exxon Valdez captain's driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours. ~Greenpeace advertisement, New York Times, 25 February 1990

As always with major environmental incidents there appear to be a large number of contributing factors. The culture of the three companies involved in the drilling, the lack of adequate regulation and oversight, the drive to cut costs to maximise profit; all the usual culprits.

And now the blame allocation is well under way. I have occasionally said that any Quality Management System has a secret procedure, QP00 'Allocation of Blame'. In this disaster it is quite obvious that management systems have not been properly implemented. The blame allocation flow chart is flailing around, coating everyone in a slime of toxic sludge. I know that politically everyone wants to be teflon coated however I feel that right now the extreme effort could be more appropriately directed to stopping the flow and dealing with the pollution. What was learned from the Valdez? That sooner or later, if corners are cut there will be a disaster. Here we have just such another instance. Cutting edge technology occasionally falls over. The closer to the edge we are the more likely the fall over the ragged edge of disaster. The closer to the edge the more important that we have an effective plan in place for when it all goes wrong. Because it will.

So, whilst we are looking for someone to blame, BP's statistics have been published in the Guardian with a fascinating graphic showing which countries have the highest oil consumption and where the proven reserves are. Have a look. There is also an interesting opinion piece in the Washington Times which brings you and me into the blame target and comments that if we want to avoid this sort of thing we (the general public) need to learn to live with higher prices because safety costs money.

I admit I have a mild tendency to smugness in my assessment of my own environmental impact but in reality I, in common with most middle-class greenies in the UK, account for the use of a great deal of oil. But then it is so much easier to see the mote in someone else's eye!

Paper towels vs air dryers!

A few weeks ago my colleague, Alison, identified the question, 'are paper towels or air dryers better for the environment?' as one of the most frequent queries she encounters. I don't have a scientific answer for you yet, just another link from the Guardian where Leo Hickman reports 'Dyson and Kimberly Clark in hand to hand combat over paper towels'. This is fascinating and well worth a read, not least because here in full view is a wonderful example of why you should be careful when looking at environmental claims. Essentially Kimberly Clark (KC), a major producer of paper towels (and tissues, loo-rolls, feminine hygiene products and nappies) has published research claiming that warm air and air jet dryers increase the hygiene risks. Dyson, the manufacturer of the Airblade, has responded by saying that their dryers have independent hygienic credentials and have a carbon footprint 70% lower than paper towels. I haven't studied any of the studies used to make these claims and you really need to in order to properly assess the validity of the conclusions drawn about the environmental claims. Dyson compares its environmental performance against 'virgin paper towels' whilst KC remarks that paper towels can be recycled once used. Both of these comments are valid but will affect carbon footprint calculations. Obviously both companies will choose the framing conditions to suit their products. How does an Airblade compare with use of recycled paper towels? How often do KC's paper towels get recycled?

The main point of issue, the hygiene performance, is also worth a look. The comments to Leo's article were very sensible (I haven't read all of them) and pointed out a number of things. One is that our hands are always covered on bacteria. Washing does not remove all bacteria. There is an interesting post here which tells you how to wash your hands and comments, 'the surfactant action of soap helps the running water flush the germs away. That's how it works. It's purely mechanical'. So, as someone in comments to Leo pointed out, the minute you touch the door handle on the way out your hand will be contaminated with whatever was on the last person's hand. Not everyone washes their hands effectively. Not everyone washes! This is not to say that the hygiene of the drying method is not important but that it is not the controlling factor for how clean your hands are when you get back to your desk. The differences in hygiene reported are immaterial in risk terms.

For what it's worth, my preference is to use an airjet, followed by one paper towel, followed by wiping my hands on my clothes, followed by a warm air blower. The clothes option only works when I'm wearing jeans and I haven't had the hygiene risks assessed.

Generating the Future

There is a new report out from The Royal Academy of Engineering which aims to identify 'UK energy systems fit for 2050'. 2050 is, of course, the date by which the government wants us to have achieved an 80% reduction in carbon dioxide generated by the UK. It is also expected to be well past peak oil and heading quickly towards peaks for the various other types of fossil fuels worldwide. The UK is already past peak for our own oil and gas, as we have become aware over the last couple of years of bad winters when there has been increased concern over whether we have sufficient gas storage. Last July the Department of Energy and Climate Change produced the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan which can be downloaded from a link at the bottom of the page here. That was big picture, looking at why we needed to change our behaviour and outlining what different energy using sectors would have to do. This new paper looks a little deeper at possible energy generation systems necessary to achieve the targets set by the Climate Change Act.

It is no surprise that they comment that demand reduction will be essential and that all low carbon energy supply technologies will need to be used including nuclear, renewables and carbon capture and storage. It is also unsurprising that as a fundamental restructuring of the whole of the UK's energy infrastructure will be unavoidable, that the scale of the engineering challenge is massive. They note though, that as the last major investment in our electricity infrastructure was in the 70's and is reaching the end of its service life, investment in renewal would be required anyway which gives us the opportunity to develop an energy system that is 'state of the art'.

The paper concludes that this will require 'nothing short of the biggest peacetime programme of change ever seen in the UK'. They state that this transcends political ideology and call for a strategy informed by a high degree of whole systems thinking and be underpinned by critical evaluation of the economic, engineering and business realities of delivery across a system.

I would recommend having a look at the paper, it is very accessible. These are things we should be thinking and talking about now.

Practical EMS issues or The Thermostat Wars!

In the world of Carbon Reduction Commitments and huge energy spends our little organisation might seem to have insignificant issues. The impact of our carbon footprint is as nothing compared to that of the metals industry in Sheffield or the power generation facilities in Yorkshire or even Sheffield City Council. However, our energy use is a significant aspect under our 14001 system, our energy spend is a significant part of our outgoings, we are an environmental consultancy and, as noted in an internet funny that eased its way though the firewall, no single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood. We spend a lot of time helping clients focus on their environmental impacts and, as a point of principle, we make the time to focus on our own.

We do have a number of problems when we look at minimising energy use. We lease our splendid old listed building. It is lovely in the summer when we can open the huge sash windows and let cooling breezes into the rooms. The ceilings are gracefully high, and the windows and doors provide astonishing amounts of ventilation. Even in the depths of winter. The boiler is not state of the art and none of the pipework has been relagged since the old asbestos lagging was removed. Oh yes, and the cellar is still contaminated with asbestos dust so we're not going to go down and put foam lagging around the pipes. Even worse for our measuring and monitoring, the meters are in the cellar. The leasor will be sorting out the asbestos issue when it's warm enough to turn the heating off for a few days. Not right now.

So working within this set of constraints there are still some things we can do to cut down on our energy use. We turn off the heating in the areas of the building not in use. The radiators in the meeting room are turned off at the end of each meeting. It's one of our little rituals. The corridors are not heated, except by the pipes between radiators. The radiator in the kitchen is turned off and the single thermostat for the building is kept low. The thermostat is in the building entrance hall which, given the drafts from the front door, means it will still keep the heating turned on even when set to ten degrees (C). It's supposed to be set at fifteen. I have been amused over the last few months to see what it is actually set at at various different times of day. Up to twenty five degrees on occasion. As I understand it you could set it to 100 and it would not heat the building up any better than when set to 15 which is why I don't particularly care that is being moved but it does give me some cause for thinking that we haven't got the energy minimisation message across.

There are always issues to consider when putting together an energy policy. You need your staff to understand and agree with what you are doing. Keeping the building uncomfortably cold means that people are going to sneak in electric heaters. This has health and safety implications because of the requirement to check the safety of equipment. It is also the least efficient way to heat a building, and expensive. If you need to 'police' your heating you are on to a loser; the policer is one person against many. We've seen this recently in the kitchen. As this tiny room is only used to make drinks and heat an occasional soup it has been designated an area where the radiator is kept off. We're in there for five minutes at most. Over the last couple of weeks it has been difficult to know whether to wrap up warm before going in or to strip off. I'm longing for the day when I go in and find one or other of the combatants under the worktop turning the valve on or off.

On the other hand, people who want to work in their shirt sleeves and want to heat a building to make it comfortable for that style of dress might be persuaded to consider a cardigan. I have an elusive memory that the National Trust had a 'Cardi' Policy, though I haven't been able to find reference to it on the internet, but I'm a firm believer in the 'don't turn up the thermostat, put on a jumper' message. I may be biased. Being a woman of a certain age and well padded to boot I often find it uncomfortably warm when my slender young colleagues are sitting huddled in their fleeces. As I have pointed out to them on occasion, they can put on a jumper but I can't respectably take any more clothes off.

So the moral of this story is that we need to reassess our approach and have a discussion where we all reach a consensus on our policy rather than just impose it. This may not be something that can work in a massive organisation but in our company, where we all know each other, it is something we can address. But in the meantime I'm also going to think about how to stop 20% of monitors being left on over the weekend. That's a waste from which no-one benefits.

Hunting for training images

I'm in Scotland at the moment. I came up to deliver a 'Know your Waste' course last week at the University of Edinburgh and I'm staying to deliver a CIWM Construction WAC course next week, which has left me with a free weekend here. What to do on a dull Saturday in North Lanarkshire? I'm just completing an Introduction to Renewable Energy course on behalf of EAUC and I wanted a few images to use so, after a visit to the local farmers market, we went looking for wind turbines. In much of England they are quite difficult to find but here there are a few elegant herds of them on the horizon. This lovely threesome appeared a little while ago alongside the M74. How convenient. We stood gazing in the chill breeze as they swept their blades almost silently through the air. So that's my first set of images. I'm thinking Scotland isn't the place to be looking for effective photovoltaic energy capture.

Will the lights go out?

Sometime in the early seventies the lights went out. I remember it vividly. We were watching Star Trek and a horrible bat thing had landed on Spock's back. And then nothing. We lived in a modern house with oil fired central heating and an electric cooker. When the light died so did the heat. The only source of light we had in the house was the advent candle. The days to Christmas disappeared as we shivered in the dark. It was years before I learned how Spock survived.

We were never that unprepared again and all these years later there are torches scattered around my house and a number of packs of candles and boxes of matches. These are short term measures though; we are almost entirely dependent on the reliability of our complex energy systems. That's why I keep an eye on energy issues. During the cold snap there have been reported concerns about the level of natural gas stored in the UK. Apparently we keep a lot less than other nations. This latest piece of news is much more worrying. From the BBC; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8494899.stm

The government is, of course, aware of all this. Their UK Low Carbon Transition Plan looks at carbon dioxide emissions and energy security; compatible issues. Until recently I had naively thought that we had all, private, public and business, given this some serious thought and put in place energy minimisation programmes. Not so much. The recent snow has been very revealing about who on my street has insulated their loft. A surprising number are paying to warm the feet of the local magpies perched on their roofs. Businesses are in a similar situation. There are tools and grants available and the Carbon Reduction Commitment means that, apart from the obvious driver of saving money, organisations are finally going to have to get serious about this. Good! If we end up sitting in the dark and cold after we have done everything we can I will pull my mittens on and put up with it. I'll be very cross though, if we have wasted our resource because we are running the air con and heating at the same time or are heating our buildings with the doors open. Have I seen this? More often than you would believe.

The winter of 1973 was when the public first became of aware of energy security issues as the miner's strike turned the lights out across the country. My abiding memory of the time is standing on the beach at Formby with the lights out over Liverpool and a glory of stars above me. These days I'd like the glory without the discomfort please. We all need to work on our resource efficiency.