Selected recent history of campaign
Latest solar powerpoint: Download “The Renewables Vision” here
Latest triple crunch powerpoint: Download “The Energy Crunch” here
Selected events since the website was set up on 4 July 2009: (more on http://twitter.com/JeremyLeggett )
3 March 2010: Solar panels are not fashion accessories. George Monbiot’s attack on solar energy and the government’s “cash-back” solar photovoltaic (PV) market-building scheme paints a distorted picture of the industry I work in, and government policy towards it (Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off?, 2 March).
10 February 2010: The lessons for oil crunch from the credit crunch ought to be stark. Implications of the oil crunch warning from the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security report published today.
23 January 2010: Growing, growing, gone. Review of Tim Jackson’s book, “Prosperity Without Growth,” supporting his view that capitalism in the form into which we have allowed it to evolve is killing economies and ecosystems alike. Re-engineering of the system is essential.
31 December 2009: Our own power. A self-help people-power idea for the Tenties: DIY solar pension investing, cutting bonus cultists of all kinds out of the equation, making a fair return but also spilling a little over to help the poor. With the failure of Copenhagen, I believe we are going to need a miriad of these kinds of ideas.
30 December 2009: Investing in coal is dysfunctional. Guardian blog about how coal marches on, including a major IPO being being lined up for the London Stock Exchange in 2010. Copenhagen has changed nothing.
6 - 19 December 2009: One person’s perspective on the Copenhagen Climate Summit, via links to my daily blogs for the Financial Times:
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Day O: Sunday 6th: Obama’s decision to attend for the end-game offers eve-of-summit encouragement. But life-or-death decisions still remain for the small island states. Will he extend his policy approach far enough to give them hope for survival?
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Day 1: Monday 7th: A positive atmosphere at the summit is fomenting hope. A policy outcome based on the imperative of not running the gauntlet of amplifying feedbacks still seems improbable. But an agreement with enough teeth potentially to trigger tipping points in survival technologies is certainly in the frame.
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Day 2: Tuesday 8th: The industrialised countries win “Fossil of the Day Award” for dodgy negotiating tactics over forestry and land use. They should make sure their negotiators are congruent with head-of-state rhetoric. As for the additional commitments to cuts that are needed, industrialised countries should lead.
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Day 3: Wednesday 9th: The loud noise made by a climate-sceptic minority rumbles on around the negotiations in the wake of the “climate-gate” stolen e-mail episode. The FT’s expert panel is split on whether they should be given more of a role in the negotiations.
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Day 4: Thursday 10th: Both business and environment NGOs hold the power to derail the negotiations. Sarah Palin, who has urged President Obama to boycott Copenhagen,based on the climate-gate e-mails, would be delighted if they did.
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Day 5: Friday 11th: Financial innovation can play a major role in accelerating emissions reductions, and strengthening a climate convention. But our collective survival reflex in the face of the climate threat must include the reining in of bonus-cultist investment-bankers.
- Day 8: Monday 14th: After the first week, Copenhagen is beginning to smell to me like Kyoto. Then, as now, hopes were low in many places, and negotiators were playing games, as they are wont to do. When the bosses arrived in the second week, things began to fall into place. But in Kyoto, it was Ministers doing the final deal. In Copenhagen next week, it will be world leaders, and from more than half the 198 nations represented.
- Day 9: Tuesday 15th: Negotiators must not try to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a new agreement. A retreat from this legally-binding instrument would be asking too much for the developing countries, who have conceded much to the US through the 20 year history of these negotiations.
- Day 10: Wednesday 16th: An adequate financing offer from developed to developing countries is essential. Developing countries militancy on this point is unsurprising. Developed countries acknowledged our responsibility for this two decades ago.
- 16 December: Interview on The World Tonight: Why we must offer significant finance to the developing nations.
- Day 11: Thursday 17th: Now is the hour the world’s Churchill must emerge: can it be Obama? This is his historic chance. But Hillary Clinton’s speech today was a blame-switcher, not a planet-saver.
- Day 12: Friday 18th: Obama fails the test. Picture this convention of world leaders as the board meeting of a giant corporation. The board has known they had to deliver a master plan for many years, with the very survival of the corporation at stake. And they turn up with no plan, bickering among themselves over trifling matters. Just imagine the shareholder reaction.
- Day 13: Saturday 19th: The Copenhagen Accord will pose countless millions of parents with unanswerable questions. And tomorrow, the accord will present investors in coal with no immediate problems at all. That is the bottom line.
- Conclusion: I called the summit wrong in the first week. Now we have even more work to do than would have been the case with a successul outcome of the kind I described on Day 1.
2 December: BusinessGreen conference on Copenhagen, London: “The opportunities for business.”26 November: Energy Institute, London: speaking on “The overlap between climate change and energy security issues.” 23 November: Guardian Cleantech Summit, London: speaking on the rise of the solar industry. 19 November: Institute for Public Policy Research, London, “Reclaiming our financial institutions,” lunchtime panel discussion with Mark Campanale. 12 November: London Business School World Energy Summit, speaking on “The solar revolution: vision versus reality.” 10 November: Twelve questions about nuclear power. Guardian blog on the things the nuclear industry would prefer you not to have read about of late. 4 November: House of Commons Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, presenting evidence on solar feed-in tariff with Solarcentury CEO Derry Newman. 1 November 2009: Petroleum Review publishes extracts from an Oxford Union-style debate at the Petroleum Geology Congress earlier this year in which former BP chief geologist David Jenkins argued for the motion that peak oil is “no longer a concern “, and I argued against, incorporating the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security conclusions into my case. Some five hundred oil-industry geologists voted at the end of this debate. Only about a third of them proved to be in favour of the motion. See also The Oil Drum for a discussion of this result.24 October: New Economics Foundation event, “The Bigger Picture,” Barge House, South Bank, London: speaking about the clean energy part of the bigger picture. What solar could do within the cleantech revolution, and what is holding it back. 13 October: Debate at the FT/WEC Energy Summit. Advocating bullish prospects for the renewables sector generally, and solar as a case history, I was on a panel with Christof Buhl, Chief Economist at BP. He advocated, by way of contrast, a “realistic” approach, meaning that 80% of global energy will still be coming from fossil fuels by 2030. Subsidies for renewables “could be unaffordable,” he suggested. Gas has a major role to play, because we can’t afford to “wait for renewables.” The heart of the disagreement people like me have with BP is that their increasing tendency to badmouth renewables risks holding back our chances for explosive growth, so that people are forced to wait for mass markets in renewables longer than they need to. Unaffordable subsidies indeed! What a nerve, from an industry drowning in subsidies. And our feed-in tariffs will rack down to zero within a decade or less. The oil industry’s many forms of subsidy will go on for very much longer, if they have their way. Including, no doubt, the military subsidy. 13 October: Zero carbon buildings debate, RIBA in partnership with the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, Royal Institution of British Architects. An account of the role solar could play in achieving zero-carbon buildings, and then a debate with other Ashden Award winners with views on the subject, and an large audience of architects with many perceptive and probing questions. A lot of fun, and hopefully some use. 1 October: Sublime column “State of Energy” a review of the shambles that is UK energy policy. 29 September: Presentation at the Labour Party Conference “Climate Clinic” fringe event: Financing the Green New Deal. And short Q&A with Climate Change Minister, Joan Ruddock. Main theme: we could create tens of thousands of solar jobs in a green new deal ….if we had a decent feed-in tariff like other European countries. 3 September 2009: Oil still has us over a barrel. The discovery of a number of oilfields is good news for world energy but it does not mean the threat of peak oil is over. 23 August 2009: The Edinburgh Book Festival, speaking on “The Solar Century: the past, present and world-changing future of solar energy.” 31 August: Presentation and Q&A at the Climate Camp. On the conflation of peak oil and climate change, as written about in my recent Independent and FT op-eds, with some hopefully upbeat thoughts about how social renaissance and a route to deep emissions reductions can and might lurk in the rebuilding of economies after peak oil. It was inspiring to see that camp. The world so needs those young people and their idealism. I told them to watch out for middle-aged men.: too may of us had meccano sets that were too big when we were boys. That’s why we prefer to believe in nuclear power, CCS and mirrors in space ahead of anything that is remotely small, decentralised and just possibly beautiful. Hopefully they and their peaceful non-violent direct actions are going to help change all that. One surprising and pleasing thing. I didn’t see a single policeman in or near the camp. What a difference from the last time I was with the climate campers, at the G20 protest in April. 3 August 2009: Independent op-ed: Another crunch is coming. But will the world act?. There is one main similarity between the energy crisis and the financial crisis, and one main difference. These two things tell us a lot about the role of cultures in how our modern version of capitalism plays out. The similarity is that we are dealing with two massive global industries – investment banking and oil - who have their asset assessment systemically, and ruinously, wrong. The difference is that few people and organisations were warning about the credit crunch as it approached, whereas with the oil crunch, a host of people - many of them in and around the oil industry - are shouting a warning, and so too are a good few organisations. 15 July 2009: Debate with Energy Minister Lord Hunt re proposed UK feed-in tariff rates on BBC’s The World Tonight (from 19.00 minutes in). The UK Renewables Consultation, out today, proposes rates that are too low to attract serious investment in solar, I argue. Hermann Scheer, father of the German feed-in tariff agrees. Lord Hunt argues not, but emphasises that this is a consultation, and decisions will come later - prior to the April 2010 introduction of the tariff. Also discussed: are nuclear advocates in the Civil Service on a renewables go-slow? I fear so, Lord Hunt says not. 13 July 2009: Launch of “The Solar Century” book, in Parliament. At the launch event in Portcullis House, Westminster, I talked about the vision laid out in the book, and government (Joan Ruddock, Energy Minister), opposition (Charles Hendry, Energy Shadow Minister) and Liberal Democrat (Simon Hughes) parliamentarians gave their perspectives on the issues covered. The emphasis of speakers was on the UK feed-in tariff, a temporary measure aiming to build a UK solar market, which the government says will begin in April 2010, and details of which are to be presented in the low-carbon energy strategy to be unveiled on 15th July. 13 July 2009: International Herald Tribune op-ed, with Paul Hohnen: Getting serious about climate change Paul and I have seen the workings of the climate negotiations close to, over many years, and are worried that old patterns of dysfunctional multilateral behaviour will reappear at the vital Copenhagen climate summit in December. We argue that climate change now has to be treated as a security issue. 13 July 2009: Guardian comment-is-free: E.On and EDF have drawn the battle lines between renewables and nuclear.
