Young Ed Miliband has wasted no time getting his feet under the desk at the all-new Department of Energy and Climate Change. And he appears to share his brother’s enthusiasm for making a bit of a splash early on in the job, if the latest targets for CO2 emissions reductions are anything to go by.
The headline figure is the UK’s new commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% (on 1990 levels) by 2050, described as a “major contribution to a global deal on climate change”. ‘Major’ indeed. This will require some radical changes in the way we generate and use energy; the way we transport goods, not to mention ourselves; how we approach waste issues – the list goes on. Can we achieve this in little more than a generation?
The Stern report of 2006, which observed bleakly that the cost of not acting is far greater than the costs of acting, quite turns this question on its head. It’s not a matter of “can we” but “we must”. And that will require a sea change in attitudes to sensitive issues like nuclear power, energy security and what we regard as our God-given right to freedom of movement, no matter how polluting the process of transportation.
The government and technologists, too, must play their part if we are to get anywhere near this target. That means greater financial incentives via the tax system to make the necessary changes. We will need real commitments to sustainable energy development – on the micro as well as the macro scale; a hydrogen infrastructure for our fuel cell powered electric vehicle future, and a one hundred percent materials recycling initiative – not the nibbling around the edges that we have today.
In his statement to parliament, Mr Miliband warned against retreating from our climate change objectives at a time of economic downturn. I think he can relax a little on this one. The prevailing economic woes are apparently spurring industry into action on the environmental front as companies strive to improve their green credentials in a bid to save precious cash. Government agency, Envirowise has reported a 22% leap in visitor numbers to its web site (April-September 2008) and has responded by making its online offering more feature-rich and user-friendly.
Envirowise director, Mary Leonard claims the agency has saved UK businesses over £1bn since its inception in 1994, through a range of free advice and support services, and it should be congratulated for this result. It highlights the fact that significant savings can be achieved by being just a bit cleverer with precious resources such as energy and materials; if only that truism were more widely appreciated by individual and business alike, then we might begin to work more effectively towards Mr Miliband’s target.
On a quite different subject, it was sad to hear that Sir James Dyson has finally pulled the plug on his vision for an engineering design academy in the City of Bath. Beset by planning issues since it was first proposed back in 2006, including the threat of a public inquiry due to flood worries at the site, the entrepreneur felt he had little room left for manoeuvre despite having ploughed £3m into the concept and planning stages.
It is natural to sympathise with Sir James, not just for his personal losses but for the loss of a great opportunity for Bath and for the future of engineering design education in Britain as a whole. Even the Bath Preservation Trust hailed the academy as a “very positive opportunity for the city” though it did express concern about the listed site. However, in the end, the city authorities were not to be swayed.
It does beg the question, given the years of doubt expressed over the development, why Sir James should have pursued a development of this nature in such a sensitive location. Bath, after all, is a World Heritage site and there were bound to be obstacles.
Britain most certainly needs schools of the type proposed by Sir James Dyson, and the architecture proposed by Wilkinson Eyre was striking enough, but if such institutions are ever going to materialise, should they not be founded on less hallowed ground?
Les Hunt
Editor
I received this email from Mr Joe Coupland, a retired engineer, in response to the article: ‘Moving to Higher Efficiency Motors’, which was published in this newsletter last week. I reproduce it here:
"I have been scrutinising every engineering publication I can get my hands on and spending an inordinate amount of my spare time trawling the Net to find an article such as the one mentioned above. However, even this article has been written with sales of the product in mind and not, as it would have you believe, the future of the planet and business bank balances.
"The sad fact is that it is not in the interest of suppliers to tell the whole picture. Robin Cowley of Baldor UK is to be commended for the distance he has gone in telling it how it is. However, it will be the accountants and other non-engineers making the decisions that will ultimately affect energy usage and efficiency of drives, and they will find themselves in a mess if they do not consult those in the know. Mr Cowley, like everybody out there, falls short of the complete truth.
"If you have been convinced by the sales pitch of any of the myriad of companies peddling their wares from the ‘Eff’ barrow, the only way to be sure that what you are about to do will not have a detrimental effect on your bottom line, is to look at what you are doing as a whole, and reinvent how you are doing it.
"For instance, is the gearbox that you have attached to the motor (Eff1 or otherwise) efficient enough to realise any benefit from the change? Does the process have minimal load changes and was the original system sized to suit the task in hand or just to save the OEM embarrassment at his inability to calculate the speed and power required? It is very possible that fitting ill-advised solutions could result in an effect opposite to that you had intended and in increased energy usage.
"Well, if we are to move ahead with saving the planet - and I, for one, with 5 children and 4.3 grandchildren to date, think we should - then it only remains to find enough engineers with the skills to do the calculations and make it all work. And I am sorry, but you won’t find them selling the product. Why? Because, the policies employed in the past by those of the same ilk as the ‘bean counters’ about to embark on this new tomorrow, have dispensed with their services and replaced them with a cheaper alternative.
"Society has undermined the status of these jobs to a point where anyone that gets oil on their hand is a loser. Hence, the bright kids aren’t coming through that route so you may want to try looking amongst the grey-haired Tesco shelf-packers or security guards out in the real world."
Do you have any comments to make on this or any other subject covered in these newsletters? We are always pleased to receive feedback from readers; simply email les.hunt@imlgroup.co.uk.
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