Delivering a sustainable future

Posted on June 15 2015

The FT has reported this morning that:

Wind, solar and other types of renewable power will overtake coal to become the world's top source of electricity in just 15 years if the pledges countries are making for a global climate change deal this year are met.

The striking finding by the International Energy Agency shows renewable power could soar from just over a fifth of global electricity generation today to nearly a third by 2030 – a bigger share than either coal, gas or nuclear plants.

I think I would add an important caveat, which is that this is subject to funding being available. Which is where Green Infrastructure Quantitative Easing comes into play.
There is a second condition. The IEA knows this one, and has said:

We have to have a peaceful divorce between economic growth and emissions for the wellbeing of all the world's citizens

That's a really powerful argument. The essence is straightforward though and is that the time has come when growth should not be based on making and consuming more but on doing more to provide and care for each other. That's an idea deeply embedded in part of my book The Courageous State where I address the physical constraints to growth and how making less would make us so much better off. Available here.

There is a follow on from that though, which is that maybe, just maybe, the reason why business is no longer investing much is that they are beginning to realise people do not need so much stuff, and have other needs that are better met by the state. Which is, of course, another reason why we may need to run deficits until we catch up and work out how to pay for this change in society.

 

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16 Responses

  1. PETER CLOSE says:
    June 15 2015 at 11:01 am

    Spot on Richard! The developed world is a consumer-led economy and [a] As a result of burgeoning public and private debt the consumer is skint [b] The essential sector of the market is relatively saturated, so no wonder we are in on-going recession. We have argued elsewhere re “debt-free sovereign money” – which is presumably no different to your Green Infrastructure QE. The current monetary/financial system is unsustainable and if that means changing accepted accounting principles in some “grey areas” so be it! Introducing new central bank money as debt is a nonsense but double entry accounting struggles with gifts and zero-cost acquisitions; argument ranging between zero cost/zero asset later revalued as appreciation/profit; to true value asset with debt to the donor. It ought to be true value asset balanced by the appropriate rise in equity.

  2. Sylvia Dobson says:
    June 15 2015 at 11:36 am

    Hard to wean people off “stuff” and offer them a longer view without instant fixes. Why do we need, my pet hate, fabric softeners in the wash. Obviously I don’t want to go down to the stream and bash my washing on a rock and I like a new dress sometimes .
    And my area is awaiting Fracking permission, the government will override the decision if it disagrees we fear. The waste flow back, well where do they intend to put it. New York fought and won refusal to use the beautiful Seneca lakes for such.

    The natural powers of the earth are most certainly the way to go,providing we all benefit fairly. So I suppose subsidies for renewals are needed for a time and sharing of technology, altruistically.

    Crystal ball needed. I have great hope in our young folk to live a more sustainable life,otherwise it will be gated communities indeed.

  3. Ben Oldfield says:
    June 15 2015 at 12:27 pm

    We also need major investment in finding a cost effective way of storing electrical power to remove the requirement of base load power stations. There is no current battery technology that comes close to providing this. The only current possibility is pumped water storage but this would need many very large reservoirs.

  4. Nic says:
    June 15 2015 at 12:43 pm

    Coming mostly from the digital economy, I am regularly puzzled by this standard left/green analysis which says there are physical constraints to growth.

    Online, in a world powered by renewable energy, there is surely limitless potential revenue growth (be it in software, services, games, music, creative IP, data, etc) without any physical constraint, resource depletion or wider impact (unless you include potential social impact from people spending too much time staring at screens). The growth model just needs redirecting from scarce and limited resources to limitless ones, no?

    • Richard Murphy says:
      June 15 2015 at 2:09 pm

      I thought that was what I was saying

      Sorry if wires got crossed

    • Rich G says:
      June 15 2015 at 7:48 pm

      Surely, even using renewable energy, with a massive online/virtual economy, the energy needed to run and cool all the servers etc will eventually cook the planet?

      http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

      is worth a read.

      • Nic says:
        June 17 2015 at 12:46 pm

        I’m not convinced. Already data centres are re-using excess heat to power nearby homes/swimming pools etc http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/03/18/energy-efficiency-guide-heat-recycling/ – data centres are wasteful but we will get better at using that energy. Any differential in energy – as ground source heat pumps show – can be made useful

        Also the example of a constant growth in US energy use in the link ignores the parallel large population growth. So provided global population growth continues to slow, eventually energy use should too.

        The main argument for supporting limitless renewably powered digital growth is less about helping out capitalism and more about making the case for a switch from fossil fuels/etc to renewable as one of great economic potential. It’s a more achievable pitch to switch growth to green-powered digital than to halt growth and undermine all the assumptions trillions in investments are built on.

    • JohnM says:
      June 16 2015 at 8:14 am

      Unfortunately, in this world powered by renewable energy, there is a limit on growth that is imposed by the limit of resource availability.
      The argument, that as things increase in cost it becomes economical to extract resources that were too expensive/difficult to extract previously, meets the real world of vanishing resources. There is already talk of mining asteroids (etc) for scarce minerals/elements.
      A read of a few facts is in order here:
      http://geology.com/articles/rare-earth-elements/
      Your rather nice rotating atmospheric energy extraction unit (wind generator) is packed with interesting elements, but the use of neodymium in the magnets is the one of interest..it is needed to produce the very strong magnetic field needed to produce the energy…from generators without a gearbox (which is the cause of much of the unreliability). So, have a read of the costs of rare-earth elements. Not economic, but socio-economic:
      http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution
      http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/media/5694/use_of_rare_earth_metals_in_offshore_windfarms.pdf

      You cannot produce something, from nothing.
      In that equation there is always a loser.

  5. Stevo!! says:
    June 16 2015 at 10:57 pm

    We need to learn the concept of enough. I have already mentioned the fact that productive capacity has increased enormously. We could have a working week of 20 hours or less and still produce more that we could ever need or want.

    Growth forever has to become a thing of the past. Infinite growth on a planet with finite resources has to end.

    To truly achieve this though, capitalism has to end. Or at least severely restrained. Almost certainly, free trade, or at least the model we have now, has to end. A home grown manufacturing base has to come back.

    Unpicking the mess neoliberal economics has made would be a good start.

  6. JohnM says:
    June 17 2015 at 10:34 am

    The “homegrown” manufacturing base has departed these shores, never to return.
    Please do not delve into the “we still produce some cars”, because we do not. We assemble some cars.
    The quite simple, simply-simple, fact is that we pay ourselves too much to produce articles that we can afford to buy.
    Restraining capitalism isn’t going to happen either: any attempt will just lead to an endgame starting.
    Maybe it is time to raise your head from the Mail/Sun/Times and look at the world?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-33151125

    http://www.news.com.au/world/russian-arms-treaty-violations-prompt-united-states-to-consider-sending-nuclear-weapons-to-europe/story-fndir2ev-1227385735356

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNITED_STATES_RUSSIA_NUCLEAR_TREATY?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

  7. JohnM says:
    June 17 2015 at 9:40 pm

    I was not referring to you Richard!
    But it is funny….nobody admits reading the sun?

  8. JohnM says:
    June 18 2015 at 10:15 am

    Good.
    Many do not though.
    I just noted that several Chinese subbies are shifting production to India because China is getting expensive….