From me on Twitter this morning:
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
So it’s good news that the Green Industrial Revolution is dead. It was a toe in the door but you won’t be happy till they blow the bloody doors off. I don’t understand you. Unless you get 100% of what you want you sulk. Well, get used to sulking because you’re in for a lot of disappointment in the next few years.
As I have already said to you Rod I am only used tp winning
And I am 100% confident I will
I feel encouraged by your point about optimism. One way of being optimistic is to be in denial over anything bad. Proper useful optimism is being fearless in stating how bad things are and believing that there are ways to deal with it.
I don’t think that collectively people can handle knowing how bad things are and until they realise it I don’t think there will be pressure for real change, revolutionary or transformative.
Years ago I read George Monbiot’s Heat where he described his proposal for dealing with cars and boilers. It involved developing a great public transport system and refurbishing all buildings according to the Passivhaus concept which allows you to keep warm in winter and cool in summer with only a fraction of the energy we use today. These are the things we should be talking about. And, er, getting used to consuming 10% or less of the energy we do now.
The problem with Passivhaus is that the higher you go, the less it seems to work as intended (this was from a very pro – Passivhaus seminar I attended in Birmingham in 2018). It’s not a panacea and I’m sure a bona fide GND policy would increase the development of other solutions that might work better in those circumstances.
The other thing with Passivhaus is the validation process that goes with it that is seen as quite costly by developers to the point where properties might very well be built like Passivhaus but never actually registered as such.
Pilgrim, The Solcer project in Wales [1] has shown a low energy, low carbon house can be built at similar costs as the large scale builders, at 2016 prices the Solcer house was around £1000 per sq metre. Compare that to current housing building cost estimates of ca. £1800 [2]. Surely if taken up at a commercial scale the costs would go down further for Solcer designs.
Solcer homes built in Stormy Down (Bridgend) are essentially zero energy units, and of good modern size and finish when I visited the research project as part of a Green Party team in 2016. The Solcer group are also researching conversion of older properties, a difficult task you might say. Swansea City Council are using these methods to economically convert older properties successfully, e.g. at £55k per two bedroom units [3], where energy bills are £1 per week [4]. Swansea Council are building new “zero energy” homes; only finance is stopping this being a larger scale endeavour – an excellent case for the Green New Deal and say govt backed Green bonds.
[1] http://www.solcer.org
[2] https://www.mybuilder.com/pricing-guides/architect-costs/new-build-house-costs
[3] https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/1767285-welsh-school-of-architecture-supports-low-carbon-refit-of-swansea-bungalows
[4] https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/housing-swansea-renewable-energy-news-18239701
The Independent is reporting equivocation on Starmer’s part in regard to implementing Labour’s Green New Deal policy. What is this about?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-net-zero-target-2030-labour-climate-change-a9586971.html
Is that really the case? Or is this factional game play?
I’ve no idea it appears bizarre in that it sets hares running!