Wed 07 Jan 09 

In the race to build a low-carbon economy by reducing greenhouse emissions, our final goal is to bring our carbon footprint down to the limit. Full decarbonisation is the moment when our society functions with no net carbon footprint.

Is this realistic or a myth?

This means goodbye to all forms of fossil fuels. Our societies must reshape beyond recognition. Can we do this fast enough? It would mean no more gas boilers in our homes. So I couldn't care less if Russia cuts off its gas supply. We would not know what to do with gas anyway. Or petrol. The Gulf states would need to switch day jobs.

Goodbye dirty energy, hello clean electricity. Essentially all our power would come from electricity, supplied to our homes by a combination of clean sources. The socket would be nothing less than an object of worship because we'd plug everything to it, all our gadgets, including our cars, motorbikes, everything. Even airplanes would turn to electricity (has anyone thought of electric aircraft? they should).

We will use over ten times the amount of electricity that we use now, so the logistics challenges for future energy generation are gargantuan.

There would be local sources (such as wind turbines on private homes) as well as "energy hubs" like large wind farms, ocean power generators and solar energy hubs. We can imagine a future where swathes of land in third world countries are dedicated to "energy hubs" or energy production centres to distribute clean electricity to the world.

I have been digesting the report "Building a low-economy" published in December by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), an advisory group to the British government. It is very meaty, and it has plenty of mileage to comment, so we'll come back to it, I'm sure. It sets a timetable of "carbon budgets" recommending emission cuts in several phases, as the UK's contribution to tackle climate change. This is the inspiration for the UK government's targets. The main target is to cut emissions by 80% (with respect to 1990 levels) by 2050. The global target that this group says the UK should endorse is less ambitious: a 50% emissions cut by 2050, a somewhat arbitrary figure.

The implication seems to be that we would aim for full decarbonisation sometime during the second half of the century. Is this real? And if it is, we better get cracking because the extent of the fundamental changes we'd need to achieve this makes me think that 50 years might be a bit on the short side to adapt the infrastructure, let alone absorb the costs.

Ed Milliband, the Secretary of State for Energy, said at the time that as from 2009 carbon budgets will take their place alongside financial budgets and become pivotal to policy decisions. This is quite an extraordinary statement. We hope there is more to it than just talk. Given that of course climate change  is a global issue, these carbon budgets need to be in sync with what is being done around the world and the UK must engage with the main emitters to encourage a convergence to the same targets.

Brunella Bell

brunella@carbonica.org

CARBONICA - PROTECTING THE WORLD'S RAINFORESTS 

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