Vote Green, not Brown (1)

The Vestas saga (New Labour duplicity on the low carbon economy) may have some consequences:
1) Union members will demand that many of their compromised leaders change tack and press for an industrial revival based partly on manufacturing renewables
2) We convince them about our vision of a low carbon economy placing industry in the centre – jobs, high technology and low emissions.
3) Among many Labour voters, the credibility of New Labour is terminally shattered as they are found out to be obsessed in kow-towing to carbon-trading multinationals and to Nuclear.

What I would like to see is now:
a) a continuing protest to force the government to step in and save Vestas
b) a practical Green vision of a series of wind turbine plants up and down the country. For example, setting up clean manufacturing in the Thames Gateway and other sites in London – how many Mega watts, how many jobs, and in which locality.

The Green New Deal gave a broad outline. Since then, we have had additions, for example, by Sean Thompson, on embedding that initial document with reducing inequality and wealth mal-distribution, with a firmer commitment towards nationalisation.

I would now like us to draw a picture of what a green industrial renewable landscape actually looks like by region.
For example, if we had the per capita wind energy capacity of Denmark or Germany, how many jobs would we create and how many factories would we have?
Would it ten or twenty Vestas plants in England and Wales?

Farid Bakht

Ed and Mandy aren’t talking

Germany has 250,000 working in their renewable energy sector. The UK? Less than 10,000.
Minus 600 more if this government allows Vestas to pack up their wind turbine factory, on the Isle of Wight.
Even then, those turbines were not being sold here, despite the hot air of nuclear-friendly New Labour, they failed to create demand for wind turbines.
Let’s get this straight. The other day, Ed Miliband tells us about his plans for ‘low carbon Britain’.
At the same time, the boss (Lord Mandelson) decides he cannot be bothered with Vestas. He has got his hands full trying to save TATA’s Jaguar….. and more car factories.

In a few months, in Copenhagen, we will hear more hot air from Brown and the rest as they tell us how they really, really do care about the world and climate change……
By the end of the next decade, Germany will have a million people plus working in a sector both high tech and job friendly.
Meanwhile, Cameron and Brown will sweep us towards a nuclear future – hardly any jobs, a decade late and hugely over-budget.

Welcome to low carbon – high unemployment Britain.

Farid Bakht

Portugal surfs wave power while Britain flirts with nuclear and dirty coal

Portugal has just inaugurated the world’s first commercial scale wave power station. It will eventually produce 21 MW, enough to power 14,000 homes.

The Guardian reported this, saying: “…..  the Portuguese are investing heavily in other renewable technologies….. In the past three years, the country has also trebled its hydroelectric capacity and quadrupled its wind power sources – northern Portugal has the world’s biggest wind farm with more than 130 turbines and a factory that builds the 40m-long blades.

Pinho wants Portugal to rival Denmark or Japan in its commitment to developing renewables industries – he predicts his country will generate 31% of all its power from clean sources by 2020, compared with Britain’s target of 15%. The Portuguese target means increasing the generation of electricity from renewable sources from 20% in 2005 to 60% in 2020.”

“The €9m (£7.14m) first phase of the Aguçadoura project, which involves the energy firms Enersis and Energias de Portrugal, has been helped partly by the Portuguese government agreeing to guarantee a premium for the electricity the station will generate via a feed-in tariff of 25c per KWh. The project has also been given a €1.25m grant from the Portuguese Agência de Inovação.”

The company building the wave generators is Scottish, raising questions about why New Labour is not committed enough to being the leader in wave energy, given the available technical skills and potential wave resources.

New Labour seems overly enamoured with coal and nuclear at the expense of viable renewables today. So do the Conservatives. Indeed, a campaign is being waged to ‘plug the energy gap’ with coal and nuclear. The carrot being waved is the avoidance of blackouts and also lower bills.

Meanwhile a Portuguese Minister can highlight his country’s ambition to be to renewables what Finland (Nokia) is to phones.

His UK equivalent’s ambition is to invite the French to build a network of incredibly expensive nuclear power stations and ignore the wind and wave potential of this island. Money talks.

Farid Bakht

Protest over Kingsworth power station

“Green activists are vowing to force their way into one of Britain’s biggest power stations next month in what will be the most serious clash yet between the burgeoning climate change protest movement and the authorities. 

At least 2,000 campaigners from the 2008 Camp for Climate Action are expected to take part in the assault on Kingsnorth power station in Kent, a huge 2,000 megawatt plant that supplies electricity to 1.5 million homes in the South-east.

They are protesting at plans by the plant’s owners, E.ON, to build a new facility on the site that would be fuelled with coal – the first such plant to be built in Britain for 33 years and very likely the forerunner of a new generation of coal-fired stations.

As coal produces more CO2 than any other fossil fuel, campaigners say such a step would make a nonsense of Britain’s pledge to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. The Government is still considering E.ON’s application.

Organisers of the climate camp, which is scheduled to be held from 3 to 11 August at a site near Kingsnorth on the Hoo Peninsula, are being open, both on their website and in conversation, about their intention to force their way into the current generating station (also coal-fired) and stop it operating – for good – on the camp’s “day of mass action” on 9 August.”

source: www.independent.co.uk

Help stop the UK’s first biofuel power plant

On Wednesday June 4th at 7pm Newham LBC has their final consultation.

If you are a member of an environmental group or a local person living in
Newham and would like to give evidence at this meeting then please submit your
concerns and make a specific request to present evidence at the consultation meeting on the 4th.

There are two protest events run jointly by Biofuelwatch and London Food
not Fuel;

1). Saturday May 31st which includes two activities: There will be a
stall outside Sainsbury’s on Myrtle Road, East Ham from 10:30 to 6:30.
We could do with help manning the stall, explaining and handing out
flyers and getting signatures for a petition. This will be followed by
a banner protest from 3:00 to 5:00pm at Newham Town Hall, East Ham on the
Barking Road around the corner from Sainsburys.

2). Wednesday 4th June.:  The second event will be timed to coincide
with councillors attending the final consultation meeting at Newham  Town
Hall on June 4th.  The meeting is at 7:00pm so we will be protesting from
6:30pm, Newham Town Hall, High Street South entrance, East Ham.

Please help us STOP the UK’s first biofuel power plant!

CONTACTS FOR BECKTON PROTEST

Biofuelwatch: info@biofuelwatch.org.uk

Why we don’t need nuclear power

A Green Party spokesperson reacted to the Government’s announcement of a new generation of nuclear power stations:

“The cheapest and most effective way of cutting emissions in London would be to decentralise energy production and put solar panels and wind turbines on every house and office. 

We already have the technology to make it happen but are simply lacking the political will and investment.  The Government should give small businesses and householders the money to install renewables instead of paying for expensive nuclear power stations.”

Building new nuclear power stations could cost over a billion pounds more than investing in local renewable energy and reduce climate change emissions by far less, according to a recent report³.  It is likely that the cost of building a giant nuclear waste storage facility will fall upon taxpayers, and Londoners may also face higher electricity bills as a way of meeting the clean-up costs when the nuclear reactors reach the end of their lifespan.”

To which I would add just one word: GERMANY.

Time we found out how they have created one of the world’s largest renewable energy industry…..

Farid Bakht

Energy bills to soar by 15% this year

The average household is set to pay 1000 pounds this year for using gas and electricity. That’s a 15% increase.

German-owned NPower announced the price increases and there is little doubt the others will follow.

Around 4 million families in Britain find it a struggle to pay their energy bills.Many people have to put aside 10% of their income towards energy costs. The great North Sea boom is coming to an end and the UK is now dependent on imports. With oil prices hitting $100 a barrel, business-as-usual means that energy will cost more and more into the second decade. 

Under this cover, the main political parties will go for nuclear and coal power plants. One was approved in Kent yesterday. Out of nearly 100 power plants in the UK, more than two-thirds run on gas, the rest is nuclear and coal.

 Gordon Brown says energy security is one of his highest priorities. So expect a battle royal between the advocates of wind energy against the dinosaurs of coal (now suddenly becoming ‘clean’) and the most expensive of them all, nuclear plants.

The sensible way would be to go for a massive offshore wind farm network, backed up by government subsidized insulation and upgrading housing – to save emissions and bills.

Greens need to show why it is right to build a new renewable energy network and how they would finance it and keep the bills down. They need to show where they would cut existing subsidies and redirect them to renewables.

Do that, prove how bills could be kept down, and people will ‘warm’ to the message that climate change and household needs are one and the same. 

Farid Bakht