Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory. Indeed, some media columnists and commentators seem to make a living from promoting them, and none more so than those prolific scribblers on the climate-denying far-right. Last weekend's column by the Telegraph pundit Christopher Booker was a glorious textbook example, and especially ironic because the target of his ire – the Department of Energy and Climate Change's (Decc) new 2050 pathways energy calculator – is in reality a rather interesting and innovative effort at open-minded policy-making, as Damian Carrington wrote recently, and as Booker might have discovered for himself had he bothered to investigate it properly.
The irony is particularly clear because Booker's central complaint is that the Decc 2050 calculator is not sufficiently transparent, and supposedly includes various nefariously hidden assumptions about the relative costs of clean energy and efficiency as compared with fossil fuels. But the truth is that the 2050 work is probably the one of the most open and transparent pieces of policy-making ever undertaken by the British government, where every cost assumption – rather than being shadily hidden – is in fact explicitly described in an open-source wiki which everyone can challenge and contribute to.
Booker's misunderstandings, like his commentary in general, are not original – in this case they come second-hand from the former Ukip press officer-turned-blogger Tim Worstall, whose complaint on the Adam Smith Institute blog is entitled "Perhaps Decc would like to do their sums again".
Worstall's problem is that he "can't find the price assumptions they make" about the future costs of fossil fuels. He laments: "I'm afraid I can't find it, just can't find it at all." He therefore conspiracy theorises that "the calculation isn't presented to us" because "we might find that renewables aren't really an option that anyone would go for."
Whoops. Worstall's conspiracy evaporates when one discovers that he has simply not clicked on the correct link on the Decc website.
To understand the underlying cost assumptions – and tweak them as he wishes – all Worstall has to do is to click on the link to the 2050 web tool on the 2050 pathways calculator page, which would take him to a standard calculator layout with all the options set at the default lowest setting (little energy efficiency, hardly any renewables/nuclear, growth based on fossil fuels, etc). This is what I call the Booker Plan, because it increases greenhouse gas emissions between now and 2050 by about 100 million tonnes per year – in other words it pretends that climate change does not exist, and continues business as usual.
So, I hereby challenge Tim Worstall to select an energy pathway of his choice (the Booker do-nothing option is fine) and then click on the link at the top left ("See implications") and then choose "Cost sensitivity".
Doing so would take him to a page with all the cost assumptions laid out in a table, where anyone can change the default setting to either today's cost or cheaper (where costs of gas, renewables, nuclear and so on are either assumed to be the same in 2050 as they are now or to get less expensive). Also – if one goes so far as to click the link called "see assumptions" – you can, er, see the assumptions for each fuel source or policy measure.
This, if you believe in an open-source approach to data, is where things get interesting. Each cost assumption has its own page (here's an example for nuclear), with graphs of different estimates from different published sources, and links to those sources and their explanations. If you don't like the sources, you are able to suggest your own – this is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that the UK government has opened up its policy-making process to a wiki format. All you have to do – come on, Tim – is register as a user, and then you can add your own data source, providing it is from a reliable source in the published expert literature.
Another Booker misunderstanding – that renewables are somehow "contrived" by Decc to appear half as expensive as fossil fuels – also originates with Tim Worstall, though in a different blog post.
Thanks to the open-source nature of this whole exercise, you can look at the offending cost-optimising "MARKAL" pathway on the Decc 2050 website, and confirm for yourself that actually it has fairly low selections for renewables – including "no significant solar PV capacity". All this shows in reality is that energy efficiency is the cheapest way of reducing emissions, which most of us already knew.
Incidentally, Friends of the Earth have created their own proposed 2050 pathway, as have I. Theirs includes lots of wave, wind and energy efficiency, and mine – which I of course consider more realistic – has lots of nuclear, less efficiency and wave power but plenty of offshore wind. I also let people live in warmer houses with the thermostat set to 20C, as mine currently is (no, I don't want to wear another jumper). Both scenarios are equally valid because they add up to an 80% emissions cut by 2050 (in line with UK law as per the Climate Change Act), because their energy-use numbers add up, and because their assumptions are open and transparent.
Crucially, this transparency aspect includes their cost assumptions. My pathway comes out a tiny bit cheaper than Friends of the Earth's despite all the nukes, I am glad to say, but no doubt we could find plenty to argue about in terms of the underlying assumptions. If I tweak their pathway to make solar PV and wave the same price in 2050 as today (assuming, therefore, no cost-reducing innovation), I can inflate their costs still further. If they retaliate by making future nuclear reactors the same price as todays, they win the costs battle. Either way, it is all out in the open, and we can have the argument on the basis of data and real numbers, rather than ideology and assertion.
Once again, I invite everyone – solar industry insiders, climate sceptics, everyone – to construct their own pathways. It's easier than you think. Then compare costs, and assumptions, and emissions. If you think future costs are inherently uncertain (which I do) then click the "uncertain" tab and have the block colours replaced by shaded error bars.
None of us really know much about the future. But if we can base today's policy decisions on what data we have, from the best possible sources, and have as wide a supporting debate as possible in an open-source way, then perhaps we can get beyond the energy culture wars. And that really would be progress.
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10 January 2012 1:12PM
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10 January 2012 1:28PM
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10 January 2012 1:38PM
Here's my pathway - don't know how realistic it is but it's telling me that my pathway doesn't reduce emissions by 80% on 1990 levels and I thought I was being quite optimistic.
10 January 2012 1:45PM
Thanks for this article, read Booker's column in the Telegraph and without time to read deeper, it's not v self-evident in plain English what to conclude, although the attention this topic deserves is at least given some proper airtime.
If energy efficiciency rises amid the numbers, surely greater personal financial and energy responsible with regard to each and every individual home-ownership within the UK is where this all drives towards? I don't think that is a bad result at all to be derived and expected from people, better than polluting and devaluing the natural world which would seem more costly in more dimensions?
The Climate Crisis & Without The Hot Air certainly lots to discuss in these 2 books in conjunction with that calculator.
10 January 2012 1:45PM
Sadly there are people like Booker who seem keen to make this group increasingly identifiable though...numerous bloggers etc seem determined to bring the Republican anti-science stance we see in the US presidential race into the UK.
Time for non-climate-denying-not-so-far-right (or even non-climate-denying-very-far-right) people to speak out and show you can be right wing and still believe in listening to science.
10 January 2012 1:47PM
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10 January 2012 1:49PM
Booker Worstall et al when confronted with something like the DECC site will nit pick in an attempt to discredit what is a fine effort. The fact that they whinge and are inept at using the site says it all.
10 January 2012 1:53PM
the calculator is a great tool but I think it hugely overestimates how difficult it is to cut energy use in commercial buildings simply because of current trends. The default is for cooling demand to increase by 250%! This is not inevitable but the result of a lack of regulation on energy efficiency for commercial buildings. Until this year commercial buildings didn't have to meet maximum solar gain standards if they had adequate AC planned. Clearly stronger regulation could reverse this trend just like it has and continues to do in housing.
10 January 2012 1:56PM
20 is a bit high, isn't it? This is on the NHS website
Not that I'm suggesting you're overweight or anything, and the NHS says this hypothesis is quite tentative. Still, I reckon 18 is plenty warm enough without an extra jumper.
10 January 2012 1:59PM
For the purposes of clarity it might be usefull to look at what Booker wrote and to read some of the following comments.
It can be quite entertaining in a wierd distorted reality kind of way. It does not look as if the readers were particularly impressed with the subject as they quickly drifted off onto major matters of import such as the stolen emails and troll hunting.
10 January 2012 2:05PM
Alright, I've turned it down to 19C - can we compromise there. Perhaps it does explain why I've been getting tubby, but it's just all this sitting around at home writing thing...
10 January 2012 2:07PM
This issue is dealt with here in the assumptions in the DECC wiki. You can tweak the pathway in the costings layout by selecting 'cheaper' in the commercial heating and cooling option, but it doesn't seem to make a world of difference.
10 January 2012 2:35PM
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10 January 2012 2:46PM
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10 January 2012 2:52PM
Perhaps you just don't understand something quite simple. I'm not sure that's my fault.
Couldn't agree more. I don't see myself as a lefty by any stretch - but who on the right has sensible ideas about how to deal with real, scientifically-defined environmental challenges?
10 January 2012 3:10PM
Booker has once again shown his lack of understanding.
This was analysed over on energyfromthorium.com, which understandably is quite pro nuclear. The biggest issue identified is that the renewables don't take into account storage needs. Yes - solar might be cheap, but it needs to be stored.
My own suggestion is that you can have lots of renewables if your main source of heating is domestic fuel cells running on gas. These provide pletny of electricity in winter when solar doesn't, and also act as a reserve capacity. This is the only way but means that renewables lock us into significant natural gas usage, which nuclear doesn't.
10 January 2012 3:26PM
Fo' wot it's worth, regardless of the UK's findings / policies, (I speak as someone mightily alarmed by the unequivocal evidence of man-made climate change) there is NO WAY that renewables will be able to fulfill the global energy requirements of an increasingly prosperous developing-world population, let alone ours.
Boys n girls: it's time for the committed development and rollout of Pebble Bed Reactors. To quote from this link:
Also, some great links here:
Wired
Dvice
10 January 2012 3:39PM
To be fair, I think that what Tim was pointing was that renewables only appear to have similar costs to conventional generation if you reduce (by rougfhly 5%) the power usage. This may well be a sensible thing to do, but I think his point that this wasn't clearly flaged in the headline descriptions is a fair one.
10 January 2012 3:41PM
"Windmills are so ugly in comparison" but compare none the less. Probably not as useful either.
10 January 2012 3:47PM
What a good idea. I hope that this could be used for other aspects of policy making.
10 January 2012 4:07PM
What you need is a pedal-powered computer.
10 January 2012 4:11PM
As I believe Leo Hickman acknowledged yesterday in the wind farm audit, we simply do not have adequate data to estimate the actual emission savings attributable to wind energy. Claims range from ~800 kg CO2 per MWh to zero or (in some scenarios) wind farms increase emissions. On this basis, the DECC calculator is of questionable value (and more realistically, no value) regardless of Mr Booker's complaints.
Quote (Leo Hickman): Until some independent, peer-reviewed research is published on this matter, this question will remain unanswered.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jan/09/wind-turbines-increasing-carbon-emissions?commentpage=1
10 January 2012 4:18PM
What I struggle to understand is why, even if you don't think that humans are causing global warming, would you not still recognise that continuing to use fossil fuels in the way we do is a bad thing.
Even if AGW was a myth, we still don't want to be digging up or importing millions of tons of coal, oil, and gas and having to deal with the resulting polution they cause.
@legjoints - I've turned my thermostat down to 15C because I'm hardcore like that.
10 January 2012 4:26PM
marklynas01
Thanks for the link but that only seems to concern provision of energy for commercial buildings not energy efficiency of the buildings. My point was about the difficulty in reducing the energy input for commercial buildings which I think is overstated in the tool. Obviously the efficiency gains from using heat pumps vs electric or gas reduces energy footprint of buildings but my point was that I think the calculator assumes as default that the trend for highly glazed overheating office buildings and single glazed retail will continue. Simple planning regulation could reverse this trend at very little cost.
10 January 2012 4:31PM
The comments under Worstall's blog article really are quite striking.
Neither Worstall, nor any of his readers, are able to find clearly marked information on a conventionally designed web page.
They're convinced there's a dark DECC conspiracy afoot.
Many of CIF's climate sceptics are often unable to read or understand information they've been shown in the course of a discussion on CIF.
I've always assumed this is some form of dead parrot denialist trolling,
automatically replying with "I don't see any data" when shown the data they had asked for.
Presumably they aren't doing this on Wortall's blog.
There seems to be a genuine cognitive problem.
10 January 2012 4:35PM
...Booker hasn't found it either, although, in his defence, he probably hasn't even looked at the web page he's writing about...
10 January 2012 4:58PM
It's pretty common in general and CiF often throws up good examples. In some cases, it might just be trolling or an attempt to discredit the 'opposition' but I think in most cases it's just rather extreme confirmation bias at work.
It doesn't matter how many times you present the information or demolish their arguments, if it counters their firmly held belief, they either won't acknowledge it at all or they'll counter it with the same or similar BS arguments. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
10 January 2012 5:27PM
I think a problem with the calculator is that although some underlying assumptions are provided, these seem to be rather high level and don't fully reflect the range of issues which affect costs. Worstall therefore has a point.
This is exemplified by Leo's column yesterday (along with a few of the comments - the intelligent ones - not those just slagging off the messengers because of who they were), highlighting some of the potential hidden costs associated with wind. The same questions could be raised about eg all potential externalities associated with fossil fuels or Government-borne security costs associated with nuclear.
That's not to say the calculator is no use - it looks like a good tool. Rather that this is a complicated field with many hidden assumptions.
10 January 2012 6:03PM
For want of a jumper, our planet was lost. ;)
10 January 2012 6:26PM
Why is it a problem?
According to the Peak Oil guys, we're about to run out of oil and other fossil fuels, aren't we? This is, therefore, something that will fix itself and apparently in short order.
So why make a deal of it? Or do you think the Peak Hydrocarbon guys are wrong after all?
10 January 2012 6:34PM
That may be the case on the CIF threads, but in the case of Worstall's readers, the problem isn't with their debating position, it is with their inability to perform web navigation tasks.
They simply - and genuinely - could not find a web page from a link on a menu.
They became confused by the navigation "decision points" that website menus impose.
10 January 2012 6:40PM
No, you've completely misunderstood the situation.
Worstall's problem wasn't that he disagreed with the cost assumptions, his problem was that he couldn't find them on the website.
Neither could any of his readers.
10 January 2012 6:50PM
If we burn all of the remaining and accessible fossil fuels on the planet how high will the atmospheric CO2 level go? And how high would that push temperatures?
Bear in mind that what peak oil means is simply the point at which maximum extraction is reached. That's not the same as the end of oil, though with demand exceeding supply we can expect oil to get a lot more expensive.
The same goes for gas and coal.
10 January 2012 6:53PM
So we're NOT about to run out. Oh, look, another scare vanishes in a puff of reality.
BTW, oil is expensive because of speculation and artificial supply restriction. Oil prices have little to do with supply and demand.
10 January 2012 6:57PM
No, the peer reviewed data exists. It doesn't matter how many times you claim it does not. Whether Leo Hickman says it exists or not has no bearing either.
10 January 2012 6:59PM
No, all of the assumptions are clear.
Taken with Prof MacKay's work on which this calculator is based, this represents the most open-source model in existence.
If you don't like it, you are free to argue with the assumptions. But you are not left the option to claim that the assumptions are hidden, because they are clearly not.
10 January 2012 7:13PM
Upon what evidence did you base your view that oil was about to run out imminently? The Hubbert peak oil plot suggests that though peak oil is around nowish, there is still likely to be oil for another couple of centuries, just that the supply is going to be decreasing.
I don't think that's the case. Concerns over Iran and Nigeria have contributed to the recent price rise.
10 January 2012 8:28PM
So, the government that has already been exposed for colluding with the nuclear lobby to deceive the British public over Fukushima has produced an online calculator that purports to show our future energy options? Excuse me while I contain my excitement.
Far from Lynas's portrayal of this Tory-approved calculator as being "one of the most open and transparent pieces of policy-making ever undertaken", it is really just an exercise in offering a carefully-selected set of sources that provide a range of answers that suit those who created it.
For instance, any suggestion that nukes will cost the same in 2050 as they do now flies in the face of all experience of the past half century. It is a preposterous suggestion. Nukes just keep getting more expensive. And where do we put the waste? At what cost? No one knows - and some people clearly do not care.
Similarly, given the metronomic cost reductions in solar for the past several decades - for every doubling of manufacturing capacity, costs fall 20% - then Lynas's suggestion to "make solar PV and wave the same price in 2050 as today" is equally preposterous.
Far from getting "beyond the energy culture wars" this calculator will simply allow every internet expert to declare they have solved the energy crisis by plugging in their personal biases to a likely already-biased set of assumptions used to construct this calculator from the nuke-loving Tories.
10 January 2012 8:30PM
> ...Prof MacKay's work on which this calculator is based...
And there's another, huge red flag given that MacKay's work has been found to be fundamentally flawed: MacKay claims that the UK cannot be powered by renewables alone. This is false. He claims the UK's demand figure is 195 kWh/d - but the true demand figure is 82 kWh/d and that can easily be reduced with efficiency measures and EVs.
MacKay's central claim that the UK cannot be powered by renewables alone is false.
10 January 2012 8:39PM
Christopher Booker is partly correct about the assumptions behind the 2050 pathways calculator, but has got the wrong answer because he asked the wrong question. The pathways are related to those used in MARKAL, DECC's macro-economic energy system model. MARKAL omits certain pathways, so these cannot be modelled as according to MARKAL they simply do not exist.
My personal interest is in decarbonised Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG) with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) at source, used to produce decarbonised electricity in existing gas fired power stations. No pathway exists in MARKAL from solid biomass, waste and coal to SNG transmitted via the high pressure gas grid to gas fired power stations to produce decarbonised electricity.
In terms of how the 2050 calculator worked, in order to simulate a non-existent pathway, I had to assume a vast amount of algae production with the same total energy as the amount of biomass, waste and coal I wanted to model. This produced a somewhat meaningful emissions curve, but the economic outcome was meaningless as MARKAL does not model negative cost waste. The pathways used to create MARKAL are not easy to find on the Internet, unless one is really determined to find them.
In other words, DECC has pre-programmed its own largely concealed pathway assumptions into the calculator. In that respect Christopher Booker is correct, albeit he has chosen slightly the wrong 'drum' to bang.
The recently published analysis of the Levelised Cost of Electricity for various technologies, including the hidden 'on costs' of wind goes some way to demonstrate Chris' point. Offshore wind is vastly more expensive than nuclear or gas. As gas can be decarbonised, stored and 'dispatched' on demand and nuclear can provide zero carbon base power, a realistically economical and technically feasible energy policy would include a balanced portfolio of intermittent wind, base load nuclear and 'dispatchable' decarbonised gas with CCS, with embedded microgeneration and some coal with CCS o produce a cross-portfolio CO2 emissions intensity of 50gCO2/kWh in line with DECC policy. MARKAL and the 2050 calculator, as currently programmed, are simply incapable of modelling such a technology mix.
10 January 2012 9:17PM
Yet if memory serves correctly, you linked to three studies yesterday - two of which were open access. These appeared to be concerned with "energy payback - eroi" and thus have no bearing on the issues raised in the Civitas report. To avoid any misunderstanding, to which peer reviewed studies do you refer - i.e. investigating the relationship between wind energy and the putative negation of its emission savings by increased operation of balancing generation ?
10 January 2012 9:58PM
What is the assumption for the cost associated with morbidity, caused by breathing / heart problems due to emissions from coal power and is that figure affected by the type of coal (and hence the efficacy of electricity generation) being burned ?
What is the assumption for costs associated with morbidity due to doses associated eating seafood containing radioactive materials released from off-shore oil and gas extraction in the North Sea ?
Etc.
I'm not criticising MacKay's work - I think it's a superb contribution to the discussion. Your claim that "all the assumptions are clear" is however wrong.
10 January 2012 10:04PM
There are nevertheless concerns with Mackay's comments on intermittent renewables. On page 188, he appears to conflate the challenge in meeting huge variations in the demand for electricity - which is predictable within a few percent - with handling the variation that occurs in the output of wind infrastructure - which is far less predictable. Note Mackay's words: Every morning [a national slew-rate of 4 GW per hour occurs] Can you see the difference here - the massive fluctuations in the output of wind energy do not occur every morning at a set hour. The fact that we can satisfy widely fluctuating demand for electricity has little bearing on the challenge we face in maintaining grid stability when large volumes of wind energy are involved. Yet Prof. Mackay appears to make this conclusion - in his words: "An extra occasional slew of 4 GW per hour induced by sudden wind variations is no reasonable cause for ditching the idea of country-sized wind farms"
10 January 2012 10:50PM
Damien Carrington picked on one model provided in the calculator to come to the conclusion and headline that "
". and
However this model assumed much greater energy efficiency than the other models and so less electricity was required. The costs were comparative for the other models but the renewbles were producing much less electricity for this scenario. Damian, with his cyclops eye failed to make this clear
The inference from this model therefore is it costs significantly more to produce the same amount of electricity using renewables.
This was the point made by Booker and was also picked up by the Financial Times and Roger Pielke Junior.
One has to question why the sample models did not do a straight, fair comparison to get a true cost of renewables over the alternatives.
http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2011/12/will-green-energy-really-cost-britons-4600-a-year-per-head/#axzz1j637nzvL
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-not-to-do-technology-assessment.html
11 January 2012 1:00AM
"Perhaps you just don't understand something quite simple. I'm not sure that's my fault."
Mark - but it is your fault - thats exactly the point ! Its not straightforward and its not simple. If only !!
Making the case that renewables are or will be more cost efficient flies in the face of all observational evidence. Why do solar companies keep going bust ? Why has Civitas just released a scathing report about how ineffiecient (even from a CO2 perpsective) thast wind power is ? Why is it that all renewables require subsidies and ROC's to survive. Why has the renewable energy contribution not grown in line with expectation ? Why has shale gas driven down the prices of gas in North Amerrica so markedly ?
Whoch is why Bopokerd and Worstalls points are so valid. Can we make it 100% transparent what the assumptions are ? Because the DECC website (for al your protestations) is not transparent and is not easy to understand how their conclusions can be reached. Its 'smoke and mirrors'.
So yes - find a way to make this 'sell' easy to understand. Find a way to make it clear why we should all invest in renewables. Because so far you have not made your case.
11 January 2012 7:05AM
Oh Immy:
The point of the article is really simple and informative. You're wrong.
Because the government keeps breaking their promises on the help they say they will provide to get this flegling industry going.
Because they are anti-renewables pro-status quo inactivists.
What? fossil fuels get plenty of subsidies. And these are new technologies that need help getting off the ground but it is clear they will get cheaper anf fossil fuels will get more expensive with time. It's called getting prepared.
Because the government keeps breaking their promises on the help they say they will provide to get this flegling industry going. Again.
Because they don't care about poisoning water tables, causing earthquakes and increasing global warming using an energy intensive unconventional source.
That's right, all the assumptions are hidden behind "links". So hard for the old buffers to get into this internets thing isn't it. And even if you do, the information is all wrapped up with "arithmetic" "science" and "maths". In fact, some of that stuff is even based on "reality". This should be made clear to everyone before they go ahead and believe some of this stuff.
11 January 2012 7:39AM
This is fun isn't it?
So, I follow Mark's instructions, all the way to this:
Explanation of our working assumption:
2050 working assumption oil price 2010-2050
2050 working assumption Coal Price 2010-2050
2050 working assumption Gas Price 2010-2050
As you wil note if you go there, the gas link is dead. Isn't in fact a link at all. They do not explain their price assumptions about gas.
Which is what I said they weren't doing: explaining their price assumptions about gas. In the parts that they do have prices (ie, the prices they use in the spreadsheets, not the bit I was looking for which is how do they estimate those prices they're using in the spreadsheets).
The importance of this is only that I wanted to see how they had estimated, or not estimated, the impact of shale gas on future fuel prices. And as they don't explain their assumptions I don't know.
Which leaves us just with the comment Booker got out of DECC. I we do extract shale it will all be exported so it won't make any difference. Which is a response so complete in its stupidity that it might even be correct.
So, back to you Mark. I originally said they don't explain their assumptions about pricing. I still say they don't.
As to the other post, err, yes, that's exactly what I say.
What irks me about what is being said is that the argument in favour of energy efficiency is being used to urge renewables....that's a political thing of course, a rhetorical trope.
The argument renewables or fossil, efficiency nor not efficiency, are two entirely separate arguments.
11 January 2012 8:01AM
Minor point.
I started blogging in 2004. Started writing pieces for newspapers in 2004. My first pieces in this newspaper were in summer 2008.
I became a press officer for UKIP in autumn 2008 for the run up to the 2009 elections. So we've the cause and effect the wrong way around here.
Still being minor, what I actually do for a living is deal with the very weird metals that certain technologies require. More specifically, I look at where we might get larger supplies of the sort of metals that an expansion of renewables will require.
Want to know where we can get lots more gallium and germanium to make solar cells from? That's something I can tell you. Want to have an order of magnitude expansion of scandium supply, so that solid oxide fuels cells (like the Bloom Energy Box) can be manufactured? That's exactly and specifically what I am working on this very day.
My experience is a just a tad deeper and richer than that original explanation implies......
11 January 2012 8:21AM
Further, the confusion about renewables and efficiency does not start with me. Here is the article from this newspaper that I mention in that second blog post:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/28/uk-switch-low-carbon-energy
Do you think that headline makes the suitable difference between efficiency and renewables?
No, the Markit pathway does not say that at all. It says that having greater energy efficiency would have similar costs.
Err, CCS doesn't work (yet, at least) and 42% renewables is not a low target.
But that'sn nitpicking. What I was complaining about was the way in which an energy efficiency pathway was being used to tout a renewables pathway. The two are not, as Mark says, the same.
As I pointed out, if we had the energy efficiency but also low cost gas (ie, shale, something the calculator doesn't have) then we might get to a much better turnout, no?
Anyone want to play with the calculator to see?
11 January 2012 8:52AM
Tim Worstall - is it your view that the environmental cost of shale gas is of little consequence?