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WEF: Big energy CEOs don’t get the renewable revolution Updated for 2026

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The World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Electricity‘ report on power generation makes depressing reading.

Perhaps the pessimism about new technologies is predictable given that Davos represents large companies, not the innovative companies at frontier of energy transformation.

Even so, to say that renewable power sources, excluding hydro, are projected to generate less than a quarter of OECD electricity by 2040 is a strikingly conservative. The percentage is probably about 8% today.

Part of their pessimism seems to derive from a very outdated view of the economics of solar power. Take a look at the chart (right). It shows WEF’s estimates for the costs of electricity generation now and in the future.

The yellow line at the top, starting off the scale, is solar PV. A megawatt hour is said to cost well over $200 in 2016 (about £130). Even by 2030 it’ll be over $110.

PV in Dubai is already at half the price WEF predicts in 20130

I think the people in Davos may have been imbibing too much of the local homebrew. Today, in overcast Britain, groups of installers are racing to put panels on the ground as fast as they can across the southern counties to ensure that they get the current subsidy rates.

The price they get for a medium-sized commercial field? A subsidy of about $100 a megawatt hour (6.38 pence per kilowatt hour) plus the wholesale price of electricity. Let’s call that $70 a megawatt hour in addition.

So even in one of the least attractive parts of the world, PV is already cheaper than WEF says, and by a large margin. More tellingly, one of the latest auctions for installing PV, in Dubai in November last year, produced a figure of about $65 a megawatt hour.

Just to be clear: an installation firm promised to install a large PV farm if it was paid less than a third of the price that WEF says is the underlying cost of solar in 2016 – and about half the price it predicts for 2030.

Open a newspaper in most parts of the world today, and you’ll see optimistic references to the prospect of ‘grid parity’ for the best suited renewable in the local market, whether it is biomass, onshore wind, storage or PV.

A business-oriented organisation like WEF should spend more time in the outside world, sensing the excitement about the rates of progress of low-carbon technologies rather than unquestioningly repeating the five year old wisdom of its leading sponsors.

Perhaps most surprisingly, WEF’s cost figures are approximately 50% higher than those produced by the International Energy Agency, long a sceptic about the progress of PV. And its figures for onshore wind are equally wrong.

By now, I would have thought that at least parts of big business would have recognised the inevitability of the transition to renewables (with storage) and begun to look at how it could profitably participate.

WEF: what are your sources?

None of the projections, estimates or calculations in the report are given a source. We cannot check their accuracy or even the provenance of their figures.

I’m sure that the writers of the document have tried to use reasonable data. But the report is stacked full of statements made without any support or justification, many of which look highly contentious.

We are expected to believe, for example, that “wholesale electricity prices are expected to continue to rise by 57% in the EU” between now and 2040 at the same as retail prices are expected to stay the same. It doesn’t need an economist to say that such a combination is impossible.  

My confidence in the report’s recommendations was further shaken by WEF’s assertion that the EU had wasted $100bn by siting wind and PV in the wrong countries.

“It is obvious to most European citizens that southern Europe has the lion’s share of the solar irradiation while northern Europe has the wind”, says the report – before concluding that Germany has installed too much PV and Spain too much wind.

Wong again. 2013 estimates from the IEA suggest that the average productivity of a Spanish turbine was 26.9% of its maximum capacity, but only 18.5% in Germany. Spain’s wind turbines are almost 50% more productive than Germany’s. In fact Spain managed slightly more than the worldwide average and was only just below the UK or Denmark in average output.

The real stories the WEF missed

Actually, it isn’t that ‘northern Europe has the wind’ but rather that westerly coasts have high wind speeds, making Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic turbines better than almost any inshore areas in northern Europe.

There’s a second reason why Spain should have wind turbines: wind speeds are relatively poorly correlated with the winds in northern Europe. For a more secure European supply, turbines in Spain have a high value, particularly when interconnection with France is improved.

 And in the case of Germany, which does have much lower output from PV than Spain, the argument that it should have left the solar revolution to its southern neighbours is a remarkably ahistorical conclusion.

Without Germany’s very costly support of PV a decade ago we would not currently be looking at grid parity for solar across much of the world.

 

 

Chris Goodall is an expert on energy, environment and climate change and valued contributor to The Ecologist. He blogs at Carbon Commentary.

The report: ‘The Future of Electricity – Attracting Investment to Build Tomorrow’s Electricity Sector‘, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, “outlines recommendations to attract the needed investment and grasp these new opportunities.”

This article was originally published on Carbon Commentary.

 

 




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WEF: Big energy CEOs just don’t get the renewable revolution Updated for 2026

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The World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Electricity‘ report on power generation makes depressing reading.

Perhaps the pessimism about new technologies is predictable given that Davos represents large companies, not the innovative companies at frontier of energy transformation.

Even so, to say that renewable power sources, excluding hydro, are projected to generate less than a quarter of OECD electricity by 2040 is a strikingly conservative. The percentage is probably about 8% today.

Part of their pessimism seems to derive from a very outdated view of the economics of solar power. Take a look at the chart (right). It shows WEF’s estimates for the costs of electricity generation now and in the future.

The yellow line at the top, starting off the scale, is solar PV. A megawatt hour is said to cost well over $200 in 2016 (about £130). Even by 2030 it’ll be over $110.

PV in Dubai is already at half the price WEF predicts in 20130

I think the people in Davos may have been imbibing too much of the local homebrew. Today, in overcast Britain, groups of installers are racing to put panels on the ground as fast as they can across the southern counties to ensure that they get the current subsidy rates.

The price they get for a medium-sized commercial field? A subsidy of about $100 a megawatt hour (6.38 pence per kilowatt hour) plus the wholesale price of electricity. Let’s call that $70 a megawatt hour in addition.

So even in one of the least attractive parts of the world, PV is already cheaper than WEF says, and by a large margin. More tellingly, one of the latest auctions for installing PV, in Dubai in November last year, produced a figure of about $65 a megawatt hour.

Just to be clear: an installation firm promised to install a large PV farm if it was paid less than a third of the price that WEF says is the underlying cost of solar in 2016 – and about half the price it predicts for 2030.

Open a newspaper in most parts of the world today, and you’ll see optimistic references to the prospect of ‘grid parity’ for the best suited renewable in the local market, whether it is biomass, onshore wind, storage or PV.

A business-oriented organisation like WEF should spend more time in the outside world, sensing the excitement about the rates of progress of low-carbon technologies rather than unquestioningly repeating the five year old wisdom of its leading sponsors.

Perhaps most surprisingly, WEF’s cost figures are approximately 50% higher than those produced by the International Energy Agency, long a sceptic about the progress of PV. And its figures for onshore wind are equally wrong.

By now, I would have thought that at least parts of big business would have recognised the inevitability of the transition to renewables (with storage) and begun to look at how it could profitably participate.

WEF: what are your sources?

None of the projections, estimates or calculations in the report are given a source. We cannot check their accuracy or even the provenance of their figures.

I’m sure that the writers of the document have tried to use reasonable data. But the report is stacked full of statements made without any support or justification, many of which look highly contentious.

We are expected to believe, for example, that “wholesale electricity prices are expected to continue to rise by 57% in the EU” between now and 2040 at the same as retail prices are expected to stay the same. It doesn’t need an economist to say that such a combination is impossible.  

My confidence in the report’s recommendations was further shaken by WEF’s assertion that the EU had wasted $100bn by siting wind and PV in the wrong countries.

“It is obvious to most European citizens that southern Europe has the lion’s share of the solar irradiation while northern Europe has the wind”, says the report – before concluding that Germany has installed too much PV and Spain too much wind.

Wong again. 2013 estimates from the IEA suggest that the average productivity of a Spanish turbine was 26.9% of its maximum capacity, but only 18.5% in Germany. Spain’s wind turbines are almost 50% more productive than Germany’s. In fact Spain managed slightly more than the worldwide average and was only just below the UK or Denmark in average output.

The real stories the WEF missed

Actually, it isn’t that ‘northern Europe has the wind’ but rather that westerly coasts have high wind speeds, making Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic turbines better than almost any inshore areas in northern Europe.

There’s a second reason why Spain should have wind turbines: wind speeds are relatively poorly correlated with the winds in northern Europe. For a more secure European supply, turbines in Spain have a high value, particularly when interconnection with France is improved.

 And in the case of Germany, which does have much lower output from PV than Spain, the argument that it should have left the solar revolution to its southern neighbours is a remarkably ahistorical conclusion.

Without Germany’s very costly support of PV a decade ago we would not currently be looking at grid parity for solar across much of the world.

 

 

Chris Goodall is an expert on energy, environment and climate change and valued contributor to The Ecologist. He blogs at Carbon Commentary.

The report: ‘The Future of Electricity – Attracting Investment to Build Tomorrow’s Electricity Sector‘, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, “outlines recommendations to attract the needed investment and grasp these new opportunities.”

This article was originally published on Carbon Commentary.

 

 




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Coal’s dark cloud hangs over Germany’s energy revolution Updated for 2026

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The energy market in Germany saw a spectacular change last year as renewable energy became the major source of its electricity supply – leaving lignite, coal and nuclear behind.

Wind, solar, hydropower and biomass reached a new record, producing 27.3% (157bn kilowatt hours) of Germany’s total electricity – and overtaking lignite (156bn kWh) – according to AGEB, a joint association of energy companies and research institutes.

This was an achievement that many energy experts could not have imagined just a few years ago.

Beyond that, Germany’s primary energy consumption – which includes the energy used in power generation, heating and transport – fell to its lowest level since reunification with East Germany in 1990, AGEB report: it shrank by 4.8% compared with 2013.

Estimates by AGEB indicate that Germany’s CO2 emissions will have fallen in 2014 by around 5% compared with 2013, as consumption of all fossil fuels fell and the contribution from renewables rose. Half the CO2 savings came from power generation.

Germany’s use of hard coal (aka black coal) was 7.9% lower in electricity generation than in 2013, while the use of the more carbon-polluting lignite (aka brown coal) fell 2.3%. The share of fossil fuels in the overall energy mix fell from 81.9% in 2013 to 80.8%.

Success? Yes, but …

At first sight, that looks like a big success story. But it comes after several years of rising emissions that have cast doubt on the ‘Energiewende’ – the ambitious German energy transition plan for a simultaneous phase-out of nuclear power and a move to a carbon-free economy.

And researchers calculate that – after allowing for the mild winter of 2014 – the cut in fossil fuel use in energy production meant CO2 emissions fell by only 1%.

In July 2014, a group of NGOs published a study on the EU’s 30 worst CO2-emitting thermal power plants. German power stations featured six times among the 10 dirtiest.

Never heard of Neurath, Niederausssem, Jänschwalde, Boxberg, Weisweiler and Lippendorf? These are the sites of Germany’s lignite-powered stations, which together emit more than 140 megatonnes of CO2 annually – making Germany Europe’s worst coal polluter, followed by Poland and the UK.

And while all of Germany’s remaining nine nuclear power plants must by law be shut down no later than the end of 2022, there is no such legally-binding phase-out for the coal industry. So no one can tell how long Germany will go on burning the worst climate change contributors, lignite and hard coal.

How can Germany meet its emissions targets?

Germany has one of the most ambitious climate targets worldwide: by 2020, its CO2 emissions are due to be 40% below their 1990 level, a cut of nearly 80 million tonnes. But how can it achieve this?

The latest Climate Protection Action Plan, adopted by the German Cabinet on 3 December last year, says that 22 million tonnes of CO2 will be saved “by further measures, especially in the power sector”. Which is great – but well short of the target 80 million tonnes.

Does that mean less power from coal? The Greens pointed out that a coal-fired power plant such as Jänschwalde alone produces more than 22 million tonnes of CO2 – and Jänschwalde is not even the biggest German polluter.

So, right now, the Energiewende seems a story both of success and of failure. Mojib Latif, the German meteorologist and oceanographer who co-authored the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, says:

“The only way of countering the rise in CO2 is to expand renewables. The technology is there – it just has to be used. My most urgent wish for the energy future is that Germany must stop using coal. Otherwise we have no chance of achieving our climate targets.”

 

 

Henner Weithöner is a Berlin-based freelance journalist specialising in renewable energy and climate change. He is also a tutor for advanced journalism training, focusing on environmental reporting and online journalism, especially in developing countries. LinkedIn: de.linkedin.com/pub/henner-weithöner/48/5/151/; Twitter: @weithoener

This article is an edited version of one first published by Climate News Network.

 




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Seven ways the Government is pushing up our energy bills Updated for 2026

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Household energy bills are in the spotlight again ahead of the general election in May.

A recent report showed that more than a million Britons in work can’t afford to heat their homes. Meanwhile a drop in wholesale energy costs led the government to tell the Big Six to cut consumer’s bills.

Ed Miliband has also called for Ofgem, the energy regulator (which is already investigating the Big Six), to have powers to force energy firms to reduce their tariffs to reflect wholesale prices.

E.On took the lead this week by saying it will reduce its standard gas charge by 3.5% with immediate effect, while one analyst, Emily Gosden, tweeted that British Gas stands to massively profit from the situation:

“If British Gas fails to cut energy prices despite falling costs, its profits for 2015 could soar by 60%, analyst Lakis Athanasiou estimates.”

So, to what extent could coalition Government policies contribute to high energy bills?

Paying out to big players

One of the themes of cross-party discussions on energy has been the importance of stimulating competition.

Yet in practice the coalition’s complex series of reforms to the power market have tended to reduce competition and increase Government price-setting and largesse – largely not for the new players, but for the existing power players.

There are two main mechanisms that are problematic in this respect: the capacity market and Contracts for Difference.

1. Capacity market windfall. The capacity market has paid quite a lot of large electricity suppliers for keeping their generating stations going when that’s what they were planning to do anyway.

In particular old nuclear stations were almost certainly going to carry on as long as they could. But they’re now being paid to do so as well.

Meanwhile, coal stations are the biggest problem for the climate, and getting coal out of the power system is widely agreed to be (at least on the supply end of the power equation) the cheapest way of improving our environmental performance.

But over this Parliament they have started generating much more of our power than before – despite the Government calling for a stop to overseas coal finance at international climate talks, saying no to new coal without CCS, and enacting an Emissions Performance Standard for new coal.

The Capacity Market is now going to pay them to keep UK coal plants open, whilst the Carbon Floor Price is taxing them to close them down. Consumers lose both ways. I unusually find myself agreeing with Head of Centrica Sam Laidlaw on the “inherent paradox” in this situation.

2. Contracts for Difference supporting big energy firms – and Hinkley: The Contract for Difference (CfD) support mechanism really suits big players, who can keep out the smaller players and so maintain the existing system that has been responsible for the prices we see.

There is considerable complexity, little transparency over contract allocation, and considerable risk in investing for energy development upfront – a situation where the risks are best dealt with by large players with legal and public affairs teams.

Despite setting itself against consumer subsidies for nuclear power in the Coalition Agreement, the proposed new power station at Hinkley Point will have many implicit subsidies under CfD, such as grid connection, accident insurance, and repayment risks covered by Government.

Despite this, its index-linked headline cost of power will still be higher than onshore wind, and probably ground-based solar well before it gets built. If it ever does.

Failing to help citizens lower their bills

The best way for consumers of energy to lower their bills is to use less. Not by shivering in the dark but by using the gas, electricity and heating fuel more efficiently. This is not only a social good but should cut emissions too. How well have the coalition done in encouraging energy savings?

3. Green Deal ‘disappointing’: The Green Deal – the Government’s flagship project for efficiency – has been a “disappointing failure“ according to Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, with poor planning, communications and implementation.

4. ECO cut: Another scheme, the only publicly funded source of energy efficiency work on homes, called ‘ECO’ was cut in a move that PM Cameron alledgedly said constituted “cutting the green crap”.

This happened when the Government were on the back-foot politically after Ed Miliband pledged to freeze consumer energy prices.

This meant a considerable loss of momentum on efficiency installation – and so higher bills for consumers in the longer-term – and a windfall of around £245 million for energy suppliers, according to analysis by Association for the Conservation of Energy.

5. EU efficiency target blocked: The UK has also been highly obstructive in seeking agreement on a new EU wide target that would provide the certainty for a new round of efficiency gains. Much of the momentum for energy efficiency – and thus for lower bills – comes from EU targets and initiatives (don’t tell UKIP).

Examples include the product standards which provide savings of over £100 on the average bill (see chart 11).

Keeping the UK system stuck in the past

Not acknowledging the economic and security threat of climate change means not thinking ahead to a new way of doing energy. The future will not look like the past. There will be cheaper and better ways of getting energy services, unless UK policy locks us into the old way of doing things.

6. Blocking wind and solar: The cheapest forms of low carbon power will soon be onshore wind and solar. Senior members of the Government are blocking wind and undermining solar, despite David Cameron hailing Britain’s renewable power success at Ban Ki Moon’s summit last year:

“We’ve more than doubled our capacity in renewable electricity in the last 4 years alone. We now have enough solar to power almost a million UK homes.”

7. Decentralised energy: The coalition’s Green Investment Bank has recently announced £200m of funding for community energy schemes, but it is not fulfilling its full potential.

The GIB could do a lot more if it was given fully-fledged borrowing powers or if it was expanded into a broader state investor similar to green investment structures like Germany and France.

A number of major banks are now arguing that the future will be a decentralised smart grid. UBS are the largest private bank in the world and are advising that large-scale power stations (such as the ones supported by the capacity market and nuclear CfDs) will be rendered redundant.

Similar warnings about the rise of decentralised systems have come from Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Barclays and other private banks advising investors on value for money.

 

 

Dr Doug Parr is Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist.

This article was originally published on the Greenpeace Energydesk.

 




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Investors falter as fossil fuels face ‘perfect storm’ Updated for 2026

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The world’s investors – both big and small – think primarily in terms of making good returns on their money. And, over the years, investing in the fossil fuel industry has been considered a safe bet.

Yet maybe, just maybe, attitudes are changing – and fairly profoundly – as financial analysts warn that the industry faces a ‘perfect storm’ in 2015.

The Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI), a London-based financial thinktank, analyses the energy industry and lobbies to limit emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

On one side, CTI says, the industry is being buffeted by a crash in oil prices and a drop in demand. On the other, there’s the threat of increasing regulation aimed at cutting GHG emissions and a worldwide growth in renewable forms of energy.

Cool reception

Anthony Hobley, CTI’s chief executive, says investors are realising that the energy world is changing.

“At one stage, when we talked to investment firms about the risks of investing in fossil fuels we were given a cool reception”, Hobley told Climate News Network.

“Now we are being invited to brief the big investment funds. Investors have an enormous amount of power – they are weighing up the risks of investing in fossil fuels and wondering just how safe their money is.”

The CTI has long warned of the dangers of a ‘carbon bubble’, with investments in fossil fuels becoming ‘stranded assets’ due to the imposition of stricter regulatory controls on emissions and the widespread adoption of renewable energy.

“The carbon bubble is not going to burst in 2015”, Hobley says. “The transition from fossil fuels to other forms of energy is going to take place over several decades.

“But a combination of more regulations, new technologies, the falling price of renewable energy, and the need for a more efficient use of resources, is making investors rethink their investment strategies.”

Energy companies are also reconsidering their plans. EON, Germany’s largest power utility, announced earlier this month that it would be reorganising its structure in order to focus on the development of renewables.

Concern in boardrooms

A worldwide campaign calling for divestment in fossil fuels is another factor causing some concern in the boardrooms of the big fossil fuel companies.

The industry is powerful and, despite the problems it’s facing, it is unlikely to collapse anytime soon. But it has been severely damaged by recent events.

Goldman Sachs, the global investment bank, says a trillion dollars of investments in various oil and gas projects around the world are at risk – or stranded – due to the fall in oil prices.

A rapid rise in production from US shale deposits in recent years has caused a glut on the global oil market.

Analysts say a significant slowdown in the rate of economic growth in China is also a major factor behind the present fall-off in oil prices, and in the big declines in coal prices on the world market.

 

 

Kieran Cooke writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




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Blinded by the lights? How power companies just stole £1 billion – from us Updated for 2026

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So, the presents have been opened and the over-eating survived. What now remains of your ‘spirit of Christmas’? For me, the answer is always the same – it’s the lights.

Since childhood, they have fascinated me. I would wander the streets, marvelling at efforts people made to light up their houses and neighbourhoods.

It didn’t have to be much; just a symbolic willingness to do something that illuminated far more than it lit up. This has always been my ‘spirit of Christmas’.

Societies need their lights to be guided by, never more so than today.

I have been trying to find some of the same altruism or mysticism in the government’s own leap into ‘keeping the lights on’ politics. This has taken the form of the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC’s) first round of ‘capacity market’ auctions.

Remember Enron? It’s a game …

An idiots guide to capacity markets would tell you they are essentially a game for idiots. You can’t auction the unknown. It becomes a game for gamblers not legislators.

So, predictably, in the first round of auctions Santa (ie the public) threw a £1bn (pre-Christmas) subsidy to big energy companies and they agreed to pocket it.

The nominal deal also included Big Energy agreeing to keep Britain’s lights on. DECC breathed a sigh of relief and went back to writing its own letters to Santa.

For most people, keeping the lights on remains a pretty important test of government competence … and energy companies know this. That is why, a couple of years ago, they started mothballing existing gas power stations (and permissions to build new ones).

On the surface, the explanation was that power prices were too low for the stations to remain viable. But behind the scenes, energy companies were already preparing to ‘game’ the system – and needless to say, keep the suckers (that’s us) in the dark.

Power companies ‘manufacturing insecurity’

If you can manufacture the prospects of a shortfall, you can manufacture the case for a new subsidy system to avoid it. Big Energy invented the idea of capacity markets and sold it to civil servants in DECC.

The embarrassment is that the government fell for such an obvious sucker punch. It wasn’t as though parliament lacked other / better choices.

In various sectors of a modern economy, maintaining reserve capacity is just a legal obligation. Major data centres – particularly those dealing in credit referencing and financial transactions – have to operate every second of every day. Heavy fines, market disqualification and / or imprisonment would follow a failure to ‘keep their own lights on’.

Similarly – until they were allowed to convert into casinos – all the major banks were obliged to maintain robust ‘reserve requirements’, sufficient to keep the banking ‘lights’ on too.

Moreover, I’m astonished at how quickly governments have forgotten the motivating effect that ‘the avoidance of going to prison’ can have in their discussions with corporate executives.

If this sounds too brutal, the government could just as easily have sequestrated the generating capacity that was being mothballed. If falling power prices (never passed on to the public) were making gas power stations uneconomic, the government could have bought them for a song.

Subsidies or safety nets?

The UK was never short of more coherent alternatives. The problems began with how we defined the problem.

In any economy, back up energy capacity is always difficult – if only because you never know how often, or how much, you will need it. The government’s most dubious assumption, however, was that this provision had to be marketised.

Once upon a time, such back-up generation power would have been referred to as Britain’s ‘strategic reserve’; a back-up, held and operated by the State, providing society with a safety net, not a market.

Today, a different version of the same thinking could have taken the form of building more interconnectors, particularly with Europe. These would have been much cheaper (and quicker) than an everlasting round of bribes and bungs.

Within a more imaginative mindset, the government could have financed measures promoting reduced energy consumption rather than increased energy production.

One of the minor / major tragedies of the UK’s first round of capacity market ‘auctions’ was that less than 1% of the contracts went into such ‘demand reduction’ measures.

Politicians could easily have changed the nature of the auction by specifying that 50% of the contracts would go into an energy politics designed to consume less … but they didn’t.

Instead, they actually made it harder for ‘demand reduction’ providers to compete by limiting their contracts to just one year, when new power generation contracts last up to 15 years (see ‘UK’s unlawful £35 billion support to fossil fuels in ECJ challenge‘).

No less boldly, they could have set a carbon ‘cap’ on where this energy came from, or a minimum proportion that had to come from renewable sources … but they didn’t do that either.

Britain’s capacity auctions were designed by and for energy producers; a point apparently lost on our political leaders – freshly returning from Lima discussions about cutting carbon emissions, rather than maintaining carbon subsidies.

Clean connections before dirty

Interconnectors could have offered Britain a much cleaner energy-balancing act than the capacity market auctions. Norway, Iceland and increasing parts of the EU can already offer renewable energy surpluses through the use of their interconnectors.

In the EU, what also matters is that retail electricity prices are 50% lower than in the UK. An increased use of interconnectors could keep Britain’s lights on and cut electricity costs at the same time. But none of this would have propped up the rewards to Britain’s Old Energy cartel.

To get out of the trap Britain is in, we have to start looking for a new source of ‘illumination’, and within a different mindset. The good news is that this is where many of today’s brightest ‘guiding lights’ are already working.

Seasonally, perhaps I should have gone looking for three Wise Men to offer you, but maybe two and two halves will suffice.

Following yonder stars

The two ‘halves’ are different organisational ‘stars’ Britain should be taking its bearings from.

The first is a collection of academics based around the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. Fraunhofer has just completed its latest scientific audit about Germany’s transition plans towards a clean/green energy economy. The Audit’s conclusion is as stark as it is inspirational –

“It is economically to our [Germany’s] advantage to move as quickly as possible to a system of 80% renewable energy”, said Eicke Weber, the institute’s director and a professor of physics at Freiburg University.

80% ?!… Britain’s current political leaders would have palpitations about Committing to half this amount … in their political lifetimes! Yet what the Germans seem to grasp is that this is as do-able as it is desirable. But it involves a fundamental shift in mindset about what ‘keeping our lights on’ actually means.

Aiding and abetting this collectivity of German scientists and engineers is the Twitter-site of their Energy Transition movement – @EnergiewendeGER. The site offers a constant stream of energy insights that are tragically missing from the UK energy debate.

But it is to the smaller ‘lights’ that we might want to direct the most heartfelt Seasonal blessings to. They are the equivalent of the individual houses whose Christmas lights I gazed at as a child, and whose lights seemed to capture the sense of vision and hope that politics often lacks.

An American abroad

The first of these ‘lights’ is Craig Morris (a refugee Americam living in Germany). Against all odds, Morris has maintained a broadsheet that many in the Environmental movement have come to rely on.

Operating beneath the banner of ‘Petite Planete‘ his Renewables International internet platform constantly analysed (and corrected) all the garbage, misinformation and ‘dark light’ put out by climate-denying lobby organisations.

His has been a David and Goliath endeavour – buttons versus billions – that defied the might of money and power. Yet even Renewables International has its limits.

Faced with a dwindling supply even of buttons, the continued existence of RI itself is now in question. If there was ever a case for crowd-funding something that consistently ‘keeps the lights on’ about brighter choices, this is it.

No less ‘illuminating’ is the work of my second wise man – Jeremy Leggett, the founder of Solar Century and now SolarAid. Leggett came back from Lima with a plan to replace every oil-burning lamp in Africa with a solar lamp, by 2020.

Into the darkness of continued global oil and coal subsidies, Leggett wants us to shine the light of renewable energy into the lives of those least able to do so for themselves. Re-writing Aladdin, he promises to swap new lamps for old, clean for dirty.

Whilst global leaders continue to throw money at an unsustainable past, Leggett (and others) want us to ‘light up’ a different future.

New lights for old

My guess (and hope) Is that society Is looking for new lights to follow. And these lights will be sustainable, accountable, open and equitable: with new voices leading where today’s Leaders fear to go.

These are ‘lights’ that would have us invest in a future we can survive in, dis-invests in the one that is destroying us, and which remembers that this ‘Petite Planete‘ of ours is the only one we’ve got.

I guess that, as a child, this was the ‘illumination’ I began looking for as I gazed in over garden gates.

As the year ends, yet another report, Renewable energy versus nuclear power – comparing financial support – details the way that consumers, across the EU, could see their electricity bills cut by 37% (and more) if government’s shifted support from nuclear to renewables.

It is unlikely even to register in a British debate that remains trapped in backward looking, ‘Dim vs Dimmer’, energy politics. For brighter choices, we need to get out more; taking greater notice of the ‘lights’ outside, and less of the lobbying inside.

Have a Brave New Year!

 


Alan Simpson is a recovering politician, Energiewende admirer, advisor on energy policy, climate change and fuel poverty.

Twitter: Alan tweets @AlanSimpson01.

This article was originally published at Evernote.

Video: ‘Lights’ by Ellie Goulding.

 




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‘Peak oil’ – the wrong argument for the right reasons Updated for 2026

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Collapsing oil prices should give everyone in the ‘green movement’ cause for reflection.

With lower prices forecast to last for the next couple of years, two lines of argument for sustainable energy – economic and peak oil – are now looking rather weaker. Equally, the case for reconsidering the arguments and the tactics of political environmentalism has strengthened.

Peak oil as an argument for environmental change was always flawed, as recent events have illustrated. Some writers and environmental organisations mention peak oil alongside wider environmental arguments for a transition to sustainable energy use (see this review for example).

Peak oil supporters predict that the price of oil will inevitably rise as ultimate exhaustion approaches. Rising prices, not lack of availability, will make oil-based products unviable.

Making sure the oil is left in the ground

If everything is left to the free market that scenario would undoubtedly occur at some point in the future. But what if the green movement achieves its aims of lower consumption, and switching to renewable energy sources while there’s still plenty of oil in the ground?

Remember the comment made 15 years ago by Sheikh Yamani, the former Saudi Oil Minister: “The Stone Age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones.”

His suggestion was that lots of oil might remain unused, as the world switched to superior alternative energy sources – much as our ancestors stopped using stone for tools and weapons because other materials were more effective, notably bronze, iron and steel.

But the analogy with the Stone Age is misleading. Sustainable energy does not have obvious advantages for industry or consumers, never mind its wider benefits.

And even with very cheap solar power and large, efficient industries dedicated to converting it into fuels for aviation and other transport uses, it’s unlikely to compete on price with Saudi Arabian oil, whose production cost is around $5 per barrel. 

But if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, most of the world’s fossil fuels will have to remain in the ground, according to the IPCC. So the success of any transition strategy will depend on artifically increasing the price of oil (and other fossil fuels), and / or applying regulations that discriminate against their use.

Being economical with our arguments

Peak oil is one of several ways conventional economics have been used to promote sustainable aims. As economic growth has faltered and governments have become obsessed with ‘the economy’, campaigners, professionals and academics have felt compelled to express their arguments in economic terms.

This has produced what later, saner generations may regard as ludicrous extremes. Several reports have attempted, for example, to justify the benefits of walking and cycling or the disbenefits of pollution on economic grounds – as though longer healthier lives were not sufficient justification in their own right.

This approach has proved no more effective than other ways of influencing politicians and business leaders. Cost-benefit analyses of transport projects typically show that small-scale pedestrian and cycling projects generate the highest rates of return.

So why do politicians who say they believe in the conventional economics behind cost-benefit analysis pour vastly more money into road-building and high speed rail, than into far cheaper, more effective and sustainable options?

I have been to many conferences where the presenters seem to implore: “if only we can show them the right economic evidence they’ll change their minds.”

This wishful thinking misunderstands the role of evidence and economics in political decision-making.

Building roads, and ignoring the evidence

In the mid-1990s the Conservative Government of John Major abandoned the ideology and the practice of big road-building, prompting a lively academic debate about the real reasons for these changes.

Some writers pointed to an influential report by SACTRA, a parliamentary committee, which amassed a convincing body of evidence that road-building is self-defeating because it “induces” more traffic.

Two other influences on the Major Government were pressure from the Treasury to cut public spending and the anti-roads protests which delayed road schemes and increased their cost.

No convincing evidence has emerged to challenge SACTRA’s findings since then, and yet those lessons have been comprehensively un-learned. The Coalition Government’s Command Paper Investing in the Future does not even pretend to offer any evidence for its claims about the economic necessity of road-building.

The CBI’s roads report Bold Thinking states that “the long-term benefits of road investment are well-known”, which is all the evidence they need. A senior civil servant from another country with a neoliberal political culture recently visited our research centre on a fact finding mission.

He reported similar views in his own country adding that “there’s a lot of scepticism about the health benefits of walking and cycling” as they appear in cost-benefit analyses. The evidence on road building and the economy is no stronger but these claims fit more easily with the values of political and business elites.

Faced with that reality, the argument that we must act sustainably for the sake of the economy was never going to persuade many decision-makers. In a context of low oil prices it will convince no-one.

Protecting the enviroment for its own sake (and ours)

When that argument becomes a common message people hear from the green movement, it weakens the values most readers of The Ecologist would share – that we must protect the environment for its own sake and for future generations (for a psychological analysis of the reasons for this, see the WWF report Common Cause).

If we are ever to change the values and practices of elites and the general public we must remain consistent, even when our arguments seem to be falling on deaf ears.

Comparing today’s situation with the mid-1990s, the evidence on road building hasn’t changed. The pressures on public spending are even greater. And yet the government is committed to spending £15 billion on building and ‘improving’ roads.

The fact that the bulk of the expenditure is being targetted at Tory and LibDem marginal constituencies tells us something important about how govenments really reach their decisions.

Make it political!

But that’s not all. One important element we are lacking today is the mass campaign of civil disobedience that rose up against Mrs Thatcher’s ‘biggest roads programme since the Romans’. We can only conclude that it must have been considerably more influential than most of us realised at the time.

It also tells us that to persuade government to force the transition away from fossil fuels, making economic arguments – however sound and well founded on irrefutable evidence – is never going to cut the mustard.

We have to make the transition to sustainable energy a political decision in the run-up to the 2015 election – and do what it takes to make the issue one that politicians cannot afford to ignore.

 

 

 

 

Dr Steve Melia is a Senior Lecture in Transport and Planning at the University of the West of England. His new book, ‘Urban Transport Without the Hot Air’, will be published by UIT Cambridge in May.

 

 




388391

‘Peak oil’ – the wrong argument for the right reasons Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Collapsing oil prices should give everyone in the ‘green movement’ cause for reflection.

With lower prices forecast to last for the next couple of years, two lines of argument for sustainable energy – economic and peak oil – are now looking rather weaker. Equally, the case for reconsidering the arguments and the tactics of political environmentalism has strengthened.

Peak oil as an argument for environmental change was always flawed, as recent events have illustrated. Some writers and environmental organisations mention peak oil alongside wider environmental arguments for a transition to sustainable energy use (see this review for example).

Peak oil supporters predict that the price of oil will inevitably rise as ultimate exhaustion approaches. Rising prices, not lack of availability, will make oil-based products unviable.

Making sure the oil is left in the ground

If everything is left to the free market that scenario would undoubtedly occur at some point in the future. But what if the green movement achieves its aims of lower consumption, and switching to renewable energy sources while there’s still plenty of oil in the ground?

Remember the comment made 15 years ago by Sheikh Yamani, the former Saudi Oil Minister: “The Stone Age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones.”

His suggestion was that lots of oil might remain unused, as the world switched to superior alternative energy sources – much as our ancestors stopped using stone for tools and weapons because other materials were more effective, notably bronze, iron and steel.

But the analogy with the Stone Age is misleading. Sustainable energy does not have obvious advantages for industry or consumers, never mind its wider benefits.

And even with very cheap solar power and large, efficient industries dedicated to converting it into fuels for aviation and other transport uses, it’s unlikely to compete on price with Saudi Arabian oil, whose production cost is around $5 per barrel. 

But if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, most of the world’s fossil fuels will have to remain in the ground, according to the IPCC. So the success of any transition strategy will depend on artifically increasing the price of oil (and other fossil fuels), and / or applying regulations that discriminate against their use.

Being economical with our arguments

Peak oil is one of several ways conventional economics have been used to promote sustainable aims. As economic growth has faltered and governments have become obsessed with ‘the economy’, campaigners, professionals and academics have felt compelled to express their arguments in economic terms.

This has produced what later, saner generations may regard as ludicrous extremes. Several reports have attempted, for example, to justify the benefits of walking and cycling or the disbenefits of pollution on economic grounds – as though longer healthier lives were not sufficient justification in their own right.

This approach has proved no more effective than other ways of influencing politicians and business leaders. Cost-benefit analyses of transport projects typically show that small-scale pedestrian and cycling projects generate the highest rates of return.

So why do politicians who say they believe in the conventional economics behind cost-benefit analysis pour vastly more money into road-building and high speed rail, than into far cheaper, more effective and sustainable options?

I have been to many conferences where the presenters seem to implore: “if only we can show them the right economic evidence they’ll change their minds.”

This wishful thinking misunderstands the role of evidence and economics in political decision-making.

Building roads, and ignoring the evidence

In the mid-1990s the Conservative Government of John Major abandoned the ideology and the practice of big road-building, prompting a lively academic debate about the real reasons for these changes.

Some writers pointed to an influential report by SACTRA, a parliamentary committee, which amassed a convincing body of evidence that road-building is self-defeating because it “induces” more traffic.

Two other influences on the Major Government were pressure from the Treasury to cut public spending and the anti-roads protests which delayed road schemes and increased their cost.

No convincing evidence has emerged to challenge SACTRA’s findings since then, and yet those lessons have been comprehensively un-learned. The Coalition Government’s Command Paper Investing in the Future does not even pretend to offer any evidence for its claims about the economic necessity of road-building.

The CBI’s roads report Bold Thinking states that “the long-term benefits of road investment are well-known”, which is all the evidence they need. A senior civil servant from another country with a neoliberal political culture recently visited our research centre on a fact finding mission.

He reported similar views in his own country adding that “there’s a lot of scepticism about the health benefits of walking and cycling” as they appear in cost-benefit analyses. The evidence on road building and the economy is no stronger but these claims fit more easily with the values of political and business elites.

Faced with that reality, the argument that we must act sustainably for the sake of the economy was never going to persuade many decision-makers. In a context of low oil prices it will convince no-one.

Protecting the enviroment for its own sake (and ours)

When that argument becomes a common message people hear from the green movement, it weakens the values most readers of The Ecologist would share – that we must protect the environment for its own sake and for future generations (for a psychological analysis of the reasons for this, see the WWF report Common Cause).

If we are ever to change the values and practices of elites and the general public we must remain consistent, even when our arguments seem to be falling on deaf ears.

Comparing today’s situation with the mid-1990s, the evidence on road building hasn’t changed. The pressures on public spending are even greater. And yet the government is committed to spending £15 billion on building and ‘improving’ roads.

The fact that the bulk of the expenditure is being targetted at Tory and LibDem marginal constituencies tells us something important about how govenments really reach their decisions.

Make it political!

But that’s not all. One important element we are lacking today is the mass campaign of civil disobedience that rose up against Mrs Thatcher’s ‘biggest roads programme since the Romans’. We can only conclude that it must have been considerably more influential than most of us realised at the time.

It also tells us that to persuade government to force the transition away from fossil fuels, making economic arguments – however sound and well founded on irrefutable evidence – is never going to cut the mustard.

We have to make the transition to sustainable energy a political decision in the run-up to the 2015 election – and do what it takes to make the issue one that politicians cannot afford to ignore.

 

 

 

 

Dr Steve Melia is a Senior Lecture in Transport and Planning at the University of the West of England. His new book, ‘Urban Transport Without the Hot Air’, will be published by UIT Cambridge in May.

 

 




388391

‘Peak oil’ – the wrong argument for the right reasons Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Collapsing oil prices should give everyone in the ‘green movement’ cause for reflection.

With lower prices forecast to last for the next couple of years, two lines of argument for sustainable energy – economic and peak oil – are now looking rather weaker. Equally, the case for reconsidering the arguments and the tactics of political environmentalism has strengthened.

Peak oil as an argument for environmental change was always flawed, as recent events have illustrated. Some writers and environmental organisations mention peak oil alongside wider environmental arguments for a transition to sustainable energy use (see this review for example).

Peak oil supporters predict that the price of oil will inevitably rise as ultimate exhaustion approaches. Rising prices, not lack of availability, will make oil-based products unviable.

Making sure the oil is left in the ground

If everything is left to the free market that scenario would undoubtedly occur at some point in the future. But what if the green movement achieves its aims of lower consumption, and switching to renewable energy sources while there’s still plenty of oil in the ground?

Remember the comment made 15 years ago by Sheikh Yamani, the former Saudi Oil Minister: “The Stone Age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones.”

His suggestion was that lots of oil might remain unused, as the world switched to superior alternative energy sources – much as our ancestors stopped using stone for tools and weapons because other materials were more effective, notably bronze, iron and steel.

But the analogy with the Stone Age is misleading. Sustainable energy does not have obvious advantages for industry or consumers, never mind its wider benefits.

And even with very cheap solar power and large, efficient industries dedicated to converting it into fuels for aviation and other transport uses, it’s unlikely to compete on price with Saudi Arabian oil, whose production cost is around $5 per barrel. 

But if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, most of the world’s fossil fuels will have to remain in the ground, according to the IPCC. So the success of any transition strategy will depend on artifically increasing the price of oil (and other fossil fuels), and / or applying regulations that discriminate against their use.

Being economical with our arguments

Peak oil is one of several ways conventional economics have been used to promote sustainable aims. As economic growth has faltered and governments have become obsessed with ‘the economy’, campaigners, professionals and academics have felt compelled to express their arguments in economic terms.

This has produced what later, saner generations may regard as ludicrous extremes. Several reports have attempted, for example, to justify the benefits of walking and cycling or the disbenefits of pollution on economic grounds – as though longer healthier lives were not sufficient justification in their own right.

This approach has proved no more effective than other ways of influencing politicians and business leaders. Cost-benefit analyses of transport projects typically show that small-scale pedestrian and cycling projects generate the highest rates of return.

So why do politicians who say they believe in the conventional economics behind cost-benefit analysis pour vastly more money into road-building and high speed rail, than into far cheaper, more effective and sustainable options?

I have been to many conferences where the presenters seem to implore: “if only we can show them the right economic evidence they’ll change their minds.”

This wishful thinking misunderstands the role of evidence and economics in political decision-making.

Building roads, and ignoring the evidence

In the mid-1990s the Conservative Government of John Major abandoned the ideology and the practice of big road-building, prompting a lively academic debate about the real reasons for these changes.

Some writers pointed to an influential report by SACTRA, a parliamentary committee, which amassed a convincing body of evidence that road-building is self-defeating because it “induces” more traffic.

Two other influences on the Major Government were pressure from the Treasury to cut public spending and the anti-roads protests which delayed road schemes and increased their cost.

No convincing evidence has emerged to challenge SACTRA’s findings since then, and yet those lessons have been comprehensively un-learned. The Coalition Government’s Command Paper Investing in the Future does not even pretend to offer any evidence for its claims about the economic necessity of road-building.

The CBI’s roads report Bold Thinking states that “the long-term benefits of road investment are well-known”, which is all the evidence they need. A senior civil servant from another country with a neoliberal political culture recently visited our research centre on a fact finding mission.

He reported similar views in his own country adding that “there’s a lot of scepticism about the health benefits of walking and cycling” as they appear in cost-benefit analyses. The evidence on road building and the economy is no stronger but these claims fit more easily with the values of political and business elites.

Faced with that reality, the argument that we must act sustainably for the sake of the economy was never going to persuade many decision-makers. In a context of low oil prices it will convince no-one.

Protecting the enviroment for its own sake (and ours)

When that argument becomes a common message people hear from the green movement, it weakens the values most readers of The Ecologist would share – that we must protect the environment for its own sake and for future generations (for a psychological analysis of the reasons for this, see the WWF report Common Cause).

If we are ever to change the values and practices of elites and the general public we must remain consistent, even when our arguments seem to be falling on deaf ears.

Comparing today’s situation with the mid-1990s, the evidence on road building hasn’t changed. The pressures on public spending are even greater. And yet the government is committed to spending £15 billion on building and ‘improving’ roads.

The fact that the bulk of the expenditure is being targetted at Tory and LibDem marginal constituencies tells us something important about how govenments really reach their decisions.

Make it political!

But that’s not all. One important element we are lacking today is the mass campaign of civil disobedience that rose up against Mrs Thatcher’s ‘biggest roads programme since the Romans’. We can only conclude that it must have been considerably more influential than most of us realised at the time.

It also tells us that to persuade government to force the transition away from fossil fuels, making economic arguments – however sound and well founded on irrefutable evidence – is never going to cut the mustard.

We have to make the transition to sustainable energy a political decision in the run-up to the 2015 election – and do what it takes to make the issue one that politicians cannot afford to ignore.

 

 

 

 

Dr Steve Melia is a Senior Lecture in Transport and Planning at the University of the West of England. His new book, ‘Urban Transport Without the Hot Air’, will be published by UIT Cambridge in May.

 

 




388391

‘Peak oil’ – the wrong argument for the right reasons Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Collapsing oil prices should give everyone in the ‘green movement’ cause for reflection.

With lower prices forecast to last for the next couple of years, two lines of argument for sustainable energy – economic and peak oil – are now looking rather weaker. Equally, the case for reconsidering the arguments and the tactics of political environmentalism has strengthened.

Peak oil as an argument for environmental change was always flawed, as recent events have illustrated. Some writers and environmental organisations mention peak oil alongside wider environmental arguments for a transition to sustainable energy use (see this review for example).

Peak oil supporters predict that the price of oil will inevitably rise as ultimate exhaustion approaches. Rising prices, not lack of availability, will make oil-based products unviable.

Making sure the oil is left in the ground

If everything is left to the free market that scenario would undoubtedly occur at some point in the future. But what if the green movement achieves its aims of lower consumption, and switching to renewable energy sources while there’s still plenty of oil in the ground?

Remember the comment made 15 years ago by Sheikh Yamani, the former Saudi Oil Minister: “The Stone Age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones.”

His suggestion was that lots of oil might remain unused, as the world switched to superior alternative energy sources – much as our ancestors stopped using stone for tools and weapons because other materials were more effective, notably bronze, iron and steel.

But the analogy with the Stone Age is misleading. Sustainable energy does not have obvious advantages for industry or consumers, never mind its wider benefits.

And even with very cheap solar power and large, efficient industries dedicated to converting it into fuels for aviation and other transport uses, it’s unlikely to compete on price with Saudi Arabian oil, whose production cost is around $5 per barrel. 

But if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, most of the world’s fossil fuels will have to remain in the ground, according to the IPCC. So the success of any transition strategy will depend on artifically increasing the price of oil (and other fossil fuels), and / or applying regulations that discriminate against their use.

Being economical with our arguments

Peak oil is one of several ways conventional economics have been used to promote sustainable aims. As economic growth has faltered and governments have become obsessed with ‘the economy’, campaigners, professionals and academics have felt compelled to express their arguments in economic terms.

This has produced what later, saner generations may regard as ludicrous extremes. Several reports have attempted, for example, to justify the benefits of walking and cycling or the disbenefits of pollution on economic grounds – as though longer healthier lives were not sufficient justification in their own right.

This approach has proved no more effective than other ways of influencing politicians and business leaders. Cost-benefit analyses of transport projects typically show that small-scale pedestrian and cycling projects generate the highest rates of return.

So why do politicians who say they believe in the conventional economics behind cost-benefit analysis pour vastly more money into road-building and high speed rail, than into far cheaper, more effective and sustainable options?

I have been to many conferences where the presenters seem to implore: “if only we can show them the right economic evidence they’ll change their minds.”

This wishful thinking misunderstands the role of evidence and economics in political decision-making.

Building roads, and ignoring the evidence

In the mid-1990s the Conservative Government of John Major abandoned the ideology and the practice of big road-building, prompting a lively academic debate about the real reasons for these changes.

Some writers pointed to an influential report by SACTRA, a parliamentary committee, which amassed a convincing body of evidence that road-building is self-defeating because it “induces” more traffic.

Two other influences on the Major Government were pressure from the Treasury to cut public spending and the anti-roads protests which delayed road schemes and increased their cost.

No convincing evidence has emerged to challenge SACTRA’s findings since then, and yet those lessons have been comprehensively un-learned. The Coalition Government’s Command Paper Investing in the Future does not even pretend to offer any evidence for its claims about the economic necessity of road-building.

The CBI’s roads report Bold Thinking states that “the long-term benefits of road investment are well-known”, which is all the evidence they need. A senior civil servant from another country with a neoliberal political culture recently visited our research centre on a fact finding mission.

He reported similar views in his own country adding that “there’s a lot of scepticism about the health benefits of walking and cycling” as they appear in cost-benefit analyses. The evidence on road building and the economy is no stronger but these claims fit more easily with the values of political and business elites.

Faced with that reality, the argument that we must act sustainably for the sake of the economy was never going to persuade many decision-makers. In a context of low oil prices it will convince no-one.

Protecting the enviroment for its own sake (and ours)

When that argument becomes a common message people hear from the green movement, it weakens the values most readers of The Ecologist would share – that we must protect the environment for its own sake and for future generations (for a psychological analysis of the reasons for this, see the WWF report Common Cause).

If we are ever to change the values and practices of elites and the general public we must remain consistent, even when our arguments seem to be falling on deaf ears.

Comparing today’s situation with the mid-1990s, the evidence on road building hasn’t changed. The pressures on public spending are even greater. And yet the government is committed to spending £15 billion on building and ‘improving’ roads.

The fact that the bulk of the expenditure is being targetted at Tory and LibDem marginal constituencies tells us something important about how govenments really reach their decisions.

Make it political!

But that’s not all. One important element we are lacking today is the mass campaign of civil disobedience that rose up against Mrs Thatcher’s ‘biggest roads programme since the Romans’. We can only conclude that it must have been considerably more influential than most of us realised at the time.

It also tells us that to persuade government to force the transition away from fossil fuels, making economic arguments – however sound and well founded on irrefutable evidence – is never going to cut the mustard.

We have to make the transition to sustainable energy a political decision in the run-up to the 2015 election – and do what it takes to make the issue one that politicians cannot afford to ignore.

 

 

 

 

Dr Steve Melia is a Senior Lecture in Transport and Planning at the University of the West of England. His new book, ‘Urban Transport Without the Hot Air’, will be published by UIT Cambridge in May.

 

 




388391