Pre-Budget Report

[biffvernon]

Chapter 7 makes interesting reading:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/pre_budget_report/prebud_pbr06/report/prebud_pbr06_repindex.cfm

 

[Nemesis]

Link doesn't work Biff...

 

[biffvernon]

I've changed it - just click on the Chapter 7 pdf 'Protecting the Environment' when you get to the main page.

 

[Flyfisher]

So what is a "zero-carbon home"? Section 7.46 talks about this target for new houses by 2016 but I couldn't see any actual definition. I suspect it means zero-carbon in terms of running costs, but it's not clear.

I smiled at the bit about no income tax for anyone with a micro-generation plant that manages to actually sell any power back to the grid. Yeah, right; how long would that last if it really caught on? It's just a bit of 'feel good' padding that means nothing and will achieve nothing.

If I appear a tad cynical, it's not because I don't accept the problems the planet is facing [1] but I do detect a sense of duplicity by the government as using the green mantra to hide tax increases. It all smacks of deckchairs on the Titanic to me.

My real worry is that the real problem is just too big and out of control. I know this viewpoint will be criticised as just giving up but, honestly, how can the world keep growing its myriad economies and continue increasing the living standards of 6 billion people (and rising) without increasing its energy consumption? We can fiddle around with low-energy lightbulbs, trying to tax people out of their cars (which isn't going to happen) and off aeroplanes (also doomed to failure, I think) but the fact remains that our entire human civilisation is founded on increasing energy consumption.

I really can't see this changing so why we're not investing every spare bit of cash into finding alternative energy sources is beyond me. I know there is work going on in this respect but it doesn't seem, to me, to have the necessary degree of urgency compared with, say, vilifying 4x4 drivers or working on ridiculously expensive road pricing schemes.

How about abandoning Trident and allocating the 24 billion to energy research . . . or maybe the government wants a nuclear capability for when the oil wars really start in earnest and the gloves have to come off?

[1] Actually, I'm not at all convinced the planet is facing a particularly big problem, it's us that has the problem. I'm sure the planet will continue to flourish quite well without H.Sapiens; we might well turn out to be a mere glitch. Funny how we normally use 'dinosaur' in a derogatory sense even though they lasted 350 million years without screwing up the planet and would probably still be here if not for a bit of bad luck with an asteroid. How long has it taken us to be on the brink of disaster? 10,000 years? Must be because we're the most intelligent species the planet has ever seen

(Yep, I'm having a bad day!)

 

[middi]

You are having a bad day ?.

I was coping reasonably well, then I run out of fags.

 

[Penners]

a sense of duplicity by the government as using the green mantra to hide tax increases

We've heard a great deal from the Government about new taxes to encourage us all to reduce our carbon emissions. We don't seem to hear a word about how the Government plans to spend the income from those taxes.

I'd feel a great deal happier about the prospect of paying them if I felt that the money would all be spent on the development and installation of renewable energy production facilities, sufficient to make a real difference to our national carbon emissions, rather than just tiffling around the edges.

But how much chance is there of that? Well, consider how much of the road tax is spent on roads....

 

[Flyfisher]

I'd feel a great deal happier about the prospect of paying them if I felt that the money would all be spent on the development and installation of renewable energy production facilities, sufficient to make a real difference to our national carbon emissions, rather than just tiffling around the edges.

Exactly!
You can't manage an economy by taxing things that you really want people to stop doing. If everyone stopped drinking, smoking, driving and flying the government would go into a blind panic because the treasury would go broke if it didn't replace the lost revenue from somewhere else.

The message might be (e.g), 'we want to reduce congestion on the roads' but if it actually happened our 'reward' would be higher taxes elsewhere. Same with smoking. Same with anything else that the government supposedly wants us to stop doing.

A more honest approach would be to scrap everything except income tax (surely the only fair measure of anyone's ability to pay) . . . . except who would vote for any party offering to take something like 80% of your income. Pah!

 

[Toby Newell]

.... but 99% of Green politics has nothing to do with the reality of saving the planet, rather its to do with making us feel better about ourselves whilst continuing to produce and sell more (which is the real problem and will never change, much like the ppl who smoke thro their windpipe a la Bill Hicks)

For example solar panels (photoelectric, not passive, they're good) are made from silicon wafers. The most common are single crystal. Silicon wafers are cut from a very large single crystal. Silicon (after refining which is energy intensive in itself) is done by heating Silicon in an electric oven at 1400 celcius and slowly cooling it for 2 to 3 DAYS. It is heated in a pure quartz glass crucible (which melts during the process).

So. We are heating 100kg of Silicon a furnace and quartz crucible at a temp of 1400 C for 3 days. Thats a staggering amount of energy. The crystal is then further refined by zone heating at 900 C for several hours, more energy. Then it is cut very thinly, sandwiched etc. All very energy intensive, in clean rooms, disposable plastic aprons/masks by the thousand/tons of specialist equipment manufactured for the process.

What I am saying is at 150W per metre square you will need 20 square metres to boil a kettle. Furthermore it takes approx 40 years (at current maximum efficiency of around 15%) of constant use to pay back in energy terms the cost of manufacture. The average life expectancy of photo voltaic cells is currently 20 years.

Therefore every solar cell installed, if used until destruction with zero defects or maintenance will only repay back HALF the energy it cost to produce it. Making its carbon imprint at least DOUBLE that of energy produced by any other method. Very, very un green. Not that we shouldnt try.

Basically the world needs to produce less, produce less electric toothbrushes, less led illuminated kettles, less cars, less shrink-wrapped M&S peeled orange segments, but it wont.

The plan is carry on and make ppl feel like they are doing something. Capitalism, mans greed and the resulting need to produce "more" of everything will ensure that if we are the cause of global warming we will never stop it. Really I wish the ppl in the know would stop fooling everyone and just invest billions into cold fusion. You could then power Britain on an evian bottle of seawater.

Perhaps when oil has run out they might try it...

Toby

 

[Flyfisher]

I'm glad it's not just me then :wink:

What are the chances of some organisation somewhere coming out and being honest about the real problem; humanity clearly wants to lead an energy-intensive lifestyle so, by chasing the 'we must use less' solution we're barking up the wrong tree and trying to deny basic human nature.

We often read about how the energy arriving from the sun is 10x our current needs, or if only we could get fusion power to work we'd have more energy than we could use, so why not put some real effort into solving the big picture?

Unfortunately, I suspect that doomsday is creeping upon us too slowly to panic us into any substantive action. It will always be a future government's problem to solve - let's just worry about getting re-elected. It's the old 'frog in a pan of water' scenario and we're going to be slowly cooked alive without really noticing instead of being shocked into action by some sudden boiling water.

 

[Lime]

The only problem we all have to face is over-population.

Every other problem, as has been said earlier, is "rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic".

 

[biffvernon]

Great film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJTDSEPSfhk
Make sure you watch it to the very end - the last 10 seconds are the best.

 

[biffvernon]

Please excuse the rather long quote, but I've extracted from the Pre-Budget report those paragraphs that have the most direct impact on houses and the building industry. I think it is all excellent stuff, except that it is 30 years too late, so is now pretty worthless.

This Pre-Budget Report sets out the next stage in the Government’s strategy for tackling
climate change both domestically and globally, including:

• an ambition for all new homes to be zero carbon within a decade
with a time-limited stamp duty exemption for the vast majority of new
zero-carbon homes;
• legislation to ensure householders installing microgeneration are not
subject to income tax on any payment for surplus electricity exported back to
the grid; and
• the extension of the Landlords Energy Saving Allowance to 2015 and to
corporate landlords.

Every section of society – business, individuals and government – has a role to play in helping meet the UK’s climate change and other environmental goals. For its part, the Government recognises it is required to take action where market failures prevent long-term economic and environmental consequences from being taken into account in decisionmaking. A key aim of government intervention is to encourage behavioural change, particularly with regard to the use of energy, waste and water. Investment to increase efficiency in these areas is often a cost-effective option for businesses and households, but short-term cost considerations and market failures can create barriers to the take up of more efficient alternatives. Intervention can correct these market failures, ensuring the implementation of the ‘polluter pays’ principle in which environmental costs are fully internalised in economic decisions.

Microgeneration
7.30 Microgeneration technologies, such as solar heating and micro-wind, have the potential to contribute to both improved energy security and lower carbon emissions. In order to stimulate demand for these new and emerging technologies, the Government has introduced reduced VAT rates and the Low Carbon Buildings Programme to encourage their adoption by individuals. Budget 2006 announced an additional £50 million to fund Phase Two of the Low Carbon Buildings Programme which aims to stimulate the market for certain microgeneration technologies so that, at the programme’s close, they can be commercially supplied to the market at a lower price than at present. Public sector organisations and charitable bodies will be the recipients of the grants under this scheme, which aims to be up and running by December 2006.

7.31 Surplus electricity generated by microgeneration technologies can be sold back to energy suppliers. To further reduce the barriers to adoption of these technologies, the Government will legislate in Finance Bill 2007 to confirm that, where an individual householder installs microgeneration technology in their home for the purpose of generating power for their personal use, any payment or credit they receive from the sale of surplus power is not subject to income tax, and they are not required to include it in their income tax return.

Reducing emissions in the household sector
7.41 Households account for over a quarter of UK energy consumption and carbon emissions. Many household energy efficiency measures can reduce emissions cost-effectively but are not taken up due to a variety of market failures. New policies have been introduced by the Government to help reduce short-term cost barriers and send effective signals to the marketplace.

Energy Efficiency Commitment
7.42 In 2002, the Government introduced the Energy Efficiency Commitment (EEC) which requires energy suppliers to achieve targets for installing energy efficiency measures in the household sector, particularly among the most vulnerable. The current phase of the EEC, over 2005-08, roughly doubles the activity of the first phase; combined, these should deliver savings of nearly 1 MtC a year by 2010. Budget 2006 announced that suppliers could count extra work carried out in this phase of EEC towards their targets in the next period. As a result, five suppliers agreed to carry out an additional 250,000 subsidised installations of home insulation under the current phase, bringing forward annual carbon savings of 35,000 tonnes and reducing household bills by around £20 million. The Government believes that activity in the third phase of EEC (2008-11) could save a further 0.9-1.2 MtC a year by 2010, whilst recognising that the scheme needs to remain cost-effective and practical and the overall policy framework needs to continue to take account of wider social considerations. As set out in Chapter 5, the Pre-Budget Report announces new investment of £7.5 million to improve the coordination between, and effectiveness of, Warm Front and the Energy Efficiency Commitment. This will fund projects using an area-based approach to identify households and provide the right coordinated set of advice and measures for them.

Code for sustainable homes
7.45 To lower the carbon impact of new development and encourage energy efficiency in housebuilding, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will shortly publish the Code for Sustainable Homes which will set out levels for sustainability in homebuilding and challenge developers to go further in meeting these standards. The Government will also continue to drive forward improvements in the sustainability of new housing through tougher building regulations. Alongside the 2002 update to regulations, the new Part L building regulations, which came into force on 6 April 2006, will increase the energy efficiency of new homes by 40 per cent. This will mean that the fuel bills for an average threebed semi-detached home with gas central heating built to the new 2006 building regulations will be £120 a year less than its equivalent built in 1997. These new standards (including measures for boilers announced in April 2005) will deliver a saving of 0.98 MtC per year by 2010. Going forward, and incorporating the new Code for Sustainable Homes, the Government will also be setting out a consultative timetable for progressively strengthening building regulations in England and Wales to reflect the energy efficiency levels set out in the Code.

Zero-carbon homes
7.46 It is the Government’s ambition that, as a result of this strengthening, by 2016 all new homes will be ‘zero-carbon’, meeting the highest Code standard for energy efficiency. To bring forward progress towards this aim, the Pre-Budget Report announces that a stamp duty exemption for the vast majority of new zero-carbon homes will be introduced in 2007. The exemption, which will be time limited, is designed to incentivise demand for zero-carbon homes among homebuyers, recognising that in order to raise energy efficiency standards significantly beyond where they are now the industry will have to modernise production methods and innovate through employment of new materials and technologies. Full details will be published at the time of Budget 2007.

 

[Nemesis]

It strikes me also that the re-use of existing buildings, with all their embodied energy, instead of the current rush to demolish swathes of Victorian housing, and even city centre historic buildings such as in Sheffield, (for another ghastly new shopping temple) would be A Good Plan, but that's about big business so that's OK.

 

[Nigel Watts]

I too was puzzled by the term "zero carbon". From the above posting it clearly does not mean what it implies.

Incidently, today's Times readers may have noticed on the front page a picture of a boy in a rather distinctive school uniform superimposed on which is amount of money Gordon is proposing to plough into schools.

The uniform is that of a rather exclusive prep school in North London which, being private, will obviously not receive a penny of the money in question.

I wonder if this is because Times journalists dont know where to find any state schools. Or perhaps they fear that their readers would not know what a state school pupil looks like and would therefore fail to make the connection with the education budget?

 

[skier-hughes]

I was surprised to see that fuel had been increased by 1.25p per litre in the budget and by 1.6p per litre at our local pumps!!

 

[Nemesis]

And sadly the cash for school buildings is sounding the death knell for many historic school buildings which are being razed in the frenzy to grab the cash.

Perfectly good handsome re-usable buildings, but as they are also sitting on the land required to build new off they go.

In fact in twenty years' time the new builds will need replacing and in the meantime they are usually not a patch on the buildings they replaced to work in.

(I suspect that Eton won't be demolished though - shocking really, those poor chaps having to make do with such outdated facilities...)

 

[Flyfisher]

I was surprised to see that fuel had been increased by 1.25p per litre in the budget and by 1.6p per litre at our local pumps!!

1.25p was the wholesale increase; the filling stations have to add their retail markup :wink:

 

[Moo]

Why?

 

[Penners]

I was surprised to see that fuel had been increased by 1.25p per litre in the budget and by 1.6p per litre at our local pumps!!

Surprised?! Really? You sweet innocent thing, you!

 

[Penners]

Zero-carbon homes

I too would like to see a precise definition of a zero carbon home. I find it impossible to believe that it means a home in the course of whose construction no carbon was emitted. That just sounds totally unachievable with any remotely conventional construction methods.

But we period property owners perhaps need to think carefully about the drive towards such homes, and the tax benefits that they will attract. Will that make our houses less attractive to prospective buyers, thus depressing the period property market?

Continuing that train of thought, will it mean that our architectural heritage will suffer from a relaxation of the listing rules, so as to allow unfettered uPVC windows, double-glazing, cavity wall insulation, and so on?

I'm uneasy.