A Renewable World Energy, Ecology, Equality

A Report for the World Future Council

By Herbert Girardet, Miguel Mendonça

Green Books Ltd

Copyright © 2010 World Future Council
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-900322-49-2

Contents

Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Foreword by Ashok Khosla,
Introduction and executive summary,
List of acronyms and abbreviations,
Chapter 1: Energy Change, Climate Change,
Chapter 2: Carbon and the Biosphere,
Chapter 3: Renewable Energy,
Chapter 4: Towards Energy Equality,
Chapter 5: Energy Sufficiency,
Chapter 6: The Green-Collar Economy,
Chapter 7: Renewing the City,
Chapter 8: From Global to Local?,
Chapter 9: Problem Technologies,
Chapter 10: Going Deeper, Looking Further,
References,
Index,
The World Future Council,
About the Authors,

CHAPTER 1

Energy Change, Climate Change

"Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side."

E.F. Schumacher

"Sea levels are rising twice as fast as predicted only two years ago by the United Nations." This was the startling message from a scientific conference in Copenhagen in March 2009, an overture to the global summit on climate change to be held in Copenhagen in December. "Rapidly melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are likely to raise sea levels by a metre or more by 2100, inundating coastal cities and obliterating the living space of 600 million people who live in deltas, low-lying areas and small island states. ... Without significant, urgent and sustained emissions reductions, we will cross a threshold which will lead to continuing sea level rise of metres."

This assessment is the consensus view of Professor Konrad Steffen from the University of Colorado, Dr. John Church of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Tasmania, Dr. Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and Professor Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who are all experts in sea-level rise. Their views now represent the mainstream opinion of researchers in this field, taking account of the most recent data available.

How did we get to where we are today? This first chapter is a concise overview of the processes that led to the massive increase in fossil-fuel combustion that emerged from the industrial revolution. Climate discussions often lack a historical perspective, and by exploring the qualitative and quantitative changes that occurred over the last 300 years we may get a better sense of the actions that are needed to create a sustainable world in the 21st century. The first half of this chapter deals mainly with the economic and ecological impacts of the industrial revolution, and the second half with policy responses to these impacts.

The fierce logic of the industrial revolution

Our current way of life had its origins in events which took place exactly 300 years ago. In 1709 the British entrepreneur Abraham Darby built the first blast furnace in Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, which could use coke, derived from coal, rather than charcoal, derived from wood, for smelting iron ore. His new coke-smelted iron proved to be superior as well as cheaper than iron smelted with charcoal. Crucially, Darby's inexpensive cast iron helped to trigger the start of the industrial revolution, a self- accelerating chain reaction of industrial and urban growth based on ever- greater refinements in fossil-fuel-based technologies. Only a few voices at the time challenged the wisdom of the ever-greater use of coal by pointing out its potentially catastrophic environmental consequences.

In 1711 the first steam engines, made with cast iron, started to pump water out of British mines that were up to 50 metres deep. These pumping engines, with the muscle power equivalent of some 500 horses, enabled miners to dig ever deeper to extract minerals from the earth's crust. Sixty years later, the firm of Boulton &Watt introduced the next generation of steam engines, and by 1800 over 500 were in use, first in mines and then to drive machinery in factories. In 1830 steam locomotives were used to pull passenger trains for the first time, and in 1845 the first steam-powered ship, the SS Great Britain, triggered a revolution in the mass transportation of goods and people across the oceans.

Until the early 18th century, muscles, firewood and charcoal were our main sources of energy, augmented by the limited use of water and windmills, with human lifestyles dependent on living within nature's productive capacity. As the industrial revolution unfolded, the dramatic increase in the use of coal, and then oil and gas, not only massively increased human productive power and mobility but was also a major contributor to the ten-fold growth in human numbers, from some 700 million in 1709 to nearly 7 billion today. Decayed and compressed plant and animal matter which had been transformed into fossil fuels, accumulated in the earth's crust over a period of some 300 million years. At the start of the 21st century we are burning one to two million years' worth of these fossil-fuel deposits every year. This routine use of stored hydrocarbons has truly changed the world.

Made in Britain

Britain enjoyed many advantages that helped it take the lead in the Industrial Revolution. It had plentiful iron and coal resources and a well developed canal-based transportation system. As a leading commercial and colonial power, it also had the capital to invest in new enterprises which turned out to be highly profitable.

Another reason why the industrial revolution started in Britain was that land available for fuel wood, charcoal and to feed horses had become scarce by the 18th century, and competed increasingly with the land needed to feed people. Small amounts of 'sea coal' had been used for centuries, mainly for heating buildings in cities like London, but from the early 18th century onwards its most significant use was for smelting metal ores and for powering steam engines. An astonishing transformation got underway: in 1700 coal had supplied fuel equivalent to a forest area covering about eight percent of Britain's land surface. By 1840 this had grown to the equivalent of a forest covering the whole of the UK, and today the use of fossil fuels is equivalent to a land surface ten times the size of the country. From 1800 to 1850 coal production in Britain increased sixfold, from 10 to 60 million tonnes.

The industrial revolution transformed the human presence on earth. It gave humanity unprecedented powers to exploit the riches of nature – cutting down forests, clearing new farmland, expanding the world's fisheries, accelerating industrial production, extending transport systems, and building new cities or enlarging existing ones. But after three centuries of urban-industrial growth on a finite planet there are clear indications that we are reaching the limits of the earth's capacity to cater for our wants and to absorb the ever-increasing amount of the waste gases that we discharge.

Technology and people

In addition to the technological changes of the industrial revolution, major social changes also occurred. Capitalist entrepreneurs, many funded with Quaker money, built new factories in Britain's cities. Legions of industrial workers, many of them displaced from...