Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 14

Should we welcome the return of CCS?

“We have found that carbon capture and storage in the North Sea can reduce emissions from gas and coal power stations by up to 90%,” said the Labour chancellor. “So we are today publishing proposals for industry wide consultation to move this important environmental advance from research to commercial development.”

The chancellor in question was Gordon Brown, speaking in 2006 as he announced government funding for research into carbon capture and storage. He promised that the first full scale...

How to recycle a solar panel

A few years ago now I had the opportunity to take part in a solar PV workshop where we made our own solar panels. It was a painstaking process of soldering together individual solar cells, which are wafer thin and extremely fragile. Then they were smothered in glue and pressed under a sheet of rainproof plastic so we could take home our own solar chargers.

Although ours were scrappy and DIY, the process is similar for making a commercial panel. The silicon cells are in a sandwich of material...

What we learned this week

I’ve written before about how Germany introduced a rail subscription to make trains cheaper and encourage more sustainable transport – rail travel rose 28% in response. Greenpeace are backing a similar scheme for the UK, and it’s detailed in their report Fare Britannia.

African owned solar companies are among the fastest growing on the continent, and several get a mention in this article from Associated Press.

Possible are inviting people to email their MP about getting a frequent flyer ...

The Heat Will Kill You First, by Jeff Goodell

I didn’t understand sea level rise until I read Jeff Goodell‘s last book, The Water Will Come. I understood the science and the logic of it. What I hadn’t grasped was how it would appear it as happened, how it would bubble up from the drains, how it would be priced into home insurance, or be argued about in city budget meetings. Goodell’s book made it real in the places where it is already being felt, and I found it very useful.

A few years later, here’s a similar exercise and a book tit...

The man with the largest negative carbon footprint?

If you had to guess, which living person would you say has made the single biggest difference to reducing carbon emissions? There are some figures in politics or activism who might come to mind. Al Gore got a Nobel prize for his contribution, though we might want to argue about that. Perhaps we could consider Pope Francis or the action inspired by Greta Thunberg.

Then again, perhaps it isn’t a public figure. Perhaps it’s a diplomat who brokered a pioneering agreement like the Kigali Accord, ...

Triodos, the postgrowth bank

Banking isn’t a sector generally associated with postgrowth thinking, but then Triodos isn’t a typical bank. This summer they became the first bank to declare its support for a postgrowth transition, which they describe as “transforming our societies in such a way that we are no longer reliant on perpetual economic expansion to be (socially) stable.”

Most banks would consider economic growth to be vital, and see themselves as critical enablers of it. Not so Triodos, who argue that “the relent...

What we learned this week

I’ve had a bit more driving than usual to do recently, and I’ve been listening to the Not Built for This podcast, a mini-series from the always excellent 99% invisible. It looks at how towns and cities were built for different weather, and how climate change is transforming places in unexpected ways. Really great reportage that tells some unusual stories.

I already shared the news about the stadium this week, but here’s the latest edition of the Zero Carbon Luton newsletter that I sent out a...

Luton Town’s new green stadium

As followers of English football around the world will know, my local club Luton Town made a special guest appearance in the Premier League last season. Millions of people heard of Luton for the first time, and there was much curiosity about Kenilworth Road, the old and eccentric home of the Town. Videos circulated of the away fans entrance, where fans basically climb a flight of metal stairs in someone’s back garden.

While all this was going on, work has been quietly underway on a new stadiu...

The SDG wedding cake

The Sustainable Development Goals are often described as a ‘to-do list for humanity’, a list of 17 priorities that includes ending poverty, universal education, gender equality and affordable clean energy. It’s a worthy set of goals, though Rohan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre suggests that they are more connected and interdependent than they look when presented as a table or a list.

Instead, we could stack them like a wedding cake. Economic goals such as sustainable production...

World Without End, by Christophe Blain & Jean-Marc Jancovici

World Without End has been something of a publishing phenomenon. It was the bestselling book in France in 2022, a surprise hit even in a country with a thriving culture of ‘bande dessinées’. A couple of years later the English speaking world is catching up with this engaging graphic novel about climate change, and it will be interesting to see if it can capture imaginations here too.

The book is the work of graphic novelist Christophe Blain, in conversation with the prominent French env...