Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 29

Climate action plans for Luton schools

The UK’s stated climate target is to reach net zero carbon by 2050. Where I live in Luton we’re more ambitious and are aiming for 2040, and I’ve been involved in some of the work that’s going into how we do that. The people who will be running Luton in 2040 are in school at the moment, so if we want to take a long term approach to change, schools are a good place to invest in sustainability.

I’ve been doing that myself with the Climate Change Teacher Champions programme, or CATCh, developed ...

Who is most responsible for waste?

This week I’ve been reading Myra Hird’s new book A Public Sociology of Waste. One of her main points is that the waste problem has been framed around household responsibility. In the public imagination it is households that produce waste. Fixing it is down to individuals to be careful about what they buy and recycle more.

That certainly seems to be a fairly common perception. If and when waste policy comes up in politics, it is almost always around domestic waste – such as Rishi Sunak’s imag...

What we learned this week

Lidl have announced that you can hire a Christmas jumper from them instead of buying one, saving on waste from what has apparently become a disposable fashion item. Green action or PR stunt?

I wrote recently about why e-bikes are more important than EVs for sustainable transport. Here’s another piece of research on e-bikes that highlights this same point.

The government won’t do it, but Oxford has unilaterally decided that no new homes will be built in the city with gas boilers.

A Cons...

The challenge of climate literacy

The gap between concern about climate change and knowledge about climate change is something that recurs a lot in my work. A couple of times a week I’ll hear something misguided or incorrect about climate change from someone who says they understand it and care about it. This week’s highlight was someone who works for the airport telling a roomful of people that the most important thing is the little personal actions we can make in our own lives.

I try not to judge people for this – almost n...

The Futures of Racial Capitalism, by Gargi Bhattacharyya

You may have come across the term ‘racial capitalism’ – perhaps in activist circles or in antiracist debate. It isn’t always used well, but like any debate, there are different levels of intelligent engagement. The noise usually comes from the shallow end, and there is some deeper thinking going on in books like this one.

For Bhattacharyya, racial capitalism is “a framework that seeks to understand the racialised division of populations as an element of capitalist development.” It’s not ...

A breakthrough in sustainable aviation fuel?

Today Virgin Atlantic flew one of their planes from London to New York on 100% sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF. It’s a world first – so far SAF has only been used as a percentage in a fuel mix. This will be the first time that a commercial airliner has taken on nothing but biofuels, and it aims to prove that this is a viable and realistic step towards low carbon flight.

Despite the world first, there’s a sense of deja vu about Virgin Atlantic’s press release. I distinctly remember Richard ...

Is hydrogen better for the climate?

A couple of years ago I wrote a series of articles about hydrogen. There was a lot of attention on it at the time, and several pilot studies were underway. Two years later a degree of clarity is emerging around the role that hydrogen might play in reducing emissions, but it depends on three important questions:

Does it work?Is it affordable?Is it green?

The answer to the first question is a qualified yes. There are hydrogen powered buses on the streets. There are trains, cars, sh...

What we learned this week

Dubai’s Blue Carbon has now secured land in Africa roughly enquivalent to the area of the UK, ready to sell on as carbon credits to allow it to keep pumping oil. This week CNN noticed. Expect to hear all about this at COP28.

While not connected to Blue Carbon at this point as far as we know, this is the kind of thing I’m concerned is going to happen a whole lot more: the Ogiek people in Kenya’s Mau forest are being driven from their homes and their villages burned to make way for carbon offs...

Building of the week: Luton retrofit

I’m going to go local for this week’s highlighted building. Very local – about a thirty second stroll from my house. Just round the corner from me is a Luton council house that has been retrofitted to zero carbon standard and opened to the public. You can visit the retrofit open home throughout the Autumn, tour the property and see some low carbon technologies for yourself.

The property has been fitted with solar panels and a storage battery. It has a heat pump and heating controls in each ro...

Badvertising, by Andrew Simms & Leo Murray

The world has begrudgingly come around to the idea that climate change is happening. What we do about it remains a point of debate, but you’d think we could all agree on one thing. While we work out the best solutions, shouldn’t we stop making it worse?

Apparently not, since fossil fuel subsidies remain. We’re still exploring for new sources of oil and gas. And then there’s advertising. “Why is the climate changing faster than us?” ask Andrew Simms and Leo Murray. “One reason is the mixe...