Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 56
October 11, 2022
Saving the Planet Without the Bullshit, by Assaad Razzouk
Assaad Razzouk is a Lebanese-British entrepreneur based in Singapore, a board member at Client Earth, and commentator on clean energy. He runs a refreshingly outspoken podcast called The Angry Clean Energy Guy, and he’s taken a similar approach with this new book, Saving the Planet Without the Bullshit: What they don’t tell you about the climate crisis.
In short and punchy chapters, Razzouk addresses misconceptions, distractions and dead ends, calling readers’ attention back to what matte...
October 10, 2022
Solar farms do not compete with farmland
Today I read that government ministers want to ban solar panels from farmland. Or more precisely, they want to change the definitions of good farmland in order to prevent more of it from being developed. This is supposed to be part of a drive for growth, apparently, though it sounds counter-productive to rural prosperity to me – see below. The rumoured change would have the effect of banning solar parks across 41% of England.
This is deeply misguided. The country is struggling with high ener...
October 8, 2022
What we learned this week
Nice bit of investigative journalism from BBC’s Panorama this week, exposing the failed promises of Britain’s biggest ‘green’ power station, the wood-burning Drax. Article here if you can’t get iPlayer where you are.
Sorry We Wrecked the Economy is a little project that succinctly outlines the network of free market think tanks responsible for current government economic policy.
France has launched a national energy saving plan ahead of the winter – something notably absent from Britain’s...
October 7, 2022
The San Marino Declaration for sustainable architecture
This week one of the more obscure UN bodies has been meeting in San Marino, the mini-republic located entirely within Italy. I speak of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Committee on Urban Development, Housing and Land Management. I can’t claim to know anything much about this particular committee, even though this is their 83rd session. But I mention them today because they are launching something called the San Marino Declaration.
This is a set of principles for sustainab...
October 6, 2022
Why does Mongolia have such a high carbon footprint?
Last weekend I was doing a talk at Ely Cathedral, and I showed a slide of per capita carbon emissions around the world. Somebody asked a question that I’ve had a few times now – what’s going on in Mongolia?
Located between China and Russia, Mongolia is easy to spot on this map. It’s the only country in bright red, which suggests that it has the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world. They come in just short of 27 tonnes per person – that’s twice the emissions of the average Amer...
October 5, 2022
What about a global frequent flyer levy?
Brits fly more than any other nationality. We take so many flights that one out every 12 international air passengers is British. Even so, half the adult population doesn’t fly at all in any given year, and it’s mainly the richest that take multiple flights a year.
That’s why there’s a good case for a Frequent Flyer Levy. Rather than tax all flights equally, a levy would escalate for each flight that you take. You might get one a year for free, and if you’re flying five or six times a year y...
October 4, 2022
How Barbados is using hydrogen for clean energy
A couple of years ago I wrote about how Barbados has one of the most ambitious climate plans in the world, aiming to be carbon neutral by 2030. It already has one of the world’s highest rates of solar hot water, is building solar power fast, and it is running its first electric buses. But like all small island states, there are specific challenges to running a grid on 100% renewable energy.
Integrating variable energy sources such as wind and solar power tend gets harder on smaller grids. Th...
October 3, 2022
Book review: Derailed, by Tom Haines-Doran
This is a book with an unusual origin story. Tom Haines-Doran is an academic with expertise in railways and transport policy. Then he got into a conversation with some fellow passengers on a delayed train. Once they realised his profession, they had a lot of questions about the state of Britain’s railways. He promised to write them a book. “This is for them,” he writes in the introduction, “and for the millions of people who rely on Britain’s railway.”
Derailed then, is a book about the p...
October 1, 2022
What we learned this week
At just the time when we need to be expanding sustainable travel options, Eurostar has announced that post-Brexit passport checks have reduced capacity at international stations, forcing them to raise prices and reduce the number of trains.
Worth catching this conversation with Greta Thunberg and Kevin Anderson, which ranges across activism, honesty and alarmism, regulation vs voluntary change and much more besides.
The Badvertising campaign has given out some Bad Sports Awards for greenw...
September 30, 2022
Interview: Raj Patel on The Ants and the Grasshopper
Raj Patel is an author, academic and activist, best known for books such as Stuffed and Starved, The Value of Nothing, or A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. He is also a film-maker, and the director of The Ants and the Grasshopper, reviewed here and currently in cinemas.
JW: You’ve been an author, an academic and an activist. How did you find yourself directing a film?
Raj Patel: I was tired of being a ‘wonk’ in other people’s films. You’ve seen these films where it starts ...
