Greener music festivals

This will please my colleague Tim Garratt who is heading off to the Isle of Wight Festival this week (I know he really does want to reduce his personal carbon footprint!)

Getting greener?

Apparently this summer’s festival season is set to have a much greener footprint. The Isle of Wight festival, which kicks off the season this weekend, has revealed that it cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 22% last year, while July’s Lovebox in London slashed 38% from its environmental impact.

They will be joined this year by many of the biggest festivals in aiming to add a clear conscience to the party experience. Reading, Leeds, the Big Chill, T in the Park and Bestival have all signed up to the 10:10 climate campaign and pledged to cut their carbon.

Some of the methods used to reduce the carbon footprint are obvious and straightforward – others somewhat off the wall;

Pedal-powered phone chargers, generators run on chip fat are some of the quirkier initiatives but festival organisers are taking on the big issues of energy and transport too.

At Glastonbury the cow sheds have been covered in solar panels which then charge mobile battery units used across the vast site. At Lovebox the stars are lit up by super-efficent LED lighting rigs.

Recyling is already well established due to very steep landfill tax charges.

But the festival-goers’ journeys to the festivals that take place each summer remains the toughest issue. The 5 million ticket holders overwhelmingly choose car travel, except in city centres, and this makes up 68% of the festival industry’s footprint. More people are using public transport, but the rise is slow and festival audiences are getting bigger every year, adding to the problem.

Leeds festival has discounted joint coach-festival tickets to encourage take-up, while the Big Chill and Latitude promote car sharing via the GoCarShare website. But some organisers are thinking of going further by adding perks such as backstage passes and VIP performances for those arriving by public transport, and perhaps even providing music on the journey itself.

I am not sure how Tim is getting to the Isle of Wight – but the only ‘public transport’ is likely to be the ferry!

 

Data accuracy and Glaciers!

This week has seen another major “cock-up” by the Global Warming movement (see my colleagues blog).

The chairman of the UN’s climate science body, Rajendra Pachauri, has said he will not resign over its discredited claims that glaciers in the Himalayas will melt by 2035.

The confirmation that there had been a “school boy error” in the calculation of the rate of melt of the Himalayan glaciers has added more doubt in the mind of the general public as to whether or not this is a real problem that deserves their attention.

The reaction of Rajendra Pachauri frankly amazed me. If he really believes in the issue and wants it taken seriously then surely his reaction should have been far more proactive and less “oh well, it was an error, but we still have a problem – honest!”

As I have said previously I do believe we have an issue – the earth must be affected to some degree by our actions. Plus we do need to move forward any alternatives to fossil fuels before they run out or become far too costly for our economies to flourish.

The green lobby has had a perfect platform to hit this new decade running – Copenhagen, the current economy to name but a few. But, they keep dropping the baton! Perhaps we need to look more closely at who is championing the issues and make some changes?

This morning on radio 4 Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice chair of the IPCC, told Sarah Montague that the IPCC had “gained credibility” from its ability to admit its mistakes and argued that the other claims in the report were “very strong”. Listen to it here – surely not the correct and persuasive message that we are looking for? Does he really believe they have increased their credibility!

Time for some well crafted management of the issues surrounding climate change?

 

NESTA’s Big Green Challenge

This week has seen the announcement of the three main winners of NESTA’s (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts)  Big Green Challenge. This has produced some interesting winners – all of whom receive £300,000 prize money to allow them to continue or expand their work.

With the recent issues over wind farms and pylons being positioned in the rural areas of the uk it is good to see one of the prize winners being ‘ The Green Valleys project’ in Wales’ Brecon Beacons that currently generates power from 10 mountain streams.

Normally hydro-power schemes rely on dams, but The Green Valleys Project uses micro-hydro, which involves diverting up to 50% of a stream’s flow into buried pipes which lead to camouflaged generators the size of a garden shed. The project is planning 40 more of such micro-power stations.

With extra help from energy advice surgeries, super-efficient vehicles and wood-burning stoves, 13 local communities in Brecon have cut carbon emissions by about 20% in a year, according to Nesta.

This is being achieved within a National Park and frankly with few people being aware of its existence. Consequently no one has complained, surely this small scale generation is the way forward in suitable areas?

The second winner is the Household Energy Service - a volunteer run service based in Shropshire that helps  households  reduce carbon emissions, improve energy efficiency and save money on fuel bills. It manages this by providing free energy surveys (conducted by volunteers) that identify practical energy-saving measures along with estimates of the financial savings they could generate.

HES now covers four counties and has helped 15,000 homes so far, it is estimated that it has reduced emissions in these homes by an average of 10%. This is obviously small beer, but is an indication of what can be achieved – perhaps the Government should take note and start a similar national scheme?

The third and final winner is the the Isle of Eigg, where 38 families are working together in a bid to halve their carbon emissions. This initiative is being led by the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust and involves a wide range of projects from installing insulation and solar panels to producing local food and developing low-carbon community transport. All the families are trying to live within a five kilowatt per household energy cap. The group has a blog which makes interesting reading!

Eigg are obviously trying to achieve something far more significant than most communities would be willing to attempt at this time. But there are undoubtably things to be learnt from their work. Another very worthy winner and perhaps a look at how we may be living in 20 years from an energy point of view?.

 

Comparing CO2 Emissions

Over Christmas the Guardian did a piece on the CO2 emissions from the UK’s public buildings – I commented upon it here. Although a fair point was being made about the need to save energy, they had missed the point about the use of the buildings affecting the energy used.

Today in the Guardian there is a reply to the article by Philip Steadman, he confirms my comments but goes further due to the data that his team at UCL have collected about energy use in all buildings across the UK. They have established that industrial buildings use around 60,000 gigawatt-hours annually (for the buildings only and excluding industrial processes) against some 55,000 gigawatt-hours annually for schools, hospitals and offices put together.

What does this tell us? Not much in my opinion. Until we have a national database of all property and its energy efficiency it is almost impossible to gauge the real cost of the building stock of this country in energy terms. That will take a several years to carry out even with the help of the business community.

However, the Department of Energy and Climate Change is apparently producing a national database that will link floor areas to property use on domestic and non domestic property. The non domestic one is well-developed (no doubt due to the domestic EPC requirement being in place longer). Non domestic data collection has further to go, but this has to be a good idea that will hopefully prove useful in the future to allow a more accurate comparison between individual buildings.

 

10:10 a move in the right direction

10:10 Campaign

I have to admit to being made aware of this excellent Government backed campaign by one of my colleagues via his blog. He is a fairly sceptical person when it comes to the global warming issue, so it was something of a surprise to see his blog (and slightly embarrassing for me as the firms energy assessor!)! 

I believe that this suggests that the 10:10 campaign may well be the best thought out so far by the UK’s Government. With the start of the new year and the current economic climate I believe it may well become a “popular cause”. We have already seen the power of social networking in pushing popular causes – Rage Against The Machine being the most recent. 

I have also previously blogged to the effect that I believe people need to see a benefit to acting on green issues. This campaign is aimed at showing how a 10% cut can also save us money, saving the planet is a “by-product”. This I think will make it much more acceptable to the public. The downloadable checklist is an excellent idea which will engage kids as well to the cause. 

So if everyone can blog, Twitter and promote 10:10 we may be able to make an impact. 

The company I work for has registered, as have I, how about you?