Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
Book Review: Dani Rodrik, Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World
Filed under: Book reviews, Environment | Tags: china, climate change, Dani Rodrik, environment, Shared prosperity in a Fractured World, sustainability, Trade
Leave a comment It was a good number of years ago a friend and former colleague of mine recommended the work of Dani Rodrik (left) to me. What I liked about his work was its humanity. He is a rare economist who recognises real-world challenges whist making the case for globalization and its impact on world poverty. That humanity stretches not only to responding to communications but granting me the rights to use some of his intellectual property in my own book at no cost.
So what was it that I thought was appropriate for my own book on Sustainable Business Strategy? Rodrick uses a simple but effective form of challenge: the Trilemma. On one corner is hyperglobalization, on another is national sovereignty and on the third is democratic politics. Democratic politics and national sovereignty are linked together by the Bretton Woods Compromise, an economic system designed to maximise domestic performance, essentially a Keynesian approach. Hyperglobalization and democratic politics are linked together by so-called global governance. Hyperglobalization is a concept that assumes that states are no longer the pre-eminent arbiter of world order. Economics is. States are subjugated to a system of global governance. Finally hyperglobalization and national sovereignty are linked together by the golden straitjacket; namely trade liberalization, free capital markets, free enterprise, etc. Readers will have noted that it is impossible for all three to co-exist. We can have two but not all three. Perhaps the world we live in today is the golden straitjacket with free reign for big tech and nationalism? We can talk about this later.
Rodrik’s Trilemma dates back to 2012 in his book, The Globalization Paradox, though it featured in his blog in 2007. Of course all of this was before the Paris Agreement (2015). It was business as usual. In 2025 it is anything but business as usual. Suffice to say, Rodrik has a new “tri” – this time a trifecta which is equally intriguing. This time at the apex is rebuilding the middle class. This is linked to global poverty reduction with the explanation that at its heart are growth-promoting policies in the North and South, without regard to carbon emissions (equating with Keynesian social democracy + export oriented industrialization). Rebuilding the middle class also links with addressing climate change; i.e. industrial policies and climate clubs among rich nations with discriminatory provisions or, in other words, Bidenomics. And addressing climate change is linked to global poverty reduction through the transfer of technology, jobs and financial resources from rich to poor nations; migration from South to North or, in short, Global Rawlsianism (after John Rawls’ principle that justice requires maximum attention to the needs of the least fortunate – p4).
The trifecta is not a trilemma as we can – and must – at least reconcile the three. And that is what this book is about. However, the paradigm is important here. Rodrik is not a revolutionary. He is very much grounded in a Keynesian/Rawlsian ontology. There is also a splash of technological determinism. By definition he is not a “no-growther”. But neither is he a hyper-globalizer or an economic neoliberal. Growth of sorts provides political stability, resources – financial, human and, indeed, natural. Rich states are mandated to share clean technologies with developing countries and exchange personnel. This is important because straightforward rapid industrialization in developing countries will just release ever more carbon; it is also the case that there are significant challenges and tensions in the trifecta. So Rodrik is a pragmatist, and all the better for that approach. Modern states and economies are so polarised at the moment, anything less than pragmatism leads us to extremes.
Key concepts
Productivism (p155) is another term for industrial policy. It is an industrial policy that can reconcile the trifecta. For example, a policy of carbon reduction through technology. Clearly carbon reduction helps in mitigating climate change by eliminating the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. But it is also good for those other pillars, rebuilding the middle class (larger markets for other nations’ exports and investment as well as reducing outmigration) and poverty reduction (poor countries are disproportionately impacted by climate change – heat, sea-level rise, extreme weather and loss of biodiversity, amongst others). Productivism is, in the end, a shared policy mindset.
Experimental governance (p172) is borrowed from Chuck Sabel and coauthors (right). It is a form of governance that challenges key assumptions about policy implementation: (1) policy makers have clear objectives; (2) uncertainty is low; (3) there is little added value in policy makers communicating with private actors. Bearing in mind my own work on policy implementation, these assumptions do seem misguided. However, working with these assumptions, experimental governance has four elements: (1) goals are set between policy maker and stakeholders; (2) the executing agents are given broad discretion in how goals are achieved; (3) agents’ performances are subject to periodic review and results compared across different experiments; (4) objectives, metrics and procedures pertaining to the experiments are reviewed, revised and disseminated to a broader set of agents. It is iterative.
In academic research, this appears to conform broadly to an action research methodology. Over time, trust and capacity grow as the ideas and initiatives develop and mature.
Some examples
Notwithstanding much Chinese industrial policy featuring experimental governance, Rodrik illustrates the concept with two explicit examples. For the first, he takes us back to the execution of the 1987 Montreal Protocol – an international treaty – that effectively stopped further erosion of the ozone layer directly attributable to the release of CFCs from refrigeration equipment and enabled it to replenish. The scientists behind it – Crutzen, Molina and Rowland (right) were honoured 20 years after their ground breaking work that made the link between CFCs and ozone depletion. Regarding implementation, firms, supported by government agencies including the EPA in the USA, innovated, even if only to avoid regulation more generally.
For his second example, Rodrik draws on a the case of Fundacion Chile (p158) acquiring a small local aquaculture company which imported Norwegian and Japanese salmon farming technology and, in a process of “learning by doing”, developed an entire supply chain from feed to export logistics. The knowledge from this experiment was widely disseminated which literally spawned a salmon farming “rush” enabling exports to go from 300 to 24,000 tons per year in the 1990s.
Whilst both of these examples are illustrative of experimental governance, they both have had significant environmental impacts. Unfortunately we replaced ozone-depleting gases with greenhouse gases. Potent ones. And as for salmon farming, it is not only a huge polluter, but it threatens wild populations through disease and mutation.
OK, I found some weaknesses in two examples. That by no means negates the notion of experimental governance. Far from it. It only shows that experimental governance can be used for good or not-so-good purposes. And to be fair in the case of the Montreal Protocol the urgency meant that we did have to move quickly to find alternatives. Another measure taken was to ensure that refrigeration gases did not get released into the environment, CFCs or not. Salmon farming, however, was always going to be problematic. It is, simply, factory farming. Ultimately when humans put lots of animals together, especially if they are bred for size, disease will follow and, in the case of fish farming, escapes will occur. Factory farms also undermine the effectiveness of antibiotics, one of humanity’s greatest discoveries, now threatened by greed and excessive protein diets.
Three buckets
As a pragmatist and economist of trade, Rodrik offers us four “buckets” in which to put policy options as they relate to globalization (having accepted that hyperglobalization is neither possible nor desirable). Sovereignty will – and perhaps should – always trump international homogenisation.
1
Here we place policies that are “prohibited”; namely those that cannot be part of a viable trading order. Note here that prohibition does not mean that they will not happen. An example would be violating sovereign territory. Sovereign territory is all-too-often violated. More contestable example are policies that are what Rodrik calls, Beggar-thy-neighbor [sic] (BTN), by which he means policies that generate economic benefits made possible by the harm they generate to other nations. Much of the second Trump Administration’s thinking on trade fits here. But more generally here we can place currency devaluations and export subsidies explicitly designed to improve the terms of trade domestically at the expense of other nations.
2
This bucket contains policies that may be amenable to mutual negotiations and adjustments. They may benefit the country enacting them, but the benefits are more widely spread such as potential spill-overs. The mutual benefit part was the basis of WTO most favoured nation status for countries not directly engaged in the negotiations between two nations but achieve a benefit from adjacent bilateral agreements. Here we may also find protective tariffs (protecting nascent sectors or employees in those sectors). It may still generate monopoly rents, but they are incidental, not the purpose. Moreover, affected parties might be expected to respond, but only in proportionate terms and should be directly linked to the damage caused by the state imposing the affecting policy. Equally, export controls on technology destined for countries representing a security threat are not BTN, but they probably will impose economic costs on the importing country (at least until that country develops the technology itself such as may be the case with China and the USA). On this latter point, Rodrik seems agnostic. In summary, states can pursue policies in their own interests subject to them not being explicitly BTN and may be subject to wider negotiation between affected parties.
3
Here we find policies that essentially invite an open discussion about the policies being touted. These are discussions that might not ordinarily take place but can be – what I would call – de-escalatory. We work this out together. Fairly. It might fall out of this bucket if the originating state is unable to explain the purpose, even if it is not BTN.
4
This bucket is for policies that require the agreement of at least two or more states. These are multi-lateral policies where we will find many of the climate change-driven policies. These are negotiations over the health of the global commons, debt resolution and, of course, pandemics. The Montreal Protocol was a bucket 4 agreement.
Making sense of climate change-driven policies
If we start with green subsidies, which bucket? What about China that now has serious advantage in terms of manufacturing and market access. Surely, these subsidies constitute BTN? This requires some logical gymnastics. First, let us step back. Carbon pricing is way too lax. Current prices do not reflect the impact of carbon emissions on the environment and their warming effect. If that is correct – which it really is – then how might we balance the account? We might try to install with haste photovoltaic cells. With a very low price facilitated by subsidies from the Chinese Government, the panels are available in volume to do just that. That is a collective benefit caused by a green subsidy from a country that may have been designed to outprice other countries. However, those countries could have responded with their own subsidies; On the whole they did but rather late and not proportionately (p201). Arguably there was insufficient subsidy overall, not enough rather than too much (as the neoliberals would argue). In the end, subsidies from the Chinese State provided an affordable resource that could compensate for inefficient carbon pricing (and hence emissions reductions, bucket 3). We’ll take that. Bucket 2. I sense it could be bucket 3 if there was an amicability about it, but I am not sure. Suffice to say, Europe has also tried to protect its EV manufacturers against Chinese imports with tariffs. But there is something about the superior technologies being offered by Chinese manufacturers and cost which add to the complexity and the attractiveness of the Chinese product(s).
What about the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) introduced by the EU (January 2026)? The EU imposes upon its manufacturers auditing of carbon emissions attributable to the product. Any imports that exceed the maximum allowed have to be paid for with a tariff reflecting the additional carbon emitted in manufacture outside of the EU (defined by the probably inadequate carbon price set under the ETS). It is, of course, a policy designed to change the behaviour of actors external to the EU.
The EU has engaged in this type of trade policy for a long time. It is not just about carbon. Food standards may be captured here. Medicines, toxic materials, exhaust emissions, etc. Is it acceptable? Surely the first job of a (supranational)state is to protect its citizens and if there is evidence that a product is dangerous or deleterious to wellbeing collectively defined, then blocking or controlling it is surely the right thing to do. With CBAM, the EU is trying to protect its citizens against the impacts of a warming planet. In doing so, there is a positive spillover as the atmosphere is a global common. Surely that is defendable? Bucket 2, surely. Or bucket 4 – multi-lateral, if only within the borders of the EU. Moreover, the British responded with its own CBAM (futile really, but proportionate).
What about not trading at all with countries that violate environmental treaties – or indeed those that block treaty ratification? Well, seemingly that is bucket 1. I trust that doing so is against WTO rules – but what are they worth in 2025? Rodrik takes an interesting position with regard to trying to impose barriers against states that have poor worker and human rights records; for example, China’s treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Seemingly not in bucket 1 – so, it is allowable. Individual trade agreements could incorporate human/worker rights into the text. Presumably, also, the rights of indigenous people and, by association, the natural environment? And not to forget that the human/worker rights are part of the membership qualification for the EU. But they are hardly definitive and some member states are very much in violation as they progressively dismantle their liberal democratic structures and associated rights. There is no qualification needed for environmental protections, it seems. There could be, if agreed. But it seems very unlikely in the current incarnation of the EU and its parliament. The bigger question though is whether it is something that we must contemplate if we are to mitigate warming and adapt? Maybe the EU as a block could and should?
And one final one. I am just reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel, The Ministry for the Future. I will review the book elsewhere, but after serious heatwave in India resulting in the deaths of 2 million people (graphically described in the first chapter), the Indian Government goes ahead with a unilateral policy of geoengineering against a UN agreement that no country would go it alone because the impacts would be global, uncertain and temporary. In this case, geoengineering (depositing aerosols into the upper atmosphere to reflect heat) is in bucket 1. It’s a no-no. It is the violation of sovereign territory. There are many other examples. Damning of rivers has long been contentious and impacting downstream communities. Not to mention water pollution from human waste, fertiliser run-off and industrial processing. More recently, plastic beads (nurdles) and plastic waste more generally cross boarders. Apparel, equally, is exported and often dumped; for example in the Atacama Desert in Chile (right).
Summary
So, where does this take us? Arguably it leaves economists in charge for the time being. However, growing extreme right-wing/fascist blocs supported by the centre-right (as in the case of the EU Parliament and reporting rules under the CSRD) are rolling back efforts to mitigate climate change. To address the challenge something is going to have to give.
Pictures: Dani Rodrik from Harvard Magazine: https://tinyurl.com/5e4d22s9
Gilbert and George at the Hayward, Isobel Rock at the Hastings Contemporary
Filed under: Art, Environment, Politics | Tags: Gilbert and George, Hastings Contemporary, Hayward Gallery, Isobel Rock
Leave a comment I have to admit, in my 61 years, I have never been to the Hayward Gallery on the Southbank in London. I also have to admit to not taking that much interest in the work of Gilbert and George. It is also true that I do not go often enough to the Hastings Contemporary. Last weekend, myself and my beloved shared the Hayward and Gilbert and George and topped it off with a visit to the Hastings Contemporary. This is what we found.
Gilbert and George, on the face of it, were two graduates of a London art school who found each other because they could not actually find themselves – more specifically, if they were going to be artists, what kind of artists were they going to be? Seemingly starting off quite bohemian (poor) they built a reputation out of performance and then provocative painting – for want of a better term. And everything they needed subject matter-wise was in their neighbourhood; namely, the somewhat salaceous East End of London. There was violence, drunkenness, vagrancy and camaraderie. Oh, and themselves.
The retrospective, then, at the Hayward (until 11 January 2026) charts their digital period. All galleries are filled with huge “canvasses” themed around the above subjects plus slugs (something shared with Isobel Rock). Not forgetting red pillar boxes, phone boxes and rather quaint post marks. Ever present are the artists themselves, always clothed. I used to think they were immaculately dressed, but looking closely they they seem not to own a trouser press.
For those of us of a certain age and nationality, there is much here to celebrate. All of the events, most of them involving violent death (captured in newspaper headlines reproduced like Wahol did with Marilyn Monroe). Their politics were always on the right side of history – indeed, their parents shot fascists (right), but one walks away feeling that the exhibition could have done to have had an editor (Gilbert and George famously curate their own exhibitions).
Because of the size of the Hastings Contemporary, exhibitions are tightly curated. Isabel Rock’s extraordinary work was limited to one room, a couple of walls and a remarkable cupboard (more on this below). Unlike with Gilbert and George, I could have sat with her artworks all day and not get bored or witness every nuance. Her work is fantastical and, crucially, addresses very contemporary issues, primarily climate and consumption.
Climate is so important a theme for her that she went to prison for it. She was one of the protestors in 2023 who climbed on a gantry over the M25 motorway in London to Just Stop Oil. Like so many of her peers, she spent some time in prison for that act. When she emerged, she had significant material for her illustrations. All of her inmates are naked. Incidentally, the aforementioned cupboard a replica of her prison cell which she seemingly shared with a giant slug. She was found not guilty, too.
It is not just slugs, there are rats (enjoying a birthday party), crocodiles – well crocodile-like with extra legs just to wear shoes. Shoes are a feature here. Then there is Pippa Pig – suitably renamed as I am sure the lawyers would have been round otherwise. Pippa Pig is a victim of intensive farming: huge, bloated, tattooed and free. The tables have turned. These pigs eat humans.
There is one masterpiece. It is the one that should detain visitors – there is a bench immediately in front of it for that reason. The picture in question is called Mere Anarchy is loosed upon the World (2024). It is a modern take on Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, but without the heaven. Hell is an Earth of felled or dying trees. What is left is inhabited by grotesque animals doing strange things like playing violins and keyboards, cooking and eating bits of themselves and playing board games. The humans are zombie-fied. The whole scene is looked over by this black female sphynx-like figure taken directly from Niki de Saint Phalle (unknown to me but obvious to my cultured beloved).
To sum up, the Hayward show is Gilbert and George at scale. It is volume, “look at us”. It is also, to be fair, a retrospective. These do have value, but do beg the question, as I did with the Hockney retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, is that it? What about the now? Interestingly none of these artists have children of their own (though Rock says she climbed the M25 gantry for the sake of her nephew and niece). My equivalent is doing what I do for the grandchildren of my wife. It could be that for Rock the art is not enough. For me, teaching without purpose is pointless. Meaning is everything. And because of that, this Hayward retrospective was an exhibition too far. Whilst Rock’s wonderful exhibition was a simple short walk from the front door.
Capitalism is the problem
Filed under: Environment, Politics, Privatisation | Tags: Capitalism, Circularity, climate, climate change, Decoupling, Dutch East India Company, energy, environment, Erald Kolasi, GDP, renewable-energy, sustainability
Leave a comment I have been reading some excellent books recently. You know the ones that you wish you had written? I have written a book, and I have just read The Physics of Capitalism by Erald Kolasi. It is brilliant and takes no prisoners. It also a book that I will need to incorporate into the next edition of my textbook if the publisher ever gets round to inviting an update. I know my book needs revision, not least because we’ve all been on generative AI catch-up. My bio needs an update, too.
Back to Kolasi. He’s a physicist. A physicist taking on economists in a way that economists should have been taking on economics in the 21st Century. Back to me. My book starts with a statement about the finite planet and argues that business strategy has to be devised and executed so as not to breach the planetary boundaries, of which there are nine. Kolasi’s genius (at least for me) is to use his knowledge of physics to critique arguments by economists (and others to be fair) about technological “solutions” in the context of climate change. It is hugely effective and it tells it bluntly and with humour (though totally unfunny if you are an economist).
At its bluntest, Kolasi likens economists to people who simply cannot accept that we cannot make light go faster than the speed of light (3×108 m/s) or go below absolute zero (currently -273.15oC). More realistically, in terms of the efficiency of the stuff we use and rely on, internal combustion engines struggle to be more efficient than 35 per cent (conversion of liquid fuel into kinetic energy/Carnot cycle). 70 per cent is a theoretical maximum, but such an engine is unlikely to be put into a car; photovoltaics, 15 per cent (though theoretically possible, but never achieved, 90 per cent). And so it goes. As Kolasi notes, too, even if we could get 90 per cent conversion of solar energy to electrical energy we would still struggle to meet demand for panels and electrical energy as they need an energy source to extract raw materials and manufacture. There are limits (that neo-classical economists will not accept).
GDP and decoupling
The likes of Hannah Ritchie have been making a strong case for decoupling as a sign that capitalism can survive a climate crisis. We can grow economies (as defined by GDP) and reduce carbon emissions simultaneously and absolutely. It’s a dangerous myth.
Some definitions first: relative decoupling is simple reduction in carbon emissions whilst experiencing an increase in GDP. Absolute decoupling is a kind of safe zone where decline in carbon emissions outstrip growth and head towards zero. From what I can see, and have read, there is no absolute decoupling even using current measures of GDP. For Kolasi, the current measure is the problem as it does accurately measure change in the biophysical scale; namely, the use of natural resources in production and reproduction.
Then there is the question of permanence, assuming GDP is a fair measure of output. Kolasi tells us that with this perspective, economic growth and life expectancy have decoupled as Americans die earlier than previously. Where we thought there was a positive relationship between growth and life expectancy, that seems not to be the case. But no one is saying there has been a decoupling.
Then we can consider the data on emissions. They are to some extent estimates. We might have a handle on carbon dioxide, but we certainly do not have measures of methane, nitrous oxide, synthetic and fluorinated gases, all of which are more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. Even before the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency in the USA relied on self reporting by corporations! Now it is unlikely that any degree of self-reporting will be needed.
Finance
Talking of changes in direction, up to 2021, banks had been reducing (not eliminating) lending for fossil-fuel projects. That has now changed. The Guardian newspaper has reported that “Two-thirds of the world’s largest 65 banks increased their fossil fuel financing by $162bn from 2023 to 2024.” The US Treasury has withdrawn from the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, essentially giving a green light to private banks to start lending again. Indeed, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs all withdrew from the net zero banking alliance. Here is a table of the worst offenders (apologies for the poor resolution, but if you download it, it is fine):
Be rest assured, banks have not changed.
The steam engine
A book that opened my eyes to the non-inevitability of industrial fossil economies was Andreas Malm’s, Fossil Capital. The argument was threefold: first, capitalists were not prepared to share resources such as flowing water. Second, flowing water was located in areas that required investment by capitalists in infrastructure such as housing, schools, medical. Thirdly, where this infrastructure existed, labour militancy was difficult to manage – wages were going down and work rates increasing. Capital is best optimised if it is mobile. The steam engine enabled capital mobility despite being less efficient than water, at least until major improvements were made to the design of steam engines (to stop them from exploding if nothing else). All this being true, it is not the whole story. Kolasi has helped me to refine this argument.
Let us compare changes over time (Kolasi 2025: 290):
| Year | Steam HP | Water HP | Wind HP |
| 1800 | 35,000 | 120000 | 15000 |
| 1830 | 160,000 | 160,000 | 20,000 |
| 1870 | 2,060,000 | 230,000 | 10,000 |
That brings us to two additional concepts that I did not get from Malm: exergy and spectralization. Exergy is a thermodynamic system’s maximum capacity for useful work (p290); spectralization is the “diversification and variation in the conversional methods of existing technologies in response to changing social and ecological conditions” (p222). And so…
“…Boosting the spectralization of conversional technologies was the main causal vector for the corresponding improvement in the efficiency of industrial devices. The Industrial Revolution in England and virtually everywhere else as well, followed a path of exergy-driven efficiency gains that spurred additional gains and butterfly effects in economic productivity. The English achieved this incredible growth through a huge increase in the aggregate output of mechanical work a process spearheaded by the spectralization of high-pressure steam engines, and eventually the spectralization of other types of engines as well.”
Kolasi, 2025: 290-1
Let me unpick that, probably imperfectly. Efficiency per se is not the point. It is exergy efficiency. And curiously, Kolasi demonstrates that steam engines had a negative impact on aggregate efficiency across the English economy as a whole. Indeed in their early days they were highly inefficient relative to water and wind. The more steam engines that were installed – at least until 1770 – the lower the efficiency of the economy in aggregate. My head hurts trying to get it around this idea.
In the 19th Century it is a different story. But steam’s impact is not that it could be used to power textile factories. Rather it is this spectralization whereby if became a significant component of the economy as a whole, not least in transportation (shifting coal to factories and shifting product to markets). And if we think that steam power is a thing of the past, we must remember that it is steam power that generates most of the world’s electricity.
Steam power does something else, too, which I had not considered. Steam enables capital to be used harder. By which we mean, it enables us to hit things harder – in a foundry, for example, that is useful.
That leaves a question as to why coal? Well here’s a thing, the answer lies is that great British phenomenon of the enclosures. Back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the aristocracy displaced many people from their traditional lands by enclosing it – fencing it off and turning it into private property. This displacement led to a rapid urbanisation. People were concentrated in towns and cities and used wood to heat their homes. More rapacious, though, was the state’s need for timber for warships. The nation’s forests disappeared. Coal was a suitable substitute and, as Kolasi writes, “…the northern parts of England were full of it”. Full of it for sure, but it was under ground. The mines were established but they needed pumping. That was first significant industrial use of steam power – to pump mines.
The steam engines then went through spectralization – the addition of condensers to improve thermodynamic efficiency; new gear configurations that allowed the engines to generate rotary motion and to power machines in factories; and the transition from low- to high-pressure machines as the driving motive force. Kolasi (p281) argues this was the “breakthrough moment of the entire industrial revolution”.
Colonialism
The English enclosures displaced many and created a work-hungry proletariat. International colonialism resulted in mass slaughter, disease and slavery. Kolasi (pp300303) goes into great detail about the activities of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Most brutally, the company slaughtered the majority of the people of the Banda Islands (modern day Indonesia) because they had a monopoly in nutmeg growing. On discovering exactly where the fabled trees grew in 1621, 15,000 people lost their lives through brutal acts of beheading and being pushed over cliffs. These people were substituted for by slaves. The VOC set the stage for the Amsterdam Stock Exchange becoming the first publicly-traded company; but as is ever, the company declined as the secret of nutmeg was demystified and grown in other regions with suitable climates. The Dutch Government nationalised the assets in 1799.
The Circular Economy
We hear a lot about the circular economy…it is essentially another attempt at saving capitalism from itself. In its purist form, the waste from one cycle of production becomes the raw materials for the next. A weakness here is the issue of recycling. Many of us are asked to recycle our waste – my weekly doorstep collection is a case in point. I separate out my plastic, card, glass and metals to be collected. Notwithstanding the fact that turning glass and metals into reworked materials requires energy. Plastic…to much cannot be recycled, and even if it can, the capacity is rarely there to enable it. So, recycling is not realistically part of the circular economy – energy is lost in the circularity.
For circularity to be meaningful, materials have to be reusable or re-purposable. A glass bottle needs to be reused as a glass bottle (energy is required for transportation and cleaning. Textiles need to be re-tradable, up-cyclable and volumes need to come down, drastically. A recent story in the Guardian newspaper illustrates once again just how much textile materials find their way dumped in habitat and wilderness because we cannot absorb the volumes being disposed of.
Sources: Decoupling Chart – Hannah Ritchie (2021) – “Many countries have decoupled economic growth from CO2 emissions, even if we take offshored production into account” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling’ [Online Resource]
Bank investment table – Banking on Climate Chaos: Fossil Fuel Finance Report, 2025: https://www.bankingonclimatechaos.org/?bank=JPMorgan%20Chase#fulldata-panel (accessed 21 June 2025)
Steam Engine: Chris Allen / Steam engine, Nortonthorpe Mills, Scissett
VOC Plaque: By Stephencdickson – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72939415
Ghana Wetlands – source unknown. Taken from Guardian story.
Ocean – David Attenborough
Filed under: Business, Environment | Tags: biodiversity, climate change, conservation, David Attenborough, environment, nature, Oceans, Oceans movie
Leave a comment 
Thee weeks ago, along with my beloved and my sister I visited Bempton Cliffs in East Yorkshire. It is a colony of seabirds clinging to steep chalk cliffs. I took the photograph (left) of gannets, one of my favourite birds for their sheer seabird-iness! Many of the other people there were trying to see, quite rightly, some early-arrived puffins who normally breed at the top of the cliff in burrows.
In recent years, the colony has been deeply affected by bird flu. I was concerned that so devastated they may have been that the colony would not recover; but alas, they were there and as amazing as ever. Gliding, diving, hollering.
About the same time, we were trying to find a cinema that was showing Ocean featuring David Attenborough. You can count on one hand the number of people in the UK that have known a world without David Attenborough. It is also true that there is no-one alive who has not been witness – whether consciously or not – to the wholesale destruction of the world’s oceans. It is not about over-fishing. It is about the wanton destruction of marine eco-systems. Largely invisible marine eco-systems.
David Attenborough has come a long way. He started with a show that traced the capture of animals for incarceration in zoos, Zoo Quest, between 1954 and 1963. Of course he later fronted some of the most memorable natural history documentaries of the 20th Century. He worked with teams that constantly innovated film technique, sometimes encountering real risk in order to do so. However, in most of those films he did not – or was not allowed to – juxtapose the wonder with the destruction that was happening in parallel. In some cases they filmed simply metres away from organised and illegal logging in rain forests, and the destruction of many other habitats through pollution and resource exploitation.
This one-sided storytelling became increasingly intolerable for Attenborough. Habitat and species loss seeped into the films; but they were never central. It has taken a collaboration with National Geographic for him to tell the story that was not told in Blue Planet. And it is devastating.
My family has its origins in the fishing industry in my home town of Hull. They were trawlers – dragging a net along the ocean floor to pick up cod and haddock, fish that fed on the ocean floor. But that trawling literally destroyed everything in its wake. And 3/4 of the “catch” was discarded. Over and over again, these trawl nets destroyed eco-systems and emptied the seas. I – along with everyone else, probably – have never actually seen a trawl in action. Now you can in graphic detail. You can see the devastation. And you can understand why the oceans are dead or dying. Oh, and the process of trawling releases huge volumes of carbon dioxide locked into the seabed.
There is not an ocean anywhere not now being exploited by factory ships. In Antarctica, the ships have come for krill, a small crustacean that feeds penguins and whales amongst other to be processed into fish food (for all of that harmful salmon fish farming) and, wait for it, pet food. These are international waters being exploited by a select few corporations.
The film is in three parts. We start with the wonder of the oceans – in particular the bits we know the best (though seemingly only recently have we bothered to look), kelp forests and coral reefs in particular. Then the grim bit – probably 30 minutes of hell on Earth. And finally, the hope. There is hope. Kelp forests regenerate super quickly if left; so too, the fish species, even those thought to be lost. Coral can recover as some fish species remove the algae that effectively suffocate the coral and prevent regrowth. It is particularly salient at the minute because the film was released to coincide with the UN Ocean Conference (Nice, 9-13 June 2025). At that conference, the future of the oceans were being decided. You can read the communique here. on 15 June 2025, the Guardian newspaper published a summary. We need to protect 1/3 of the oceans the regenerate the rest. That is an amazing thought – just one-third can result in the rest of the Earth’s oceans recovering to once again provide a living for shore fisher communities globally. These communities have been subject to an ocean colonialism (Attenborough’s words).
Or we can turn the oceans into chronic deserts.
Why banks do not invest in renewables
Filed under: Environment, Privatisation, UK | Tags: climate change, Electricity markets, energy, environment, Feed-in-tariffs, investment in renewables, renewable-energy, renewables, spot prices, sustainability
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I wrote last month on Andreas Malm and Wim Carton’s book, Overshoot. Like all arguments – and their book is full of them – there are weaknesses. Or in my case, a failure fully to understand. In pursuit of that understanding, I have turned to an extraordinary book by Brett Christophers, the Price is Wrong – Why capitalism won’t save the planet (right).
Christophers waits until chapter 6 – appropriately entitled, The Wild West, to broach the point of why. It is not because the previous chapters were superfluous – far from it. Rather it is because electricity is complex, and despite out belief that all electricity is the same, Christophers has to make the case that not all electricity is the same.
First, we have to look at the structure of the liberalised (i.e. non-vertically integrated markets), of which the UK is a prime example after privatisation in the 1980s. Let me break down some of the stakeholders in the system:
- Generators – owners of power plants (some located outside of the country)
- renewables
- wind
- solar
- hydro
- non-renewables
- gas
- coal
- biomass
- nuclear
- renewables
- Last-mile suppliers.
- Buyers of wholesale electricity for supply to end users (domestic and businesses)
- Electricity System Operators (ESOs)
Markets
Increasingly the industry’s liberalisation has led to regulated markets being constructed by policy makers. In the UK there two distinct routes to market by generators.
- spot markets (electricity for immediate use)
- corporate – Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) – generator contracts directly with corporate entity which is often a large user of electricity. There can also be PPAs between generators and utilities (retailers).
Spot markets trade in blocks of time, 30 minutes in the UK, for example. There is a base load, usually supplied by renewables and then a top-up, usually coming from the most flexible of supplies; namely, gas. In the UK the last coal-fired power station closed in September 2024.
Spot markets and volatility – why renewables are unattractive to investors and fossil-fuelled plant is attractive
The prices of electricity on spot markets are volatile. They are volatile over each day – demand can vary widely from the peak of the early evening to the overnight lull. But volitivity over a month…that seems to be more scary to investors. For example (p 170) in February 2022, spot market prices in Germany ranged from under €50 per MWh (day 19, Saturday) to just under €250 per MWh (day 25, Saturday). Demand is difficult to predict; indeed, we might ask, are there any other (commodity) markets with such pronounced volatility?
If you are an investor – a bank, for example – such volatility instils a sense of unease. It does not make investment impossible, but it makes it more expensive. Christophers’ research suggests that interest rates for renewable energy projects can be as much as 3x that of non-renewables.
We should then ask, why would a gas-fired power station – that sells into the same volatile market – not also be high risk? There are two things to be aware of here. First, banks have been investing successfully in fossil fuel projects for many years. Successfully. It is a known and tangible entity that has largely been low risk. Bankers, however, when making investment/loan decisions ask one simple question, will the client be able to pay back the loan on any terms agreed? The banker wants to know how much income the project will be generating to service the debt. The project owners will, of course, not be able to answer that question because of the volatility. It seems to be insufficiently adequate for the loanee to say that they are 100 per cent certain that all electricity they generate will be bought by suppliers because what they generate will always be cheaper than electricity generated by gas. The spot markets always include the lowest-priced electricity in a merit hierarchy.
There seems to be other issues here for investors. The returns on renewables is lower than that for fossil-fuelled plant. Typically, noted by Christophers (pp 211-221), fossil-based investments can generate returns of up to 20 per cent. Renewables come in at between 4 and 9 per cent. If we consider oil company shareholders, they are offered by the executive investments that will bring in double-digit returns, or equivalents that will deliver at best half of that. What will they choose? And what if the executive takes the decision to go with the renewables, knowing that their returns will be lower? Most will be out on the ears at the next shareholders’ meeting. These are so-called opportunity costs. Investing in renewables means that the investment will not be made elsewhere; i.e. something that brings in a higher return. But, argues Christophers, the shareholder concerns are minimal in comparison to that of the banks. Banks are looking for double-digit returns. It is also the case that many investments in renewables are made by companies that are not fossil-fuel based. They specialise in renewables. They will only deliver across their portfolio single digit returns to a market that is volatile, that exhibits the so-called merchant risk. Added to that, renewable plant is part of a “transition” – an energy transition. That transition, argues Christophers, has two elements. The first adds to the uncertainty. Transitions by definition are uncertain. The second is transition has no history. Generators are asked to project into the future with no historical data on which to make the calculations.
We might then ask, what about owners of plant fired by fossil fuels, how do they make the case to investors if they sell into the same volatile electricity market (because new gas-fired power stations are still being built)? Well, it seems quite simple, a traditional fossil-fuelled power plant is not part of a transition. It is proven technology and can demonstrate historical returns on investment. It is eminently bankable.
And here is another scenario. If the spot price of electricity (say in the UK) falls, so does the price of gas. The spot price is determined by the gas price (or the highest bid price in the bidding round, usually 30 or 60 minutes in each 24 hour period). In that scenario, the price of gas falls and the bid posted for electricity generated by a gas-fired power station is at a lower price because the primary cost of the power station is its fuel. If the gas price falls, so does the cost base of the plant. There is a hedge at work in the eyes of the bankers (p180).
The same is not true of wind-based renewables plant. The fuel – wind – is a gift of nature. It is free. The cost base of the plant, in the event of the spot price decreasing, does not decrease. That seems to indicate to bankers that there is a point where there is no return, and hence the ability of the plant owner to service the debt. In other words, finance cannot be secured because the fuel is renewable, meaning that even if the turbine is turned by the wind it can still be used by another wind turbine. But non-renewables once used are used. It is counter-intuitive that this is a positive and hence a challenge to bankers. In essence, then, there is a significant merchant risk; namely, “the risk associated with selling renewably generated electricity exclusively or predominantly at volatile merchant (wholesale) prices.” p174
Work arounds – how renewable plant owners can hedge the risk
Christophers offers three ways around this problem.
- Option 1: the futures contract. This is a situation whereby the electricity will be bought and sold at a predetermined price. The fear/danger is that the spot price falls such that revenue is flat and threatens not to cover liabilities. This is a balancing act where an option to sell (short) on the electricity futures contracts means that if the spot price does fall, the negative outcomes in terms of income “earned” in the spot market are compensated for by a gain in the futures market. Essentially, the trading value of the contract enables the sale to be transacted at a fixed future price which typically rises as the spot price declines. This is a common mechanism for hedging in liberalised electricity markets.
- Option 2 – swaps. These are more common in North America and Texas in particular. Swaps act as substitutes for futures contracts. The principle is that a party averse to risk relating to falling electricity prices can offset the risk by entering into a swap that pays out even if electricity prices fall.
Hedging, though, is complex. Only the largest producers have the so-called competence to hedge at scale. There are at the very least significant cash flow challenges. For example, if the spot market does decline, one party has to put up considerable cash to cover the decline. There is even a bigger challenge to contemplate. Christophers asks fairly, what happens if the renewable electricity supplier cannot supply the amount of power it is contracted to supply to the futures or swap markets? The above relate to Christophers’ arguments on pages 178-183.
- Option 3 – PPAs – these reassure banks that there will be a return sufficient for loan repayments.
- Option 4 – government subsidy/support. Such support has its own hazards.
- investment grants do not help in pricing
- Investment Tax Credits can help reduce the level of break-even spot price
- Price controls/Feed-in Tariffs (FiTs) – compensating generators when the spot market “reference” price drops below the contract “strike” price; though when the strike price climbs above the reference price, generators pay back into the pool. The net price is always the strike price.
Price controls stabilise markets and satisfy investors. But then introduces yet another source of uncertainty. Will governments – especially when they are fiscally stressed – honour or extend FiTs rates? Unless they do, renewable generators are back to spot price volatility. Christophers offers examples of state withdrawal in China and India (pp.
Notwithstanding problems with subsidies (option 4), markets can bankrupt renewables generators. In Texas in February 2021, a bolt of cold air caused a number of generators to cease as their equipment, not used to such extreme conditions, seized up. This was not just renewables generators. Fossil-fuel plant also seized up. As a result of the limited supply, electricity spot prises went up considerably. Renewables generators were supplying into a market with spot prices below $100 per MWh (as low as $50). During the crisis, prices were $9000 per MWh. Now if renewables generators were selling into that market, then there was money to be made (assuming the turbines were working, of which many were). But if the generators had PPAs at fixed prices, if they were unable to supply they had to go into the spot market to meet the terms of their PPA. That was enough to bankrupt generators (p310).
Why renewables will not supplant fossil fuel investments
Filed under: Environment, UK | Tags: Andreas Malm, climate, climate change, energy, Overshoot, PV cells, renewable-energy, sustainability
Leave a comment Overshoot
For us non-economists there seems to be a logic that should prevail. If renewables are significantly cheaper than non-renewable fossil fuels, then why do banks and financial institutions continue to provide capital to the fossil fuel industry to extract more oil and gas, despite climate change?
For an answer, I return to the work of Andreas Malm and a recent book (2024), Overshoot (co-authored with Wim Carton). We experience overshoot when policy makers conclude that we can afford to spend our carbon budget in the (mistaken) belief that we can bring back 1.5 degrees by carbon capture and storage. Or even more problematically, reduce the surface temperature of the Earth through geoengineering. It is propagated by fossil-fuel industry lobbyists in order to maintain business-as-usual. Business-as-usual is important because sunk assets of the industry are long-lived and the value of the oil over which they have extraction rights is high.
Commodification
For Malm and Carton (pp209-218) an answer is the inability to commodify sun and wind. We can commodify the equipment that converts the sun’s energy into electricity. We can commodify wind turbines. But because the sun and the wind are renewable – i.e. tomorrow’s sunshine is independent of the sunshine from the previous day – it has not been used up. Moreover, using Marxist theory, Malm and Carton argue that value can only be ascribed to products if human labour is required in its exploitation. Even in the most efficient mining operations, humans are still directing the operation. Wind, sun and water are labourless. That makes them valueless in the eyes of economists. There is no “surplus value”.
By contrast fossil fuels are commodities. They are traded, stored and consumed. The sunshine cannot be traded. There is no world market. There is no OPEC equivalent in renewables. It has no economic value in the capitalist mindset. It is costless. But costlessness may be valuable to consumers, it really is not to capitalists because they are unable to maximise profit – or indeed generate profit at all. Consequently there is only so much renewable energy that any national energy system can support – Malm and Carton suggest about one-quarter to one-third. Above that, costless electricity is so abundant that the price drops to zero or below. It is in Marxist terms, a “labourless void”.
This phenomenon can be illustrated indirectly by asking, name and ascribe a capitalisation to the world’s biggest manufacturer of PV cells or wind turbines. Likewise the owners of the world’s largest PV farms. We can all name the top 10 oil majors and easily find a capitalisation. For those who think Tesla may be a candidate – notwithstanding the current crisis within the company – it is an automobile manufacturer, not a renewable energy company. Essentially, renewable energy technologies (of the flow) have “no talent for providing the accumulation of capital”. (Malm and Carton, 2024: 215).
Competition
Other explanations are available, of course. Is it that there is perfect competition in solar, wind, etc. Barrier to entry are not high and hence there are too many players in the industry (a very Porterian approach). As Malm and Carton argue, if that was the case, then the whole industrial revolution would not have happened as the textile industry was just that, highly competitive.
What is particularly interesting in these technologies is their disruptive potential that could be led by consumers. No amount of consumer demand for fossil-fuel-free electricity, as we have seen, will see off the producers of electricity from fossil fuels. The profit motive blocks this. But it is possible for consumers to become their own generators. And whilst the majority of citizens own little in the way of land, homeowners do have roofs – house, sheds, etc., And in those houses they have space for storage – batteries. Most consumers remain indifferent to this. Even better would be whole neighbourhoods pooling their roofs and generating electricity for collective consumption. The question here is just about the design of the delivery system. For the time being at least, the grid is optimised for national distribution, and as such does not accommodate collective consumption.
Why then has there been any investment in renewables. Malm and Carton offer five reasons.
- Government subsidies – paying someone to do it
- End consumers not needing to make a profit (whilst reducing their own bills)
- Early profit – first movers, for example
- Low rates of profit can still be justified up to a point
- Fossil fuel companies have invested in renewables to fuel their own plants because, like all end users, it is valuable to them
Ultimately market capitalism cannot deliver transition, a mixed economy can.
Kyoto – Soho Place Theatre
It is Valentine’s day 2025, and I look to offer my beloved a romantic evening. What better than to go to a West End theatre to see a romantic comedy with thousands of others desperate for love and romance. Our chosen performance was not a traditional romance; rather it was demanding, pertinent and funny. Yes, it was very funny. It was a romance between humanity and Earth.
Many of my readers know that I have been sceptical about theatre for many years until I realised there is theatre and then there is theatre. Last April we went to the National Theatre in London to see Nye. That is theatre. Now, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s presentation an unlikely play by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson who started writing together in 2011 when they met at university. Both are northerners, one indeed from my home town of Hull.
Those of us of a certain vintage remember Kyoto, though probably not the detail. It was the first UN treaty to tackle climate change. It was the product of COP3 and a process set in motion after the Earth Summit of 1992 (held in Rio de Janeiro). The story is told by one man who was there, Don Pearlman, played by Stephen Kunken. Pearlman, a child of Lithuanian parents who emigrated to the USA, was a lawyer working for the dark forces of the oil majors (the Seven Sisters). But his motivation were more than just money. He was a true patriot, defined by his origins and the opportunity afforded to him by the USA.
His job was to derail any attempt to set targets and timeframes for carbon reduction caused by burning fossil fuels. And he is good at it. His key adversary is the chair of COP3, the then Argentinian Ambassador to the UN, Raúl Estrada, played by Jorge Bosch. They have a number of head-to-heads. Pearlman thinks Estrada is a buffoon, but we know otherwise.
For two-and-a-half hours we watch the protagonists in this minimal theatre setting argue over words, commas and implications. We know the outcome, but the tortured process is worked supremely by this cast. Bearing in mind the origins of the playwrights, it is not surprising that they introduce the character of the former UK deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, played so well by Ferdy Roberts (right) capturing both voice and mannerisms to great comic effect. I am sure Prescott would have been flattered by this depiction. He sadly passed away very recently. The man was very much part of my early life as a constituent and a constituency party member. But I had never really thought that he may have some enabling wisdom to share with Estrada. Never give up until the compromise is reached.
In modern times I am not sure that there can be compromise, which is why this play seems now to be anachronistic. It came just at the right time with Al Gore as the US Vice President (contrast with yesterday’s seriously depressing speech to the Munich security conference by the current incumbent, JD Vance). We know that since Kyoto, step-by-step, the targets have been deepened and it is now actually possible to talk about phase-out of particular fossil fuels. We also know much better now that renewables can deliver energy security at a competitive price. We also know that those dark forces never gave up, bankrolling Pearlmans galore (a practice of lawyers, apparently) and, of course, politicians and their propaganda. Estrada showed us that we have to be better than those who value money over a livable planet. There is nothing more romantic than that.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and airport expansion
Filed under: Environment, Transport, Travel, UK | Tags: Airbus, Airport Expansion, aviation, Hydrogen aeroplanes, Logan Air, SAF, sustainability, Sustainable Aviation Fuel
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Decarbonising aviation is very difficult. It is a good example of why oil-based fuels have been so important in the development of modern society. Nothing quite matches the energy intensity of oil, with the exception of nuclear. Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) are trumpeted as the solution to aviation’s sustainability problem.
I am grateful here to Ben Purvis, Research Associate, Sustainability Assessment, University of Sheffield, for his contribution to the The Conversation for the content here. Purvis notes that there are so-called pathways for creating sustainable aviation fuel. These are:
- Oils or fats, including used cooking oil or tallow.
- Municipal solid waste, agricultural residues and sewage
- Hydrogen and captured carbon using renewable electricity.
It might seem that used cooking oil processing into aviation fuel is a win-win. But with the best will in the world, there is just not enough to go round. At the moment it is around 2 per cent of all aviation fuel. There is a UK mandate to increase this to 7 per cent by 2030 and 22 per cent by 2040. That is still only 1/5 or there about. To meet the current demand the UK imports 92 per cent of its used cooking oil from China and Malaysia (with its own carbon footprint). Currently the UK has one facility converting used-cooking oil to aviation fuel. That is the Phillips 66 Humber Refinery.
A recent report from the Royal Society notes that the 12.3 million tonnes of jet fuel per year needs 42.4 million tonnes of rapeseed biomass per year. In land terms, that is 68% of the UK’s agricultural land or 6.2 to 10.3 million hectares (see Innovate UK). The aviation industry’s own sustainability roadmap, CORSIA, precludes use of agricultural land for “fuel” crops.
The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer said on the 30 January 2025 (BBC radio 4, Today, c0815) that SAF could reduce aviation’s GHG emissions by 70 per cent. “Engines have become much more efficient. And, just at the beginning of this year, this government introduced the mandate for sustainable aviation fuel, which can reduce carbon emissions from flying by 70%. And of course, there’s going to be much more progress on that in the years to come.” (Quotes taken from the Guardian)
Equally there is global competition from both the EU and the USA (the latter now depends on the airlines rather than the state as burning fossil fuels now seems to be a US citizen imperative). Whilst it is clear that production could be increased with more investment, there is little confidence that it would be profitable; moreover, there is the small problem of cost – whichever pathway is taken, SAF costs more to manufacture than does aviation fuel (kerosene). That is £s on each ticket.
Surely there is enough municipal solid waste and sewage to go round? Well maybe, but the technology is in its infancy or not yet approved (see below) and no commercial facilities are producing it as yet. As for hydrogen, first it is packed with carbon if fossil fuels are the source of energy for the electrolysis necessary to produce it. Electrolysis by electricity from renewables remains distant. There is a long way to go before the UK grid is totally decarbonised. And now the British Government has added data centers to the mix, which means electricity supplies more generally are under pressure. Hence the Government’s latest endorsement of nuclear power and another un-tested technology, Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
Not only manufacturing is a challenge, but the infrastructure to store hydrogen at airports or other facilities is just not in place. Hydrogen is also explosive and there are examples of denial of licences for users to store it, for example bus companies. It would require a major change to planning laws for widespread storage.
One UK company is undeterred: Logan Air. Logan Air has announced (12 February 2025) a plan to launch the world’s first hydrogen-fuelled commercial service by 2030. The company does not reveal the identity of the manufacturer of the aircraft that they will use for their point-to-point service (also as yet not stated). This against the backdrop of Airports Council International backtracking on its hydrogen ambitions in favour of scaling SAF, better air traffic management and improving aircraft engine efficiency.
There remains, therefore, the central question of actual aeroplanes. There was some succour in that Airbus was developing hydrogen planes (the A380 Airframer). This aeroplane was going to be a 100-seat 1850km range aircraft (right). But as recent as 6 February 2025 the Force Ouvriere trade union was informed that the launch date has been put off by between 5 and 10 years with an additional budget cut of 25 per cent. The company has identified the lack of available green hydrogen as one of the reasons for the delay. Another, less explicit but particularly troubling reason, is the company’s intention to replace its popular A320neo with a newer and more efficient conventionally-fuelled aircraft. The end of fossil-fuelled aircraft is nowhere in sight. The only option then, for sustainable aviation, is SAF from vegetable oils, tallow or waste.
There is a need, therefore, to clarify whether SAF is actually sustainable. In theory, because the things that it is made of already exist or are grown, burning it does not add to overall CO₂ levels. (Hydrogen, even more so, because it is derived from water and the emissions are just water.) So, aeroplanes still emit CO₂ when we really need to be capturing it and locking it into plants such as trees to generate negative emissions. Equally, it assumes that the crops and the waste had it not been for SAF would have degraded and decomposed releasing greenhouse gases in any case. The reality is that the area being used to cultivate crops to be turned into SAF would in actual fact be used either for food consumption or some form of rewilding. Essentially growing crops to fly planes (at least part of the way to their destinations) would displace food production. This would be a major distortion of land use.
The reason that SAF is so topical is because the British Government seeks to make the case that not only can we continue to fly at current levels, but that airport expansion is possible because the emission reductions from SAF rollout will offset increased flights (all in the name of growth). The above argument challenges that proposition. The calculation also needs to factor in the carbon emissions generated by constructing new runways. It is not trivial.
Gran Canaria – over land and sea, November 2024
Filed under: Easyjet, Environment, Transport, Travel | Tags: Cadiz, europe, European ferries, Eurostar, ferry, Gran Canaria, low-carbon travel, Madrid, Paris, Refre, SNCF, spain, Travel
Leave a comment OK, here we go. Low carbon travel. Train and ferry. Some facts.
Cost
Journey starts Saturday 17 November 2024. To fly from Gatwick Airport on that day would have come in at £45.00 (no luggage) – probably double that with the luggage I have taken that would need to go in the hold. Such pricing in the age of a climate emergency is obscene. By train:
London-Paris – £69.00 (standard class – average of return fare in November/December, considerably more in the summer or ahead of public holidays)
Hotel Paris – I was too late booking this for a Saturday evening. Overall cost £135. Hotel was Ibis Styles, Bercy. Breakfast included, and it was not bad. The room was tight but comfortable.
Paris – Madrid – £175.00 (standard class) – TGV to Barcelona and then Renfe to Madrid. The double-decker TGV is not particularly generous in terms of space, but not uncomfortable. The single-deck Renfe train was much more spacious but with no table (drop down rests were adequate for a laptop). We could not use the wifi because we could not see our ticket number (needed to register).
Hotel Madrid (Ibis Ventas) – £96.33 (incl. breakfast)
Madrid – Cádiz – £80 (standard class)
Hotel Cadiz (Soho Boutique Cadiz) £80 (incl. breakfast)
Cádiz – Gran Canaria – £91.10 (ferry – no cabin)
Taxi – Las Palmas de Gran Canaria – San Augustin – (£75.71) – Why taxi you ask? See below
Being in my sixties, I am not up for hostels, although I know that some budget travellers do so. Good for them, but I think I have reached a milestone. That said, in not selecting a cabin for the journey, we effectively slummed it, but the cost so far have been significant.
There are two of us so we need to double transport costs and share the hotel costs.
First leg
I’m pretty familiar with Eurostar. I travelled standard class on 16 November 2024 on the 1758 (retimed from 1801). I was able to work (the new drop down rests for stuff are now a bit wider). There are power sockets – UK and European. I have my own modem/internet for security reasons. The signal was pretty good throughout, including in the tunnel. In the past when I have connected to the Eurostar wifi, it has been pretty unreliable.
It cost me €2.15 to use the Paris Metro/RER to get from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon/Bercy. One can buy a card to load and reuse. Ticket machines take cash and cards.
Second leg
The next day (17 November 2024) we walked for 10 minutes from the hotel to Gare de Lyon and went to Hall 2 from where the trains depart. The QR codes on our phones or paper did not read. There was someone at the barrier to scan using their own reading machine. All good. We had two seats on the upper deck with a collapsible table usable only for the people sat closest to the window. There is a socket and wifi (below left).
The route taken by the train is pretty much rural France, but on reaching the Mediterranean, the scenery changes to on of salt marsh as it precariously meanders through the Parc Naturel Regional de la Narbonnaise (below right). The train is probably the best vantage point for seeing it as the train runs over what seems to be a causeway.
Warning, however, whilst writing this blog entry my case located by the entrance to the carriage was stolen. My advice is either to chain it to the bars or locate your case inside the carriage – there are some internal luggage racks.
The RENFE train to Madrid was directly opposite the arrival platform of the incoming TGV. It was that simple. Though there are a few challenges. We bought our tickets on RailEurope.com. The pdf that is made available on the app is unreadable by anyone with less-than x-ray sight. The train manager had a record of the ticket, so we were fine. It seems also possible to print tickets from ticket machines providing one has a PNR number that was clearly stated on the itinerary confirmation.
We then looked to buy tickets for the next leg, Madrid – Cádiz. We tried the machines – ticket buying by non-Spanish citizens is not so easy. Each traveller needs to insert their passport number. We got so far in the process (give yourself 10 minutes) before we were thrown out of the system whilst trying to pay. We did then find the staffed Renfe ticket office on the first floor and bought them in the traditional way, but passports are still needed. And the ticket office sales person found the system equally cumbersome. Our passport details had to be put in twice!
Then on to the Metro. Two lines, first 1 (blue) to Sol and then 2 (red) to Ventas. Buying tickets is easy, but you have to buy a card and load it with as many journeys as you need. In our case one centre ticket. Each centre area ticket cost €2.50 with the card. For the first charge, I think the card costs €2 (extra). On the way back to the station the following day, 18 November, we just loaded the cards. Note the machines are cashless. We ate in a nearby Lebanese restaurant. Portions were huge – salad, falafel, spicey patata and vegetal mousaka.
The hotel is next to the bull ring (left) – a constant reminder that there are some residual bloodthirsty passions in Europe. (The British as much as the Spanish – though not in such grand areas.)
Third leg
Monday 18 November is another train journey – about 4 1/2 hours to Cádiz. There is a fast and direct service roughly every 3 hours. It think it can also be done in two legs if needed: one to Seville and then Seville – Cádiz. The trains are spacious (standard class). Each seat has a socket (though mine did not work). There is room for a laptop to be opened and used. The wifi on the train is not working. Though my modem is fine. Similar to Paris, Madrid has distinct boarding gates. Passengers are advised to get there 30 minutes before departure – all baggage is scanned (unlike Paris). It takes about 10 minutes to pass through.
Incidentally, I bought a new case at the station, a t-shirt, shirt, a pair of socks and a sweater to keep me going. I discovered that I did have some underwear in my rucksack.
For a change we arrived at our destination in daylight. We checked into our hotel – probably one of the best we have ever enjoyed – the Soho Boutique Hotel. We had a suite. It was sensational. The breakfast was additional, but worth it. The spread was varied ranging from breads, pastries, cereals, cheeses, meats and fruit.
We bought a few more items in the town:
- food to take onboard – correctly assuming that the onboard catering might be a little unapetising
- Some eye protection (my prescription sunglasses were in the stolen case)
- some trousers and a gilet from a male clothing retailer and shorts, leggings, t-shirts and underwear at an unexpected-to-find branch of Decathlon.
We ate in a Latin-inspired restaurant in the town. The restaurant – Más Que La Cresta – is not exclusively vegan, but the options are good. We took a selection of starters as tapas; though the vegan burgers were certainly enticing, burgers are not quite our thing.
Fourth leg
The ferry terminal is about a 15 minute walk from the entrance to the port. Foot passenger enter the office through which they pass security control and then enter a taxi to drive to- and then in-to the ferry. We did not take a cabin – trying to keep down the costs somewhere – so slept in the reclining seat area on deck 7. For the first part of the journey we sat on the deck in the sunshine. The ferry crosses the shipping route from the Mediterranean west. I trust they have some communication and understanding that ferries operate against the dominant shipping route. It is a reminder that the seas are equally colonised by humans. And on the deck, the exhaust from the ferry reminds us that there are still greenhouse gases being expelled into the environment.
The ferry has a small shop that sells the basics – cigarettes and soap. There is a bar/café and then the self- service restaurant. Not much more. It is unlike the ferry to Rotterdam from Hull which has cinemas and a casino (not that a casino is of much interest to us).
Sleeping – without a cabin, there are rows (2-3-2) of reclinable seats on decks 5 and 7 (right). Deck 7 is the quiet level. What we have realised is that this ferry carries some very seasoned travellers, many of them young, who bring mattresses, airbeds, sleeping bags and food to microwave (the restaurant has a public microwave for use). There is no washing up area, though. So the seasoned travellers often sleep horizontally on any available floor (there are signs all around forbidding this, of course). It is, I think, also the case that this is not a party ship. People are here to sleep, not to party (that is probably saved for the islands).
Did I sleep…yes. It was quiet. People slept. Though in the summer it might get more chaotic with so many floor sleeepers. The reclinables are least comfortable, I found, when reclined (they do not recline too much). I reverted to normal position. A pillow of some kind is needed. That doesn’t mean that I am not looking forward to a bed on arrival.
For the day, I was on deck for much of the time (left). The sun was warm and I had a book. Working is not so easy as the ship is really not geared up for business. The sockets are few – and in demand for mobile recharging. There is a small cordoned-off area in the restaurant that could act as a business space. It does have sockets, but I only counted four, and they were not well spaced around the room either. In the end I went to work in the restaurant in-between sittings (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Talking of which, we did take breakfast. It was not bad actually. And not expensive. For €12.50 we had cereal, bread, egg, yoghurt, tortilla and coffee. We are not sure whether it was accurately calculated. But hey.
We were scheduled to dock at midnight…in the end it was 0130 GMT. We were out by about 0200. But what then? Cadiz is easy, the port is adjacent to the town and walkable. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria port is quite large, not walkable and relatively deserted at 0200. There was no shuttle bus, no taxi rank. My beloved was armed with a taxi phone number but more than once – without perfect Spanish – they just put the phone down on us. I walked back to the ferry to ask one of the personnel if they could speak for us. We had a volunteer whose intervention magically summoned a taxi that arrived after about 10 minutes. Uber is on the island – download the app before you travel. Anyway, the drive was approximately 45 minutes – fast because there was little on the roads (which are superior to anything in the UK – not a pothole to be seen). The fare was €90 to San Augustin – 55km. Journey end.
Reflections
I wanted to test the feasibility of getting to the island by land and sea and be productive in the process. Whilst I may be on holiday, I still want to engage in some academic work – I am an academic after all. All travel raises questions that warrant answers. I have never regarded travel time as a waste. I do think my efforts here were thwarted by the transport operators – notwithstanding the theft of a bag. Here are the key challenges:
- Cost – it is significantly more expensive to travel overland than by air. The journey cost overall was £802.14. That is at least eight times what it would cost to fly. We could cut out the hotels – do Paris to Cadiz in a single day starting very early in the morning. That is a tough day and all the connections need to work.
- Time – I wanted to be productive and connected. It was ideal for reading books and academic papers, not so good for writing. Observations:
- I could not connect to the internet on Renfe between Barcelona and Madrid because users need their ticket number. This was unreadable on my ticket from RailEurope. That said, for security, I use my own dongle with European roaming, which worked fine. I did use about 21/2 Gb.
- The (un)complementary internet on the ferry was very poor. And because we were sailing, there was no mobile signal (I feared, too, that if there was, it would be Moroccan, and therefore elicit extra roaming costs). I could have bought a better internet package from the operator, though. I did not because I had lost my credit card in the bag theft.
- As noted, there is no dedicated workspace onboard.
- Foot passengers on ferries are poorly served. The situation at the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria was a problem. There was absolutely no provision for us at the port. And being so late, it leaves stranded passengers vulnerable. This is not universal. Other ferry journeys that we have taken have been better served. Hoek van Holland has its own railway station! Europoort had coaches to take passengers to Rotterdam (or used to).
What needs to be done
- Sort out ticketing…
- Buying European train tickets is way too complicated, especially across borders. We used Rail Europe, but the tickets issued were unreadable by station and train staff.
- Adding to that, buying tickets in Spain either by machine or at a staffed ticket office is slow and cumbersome. Passports are needed for non-Spanish travellers and it can take an inordinate amount of time to get issued with a ticket. On the machines, we twice got ejected and had to start again.
- Wifi…
- I am happy to use my dongle for security reasons, but the ferry wifi was poor by any standard. Even basic searching was difficult or impossible. The wifi would shut off in any case after 30 minutes or so and it was necessary to log in again, including reading the terms and conditions.
- Make provision for work – dedicated space, sockets, reliable wifi. I know the argument – there is no demand. But there is no demand because there is no provision, arguably. Equally, the ferry would be an ideal place for a conference, workshop, briefings, etc.
- Treat foot passengers with respect. Ensure that they can embark and disembark safely. And do not leave them stranded at a port in the middle of the night. That is truly shocking.
Getting back
We flew back! It was not the original intention, for sure. I made the decision when we got on the ferry from Cádiz. I am not advocating flying – my overland and sea days are not over, far from it. Indeed, the flight was long, cramped, hot and involved airports. However, three key things swung it for me (a further two factors made me feel slightly more sanguine).
- The timings of ferries back relative to my need to be at my desk on 9 December meant that the time on the island would be much shorter. In order safely to get back by 9 December, I would need to leave the island on 1 December 2024. That ferry is scheduled to be 43 hours. Having taken 5 days to get to the island, to leave after just over a week seemed rather punitive (bearing in mind I am working throughout the period January to August inclusive and this is my summer holiday).
- The experience getting here was not the best – from having my bag stolen to the facilities on the ferry and the restaurant menus.
- Cost – I had to spend quite a bit of money replacing some of the things I had lost particularly my clothes.
- Carbon – I am trying to be a good citizen, but I am not perfect. Though I am reminded by some pioneers of low carbon working of studies relating to carbon generated by flying, in particular the contrast between short haul and long haul. That is not to say that I am going suddenly to start flying again as I had done prior to Covid (i.e. every week). Here is a quote based on work by Frédéric Dobruszkes, Giulo Mattioli and Enzo Gozzoli “flights of less than 500km account for 26.7% of flights, but only 5.2% of fuel burnt; while flights of 4000km or more account for just 5.1% of flights, but 39% of fuel burnt. This tallies with AEF’s (The Aviation Environment Federation) findings that shows that in terms of carbon emitted from flights from the UK to destinations around the world, the worst offenders are indeed long-haul – in top place is the US with 23.6% of the UK’s international flight emissions (10.6Mt), and Dubai with 6.7%.” You can read the summary article, “The Elephant in the Middle Aisle” here.
- Finally, I picked up an injury in the final week on the island (see later entry) that would have made overland very difficult, painful and dangerous. On that basis, too, I can safely say that disabled travellers are much better served by airlines (though there are some horror stories) than overland across borders and modes.
Decarbonisation milestone
Filed under: Environment, Transport, Travel, Vehicles | Tags: decarbonisation, diesel van, Mercedes Vito
Leave a comment It has taken three years to get there, but I have reached a decarbonisation milestone. It started with six photovoltaic cells on my roof and 6kW of battery storage. I then invested in an induction hob. Then, the big one, the heat pump. Which is now doing an amazing job at keeping the house warm and supplying hot water. It is a different experience to my gas boiler and super hot radiators. The radiators stay ambient.
Anyway, finally, today I said goodbye to my diesel van (why did I have a diesel van in the first place you might ask?). I have sold it, so it will still be burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases. But I felt that in selling it I may be tempering demand for new vehicles. Even this old van has embedded carbon from its manufacture.
Where to next? What more can I do? Well, there remains plenty of scope. First, I need to do a full audit of my life and then create for myself a carbon reduction plan! I will report further here in due course.
Be informed 
