A UK low-carbon industrial strategy with CCS

The 25th November 2016 may have passed many people by. However, for the CCS industry it marked the one-year anniversary of the UK’s decision to cancel the competition to build the first commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in the UK.

It is hard to argue with the evidence regarding the importance of CCS – the IPCC has estimated that the costs of meeting global climate change targets without CCS could increase by 138%. Similarly, the Committee on Climate Change found that CCS could almost halve the cost of meeting the UK’s 2050 emissions reduction target.

When all the evidence points to CCS as being a crucial part of the cost-effective solution to climate change, why has an operational project so far eluded the UK? And how do we now move forward?

The answer to the first question is slightly complicated and explains the benefits of CCS as well as some of the challenges. CCS is a vital decarbonisation tool across a broad range of sectors; let’s take each of them in turn.

In a world with increasingly stringent climate change targets, industrial sectors such as steel, cement, chemicals and refining will be very dependent on CCS to achieve significant emissions reductions. This is because these sectors produce carbon dioxide as part of the process (for example to make steel in a blast furnace, you need to use coking coal and carbon dioxide is a by-product of this process). So CCS will be vital to ensuring a long-term, sustainable future for these industries.

To say CCS in the power sector has been on a bit of a rollercoaster ride would be an understatement. The UK’s low-carbon energy policy is focussed around the trilemma of affordability, energy security and sustainability. The options that the Government has pursued to meet this trilemma are focussed on renewables, nuclear and (at the moment) gas. The latter is particularly important because it provides vital flexibility in a system with intermittent renewables and inflexible nuclear, so gas is needed to balance the mix. However we must concede that over-reliance on gas will cause us to significantly miss our climate change targets and CCS is therefore vital to ensuring that gas can continue to provide a low-carbon source of flexible electricity.

CCS also has significant potential to decarbonise heat via hydrogen. There is increasing interest around the potential to use hydrogen for domestic and industrial heat and for transport. Steam methane reforming of natural gas with CCS is at present the best way to produce large-scale, low-cost, green hydrogen – the Leeds H21 report, published a few months ago, proposes to convert the Leeds gas grid into a hydrogen network using this method.

So the above applications show that CCS has cross-sectoral benefits. However this also presents a challenge for the UK as policies have historically tended to focus on specific sectors in isolation, missing the big picture.

So how do we now move forward? There are signs that the tide is turning – the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) seems to be a step in the right direction, bringing together energy, industry and climate change policies. Theresa May has put industrial strategy at the heart of the new Government and regional/place-based development at the core of this strategy.

This could actually be very positive for CCS. The cross-sectoral benefits of CCS are best realised by developing clusters or networks of carbon dioxide pipelines and storage sites in a specific region – such as Teesside, the Humber or Scotland. This infrastructure enables the cost-effective decarbonisation of both industry and power in any given region and can also link up to a hydrogen network, thereby decarbonising heat at the same time.

We are very fortunate in the UK that many of our industrial and power facilities are already closely located together – the development of CCS clusters would actually be a fairly simple task. However, time is not on our side. We are losing many of our key industries and the availability of CCS infrastructure has a significant role to play in ensuring a sustainable long-term future for these industries, as well as the jobs and contribution to economic output that they support.

The decision to decarbonise heat via hydrogen has to be taken in the early 2020s (otherwise other – more expensive – options will need to be pursued instead) and this means that there needs to be a clear pathway to developing CCS transport and storage infrastructure ahead of this decision being taken. The UK’s oil and gas industry is heading towards a cliff edge in the 2020s when many fields come to the end of their life. Repurposing oil and gas infrastructure for CCS would delay decommissioning and could even provide an additional revenue stream via enhanced oil recovery.

This is why the Government must urgently come forward with a new approach to CCS. Whilst the specific policies are not yet fully formed, we are arguably in a better place to make the right decision. Industrial strategy, regional development, infrastructure and economic growth – CCS is vital to achieving all of these. Let’s hope the UK makes the right decision very soon.

Judith Shapiro is Policy and Communications Manager at the Carbon Capture and Storage Association

The views expressed in this article are those of the article, and do not necessarily represent those of Bright Blue

An environment that works for everyone

The 2015 Conservative manifesto contained the very welcome statement that ‘we will build new infrastructure in an environmentally sensitive way’ and committed to produce a 25 year plan for nature.  Although the context may have changed significantly with the outcome of the EU referendum on June 23rd, both commitments will be coming into sharp focus over the coming months. Indeed, the two commitments are interrelated - far more so than the impression has been given.

Respecting the irreplaceable

The Autumn Statement traditionally sees a strong emphasis on improving infrastructure but there is the added context this year of the recent Natural England report into how HS2 was seeking to achieve its aim of no net loss of biodiversity. It argued that ancient woodland is irreplaceable and should be not be included in this calculation by HS2 lest it give the impression that ancient woodland is somehow tradeable. The report also went on to argue that a compensation ratio of 30 hectares of new woodland created for every one lost was an appropriate recognition of its importance – sending out a strong signal that loss needs to be avoided.  The response from the Department of Transport that the report was ‘a stimulus for debate’ rather than immediately accepting the conclusionsuggests that there is work to do in terms of securing cross-government buy-in to those manifesto commitments.

Ancient woodland (our richest land habitat, covering just 2% of the country) is a key building block for environmental enhancement but we are losing it at an alarming rate. We need an approach to the delivery of needed infrastructure and housebuilding that both recognises the importance of protecting our most valued habitats and seeks to improve people’s opportunities to access nature with all the many benefits such access brings.

Exiting the EU and the natural environment

Whilst we must ensure that the EU’s protective and regulatory frameworks that currently apply to UK wildlife and habitats are at least secured, we must also ensure that domestic protections which are clearly failing – such as those around ancient woodland where the National Planning Policy Framework is failing to halt loss to development are properly addressed and not simply parked. They are part of the same question about being the first generation to leave the environment in better shape than we found it.

Leaving the EU provides the opportunity to shape a new land use policy that addresses environmental security and forges far better interplay between environmental enhancement and productive farming than the CAP allowed – but it will require imagination.

A broader understanding of ‘infrastructure’

The Government’s 25 year plan for the environment needs to make clear that enhancement of the environment is a cross-government responsibility. It also needs a modern understanding of ‘infrastructure’ that will really equip us for future challenges, not just getting from A to B more swiftly. This means acting on the increasingly compelling evidence about our need for green infrastructure. Research carried out for the Woodland Trust by Europe Economics found that trees deliver £270 billion worth of benefits to society. It is becoming ever clearer that they are far more than an aesthetic prop or somewhere for wildlife to live. They are essential to combating air pollution, to flood management and to locking up carbon.

Turning around the present lamentably low planting rates - just 700 hectares in England last planting season, when the target is 5,000 hectares per year - will require reduced complexity around grant agreements for landowners, incentivising payment for ecosystem services and capturing the imagination of the wider public. In terms of the latter, a new national forest in the north of England is an idea which the Woodland Trust believes would offer a great deal in showcasing the importance of green infrastructure and bring a very visible environmental dimension to the Northern Powerhouse project.

In the present uncertain times, Burke’s declaration that we must leave to future generations ‘an habitation not a ruin’ was never more relevant. But there are grounds for optimism given how much there is to play for in terms of shaping a land use policy that meets our needs and using new development to enhance opportunities to access natural green space whilst protecting the best of what we have. In short, an environment that works for everyone.

Dr James Cooper is Head of Government Affairs at the Woodland Trust

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue

Intermittent renewable generation concerns get blown away

This week, a new report, Plugging the Energy Gap, was released based on research by Imperial College London. It looks at how to secure our future electricity needs at least cost and addresses common concerns regarding the intermittency and reliability of renewable energy generation like wind and solar. Such concerns have, in part, led to government blocking announcements on future auctions, which are the route-to-market for onshore wind farms and solar photovoltaic (PV) projects in the UK. Results of the report, however, show that these concerns are based on perceived, rather than actual, cost barriers and that the cheapest way to decarbonise our power system would in fact involve large volumes of variable renewable generation. This is the case even if any additional costs of creating the flexible system needed to manage intermittency are taken into account.

Good value for money for consumers

As conventional power stations close down, Britain is facing an “energy gap”.  By 2030, the UK requires the construction of new low carbon generation capacity capable of producing over 150TWh of electricity each year by 2030. That is the equivalent of around half of all current annual consumption.

This creates an unprecedented opportunity to create a secure, clean, flexible energy system fit for the twenty-first century. However, new policies are required to ensure that the capacity to plug this energy gap is delivered at least cost to consumers.

With this in mind, it seems evident that low carbon procurement decisions should be underpinned by value for money. On the 9th November 2016, the Government announced its second round of auctions for less established renewables. It did not, however, provide a clear cost justification on why budget had not been allocated to lowest cost, mature technologies. This was despite a very clear recommendation made by the Competition and Markets Authority in June this year following their investigation of the energy market, to provide evidence that these procurement decisions did indeed deliver value for money.

The lack of justification is even more troubling because on the same day the Government also published an update of the cost of electricity from new power stations. This clearly highlights that mature renewables like onshore wind and solar PV are by far the cheapest form of low carbon generation in the UK. In fact, it predicts that, in just a few years, mature renewable projects are expected to be the cheapest form of generation in the UK - and that includes gas. The renewables industry believes that onshore wind and solar PV are already cheaper than gas, but a new auction round is required to prove this.

The cost of intermittency

Understanding the real cost of variable renewables is not simple. Renewables, like solar and wind, are infamous for being intermittent. Even though wind and sunshine are free, there is a hidden cost to keeping the lights on when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.

In a report on costs, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has said that they are working on understanding this topic in more detail. There is, however, already a growing body of evidence to inform this question and Imperial College London has been working on this issue. Their findings, reported in Plugging the Energy Gap, conclude that “the cheapest way to decarbonise the power system involves large volumes of variable renewable generation even when taking system integration costs into account.”

The analysis shows that it would be possible to more than double the levels of variable renewables without adding significant integration costs to consumers from current levels. So, contrary to general perception, system integration costs do not change the fact that mature renewable technologies are the cheapest form of low carbon generation. Given a chance to participate in future auctions, evidence suggests that mature renewable technologies will prove beyond doubt that they are cheaper today even than gas.

With the looming “energy gap”, the UK will need to build new generating capacity to deliver at least 150TWh more electricity per year by 2030.  This is an unprecedented opportunity to create a modern, secure, clean and flexible energy system.  Mature renewable technologies are still the cheapest form of new low carbon generation, even taking into account the costs of dealing with their intermittency. The Government will need to provide a clear trajectory for the deployment of all low carbon generation that is consistent with delivering on its long-term carbon budgets at least cost. At the same time, it can continue to grow regional supply chains as part of its industrial strategy. Plans to fill the energy gap and, at the same time, deliver on carbon budgets should strive to maximise the advantages for both consumers and the economy.

Alex Coulton is a senior policy analyst at RES

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue

It’s time to innovate to strengthen energy security

This winter, the UK is expecting high demand for electricity supply and an increase in costs. Renewable power sources are starting to fill the gap left behind by closing coal power stations, but they generate more when the sun shines or the wind blows and are not necessarily available when people turn on their televisions in the evenings.

National Grid pays gas and coal plants and diesel farms to turn up or down their supply whenever there’s an increase or decrease in demand for electricity. This winter alone, keeping power plants going for peak demand is forecast to cost consumers £122 million, while an estimated £800 million in subsidies may  be awarded to diesel projects under the Government’s Capacity Market. This is expensive, slow and not very green. Energy prices and security of supply are top political priorities, but when it takes four years and a lot of money to build a power station, there needs to be a more efficient solution.

The good news is that Great Britain has a thriving energy technology sector with a vast portfolio of innovations that can step up to this immediate challenge. Open Energi, a dynamic UK tech firm, uses technology to link together more than 3,000 machines - like air conditioners in your local supermarket or the pumps moving our water - and switches these machines on or off during the day to make power available when it’s needed by consumers, or to store electricity after a big gust of wind. This technology is already installed at over 350 industrial and commercial sites across the UK including Sainsbury’s, Tarmac, Aggregate Industries, United Utilities and University of East Anglia. Developed right here in Britain, this is powerful technology. On cold winter evenings, it can function just like an entire nuclear plant. Demand flexibility is the first line of defence in an energy security crisis, which is characterised by successive power plant failures rather than a lack of supply.

But this ‘demand-side’ energy tech faces major barriers in UK energy markets. Companies like Open Energi cannot prequalify for the government Capacity Market and cannot compete directly against gas plants in the balancing mechanism. The fast, flexible power they provide is instead only accessible via monthly tenders and procurements. Faced with a national energy security crunch on one hand and with the tech needed to solve it bound only by markets that aren’t fit for purpose, there is an immediate opportunity to unleash competition. Unlike other energy projects, demand flexibility requires no state subsidy at all. All that we ask at Open Energi is that the regulations are updated to ensure ‘demand side’ (when we turn demand up and down) is given the same treatment as ‘supply side’ (when new power is generated) in the existing energy markets.

Deploying demand flexibility and storage at speed to solve an energy crunch at scale is a proven path. In 2015, Californian policymakers were faced with a shutdown at the state’s biggest gas storage facility, threatening peak shortages and blackouts. To solve this immediate challenge with an immediately available solution, policy-makers fast-tracked 64.5MW of electricity storage and approved $11.5 million for demand response and dynamic pricing. Energy storage projects were constructed in less than four months, compared to a previous average of three and a half years.

Applying the same market mechanisms in the UK could dramatically change the game for energy security on the GB grid as early as next winter. With over 1GW of energy storage prequalified for National Grid’s recent Enhanced Frequency Response tender, of which only 200MW was purchased, it’s clear we have the appetite from investors to bring innovation to market. The challenge now rests with policy makers to make regulation fit for purpose in a modern age of energy technology innovation.

Lucy Symons is the Director of Public Policy for @openenergi and recently travelled to California as part of a delegation of female founders leading some of the UK’s fastest growing tech firms. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

Nuclear innovation must be part of the climate and energy solution

Nuclear is a necessary part of the UK’s energy system. It currently provides about a fifth of UK electricity. Reactors are expensive to build, cheap to operate, then expensive to decommission. So it makes sense to run them for as long as regulators say it is safe to do so. Angela Merkel’s decision to close Germany’s reactors early makes no economic sense.

However, the UK has not opened a new nuclear reactor since 1995. (Labour was, for most of its 13 years in power, anti-nuclear.) So most UK nuclear plants are reaching the end of their design life. If we are to meet the legally-binding carbon budgets of the Climate Change Act, new nuclear will be needed, alongside energy efficiency, renewables and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

Amber Rudd promised, while Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, that there will be no coal generation without CCS after 2025 – but only if this is consistent with energy security. By this she presumably meant ‘only if there is enough non-coal generation capacity to keep the lights on’.  In the broader energy security sense, ‘where does the fuel come from?’, nuclear clearly is consistent: the uranium comes from friendly countries like Australia and Namibia.

The Coalition Government did well to make progress on new nuclear, which the Conservative Government has continued. Prime Minister May has now given final approval to EDF to construct Hinkley Point C. The reactor EDF will build, the European Pressurised Reactor, is a very complicated design – with additional safety features added to an old design. This complexity increases costs. EDF’s efforts to build such reactors in France and Finland have been beset with difficulties, delays and budget overruns.

Nevertheless, now the decision has been made Hinkley should be supported. So should new build proposals on Angelsey and in Cumbria. These projects will use less complex reactor designs, so will very probably be cheaper to build. But they are again not the most modern reactor designs. So the Government should also promote nuclear innovation.

Last year, the think tank I work for, Weinberg Next Nuclear, called for public investment in nuclear innovation. In his Autumn Statement, George Osborne promised £250 million for nuclear R&D. Earlier this year, the Government launched a competition to develop and demonstrate small modular reactors, which can be made in factories. They are then delivered to sites, where the modules can be combined to provide a power station as large as desired. This will almost certainly cut construction costs.

The Government should go further on nuclear innovation, as Weinberg argued in our April report Next Steps for Nuclear Innovation in the UK. Britain has an enormous legacy from past nuclear activities: spent fuel and the largest plutonium stockpile in the world. Burying it in a very deep – and very expensive – hole has been the favoured option of successive governments. A much better approach would be to use the legacy to provide clean energy. Most of the energy that was contained in the uranium remains unused in spent fuel, so the fuel should be re-used, not thrown away. Plutonium can also be used as fuel. Advanced molten salt and fast reactors could deal with the nuclear legacy as well as providing clean energy. Because safety is built into the design, they will be cheaper to construct than the Hinkley design will be.

Why can’t energy policy, including technological innovation, simply be left to the market? Because there is not a proper carbon price, so the market delivers dirty energy, not clean energy. A carbon price set in the UK alone damages competitiveness. There could in theory be an international carbon price at a respectable level (so unlike the EU Emissions Trading System). But this debate has been going on for 30 years, with little progress. We cannot afford to wait longer. As Christine Lagarde has pointed out, climate change is the greatest economic threat of the twenty-first century.

Chancellor Hammond should therefore continue Osborne’s investment in nuclear innovation. He should reverse one of his predecessor’s mistakes and re-start a UK CCS programme. And he should support innovative renewable energy technologies: tidal lagoons, floating offshore wind farms, bioenergy from seaweed. Innovation, like energy policy generally, must include a diverse portfolio.

The Conservative Party has – as the name suggests – a strong commitment to conservation. It has a proud record on climate change: Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 speech to the Royal Society helped shape the global climate agreement reached three years later in Rio. Theresa May and Greg Clark now have the opportunity to build on this record by publishing, then implementing, a clean industrial strategy.

Stephen Tindale (@STindale) is director of Weinberg Next Nuclear. He is also a consultant to Tidal Lagoon Power.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

Why solving the global wildlife crisis could help build a stronger, healthier Britain

Data released today by WWF and the Zoological Society of London sends a shocking message about the health of our planet: global populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles have declined by 58% since 1970.  The Living Planet Report shows that without urgent action to reduce humanity’s impact on species and ecosystems, vertebrate populations are projected to decline by a staggering 67% from 1970 levels by the end of this decade. 

Human activity including agriculture, pollution and hunting has eroded populations of African elephants in Tanzania, maned wolves in Brazil, leatherback turtles in the tropical Atlantic, and orcas in European waters.  We lose an area of forest equivalent to a football pitch every two seconds, we have overfished our oceans, and through over abstraction and dam building some rivers no longer reach the sea.  This is not just a faraway problem: the RSPB’s recent State of Nature report showed that almost 60% of our native species, from kingfishers to hedgehogs to turtle doves, have declined in recent decades.

We ignore the decline of other species at our peril – for they are the barometer that measures our impact on the world that sustains us.  We are entering an era where climate change, floods and health costs from pollution threaten our economic prosperity, resilience, and wellbeing. This is arguably the greatest challenge humanity has yet faced - but great challenges can be the catalyst for great progress.  By basing all future policy decisions on the understanding that a healthy natural environment is a crucial underpinning to our economy and society, Ministers could not just help save the global environment, but also markedly improve the lives of millions of people. 

Laudably, the Government says it wants this generation to be the first to leave the natural environment in an improved condition.  So as we prepare to leave the EU, Ministers must jettison any temptation to erode the environmental rules and standards their predecessors worked to shape.  Instead, they should build on these achievements.  

Post-Brexit, there is no reason why the UK should not lead the world in running a successful, low-carbon economy that respects and nurtures precious wildlife and wild places, at home and abroad.  The promised 25-year environment plan, due for publication in draft form later this year, could start this process.  It should be explicitly backed by the Prime Minister, boast strong proposals for reform, and apply to every corner of government.

What should this plan contain?

It should set ambitious goals for restoration and improvement of our natural resources - including forest cover, urban green space, air, water and soil quality - and put in place a transparent monitoring system so our natural capital can be managed as prudently as our financial resources.  

It should hold all government departments and public bodies accountable for how their policies and actions will affect nature for generations to come. For example, the impact of any new housing, transport or energy infrastructure should be assessed against rigorous environmental standards – including on carbon emissions.  

Nature doesn’t recognise borders - and our actions at home can also impact wildlife on the other side of the planet.  So the plan should set out provisions to measure and manage the UK’s impact on nature in other countries, so that unsustainable supply chains, for example in food and raw materials such as wood, palm oil and soy, become a thing of the past.  Savvy businesses – many of which already take advice from WWF in order to decrease their environmental impact – would have every reason to back sensible regulation that levels the playing field and helps preserve essential resources over the long term. 

There are precedents to build on here.  The Paris agreement on climate change (which British Ministers played an active role in shaping, and which Theresa May is committed to adopting) has been ratified by over 50 nations.  The Government is a signatory to the UN’s sustainable development goals and has a proud record in fighting the illegal wildlife trade, recently backing new restrictions on the international trade in threatened species including pangolins and African grey parrots. December’s conference of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity is a vital forum for the Government to reiterate that it is serious about helping tackle the global loss of species.  And a 25-year plan that tackles our international footprint and provides inter-generational accountability would allow the UK to show international leadership.

A lot can change within just one generation.  So allow me to imagine what life could be like in only 25 years’ time. Flooding in towns and cities could be reduced with restored wetlands and rivers which, now brimming with wildlife, provide us with beautiful places to spend our free time.  Farmers will be paid a decent income to create beautiful, wildlife-rich habitats, using natural methods to improve productivity and contribute to societal benefits such as clean water and reduced flooding.  Our seas will be full of life, supporting a restored and sustainable fishing industry. Housing and infrastructure developments will be located where they will do minimal environmental damage, working with nature rather than against it. Children will be healthier both mentally and physically as they play in green space in all our cities, towns and villages, and their future will be more secure as our carbon emissions fall to almost nothing.  

And new industries – boosted by a low-carbon Industrial Strategy - will create jobs in an increasingly resource-efficient, circular economy in which materials get reused and recycled, we consume in ways that do not leave a footprint internationally, and the value of nature is incorporated into business plans and government policy.

Sensible stewardship of the natural world is not an alternative to enterprise; on the contrary, it is now a prerequisite for the economic and social health of communities and nations.  As a global green industrial revolution gets underway, the Government should not be afraid to use its power to ensure the UK leads rather than lags behind.

Mike Barrett is Director of Science and Policy at WWF-UK

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

A post-liberal approach to the natural environment

As Brexit approaches, too many public figures seem determined to stress what divides rather than what unites us; yet the great majority of people outside Westminster simply want to get on with building a country we can be proud of, with a fairer economy and healthier environment. 

Luckily, the further away from SW1 you travel, the more possible it is to imagine a politics that could make this happen.  From Brixham to Birmingham, Sutherland to Stoke, people tell us that they value relationships and the bonds within communities, as much as individual rights and freedoms.  They are sceptical about allowing the state to dominate their lives, but recognise its role in making things better.  They don’t think of people or nature as commodities; but embrace the role of businesses in building economies that flourish.

Theresa May seems instinctively to understand this politics, which has loosely been called post-liberalism. If she were to put it to work to restore Britain’s natural environment, she could begin a project of remarkable national renewal. 

Our wildlife has suffered horribly since the war; our soils are in poor health; and we are facing the impacts of climate change without the resilience we need.  The last Government showed what can be done, by securing wide-reaching reforms to European fisheries policies, and creating a magnificent over-seas network of marine nature reserves; but we need more of that ambition, if we are to turn Brexit into a moment of opportunity for the natural world.

The first step will be to re-think the role of the state in protecting and restoring our environment.

As the Government has already shown through its welcome ban on microbeads, emphatic state action is sometimes simply the right thing to do. But truly effective regulation should act as a spur to innovation, creating dividends for those able to produce cleaner, more efficient and safer products.  At its best, regulation is dynamic. Its job is specifically to render itself redundant.

A similar story can be told about public funding.  State support can help drive down the costs of new products or practices, and in doing so, become an agent for change.  Governments around the world have helped reduce the costs of solar power, for example. The trick is to taper such support in a way that works for consumers and builds markets, rather than demanding an open ended commitment to subsidy.

In an ideal world, the active state would be an environmental problem-solver, not a nanny.  But in many cases the best solutions don’t come from the centre, but from local people working to improve the places where they live.  Their ‘ask’ from Government is to be given more power to do better. 

This is certainly the case for many farmers trying to do the right thing for their businesses and for nature.  A staggering proportion of today’s farmers say they aren’t profitable without the under-pinning support of the single farm payment.  Yet many also acknowledge that this payment, and the rules that come with it, have done little to incentivise innovation; and that they feel trapped in unsustainable patterns of business that demoralise them and their families. 

The remarkable thing is that in many cases, the route to a more profitable farm is also the route to a better environment. I recently met a farm owner and his young manager in Devon who have dedicated years to developing a machine to turn sea-food waste into high-grade fertiliser. Outside Banbury, I met a young business man who is turning his farm around by matching inputs to outputs with passion and precision.  Producers of the highest quality food tell me that they could sell at prices lower than those of the supermarkets, if they could build shorter supply chains. 

The best food needn’t cost the earth – for nature or customers.  But we desperately need an agricultural policy that supports positive change, rather than underpinning the status quo – through capital grants, advice, and backing for smaller farms (the core of our rural communities and our biggest pool of innovators); rather than static payments and moribund rules.

Once we have this foundation, we can encourage farmers to form partnerships locally to deliver more ambitious projects of environmental renewal.  This might include restoring endangered species and habitats, reducing flood risk or cutting the cost of clean drinking water.  It might even see rural communities offering new ways for children from towns and cities to spend time in the countryside – making a real difference to their development and mental health.

Let us imagine that by the end of this parliament, the Government had committed itself to making the UK a world leader in environmental recovery, with bold plans for restoring nature, reducing pollution, and rebuilding sustainable farm and fishing businesses up and down the country.  And let us imagine too, that the engines for this project were local communities and thriving businesses committed to making great places - with the support of an active but enabling state.  Who would care then, which of us (or them) had voted leave or remain?

Ruth Davis is a senior associate at E3G

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

Future farming policy: putting all our asks in one Brexit?

Politics is finally emerging from the shock and awe of the Brexit decision and frameworks for policy development for a new post-EU future are beginning to emerge. An abiding question is whether the political and economic realities of our impending separation will mean damage limitation is required or whether Brexit presents opportunities, not least for innovation and dynamism in business and in policy.

The risks of damage are perhaps nowhere clearer than for farming. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has taken the lion’s share of the EU budget for decades. Though it has fallen recently, it’s doubtful HM Treasury will want to continue funding farming in the way the CAP has done. George Freeman MP, chair of the PM’s policy board, has recently suggested as much.

Not least the Brexit debate set many hares running about where our ‘repatriated’ EU contributions could or should go and farming wasn’t at the top of the list. If we add in the risk that the trade deals finally settled upon are likely to meet the needs of the most influential industries – perhaps financial services or engineering – then farming could face both cuts to a stable source of funding and more intense competition from often cheaper imports.   

These challenges are faced by an industry that is already in a precarious economic position. Despite turnover of nearly £24 billion in 2015, little short of half of the ‘income’ from farming came from public funding, not farmers producing food. In 2014-2015, farms in the cereals and grazing livestock sectors upland and lowland were on CAP life-support: they made losses. Overall, the farming industry is struggling from a combination of interrelated economic pressures despite public funding: long-term falls in farm gate prices, volatility on world markets, a de facto cheap food policy in the UK and supermarkets driving food prices down as they compete for customer loyalty and market share.  

Brexit hasn’t changed all these factors but it offers the chance, unparalleled in 40 years, to reshape farming policy to better address them and other pressing needs. Within the new frameworks of its 25 year plans for farming and the environment, the Government has a signal opportunity to be progressive. It’s also a moment for all those who care about the countryside and the future of farming to support an ambitious agenda.   

A first goal must be to agree on how to create a resilient, financially stable and dynamic farming industry for the long term. Without it food production will be less secure and the rural economy weakened.

A second and equal goal must be to agree on how farming can be made to work for the wider community and the environment. We should take it as understood that a farmer’s vocation is to produce food. Although food production depends on environmental assets, we can’t rely on farmers’ benevolence and voluntary action on the environment when they face tough markets and a fight to survive in the short term. But equally, if substantial amounts of public money are to keep going into farming, we can’t rely either on public benevolence to fund farmers for business as usual.

This means farming fit for the future has to engage with a wider set of issues as a norm: it must address unsustainable use of natural resources and the damage caused to wildlife, water quality, soils and landscapes. So a central goal for future policy post-Brexit – which the Government’s new plans for farming and the environment must help achieve - should be to recognise its multipurpose role: we need to farm for food and beyond food too.

In a country with a relatively small land area and growing population we don’t have the space or freedom for farming to do otherwise: farming must continue to feed us and provide cherished landscapes, clean water and effective flood management, healthy soils that soak up carbon, thriving ecosystems that support abundant wildlife, all of which benefit the public in myriad ways. These are benefits that the market poorly rewards, if at all.

These are benefits that, if farming is oriented towards them by policy with proper levels of funding, should bring greater efficiencies – for example, by ensuring fewer nitrates enter water bodies, that pesticides are targeted precisely - and cost savings to farmers. They will avoid costs to the public too: for the clean-up of water polluted by run-off, for the dredging of eroded soils, insurance bills for flood repair and the unpredictable fall out costs of global warming.

The case to fund multipurpose farming should and can be based on strong principles: demonstrable public benefits for public funding, accountability to those who pay, a holistic approach to link farming with nature across the landscape and fewer costs, more efficiency and better value for money.  Framed this way there is a strong case to be made to Government to win the first battle in the post-Brexit debate: to maintain public funding into farming at the high levels we will need to create the resilient farming sector that can do what we need for food, for communities and for the natural environment.

Graeme Willis is senior rural policy campaigner at the Campaign to Protect to Rural England. You can read more about these ideas in their new report, New Model Farming: resilience through diversity

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

Polar bears, face paint and protest: why young people don’t care about climate change

I’ve been a climate change communicator and campaigner for over a decade, and recently I delivered a keynote at the Shell Powering Progress Together Conference at London’s Olympic Park.

An unlikely mix you might think. But not really.

There are three things which attracted me to speak at this event: complexity, cost and collaboration.

Before I explore my motivation and message, we need to evaluate why current communications on climate change aren’t working.

Climate change is perceived to be dull. Very dull. If you want to kill a conversation, just drop this climate-bomb in there and watch it wither. Climate change is not a fascinating topic for anyone outside of the niche bubble of climate geeks. By the majority of people, it is seen as a distant threat in time (its impacts are perceived to be at least a generation away) and space (its impacts are perceived to be happening to faraway, dehumanised landscapes like Antarctica or to communities so unrelatable to western lifestyles like rice farming villages on the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta). It is a concept which is seen as far removed from everyday life and ‘action’ on climate change is seen as punitive rather than liberating with the likes of carbon taxes, stricter standards on everyday products and the guilt associated with waste and consumerism.

There are countless reasons behind why the climate message isn’t resonating with people. However, the one which I am increasingly seeing as a barrier to people, especially young people, engaging with climate action is its long-standing association with activism and protest. Climate activism is seen as a preserve of the far-left, and protest is discarded by many as idealistic and ineffective. This long standing association between climate change and hard-core activism discourages many from engaging with climate change, and I feel this is even more true for millennials.

As a group, millennials are actually quite conservative: economics tops the list of our concerns, and as a result we are a very financially prudent generation. As Fiona Scott, Managing Director of consumer engagement agency PSONA, put it in a recent Evening Standard interview: “the 24/7 coverage of the recession means [young people] are very driven and at the same time also very entrepreneurial”.

We are entering the working world in one of the most competitive environments seen for generations: globalisation is speeding the world up and there are increasing pressures to achieve. Gym culture is thriving; vanity is increasing; and the hedonism of youth is being replaced by hard work. Entrepreneurship is exciting, and the images of the entrepreneur and of the activist couldn’t be more polarised. 

This disassociation with activism brings me on to my three ‘C’s which framed my message at the Shell conference. We need a radical rebranding of climate change, as it is actually extremely compatible with millennial values. You’re currently reading this article on a green conservatism microsite so these ideas probably won’t be entirely new to you, but acceptance of these features is far from universal.

Firstly, we have to acknowledge that tackling climate change is difficult. Very very difficult. And the simplified adversarial battle of attrition between ‘the people’ and ‘the powers that be’ who profit from the high carbon system only exists in the minds of some activists. We have built our entire civilisation on the foundations of cheap fossil fuel and now those foundations are shifting. There is not a simple solution to the transition as it is wound up in issues of national competitiveness, cost, technology, politics and science. Transitioning to the low carbon way is necessary, as we know, but difficult and we need to acknowledge that messiness.

That said, the transition is also a fantastic engine for innovation and enterprise. The future path to a low carbon world is not clear to see but this means there is room for trailblazers and new systems, which offer health, security and cost benefits alongside environmental ones. To communicate this new climate narrative, we need to banish the idea that tackling climate change is this grand battle of good versus evil.

Secondly, saving the world can actually be very profitable. The production price of renewable energy tech is plummeting, and after the Paris Climate Agreement new investable markets are opening up. Likewise, consultancies are genuinely transforming the sustainability of corporations throughout the entire supply chain. Now that the low carbon economy is starting to show how profitable it can be to go green, I expect more millennials to be attracted to the industry.

At the moment, I see an increasing dilemma in young people between having a career which is more of a lifestyle and fits their core values (generally associated with start-up or freelance culture) and a more traditional, safe and prestigious corporate job (yet often bland and stale). The dilemma is that although the former initially seems more attractive, it also has poor income stability and hubs of innovation such as London aren’t getting any cheaper! As traditional employers embrace sustainability (and similar internal culture changes which accompany this more modern mind-set), I believe they will also attract and retain young talent. Those of us who are already involved in the emerging and profitable industry of sustainability need to do more to get the message out there, show young people the opportunities for innovation and start getting excited about how you can change the world and make a living. Essentially the eco movement needs to take some lessons from what the tech industry has become.  

My final point is about meaningful collaboration. This is not so much about getting together with peers and friends but more about reaching beyond your current circles and getting radically new working groups. Mixing the very siloed domains of activists, business people and politicians. The echo chamber of social media exacerbates these views. There is an increasing need to break the chamber and bring these different groups together in order to achieve transformational change. In particular, I believe more work needs to be done to bring together activism and business. Activism has the vision and the passion for change but lacks the realism, business on the other hand has the economic pragmatism and experience but can be stale and un-imaginative. Combining these worlds offers an opportunity to make significant headway on tackling climate change. The private sector is showing increasing engagement with climate change after COP21 and seeing that sustainability action makes business sense. It is now up to activists to cast aside protest and opposition as a means of driving change and work collaboratively with business and politicians. This is not to say activists should stop pointing out social and environmental wrong-doing when they see it, but rather the general attitudes to genuine cooperation need to shift. 

The adversarial nature of climate change activism needs to change in order to attract more young change-makers to the issue of climate change and the future of energy. Discussing and debating with others who hold different views is an excellent start.

David Saddington is a climate change communicator. A white paper from Shell’s Powering Progress Together London event, including David Saddington’s contribution on youth engagement in climate change and business, will be available soon. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

Rewilding in Britain

Britain is one of the most ecologically depleted nations on earth. We have lost all our large carnivores and most of our large herbivores. While the global average forest cover is 31%, and the European average is 37%, ours is just 12%.  Our ecosystems have almost ceased to function. In the words of David Attenborough “far more species are declining than increasing in the UK, including many of our most treasured. Alarmingly, a large number of them are threatened with extinction. The causes are varied, but most are ultimately due to the way we are using our land and seas and their natural resources, often with little regard for the wildlife with which we share them.” In fact, 60% of all studied species in the UK have declined in the last 50 years.

People in Britain have never before spent so little time in contact with nature and rarely gain a sense of just being part of the environment rather than in control of it. Indeed three quarters of our children spend less time outdoors than prison inmates.  This is having a huge impact on health and wellbeing, and has been connected to increased levels of stress, physical inactivity and obesity.

The damage to our natural systems also means our environment is less able to provide the goods and services upon which we depend. Across the whole of the North of England, in late January 2016, about 16,000 homes and businesses were flooded. The preliminary estimate of the cost of the flood damage is £1.3 billion, and rising. The cost in terms of human misery is unquantifiable. It is now increasingly recognised that the impacts of this extreme rainfall were exacerbated by the overgrazing, deforestation, burning and drainage of the uplands and by the canalisation and dredging of the rivers. And there are increasing calls for investment in the planting of trees and changing land management practices to encourage the restoration of natural climax vegetation communities in areas upstream of our towns and cities. 

And it’s not just water – we are losing our soils at an alarming rate and the ability of our habitats to act as carbon ‘sinks’. We now know that the highly simplified ecosystems of the kind that prevail across Britain are also much less resilient to environmental change, such as climate change and invasive species.

Rewilding offers a chance to reverse that. A chance to restore natural systems and all the benefits they provide; to work with communities to restore to parts of Britain the wonder and enchantment of wild nature; to allow magnificent lost creatures to live here once more; and to provide people with some of the rich and raw experiences of which we have been deprived.

Rewilding Britain was set up to promote the large scale restoration of ecosystems in Britain, on land and at sea.  We believe it is not enough merely to try to preserve tiny fragments of our wildlife. Meaningful conservation must involve restoring natural processes and re-establishing missing species. Rewilding does not attempt to produce fixed outcomes. It sees dynamic ecological processes as an essential, intrinsic aspect of healthy living systems. The animals we lack, such as beavers, boar, lynx, pelicans, cranes and storks, are not just ornaments of the ecosystem - they have a role as ecosystem engineers and are essential to an effectively functioning environment. 

By 2030 we would like to see at least 300,000 hectares of core land areas and three marine areas established where nature is starting to take care of itself and key species are starting to become re-established. These areas will be ecologically connected, supported by an engaged and enthusiastic public, and delivering a range of benefits for local communities and landowners.

Rewilding is about the restoration of natural processes. It benefits nature, by connecting nature with nature, creating diversity and increasing the number of niches available, and making room for species to move through landscapes as they adapt to environmental change.

Rewilding benefits the wider environment too. By allowing natural process to function rewilding improves provision of ecosystem services. For example, restoring woodland reduces the flow of water downstream, flattening out the cycle of flood and drought. And increased woodland filters out contaminants that affect water quality, and increases carbon sequestration, helping mitigate climate change. Certain keystone species can have a huge impact. Beavers clean rivers. Their ponds retain silts and trap nutrients and flatten out cycles of flooding and drought.  And predators such as lynx can regenerate forests by reducing deer numbers and allowing saplings space to grow.

But it’s not just about the environment – rewilding can bring significant economic benefits. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world on average has just 60 more years of growing crops. Rewilding can be farming’s greatest ally. It helps restore nutrients, worms and mycorrhizal fungi to the soil, provides for pollinating insects, purifies water, reduces flood risk and helps resist droughts. Perhaps rewilding will give us a few more harvests yet?

Rewilding can revitalise local communities. An RSPB report found sea eagle tourism on the Isle of Mull brings in up to £5 million a year to the island’s economy and supports 110 full-time jobs. Examples from around Europe show that new sources of income and jobs, based around wildlife and eco-tourism, offer a great potential to revitalise rural communities, supporting the recovery of the human economy as well as the natural world.

Rewilding is as much about people as it is about the planet. Time in nature improves concentration and behaviour, benefits health and wellbeing, and increases environmental awareness. Which is why rewilding is as much about rewilding ourselves as rewilding land. It’s about experiencing the enchantment of wild nature, about noticing and experiencing what's around us, about an increased connection with the living planet – “to love not man the less, but nature more”.

Rewilding is our big opportunity to leave the world in a better state than it is today. To turn our silent spring into a raucous summer. To introduce one of the rarest of all species into Britain’s ecological vision: hope.

Helen Meech is the Director of Rewilding Britain

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.