BCSEA News & Views

Starting on January 1st, every vehicle in BC is using biofuel in its tank - 3% for biodiesel (rising to 5% by 2012), and 5% for ethanol. Is this good? Is it bad? What does it mean for BC’s emerging biodiesel industry - and why has the industry suddenly lost its 22% tax incentive?

In the big picture, the change is hugely important, spelling the first organized move away from fossil fuels to power our transport. We need such a move both because of the looming proximity of global peak oil, and because of global warming’s rapidly melting ice-sheets. Whichever way you cut it, we must break free of fossil fuels as quickly as we can.

In the wake of Copenhagen, what are we to make of all the confusion and mutual blaming?

Der Spiegel’s editorial said “What a disaster. The climate summit in Copenhagen has failed because of the hardball politicking of the United States, China and several other countries - and because people just can't seem to fathom how catastrophic climate change will be.”

But let’s step back a minute, and consider the difficulty of obtaining a binding consensus from the leaders of 193 fractious nations, each of whom has to answer to his or her own voters, on a change so enormous that it calls for nothing less than retrofitting the entire planet for zero carbon operations within 40 years. There’s not a nation on Earth that manages to govern itself by consensus.

From December 7th - 18th, the world’s leaders gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, for the most important conference our world has ever known.

To understand why, you have to lay aside the muttering of those believe global warming to be a massive hoax perpetrated by all the world’s climate scientists over 20 years, and pay serious attention to the facts.

The physics of climate science has been solid for over 100 years. Carbon dioxide and related molecules such as methane trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere, and their rapidly increasing presence is causing global temperatures to rise. All other contributing factors - such as the changing nature of the Sun - have been examined, and none has been found able to explain the steady although variable rise in temperature.

In November, we took time to acknowledged the significant contributions of some our our colleagues, friends and allies who have distinguished themselves as Champions of Climate Action.

In Vancouver, 10 local climate heroes were presented with copies of The Climate Challenge:101 Solutions to Global Warming. The celebrated heroes are: Dominica Babicki, Herb Barbolet, Ian Bruce, Helen Goodland, James Hoggan, Matt Horne, Robert Safrata, Arno Schortinghuis, David Van Seters, and Kevin Washbrook.

On November 7, BC Sustainable Energy Association supporters Norma and David Butterfield opened their Victoria home to a very special event.  Guests were treated to an intimate evening with some of Vancouver Island’s top eco-celebrities, including:

We know how to tackle the climate crisis.

The technologies, the policies, the lifestyle changes - most are already being implemented somewhere on our planet. All that we lack is the political will, so that they might be implemented everywhere, and much more rapidly.

I say this with some confidence, having just spent two years researching and writing The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming, which will be in bookshops by mid to late November. (New Society Publishers)

The warnings were grim nine years ago, when I wrote my first book - Stormy Weather - on the topic. They are even grimmer today.

The Province is accepting proposals for pre-commercial, clean energy projects in a Third Call for Applications to the ICE Fund.

The closing date for applications is November 20, 2009 at 4:30 pm Pacific Standard Time.

The Innovative Clean Energy Fund was created in 2007 to encourage the development of new sources of clean energy and technologies to help support local economies and livelihoods in communities across B.C.

The $25 million a year ICE Fund is collected through a 0.4 per cent levy on final sales of electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, propane and any other product prescribed by regulation as an energy product.

On October 24, my kids Duncan and Sabrina, and my wife, Elle, and I will together march in our first-ever global-warming, er, “action.”

The occasion is Bridge to a Cool Planet, which will likely be British Columbia’s largest event marking the International Day of Climate Action. Expect drummers, people dressed up in polar bear costumes, dudes on stilts and unicycles, and lots of off-key improvised call-and-response singing and chanting.

It’s the kind of gaggle-of-people-holding-signs event that, once upon a time, I would have driven on past without even blinking. But this time, I’ll be on the other side of the windshield. And you should be, too.

Everyone is in favour of energy efficiency. Using energy more efficiently is usually seen as the cheapest way to reduce/avoid carbon emissions.

Certainly, given that energy has been relatively cheap until recently in countries like the Canada & the UK , we have paid little attention to conserving it, so that there are substantial energy saving gains that can be made.

However, once we have picked the easy and cheap ‘low hanging fruit’, the next wave of energy savings are likely to be harder and more expensive to achieve.

Energy efficiency advocates such as Amory Lovins argue that, much as with many another technologies, as the market for them expands then they will get cheaper. But it is not clear if this is the case for all energy efficiency systems. And even it is the case, then we come to a potentially much larger problem- the so called rebound effect. But simply, if some commodity or service gets cheaper then we are likely to use more of it.