Energy section

We applaud the work the Council is doing as part of the PEPESEC, (Partnership Energy Planning as a tool for Realising European Sustainable Energy Communities – http://www.pepesec.eu) and we note with interest the work being done at the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) level on renewable energy.

As per the later section in the Call to Real Action entitled “Transition”, we call upon the Council to start the truly radical process of envisaging an “Energy Descent” programme. It is only against a framework of managing a planned decrease in energy demand that we can build a stronger, climate-resilient society. We are well aware that this goes against the grain of current economic thought.

Gas

In the nineteenth century and until the mid-sixties of the twentieth century Manchester’s gas supply was typical of its era – large, smelly and dangerously polluting coal-baking plants “the gas works”, operating in the poorer areas of the city (eg in Miles Platting), but also furnishing the wealthier areas (e.g. Whalley Range), produced both coal gas, piped under pressure throughout the city, and coke, essential to commerce and metallurgy.

This “town gas” gas had two main components: carbon monoxide, the easily combustible but infamously poisonous part, and hydrogen, clean-burning, non-poisonous and – above all, not climate changing – but impossible to extract on its own from coal without sacrificing the profitable monoxide component.

The relevance of this infrastructural inheritance to the present-day carbon reduction/suppression challenge is that the whole underground distribution pipework is now used to distribute the successor to coal/gas, natural gas from the North Sea, Russia, Algeria, Qatar and further afield.

What had been a semi-indigenous industry, offering “security of supply”, using British coal and technology, locally processed, is now a mere component of a global system, totally out of the control of Manchester or any larger city or conurbation.

Our gaseous inheritance is therefore a powerful agent of global warming, and yet essential for our present physical survival. This conundrum cannot be solved by Manchester alone – however, our city acting in concert with other concerned parties (see ‘universities’ below) may find a solution, comprising hydrogen or not.

In the meantime a rigorous imposition of instruments already in Manchester’s hands, for example the Local Government Act of 2000, which permits all councils to “do anything which they consider is likely to achieve” the “promotion of social/environmental well-being of their area” may make inroads into our carbon emissions and prime us psychologically and electorally for the harder decisions to come. Firm directives (see ‘directives’ below) have not yet been fully applied.

Electricity

As with gas, so with electricity – Manchester and all its citizens, public institutions and enterprises are locked in to a network of wires and distribution centres which date from the first decades of the twentieth century. Moreover the transmitted electricity is generated in the same old way – by burning fossil carbon, and releasing the uncapturable carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In the opinion of Prof Nick Jenkins, an electrical engineer based at Manchester University, who has researched the future of the grid under both partial and total renewable inputs, it would be “unwise” to dismantle the grid and its local dependencies, as it already exists as an expensively constructed resource, and can be turned to good use, in conjunction with locally generated renewable electricity.

The challenge for Manchester is therefore the same as for all electricity-dependent conurbations: to accept the aim of zero dependence on fossil carbon for the generation of its electricity, to work assiduously for the attainment of this aim, and in the meantime to press for and to achieve continuing reductions in our use of electricity.

It is not yet clear that the City authorities have fully accepted this goal, in spite of being signed up adherents to Agenda 21, and in spite of its seeming addiction to “iconic” projects, such as the talk at one time of a few large wind turbines spread over the larger conurbation.

Energy choices

With its two large universities, or three with Salford in the larger conurbation, its wide range of technological businesses and a partially committed public, it should be possible for the city to think its way forward, out of the present carbon morass into the entirely renewable future. The time has passed when iconic or exemplary projects serve any useful purpose: iconics and exemplifications have already been in place throughout Europe, in Merton and Nottingham in the UK, in Freiburg in Germany, and elsewhere.

They have served their purpose: for Manchester to build an isolated urban turbine, or another low-carbon demonstration house, can have no effect on the citizenry or on advancing the zero-carbon agenda. Activity of an altogether greater order of magnitude is called for.

Avoiding the mistakes of the past

The Urbis Centre, which is devoted to the display of the glories of the modern city, features a spectacular whole-length sloping roof, which would have been ideal for the mounting of solar capture devices – if it did not face due north. The solar sabotage is complete, and it should simply have never been accepted as a design within a city which wishes to be at the forefront of sustainability.

The Beetham Tower, the tallest habitable building in Manchester, features a generously wide flank facing due south – ideal for solar capture. Again, no advantage of this orientation has been taken so as to generate clean electricity. If the city is to be taken seriously in the future as ‘iconically’ progressive, such mistakes must not be repeated. (The only large solar array in the city, a 300 000 pound photovoltaic cladding of the CIS building, was an initiative of the Co-operative bank – a potential senior partner in the council’s strategies given its ethical base and secure financial model).

Unfortunately, many such errors have been allowed, including the construction during the late (un)lamented building boom of very many apartment blocks featuring a great area of windows and glass walling. There is no single solid element of any building which leaks heat so copiously as glass. Why, it may be asked, was there no political or official voice, environmentally guided, to arrest this thermodynamic disaster?

The universities

Within Manchester University, Manchester Metropolitan University and Salford University there is a great deal of expertise in all the skills, science, technology and arts which, in concert, could lead to a partially or even one day a fully sustainable city. The ‘concert’ does not yet exist, and the will, the necessary sense of urgency, to bring it into existence shows little sign of burgeoning.

There is no doubt that a “climate solution supremo”, such as has existed in Merton, well funded, politically supported, with a functioning secretariat, would be a true boon for the city.

The skills which so badly need to be co-ordinated between the Council and the various university departments include chemical engineering (to research non-fossil fuels), building and architecture, town planning, law, electrical engineering, sociology (to research the possible acceptance of a non-fossil fuelled society by the citizens of Manchester), all aspects of renewable energy, both as electricity and as storable non-carbon fuel, and climate modelling for the North West.

If Manchester is to become a powerhouse of ideas to solve the carbon conundrum (without it we perish now, with it we perish later), it should take the lead in establishing such an approach to climate change solutions.

Practical action –

The “Memorandum of Understanding” between the Council and Universities must be released as soon as possible, and its implications explained to the staff of all relevant organisations.

The energy supply challenge

Since Manchester citizens consume as much energy per head per year as other UK citizens, with the richer consuming more than the poor, it is clear that such energy cannot be sourced within the city boundaries. The figures tell the story.

Each UK resident has access on average to one kilowatt of commercial electric power. This requires the city of Manchester to have about 500 megawatts of electrical power at its disposal, the equivalent of a fairly large generating unit, or 500 very large wind turbines, of which scarcely one could be sited within city boundaries. It is therefore clear, for electricity alone, that our supply must be imported. Moreover, the city does not have enough roof space for very much solar electricity, which in any case has to exist as an adjunct to the existing grid.

It is for this reason that the Call to Action needs extending on a bio-regional basis, that is to the city region and the surrounding countryside within which larger footprint there is potential for greater self sufficiency not just in energy but in food too. A bio-regional focus would bring into play larger scale water and wind power, pumped storage, solar and sustainable biomass (from woodland).

Within the city itself there is scope for solar thermal, solar electric, ground source heat bump, and community wind power (for example along the Mersey valley or in the northern edge of the city).

THE CARBON CO-OP

Carbon Co-op is creating a large scale, bulk buying co-operative that will allow its members to purchase low carbon technologies cheaply and easily – everything from energy monitors to solar panels. Our model seeks to overcome the catch 22 situation that consumer demand for low carbon technologies is low due to high retail prices but costs wont drop until demand increases.

Developed by low winter sun and URBED Co-op, the Carbon Co-op was shortlisted in the Big Green Challenge competition and won through to Social Innovation Camp 2008. The project is being piloted in South Manchester and will conduct further market research in 2009 with a view to launching the project in 2009/10.

Housing

A great deal of the carbon-based energy used in Manchester is used to heat homes and water. As the CaRB Consortium (partly staffed by Manchester University, 2004) states

“energy intensive behaviours are becoming embedded within everyday domestic life”

It is difficult and very expensive, to retrofit the traditional Manchester house so that its energy consumption is halved – and yet halving is not sufficient to arrest our contribution to climate change.

As a further example, the “40% House” proposed by the Oxford Environmental Change Institute as a replacement for present-day standard housing, as new build or as retrofit, is an expensive item, and would cost the Council unobtainable amounts of money, even just for its own estate.

Practical action –

The Council should commission urgent scoping work to know the specifics of the scale of the problem it faces.

We do not yet have a precise description of Manchester’s own housing, sector by sector and type by type. Only with such data may it be possible to plan for a low-energy, zero-carbon future. For example, how many square metres of uninsulated exterior solid walls do we have within city boundaries? Without such calculations it is impossible to design a future whose main aim is climate protection.

The Council has a waiting list for social housing which approaches 30,000. This list does not include couples living with their parents or friends, unable to afford to buy in a market still out-of-reach and knowing that signing on to a waiting list without some special claim is pointless. Meanwhile, the recession has left the city littered with empty and half-finished building schemes which have been simply abandoned by property developers.

There are no statistics available on the number of these properties but casual observation suggests that there are many such situations. As an example, one of Manchester Council’s flagship programmes for urban regeneration, the New Islington scheme, now resembles the Somme battlefield with little sign of activity. Nearby several half-finished blocks stand idle whilst blocks and whole streets in Ancoats, emptied by the Council for demolition or ‘refurbishment’ by the private sector, also stand empty and boarded up.

However, this parlous situation also contains opportunity. The government announced in its Pre-Budget Report (PBR) that £775 million in funds for housing and regeneration would be brought forward into the current year’s budget and made available to local authorities precisely to buy up unfinished projects and complete them to high energy efficiency standards for social housing. This is just what Manchester Council needs to do. The funds are available, the work could start almost immediately providing jobs for local construction workers and the waiting lists for social housing could begin to come down.

Practical action –

The Council should immediately prepare inventories of potential projects and begin the process of purchasing suitable properties. Empty council property should be developed immediately for family occupation. It is a social as well as an economic crime that housing should stand empty or half-finished, whilst building workers receive the dole and families wait for years on housing lists.