Although I think that governments and large corporations must do a lot of ‘heavy lifting’ to get us moving towards a sustainable economy, it is often the smaller ventures that fill me with pride and inspiration. I am always pleasantly surprised by the nimble enterprises and initiatives that pop up to fill a specific gap in society. Importantly, as a person with a business degree, I can better relate to to entities that exist to tackle focused problems, rather than the more nebulous ‘advocacy’ organisations that exist.
I have already written about Green Drinks fairly extensively in the past few months, so thought I would share details of other enterprises/initiatives that have captured my imagination. I call it the ‘green groups‘ series and they will be collated in this category of my blog.
Note that I haven’t necessarily dealt with these groups/organisations personally. Often they’re just a great idea that I have heard about.
In my last post I mentioned solar thermal energy technology. I thought I must mention how solar thermal is different to the photovoltaic solar cells that readers may be familiar with.
While photovoltaic cells directly use the sun’s light to create electricity, solar thermal installations use mirrors to concentrate the heat from the sun into a storage medium, such as molten salt. The high heat of this molten salt can then be used to turn a turbine by boiling water into steam, much like what happens in a coal, gas or nuclear power plant. The benefit of solar thermal over photovoltaics is that it can be relied upon as a baseload, 24 hour power source as heat is gradually drawn from the molten salt when required. The benefits of solar thermal over coal, gas and nuclear is that it requires no fuel inputs, and emits no pollution from its operations.
I’m sure I’m not the only one excited by technology such as this. I’m fascinated by the idea of energy sources that need no fuel inputs and produce no pollution or emissions. Better yet, the cost of solar thermal is comparable to coal power plants and the technology is well-suited to Australian conditions. Bring it on.
Solar technologies are currently more expensive than coal because they internalise their costs to the environment, but coal externalises its costs.
I think it’s great that despite this situation (the costs of coal pollution to the environment being written off as ‘free’), solar thermal is still emerging as an economic challenger to coal under these ‘old rules’. When we remember that coal is only ‘cheap’ because of the incomplete way we account for its environmental lifecycle, the choice between fossil fuels and renewables is stark. Let’s make our priority supporting clean, rapidly deployable technology such as solar thermal.
What would it take to transition Australia’s electricity grid to 100% renewable energy in 10 years?
That is the question asked by the Beyond Zero Emissions group, who are a part of the exciting Transition Decade movement. Better still, they think they have an answer to the question.
The plan uses current, proven, commercially available technologies in a 60/40 split between solar thermal and wind. Their plans maps the sites of the solar and wind modules to areas with appropriate sun and wind resources that are suitably close to major cities.
The upfront costs of the plan have been calculated, with a quoted figure of $35-40 billion per year for 10 years – the equivalent of 3-4% of Australia’s GDP. The group state that with the economies of scale associated with such a project, the cost of installing these solar and wind options are close to parity with that of coal power. The upside, of course, is we won’t have to deal with the many dirty consequences of coal mining and coal-fired power plants, and that we will have invested in a brand new grid of energy utilities that requires no fuel inputs.
Beyond Zero Emissions are keen to take on the might of the fossil fuel lobby, who have long run a scare campaign about renewable energy: specifically that renewables are too expensive, can’t provide baseload power, will cost jobs and will ‘wreck the economy’. Level-headed analysis dismisses those claims as scare tactics by vested interests.
The T10 plan show that there are no resource constraints (steel, concrete, glass, labour, etc) that are holding us back from a 100% renewable energy grid in one decade’s time. Personally, I think there are just three things holding us back:
community members who have not been informed that such economical clean energy alternatives exist and are ready to be deployed
politicians stuck in the ‘coal, coal, coal’ mindset who have not been shown a vision of the benefits that a transition to renewable energy would provide for the economy and society
environmentally informed citizens who are not doing all that they can do to make this plan succeed (I raise my hand to this category)
Please take ten minutes to watch the above video, and please help spread the word of this credible plan. We need this issue on the agenda in the lead-up to the 2010 federal election.
Late last year I got involved with the Brisbane-based sustainability consultancy FWR Group after their Managing-Director Mike Duggan liked the look of my early sustainability-related cartoons. He wondered if I’d be interested creating a cartoon specifically for FWR group – a sort of ‘unique marketing strategy’ to better position the FWR brand with their target audience. Music to my ears – I agreed to the offer!
Mike offered some few suggestions as to the themes of the cartoon, but mainly left me to my own devices. My Recombinant Records cartoons from the second-half of 2009 had moved away from the original idea of having a ‘cartoon Stuart’ narrating readers through the topic of interest. However, I was keen to return to the idea of a central character for the FWR strips. After some discussion, we settled on an anthropomorphic koala.
Our first FWR ‘Green Maze’ cartoon was finished in early March, and was uploaded to the FWR webpage yesterday. My inspiration for the script can from a fairly unlikely source: former Talking Heads singer David Byrne. Turns out that David is a keen cyclist, and has a few thoughts on the topic of sustainability, and urban design. From page 275 of David’s 2009 book ‘Bicycle Diaries‘:
It’s unsustainable. Unsustainable means that eventually the behavior will inevitably be changed or modified, either thoughtfully and voluntarily, or as a result of tragic consequences. Either way it will not go on as it is for very much longer.
That quote really struck me as being at the heart of the struggles of the environmental sustainability movement. It really is the reason why I do what I do and also, I believe, the reason why the FWR Group guys are in their line of business. Here’s a link to the finished cartoon:
Being someone who is concerned about environmentalism, peak oil and all that jazz, I am very reluctant to travel by plane. I am very uncomfortable with the idea of choosing to support an activity which is a very large part of our planetary problems.
So that got me thinking – is there still a way to travel overseas using the surface of the planet? Has ocean transportation died out, or is there still a way to hitch a ride on a ship? Not a cruise liner, but a freighter ship. It turns out there are options available…
‘Steerage’ is a (seemingly) antiquated word referring to the lower priced, below-deck accommodation on passenger ships. Even though passenger ships are now almost a thing of the past, it seems that notable number of freighter ships offer basic accommodation for passengers wanting to join the voyage. From the webpages I have read (1, 2, 3), there seem to be some drawbacks to freighter travel:
Speed: it takes around one day to travel by sea for every hour that it takes an aeroplane. Travelling from Melbourne, Australia to Vancouver, Canada takes around 28 days one-way.
Conditions: whilst habitable, the conditions are basic compared to those offered by cruise liners. The purpose of the voyage is to transport the multi-million dollar cargo aboard the freighter, so guests are expected to be able to entertain themselves. Meals are reportedly fairly basic and eaten at set times with the crew.
Price: from what I can see, budgeting $150 per person per night seems like a realistic amount to set aside. This is cheaper than a cruise liner, but would probably work out more expensive than travelling by jet.
Novelty: Almost everyone I know has been on an aeroplane, but I don’t know anyone who has taken a voyage on a freighter ship. It certainly would be something different!
Adventure: maybe it’s because I recently read Moby Dick, but I would like to experience life on a working ship. Seeing the sights of the world coming over the horizon, feeling the sea breeze in your hair, watching the changing weather patterns, getting to know the crew members, spotting wildlife… “Hast seen the white whale?”
Space: it would certainly be a less crowded experience than travelling by aeroplane or cruise liner. The web pages I read suggest that the crew members tend to be pretty polite and friendly. Although they are primarily employed to operate the ship, it seems they are happy to tell a few tales to the passengers when it suits their working routine.
Experience: I bet it would be an incredible feeling on the high seas, hundreds of kilometres from land. It would probably be very exciting, also probably a bit scary. I’m sure there’d be plenty of chance to reassess everything and let the mind wander. Also…
Time: as well as having extra time to let the mind wander, it would offer time for creative pursuits. Reading, writing, drawing, photography, etc. Sea travel wouldn’t be for everyone, but I think I’m the kind of guy that can keep himself amused for longer than most…
So, what do you reckon? I have no plans to jump on a cargo ship any time soon, but it is definitely food for thought…
I would like to draw your attention to this bizarre marketing campaign from QR Citytrain.
In a sort of ‘feel good’ campaign, bottles of water were freely distributed to commuters at Queensland Rail stations around Brisbane. The labels read “It’s easy being green. By recycling 17 timetables QR has saved this bottle of water. Recycling, it’s easy!”
So let me get this straight….
QR begins running its trains on a new timetable.
With the old timetables now redundant, QR bundles up its remaining supplies of outdated timetables and encourages commuters to deposit their old timetables at train stations.
QR recycles these old timetables.
QR calculates the embodied energy of this pulped paper compared to sourcing paper from freshly logged trees.
QR calculates the embodied energy of a bottle of water.
QR ‘spends’ the embodied energy value that it saved through its paper recycling program by purchasing appropriate quantities of bottled water to distribute to random commuters.
The concept behind this campaign is utterly puzzling. Though not at the ‘deceptive’/'unethical’ end of the greenwash spectrum, the logic of QR’s campaign is deeply flawed.
The campaign concept implies that QR’s resource efficiency efforts are so successful that it is able to provide commuters with ‘guilt free’ bottles of water. It has carefully measured the typical energy costs of ‘business as usual’, as well as the lower energy alternatives that it could also adopt. The problem is that QR implies that the ‘business as usual’ consumption pattern is the position to return to, rather than to point to descend from.
In other words, instead of creating genuine savings with their actions, QR are comfortable adding and subtracting embodied energy brownie points and arriving back at the very place that they started!
(I won’t even begin to elaborate upon the fact that the embodied energy of QR’s paper consumption pales in comparison to all other parts of its operations…including the trains themselves!)
To be fair, this bottled water campaign was conducted in late 2008, so these comments are not exactly timely. (I have been meaning to photograph this bottle for some time…) However, the flawed logic of the campaign serves a fair reminder of what can happen when spin doctors overstep the boundaries of common sense.
Hopefully looking back to this campaign can teach us lessons for the way forward. Can we please focus on achieving genuine resource efficiency results from our sustainability initiatives.
