Archive for the 'Economy' Category

20 predictions for the next 25 years

Published on November 15, 2011 in Economy, Environment, Generation, Sustainability and Transport. Closed

Interesting excerpt from an article in The Guardian earlier this year,  20 predictions for the next 25 years.  The full article is available here.

Energy: ‘Returning to a world that relies on muscle power is not an option’

Providing sufficient food, water and energy to allow everyone to lead decent lives is an enormous challenge. Energy is a means, not an end, but a necessary means. With 6.7 billion people on the planet, more than 50% living in large conurbations, and these numbers expected to rise to more than 9 billion and 80% later in the century, returning to a world that relies on human and animal muscle power is not an option. The challenge is to provide sufficient energy while reducing reliance on fossil fuels, which today supply 80% of our energy (in decreasing order of importance, the rest comes from burning biomass and waste, hydro, nuclear and, finally, other renewables, which together contribute less than 1%). Reducing use of fossil fuels is necessary both to avoid serious climate change and in anticipation of a time when scarcity makes them prohibitively expensive. It will be extremely difficult. An International Energy Agency scenario that assumes the implementation of all agreed national policies and announced commitments to save energy and reduce the use of fossil fuels projects a 35% increase in energy consumption in the next 25 years, with fossil fuels up 24%. This is almost entirely due to consumption in developing countries where living standards are, happily, rising and the population is increasing rapidly. This scenario, which assumes major increases in nuclear, hydro and wind power, evidently does not go far enough and will break down if, as many expect, oil production (which is assumed to increase 15%) peaks in much less than 25 years. We need to go much further in reducing demand, through better design and changes in lifestyles, increasing efficiency and improving and deploying all viable alternative energy sources. It won’t be cheap. And in the post-fossil-fuel era it won’t be sufficient without major contributions from solar energy (necessitating cost reductions and improved energy storage and transmission) and/or nuclear fission (meaning fast breeder and/or thorium reactors when uranium eventually becomes scarce) and/or fusion (which is enormously attractive in principle but won’t become a reliable source of energy until at least the middle of the century). Disappointingly, with the present rate of investment in developing and deploying new energy sources, the world will still be powered mainly by fossil fuels in 25 years and will not be prepared to do without them.

- Chris Llewellyn Smith is a former director general of Cern and chair of Iter, the world fusion project, he works on energy issues at Oxford University.

So what is our government doing about providing for our energy security in the future when it’s unoversally accepted that renewables will NOT provide enough energy no matter what we do with them.  Build an interconnect?  Check.  But now we’re leaving ourselves open to being more dependent on other people’s energy if we assume that the interconnector will safe guard our future.  Why isn’t the government pushing an indigenous industry in biofuels and biomass on a massive scale?  They’ve actually de-incentivised the production of ethanol and cars that can run on them.  Why?  Following food riots in poorer countries recently, due to locals not being able to afford corn as the market price for corn had increased as, predominantly in America, corn was being used up to produce ethanol.  Subsequently ethanol appears to have become a dirty word and the Irish government didn’t want to be seen to be supporting it.  Of course ethanol which was being produced in Ireland at the time was being produced from a by product of the dairy industry – milk whey.  The production of this wasn’t taking the food out of anybodies mouths.  Thanks to the governments knee jerk reaction the sale of E-85 bioethanol was no longer viable in Ireland and so Maxol withdrew it.  Brazil has a thriving ethanol industry, producing ethanol from sugar cane.  Again no one is being deprived of food due to the choice of raw material for their ethanol industry.  The Brazilian government has been strategically developing this industry since the oil crisis at the beginning of the 70′s and now over 70% of all cars in Brazil run on domestically produced ethanol.  Could we revitalise our defunct sugar industry.  Could we revitalise rural, agricultural areas by providing a ready market to farmers for their sugar AND milk from dairy herds which they would otherwise be paid by Europe not to produce because the eurocrats, justifiably, don’t want another milk/butter/etc lakes and mountains forming again.  If we have the capacity in terms of farmers and agricultural land which is either not being used or not being used efficiently, could we develop a viable biofuel economy here in Ireland?

Below is a Sankey Diagram for Ireland’s energy inputs and outputs.  Everything is expressed in Kilo Tonnes Oil Equivalent (KTOE).  Interestingly, on the output side you can see that Transport is by far the biggest consumer of energy in Ireland, the bulk of which is imported.  That’s true for today as well as projections out to 2020.
If government policy concerned itself with promoting the indigenous production of biofuels for transport through the means outlined above, think what it could do for the entire economy, not just the rural economy.
Which would you rather have the Green party pursue – a policy to encourage that kind of activity or one where they’re more worried about hunting for example?  Tell our politicians to take their heads out of their collective backsides.

Planned obsolesence.

Published on March 24, 2011 in Economy. Closed

I absolutely hate that term.  The very idea of it in fact.  In two words you have described all that is crappy about our modern day throw away society.  I wasn’t always thus.  I love my gadgets and things.  I loved the periodic iterative updates that manufacturers made to their products which I had lusted after and eventually purchased.  And repurchased.  And repurchased.  Then I became cynical.  Who needs an iPod Mini, an iPod Touch and an iPhone?  I can only use one of them at a time.  By allowing planned obsolescence to even exist, not to mention functional obsolescence, we allow ourselves to be led around by the noses by companies and their marketing departments, and we will never be happy.  Now I value quality above all else and will happily pay extra for something which I know will last for God knows how many years and which if it every does break for whatever reason, I can return it to the company to be repaired so that it’ll last another very very long time.  Isn’t that sustainable?  Build less, of higher quality and which don’t end up in a container bound for some poor third world country where people will spend their lives eeking out a shitty existence trying to recover some precious or rare earth elements from the item in a totally unhealthy environment.

I feel however that some of this behaviour falls into a classical chicken and egg scenario.  Companies conduct R & D to improve their products or if it’s marketing led to create a new product or an updated version of an existing products.  Obviously this incurs a cost to the company.  In many cases quite a substantial cost.  This cost needs to be recouped by the company before they can make a profit on the product.  But, depending on the type of product, the life cycle before the next update is introduced is only a year. In that year they have to sell as many of the item as they possibly can, without impacting sales of the next update or alienating customers who bought the last item and who are now being told that the item they bought last year is inferior in every way, so that they can recoup the investment in the existing product, make it pay for itself before they introduce the next updated version and the cycle begins again.  And they do.  They perhaps make the item with components which will only last some incremental time more than the life cycle of the product creating a ready market for the next updated version.  CYNICAL, ain’t I!?  Anyway, why are they doing this?  Because the measure of a company’s worth, and by extension it’s CEO/MD etc. and their salaries & bonuses is the profit and growth of the company.  In order to keep their profits growing in a market that at some point must become saturated, they need clever marketing departments and R & D departments.  Where did this all start?  With the consumer wanting more choice?  With an advertising campaign introducing us to choices we didn’t know we needed but now feel we can’t live without?  With a shareholder demanding to know why the company’s turnover didn’t grow 10% in the last year?  By a greedy society that expects everything to grow year on year, quarter on quarter?

Advertising Ireland

Published on March 13, 2011 in Economy. Closed

Good IDA Ireland advert.

http://www.idaireland.com/news-media/videos/index.xml?bclid=66038357001&bctid=819825751001

Food miles

Published on February 21, 2011 in Economy, Food, Humour and Sustainability. Closed Tags: , , .

So, thanks to the global economy and modern refrigeration and transportation methods we can enjoy all sorts of different foods here in Ireland which we previously barely knew existed.  Take this for example:

Consider if you will the following facts:

Surface area of the Earth:  510,072,000 km2 of which 148,940,000 km2 is land.  But how far does Santa have to travel each year to deliver all his presents to all children on earth?  The best reported figure was found by by Keld Helsgaun using a variant of his LKH heuristic algorithm. His tour of length 7,515,947,511 meters was found on November 27, 2008.  This equates to 7,515,948 km’s.

Male Reindeer can live to over 10 years, but let’s assume 10 years for the purpose of the exercise. 

Let’s assume that Rudolf was at least 3 years old when he took up his position at the head of Santa’s sleigh and continued in that role until he expired, so a total of 7 years.  That means that he has traveled approx. 52,611,633 km’s in the employ of Santa.

Furthermore, let’s assume for arguments sake that a Reindeer covers 500 km in it’s migration from winter to summer lands and a further 500 km back again.  As Rudolf only flies for Santa on one night a year, it is reasonable to assume that for the other 364 days of the year he would follow the normal pattern of Reindeer.  That’s an annual distance of 1,000 km’s for 10 years, so that’s 10,000 km’s

These are just the big ticket items in the typical life of a Reindeer.  Now add the distance of his migratory journeys to the distance he covers on Christmas every year and then also add in the distance from Lapland to Ireland (Dublin to be precise), approx. 3000 km’s, and you come up with a grand total of 52,624,633 km travelled by that meat before it ended up in the shop in which I bought it.  Now that’s serious food miles.

But let’s be serious for a moment.  I make an effort to look out for and where possible to buy Irish sourced meat and vegetables when we go to the supermarket.  But most of the fruit that I buy has come from afar, as has some of the meat, and has covered a not insignificant amount of mileage in order to get here.  By supporting local farmers and markets we can get top quality produce here in Ireland but we may possibly have to sacrifice some variety.  Some of the variety penalty we would have to suffer could be subsequently made up if Irish farmers and food producers see that there is a market and demand for Irish produced goods.  We’re also supporting a local industry which has been in decline for a number of reasons (some of which we need to look to the EU as a reason for).   There is much talk in the media about a new breed of educated Irish farmer which I think we need to give a chance to and who can help us to utilize our country’s land better and more sustainably.