Friday, 5 September 2014

Not just ironic

This week, the FT reported that the National Grid was looking for emergency supplies of electricity for this winter ('Power shortage fears spur hunt for extra electricity', National News, FT September 03).
The emergency has come about it was said, because of shortages in output from the UKs coal gas and nuclear stations. In August, EDF, the main nuclear power generation company, had announced the closure, due to boiler faults, of four nuclear power stations and the resultant loss of a combined output of 2.3 GW ('Nuclear power plant warning puts spotlight on supply plans', National News, FT September 05).  In addition, fires at Ferrybridge and Ironbridge power stations, two key coal fired plants, have resulted in a further loss in electricity generation capacity. A gas fired station in Barking East London has also recently closed.

With the NG urgently looking for new sources of electricity, it seems ironic then, does it not, to find that several new electricity generating projects have recently been scrapped ('Offshore wind farms hit by new blow', National News FT August 01).  Centrica's project to develop the new 2.2GW Celtic Array, Europe's largest wind farm (which was to be sited off the North Wales coast near Anglesey) has been closed. To add to that, in recent months power companies have pulled out of a litany of offshore windfarm developments. The £4B Atlantic Array which was to have been built off the Devon coast by RWE has been scrapped. Scottish Power pulled out of it's Argyll Array project late last year and a second phase of Kent coast's London Array windfarm, run by a consortium of companies, has also ended up as more flotsam and jetsam.
The reasons given for the ditching of the Anglesey development are many and varied: Engineering difficulties, concerns about damage to shark and bird habitats, uncertainties about financial support, tightening of the Coalition government's subsidies regime, challenging ground conditions, the seabed of rock and sand leading to additional complexity and cost for the construction of footings for wind turbines. That’s a long list. The reasons given for the other project closures, as far as I can see, are similar - they cite, for example in the case of the Argyll project, problems with basking sharks and rocky seabeds.

UK based companies and others have amassed great skills in Offshore engineering from decades of marine oil and gas exploration projects and experience. Much is known about how to build footings for large structures on tricky seabeds. Energy companies enjoy a challenge it seems. BP and other companies mined seven miles! below the surface of the Mexican gulf to drill for oil. They have been and go to the most challenging parts of the world in an attempt to squeeze as much black gold from the earth as they are able. Environmental concerns - water table pollution, destruction of wildlife habitats, have always taken second place to the primary concern - profit. This last point has been rammed home more firmly today as BP has been found guilty of gross negligence and willful misconduct in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. If the energy companies were keen to go ahead with those offshore wind projects, all of the hurdles listed above would be straddled by using the means that have been used in the past to railroad through difficult schemes - with one sole proviso -providing there were returns to be had.

I don’t believe the reasons given for those project closures.

Renewable electricity generation, for example, windpower, produces electricity more cheaply than conventional generation, like coal, oil, gas and nuclear and brings the electricity price down for all forms of generation. This is because, once installed, a wind energy converter say, requires no fuel, and requires only a small amount of maintenance work. Electricity is produced continually (when the wind blows) at little (or no) extra marginal cost. Contrastingly, all other forms of electricity generation - nuclear, gas, coal and oil based power stations - require a constant supply of fuel and the associated labour required to deliver the fuel and to maintain the equipment.  

This can be confirmed to some extent, by taking a look at what is happening to electricity prices in Germany.
Europe's second largest electricity producer by capacity, RWE, has moaned that power prices are too low. The price of electricity has dropped there, it is said (The LEX Column, FT August 15), because of the excess capacity on the German electricity market, partly caused by the nationwide switch to renewables. The price of electricity in Germany has reached a seven year low at Euro 34 per MWh. That is significantly below the current electricity price in the UK. To compare this with the UK, the forecast UK baseload electricity price for October rose to £46.55 per MWh today according to the above quoted FT article (September 05).  
'Excess' renewables capacity is forcing RWE, as an operator of both renewables and also of conventional power generation, to close its (more expensive) conventional capacity when it has to choose as a result of dropping electricity demand (or lots of excess electricity due to high winds). The result is that the electricity price drops at these times when generation of electricity exceeds demand.

I believe that this underlines the primary reason for those closures listed above. Renewable generation brings the price of electricity down. Not just down for renewable electricity, but for all electricity, whether generated by nuclear, coal, oil, gas or wind turbines. Having more and more renewables generating electricity is not good for companies heavily invested in fossil and nuclear. If their prices have to drop, so do their profits from huge investments in conventional power.
In the UK, a contrasting phenomenon shines a little more light on the nature of renewable electricity and the politics surrounding it.
Rather than an energy company, as in Germany, moaning about low energy prices, a national newspaper bleats here about how 'A windfarm has been paid £11 million not to produce electricity'  (Sunday Telegraph August 24).
The National Grid has to constantly balance electricity supply with demand. Electricity cannot simply be thrown away once produced. Something must be done with it - heat an oven, light a room, power a fridge etc. If there is an excess of electricity being generated, then either some generation must be shut down, or some demand switched on. In Germany currently, it seems conventional plant is being switched off when necessary while in the UK, the choice, currently is to ask windfarm operators to temporarily stop their rotor blades from turning. That payment of £11 million would be arising from a pre agreed contract between National Grid and the generation company, that stated that amounts of cash would be handed over if a request was made to not generate. That kind of contract is drawn up between National Grid and every type of electricity generation organisation.  The choices behind the different approaches in the UK and Germany are political and commercially determined. In Germany (although how long this will last is unclear), the Government is favouring some renewable generation, while in the UK the Government is fully behind conventional fossil and nuclear generation (and of course is also behind the new kid on the block, fracking) as is evidenced by its removal of subsidies from onshore wind, and the recent announcement by the Department for Energy and Climate Change that rival technologies- implying offshore wind and fracking etc- would now have to compete for funding.

If we are to tackle effectively the most serious challenge affecting us regarding energy production - climate change - we should be building and installing more windfarms, not closing projects down.
The reason they are not being built fast enough and why sensible projects are in fact being closed down is because of the investment by the those multinational energy companies, those behind the projects mentioned above - some of the worlds most profitable firms - in oil and gas and their desire to keep making profits in the same old way from these investments with support in this from the UK government and governments in many countries worldwide.    

That the National Grid balances the electricity grid by  paying large amounts of money to windfarm companies to not produce electricity, while at the same time it is saying it is searching for emergency supplies of electricity elsewhere is one irony. Another is that while new, safe, clean and potentially reliable renewable electricity projects are shut down, massive amounts of investment continues to be spent on dirty dangerous unreliable old nuclear and fossil stations which frequently break down and require constant maintenance and safety inspections.
These ironies arise because of the irrational unpredictable outcomes that follow production for profit.

Much more investment should be made in energy storage and in building more electricity links (like the £1billion Western Link which will link Scottish renewable generation to the rest of the UK)
With more links and more electricity storage, windfarms would not have to be paid to shutdown, any excess would simply be used to satisfy demand further afield, or would be stored for use later when demand had risen or for when the wind did not blow. But this investment is not happening, or is not happening quickly enough and this is because of the profit motive. Renewables can produce clean cheap electricity, but its development threatens the profits of the most worlds most profitable and powerful companies.

 My new book, Safe Planet will be published on 26th September 

Friday, 13 June 2014

Double Speak on Energy Prices

The 'big six' energy companies this week blamed rising costs due to the 'governments environmental policies', and excused tariff rises, blaming them on 'green levies' [FT Wednesday].
On the same day, an article in The Times told us that National Grid proposes to increase the number of interconnectors from Britain to Europe where 'an excess of harnessed wind and solar energy is depressing prices '
So does solar and wind 'green' technology raise prices or does it depress energy prices?
According to the FT article you would deduce that green technology is responsible for price increases.
According to the Times article, the wind and solar technology had depressed prices.

The reality can be seen in Germany, where the price of electricity dropped to zero earlier this year when windy conditions coincided with a lot of sun and a drop in demand. The energy capitalists do not like their energy price to drop to zero - neither the British ones nor the German ones. Zero price, zero profit. I suppose the new interconnectors will help both manage their prices.
Meanwhile, energy companies will scramble to try to frack the earth for shale gas and continue to resist, with help from governments, the only rational solution - building a renewable energy infrastructure. Why don't the energy companies want to do this? Because prices will fall.

Friday, 30 May 2014

Ecosocialism: Fracking, Climate and Revolution

I was asked to do a workshop on Marx's Ecology at the Ecosocialism Conference
This is the gist of what I wanted to say:

Marx's Ecology
We've had report after report, haven’t we, from the IPCC, from the UN, from leading scientists, about the fact that human activity is causing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to rise year on year and that this is causing the average temperature of the planet to rise and that this, in turn, is causing the climate to change. And we have witnessed many unprecedented weather events over recent months and years - those floods, storms and droughts seen on our TV screens. The scientists had predicted that more extreme weather will be the result of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And it seems they were right. Many scientists have now linked the recent unusual weather to the burning of fossil fuels.
For more than a decade we had leading members of governments, making a lot of noise about the danger of climate change.  Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair said , in 2002. 'Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity'. In 2006, David Cameron then the Conservative opposition leader was photographed posing with huskies in the Arctic to highlight climate change. In the lead up to the 2009 Copenhagen governmental conference on Climate Change, Gordon Brown the then Prime Minister stated  'Copenhagen is our last chance to get international agreement on climate change to reduce emissions'.
We have to hope Brown wasn't right about the timing because they didn't get it.

But what is happening 12 years 8 years, and 5 years after those prime ministerial statements?
Carbon dioxide emissions are going up at an ever increasing pace.
Far from saying that we must cut back (eliminate) CO2 emissions by cutting fossil fuel burning, companies around the globe are scouring the earth for oil miles under the surface of the oceans, in the pristine wilderness of the arctic, out of the dirty tar sands of Canada and are prospecting for fossil gas under the earth everywhere - even fracking mother earth in leafy stockbroker belt Surrey. And the Prime Minister, ministers and departments are fully behind the fracking of Britain.
In this years Queen's speech, Prime Minister Cameron announced that the law would be changed to make it possible to allow fracking companies to drill for oil and gas wherever they want and the pledge, given previously to ensure all post 2016 building must comply with zero carbon rules, was abandoned. Both of those measures will result in more CO2 emissions and consequently, more  global warming.  The British Government are fully behind the burning of more and more fossil fuel, despite the warnings.

If we can force a change in these kinds of policies, there is time to set a course towards a safer planet, but time is running out rapidly.
One reason time is running out is because of the danger of reaching the tipping points identified by many scientists - the albedo affect in the Arctic; the possible release of trapped methane in Permafrost regions as the temperature rises; the reducing carbon dioxide buffer of the sea; loss of biodiversity and its effect on the ecosystem.
If we burn all the oil, all glaciers will melt and the planet will enter the ice free state with sea levels hundreds of feet higher than they are at at present. Future generations will be confronted with a situation that is out of their control. It will not be us that is affected.  It will be our children's children and our children's children's children that will be confronted with an unsurmountable problem.

Climate change is not the only ecological problem. It is just, perhaps, the greatest life destroyer that capitalism has unleashed upon humanity. Other massive problems - diffusion of toxins into the environment, destruction of the soil by agribusiness, deforestation to list just some also must be dealt with.

Karl Marx, a long time ago identified capitalism as an unsustainable system.
This comes about partly from the necessity of capital to continually expand, to break all barriers to the self expansion of capital. Nothing must stand in the way of the drive for profit. That’s why the government has introduced the new infrastructure bill in favour of fracking and of changing laws to allow it despite the absurdity and the destructiveness of fracking. That it destroys the environment is of no matter.
And partly it comes about from the way capitalists have been able to treat on the one hand, unpaid labour, and on the other, nature, the environment, as a free gifts (both being important sources of its profits). So alongside labour, Capital has always treated the environment as if it is free for it to do what it wants with it, whether as a dump or as the scene of the crime for its robbery of nature. Fracking, and all the other combined efforts of the carbon capitalists are an extension of this agenda.  
One of the first historic acts of capital was to drive peasants and farm labourers off the land. The enclosures of the commons. 'The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, is the basis of the whole process'  [Capital Vol 1, pp 503,4] This created a rift ,or rupture, in what Marx called, the human-earth metabolism. 'Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of town population,... disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to the lasting fertility of the soil' [Capital Vol 1 pp 352/3 ]
This act destroys the health of the town worker and the intellectual life of the rural worker - it depletes the land, and pollutes the city.


Its clear from its works that capitalism is incapable of solving the climate problem. There have been many lost lives, lost livelihoods and communities displaced already as a result of climate disruption. It is incapable of solving this ecological problem because it, capitalism, is the source, the very heart of the problem.

Why can't capitalism solve climate change?
In short, the capitalists think they have too much to lose by converting to clean energy like wind or solar power. The energy companies that make profits from oil, coal and gas are central to capitalism. According to the Fortune 500 report, of the ten most profitable companies worldwide in 2007, six were fossil fuel companies, one was an auto manufacturer, and two were banks. The odd one out was Apple at number 7. At the top was Russia's Gazprom ($44.5B profits), followed closely by the US company Exxon-Mobil ($41B); then comes a bank, The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ($32B). These concerns are linked by a web of mutual interests. Banks make loans to oil companies for infrastructure like oil refineries, drilling technology etc. Car companies rely on oil and refinery companies to produce the fuel on which their products run. And the oil companies benefit from the constant demand for oil products from the automobile industry.
A wholesale switch to renewable energy would mean a massive amount of stranded investment (equivalent to lost profits) for these fossil and fossil related organisations. And so, renewable energy is seen as a threat to these profit hungry  businesses. This is why they attempt to block or stall the growth of the industry and technologies that can save the planet. To do this they enlist the help of governments. In this country we heard in April this year (2014) the Tory/Condem (and Labour is not different in this) Minister in charge of the department of energy and climate change (DECC) saying 'we will be finishing all subsidies to onshore windpower and no more will be installed because we now have enough onshore windpower', and the compliant BBC Radio 4 Today presenter asking whether we should now be ripping up the existing wind turbines!

We must demand a complete change! and we should, unapologetically, use the phrase that the apologists for capitalism use a lot. It’s the right thing to do!
But isn't capitalism needed to provide all the stuff that we need in order to live? How can we produce, for example, the energy we need without burning more fossil fuel? Are we not caught in an oily trap we cannot get out of?

Taking the UK as an example.

If mention of numbers and arithmetic makes your eyes glaze over, relax and don’t worry, you don't need to follow these figures too closely; I just want to demonstrate the power in the wind, and the scale of the task.

The power you can get from a wind turbine depends on a number of factors. Not surprisingly, the windier it is, the more power you can get; and the larger the wind turbine, the more power you can get. The power varies according to the square of the blade length.
Doubling the blade length quadruples the power. The power output is also proportional the cube of the windspeed. If a wind turbine produces 8 units of power at a wind speed of 2 m/sec, at 3 m/sec it will produce 27 units of power and at 4 m/sec, it can produce 64 units of power and so on.
So makes sense, if power is wanted, to install lots of very big wind turbines out at sea where the windspeeds are typically high and are stable.
Could windpower produce all we need?
Take a typical windspeed out in the North Sea of 9 metres per second say.
That’s quite an easy calculation to do.

This includes all forms of energy - solid and liquid fuels like coal and oil and also electricity.
Very roughly, if this energy was consumed at a constant rate (its not, but this is just an illustration) then the continuous power demand would be 211GW (the equivalent of 211 nuclear power stations on at full power) We don’t want nuclear because its dirty, expensive, dangerous has a limited stockpile of fuel and it is very unreliable (most of them are down for maintenance at any one time according to ENDS). So lets replace them with windpower.
Calculations show that, making reasonable assumptions about power losses in the grid cables and equipment, around 23,000 wind turbines will deliver 211GW from a wind speed of 8.7 metres per second.
This number of wind turbines at optimal spacing will take up an area of about 10,000 square kilometres (about half the size of Wales!). This windfarm would be out at sea!
 It will be necessary to spread the turbines over a wide area to minimise the chances of them all being becalmed at the same time. And, I believe, it is important (essential) to have a good energy storage system in place if we want to power everything with renewables (which we do!). 
When the wind drops, when the windfarms are becalmed - All the lights will go out!
With a very large internationally interconnected geographically dispersed electricity grid, this problem will disappear, but initially, there will be a requirement for substantial energy storage facilities. 

Energy storage removes the problem of intermittency.
We will need the existing energy storage - such as the pumped hydro power station at Dinorwig in Wales and those at other locations around the globe. And more of this type of facility must be built. This is expensive technology however, and, crucially, takes a long time to build so, in the transition period an alternative could be provided by a transport system that becomes increasingly electrified as the renewable generators come on line. 
All electric transport, be it trains, trams, trolley buses, buses, vans, lorries etc must, at least in an interim transitional period, be equipped with electrical storage. This storage will support renewable generators as well as holding the power to run the vehicles.

Transitional Demands.
What are our demands?
We demand that all the oil gas and coal is left in the ground. We demand that all governments and states plan a route to a fossil free energy system. For that we have to use the fossil fuel we have. We have to phase out fossil fuel and phase in renewable generators like wind, wave, solar and tidal. Insulate all buildings so that they require less input energy to keep them warm or cool.
We demand no new coal, no fracking and no new nuclear (nuclear will suck away investment from safe renewables,and it's dangerous etc etc).
We demand that states/governments invest in renewable technology and in all the new training that it requires. So the UK we demand the Government builds and installs, together with the necessary grid strengthening and ancillary equipment eighteen hundred 10MW wind turbines each and every year for the next 20 years. (Six a day) (This is the scale of what is required). Intermittent renewables require energy storage. That must be built in tandem. (this can be done by equipping all electric transport with battery storage - and there are other storage infrastructure projects that can be developed). 
We demand an annually reducing cap on the number of internal combustion engined vehicles that are registered on the road. The reducing fossil transport fleet must be replaced by electric trains, trams, buses, trolleybuses and electric vehicles.
The Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group pamphlet - One MillionClimate Jobs Now argues sets out to some extent, the detail (excluding the storage argument) of what needs to be done in the UK

Big Oil
But those workers who currently work for big oil, coal, gas and nuclear and for the ICE auto industry are part of the solution. The expertise amongst the car, oil, coal, gas and nuclear workers, their skill set, fits pretty much exactly what is needed in a new renewable energy industry. Where their skills are redundant, they must be retrained.
Jobs and (Energy price)
Renewable energy will be (unlike claims made for that by nuclear apologists in the fifties) too cheap to meter. It will be cheap, and eventually, virtually free.
At first, building a renewables industry will require millions of jobs (good!). The capitalists 'industrial reserve army' that they like in place because it keeps wages down, will be taken out of their state of humiliation will learn essential skills, and will have good useful jobs. Once the renewable generators have been installed though, they require only a small amount of maintenance. At this point workers will be able retrain to work in other essential areas (and I would like to think, will get more leisure time!) 'From each according to their needs, from each according to their ability' [ Marx, Engels, Selected Works,  p 321] Critique of the Gotha program,  (NB We must critique the Obama/Cameron/Putin program)  
The price of energy will come down once the initial investment has been made. This is because the sun (and the earth in the case of tidal) sends no bills. Once the wind turbines, solar panels, wave machines or tidal stream generators are up and running, the cost of the electricity they produce will plummet (because there will be more than enough for everyone and, under the current system, because of the law of supply and demand) and this is why, of course, that the oil companies do not want wind. The price of oil, gas coal and nuclear energy will come down and profits will tumble. It will make the old energy  technology and fuel sources totally redundant. Capitalists do know this and wrote about it in a CBI report called 'Decision Time' about 5 years ago. They worried about 'negative marginal costs' of wind. They worried about the cost of wind electricity falling to zero and below!
The 'green' levies we are paying for in our electricity bills are actually 'fossil' levies as the oil coal and gas companies attempt to resist what they see as interference in their profiteering and they attempt protect their massive investments in dirty coal, oil, tar and fracking gas. Internationally the corporations and governments are planning in a totally undemocratic way, to push through, to push down our throats, more business as usual fossil fuel burning via the fracking industry. They hope the EU-US trade deal (TTIP) currently being negotiated by the US and EU will allow them to do what they like.

What can we do?
Spread the word by any and all means necessary.
Join groups. Join your local residents association; Join your Trade Union; get them to affiliate to CCC. Agitate in your workplace for action on climate change. Solidarity and Unity in action is where our strength lies. Build links everywhere. Hold demonstrations, vigils, marches. Above all, use the power of our side in the workplace - strikes occupations, picket lines.
Link the struggles. Against austerity, the struggle against low pay and precarious work, the struggle against a debt ridden society, the humiliation of pay day loans - link those struggles with all the other resistance - the resistance to fracking, public service cuts; the list is goes on and on. That we have all these fights, we can turn to our advantage - if we successfully link them. Capitalism is the root cause of all these problems. A successful fight against this system of profit for the few, will be the solution. 
There are many groups concerned about the fracking of mother earth, Groups like Grandmothers against fracking, Frack Off, Youth for climate justice, CCC etc. Get involved, Act.
Oppose big oil ideologically and physically whenever and wherever we can.
Our job could not be more important. We have a closing window of opportunity to change the course of human history. Capitalism is a sinking ship. What interests it is profit only, not what humanity needs. The never ending drive to make more and more profit from the free 'gift' of nature; and the free gift of unpaid labour has taken us to this perilous predicament. The earth has been and continues to be treated like a dustbin and workers have been and continue to be treated as dirt, as a necessary inconvenience. Its interesting to note that, if capital could replace all workers with robots, the capitalists would do that. But they cannot do that; workers are needed by the capitalists so profits can be made from them - from our unpaid labour - at work and in the home and in the community. They need us! - and - and this is the key - we don't need them!

7)  Agency for change - us!
A world uprising is required. We will be part of that. We don't know exactly how this can happen; what things might cause the spark. And it's not entirely clear where the epicentre of resistance is likely to be. Therefore we must build wherever we are. We must build here.
We still have time to act.
 TIME to ACT is a CCC  campaign helping to give a timely lead - first to the September 20th 2014 Peoples march for the climate centered in New York and mirrored everywhere - and secondly to the Paris COP 21 next year. We have the chance now to bring together campaigns - from where people are suffering the most - in the global south and in the resistance in the developed world -  against the global corporate fossil fuel profiteers and the whole web of capitalist interests from banks and arms companies with the governments that support these profiteers - against these parasites on what Marx called the human metabolism with nature.
We must work together internationally to build a truly sustainable system.

Marx talked of man's inorganic body - by that he meant the environment on which we all depend - the land, the air, the sea, the fresh water, the birds, flowers, plants, animals, bees, and fishes, etc; all life. And although not explicitly stated in Marx, this would also include sunlight and all the essential energy we receive through the atmosphere from the sun. Capitalism is destroying that inorganic body. It has already cut deep into its heart - the heart of us all. It will leave a scar (loss of bio-diversity, extinct species etc) forever. We must stop its incessant advance before the damage is completely irreversible.
Marx wrote  'Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeathe it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias (good heads of household)' [Capital Vol 3, p911]  
 It will not be us that suffer the most damaging consequences of inaction, it will be our children and grandchildren in the generation to come who may find they live in a climate chaos they are unable to control. There is an open window, but the window is now closing. It is time to act.   

Marx Capital Vol 3 Penguin, London 1981 
Marx Engels, Selected Works, Lawrence and Wishart Ltd, 1968 
Bellamy Foster, Marx's Ecology, Monthly Review Press, 2000