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Dealing with Climate Change & Justice

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  • Started 3 years ago by chdot
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  1. crowriver
    Member

    @Yodhrin, nice idea but I reckon heat pumps of any variety are a non-starter for C19th tenements. They're just too draughty. The amount of retrofitting of wall and floor insulation, triple glazing, etc. that would need to be done is not only eye-waveringly expensive but also highly disruptive to residents. Also the buildings are just not designed to be hermetically sealed off from outside air - they are supposed to be draughty to feed the original open fireplaces (even if these have subsequently been bricked up). If you seal up the necessary ventilation you'd get all kinds of problems with the fabric of the building, with damp and rot affecting timber joists, brickwork, plaster, etc.

    Would be more feasible to mandate heat pumps for new builds and housing built within say the last 50 years or so, where wall cavity insulation is practical and homes are not designed around a through draught for fireplaces. Doesn't resolve the issue of heating and insulating older tenements but other solutions will need to be found I suspect.

    Posted 3 years ago #
  2. Dave
    Member

    We could just EWI the tenaments and re-roof them if we were serious enough about the climate to be OK with losing the period architecture. That would provide airtightness at relatively low cost and by moving the dewpoint outward of the original structure, preserve the timbers and so on (plus, almost no disruption to residents.

    The only thing that is insanely expensive is being determined to retain centuries-old architecture while insulating to the necessary standard. If you wanted to EWI then render with sandstone slips... I guess it might be possible but just how much do we want the coral reefs to survive?

    Posted 3 years ago #
  3. Dave
    Member

    The other thing that always strikes me is that some of these problems (e.g. lack of airtightness and insulation) are really only problems because our electricity supply is both constrained and expensive. If you imagine for a second that we had neighbourhood cold fusion, we wouldn't need to insulate anything, just use a big electric boiler in place of the gas one. You'd have a warm house with almost zero building retrofit costs and zero carbon. Instead of spending untold trillions retrofitting every dwelling to passivhaus standard, what if we spent the money on decarbonizing the mains and lowering the cost of electricity directly?

    (I get that there's low hanging fruit in airtightness and insulation you'd want to do anyway, but it's not going to be easy to get big water tanks and heat pumps etc. into 18c terraced houses...)

    Posted 3 years ago #
  4. crowriver
    Member

    I don't see heat pumps working for tenements, energy efficiency measures such as insulation and re-glazing would be more effective. Longer term, district heating systems could be built.

    No need to replace tenement roofs entirely. Insulating the existing flat roofs on tenements is perhaps the simplest improvement that can be made - easy to install, effective and relatively cheap. We did this to our flat when building into the loft space. Thick external insulation goes on top of existing roof felt, then new felt applied on top. In comparison, insulating the sloping part of the roof was a faff as insulation has to be cut to fit between supporting timbers. Also additional surface vents required to stop damp building up between the slates and the insulation.

    The new rooms we created in the loft are incredibly cosy because they are well insulated. Also one half of the flat is south facing so there is a large solar heating effect on sunny days, even in winter. Rarely need to run the heating during the day, and if it has been sunny (like today) it's usually not required in the evening either.

    Certainly true that external wall insulation could be fitted to most tenements at relatively low cost. Much of the tenement housing stock is not in conservation areas so as long as visual impact is mitigated (e.g. sandstone coloured render on top) wouldn't be much of a problem. Would have to ensure the cladding was properly rated for fire safety though.

    EDIT - Just had a look at this in more detail, and external wall insulation of tenements apparently not practical unless doing entire streets at one time... Also air tightness is a real problem in pre-1919 buildings and not easily addressed without creating damp issues. More info here:

    https://www.climatexchange.org.uk/media/1331/technology_landscaping_report_energy_efficiency_technologies.pdf

    Posted 3 years ago #
  5. CocoShepherd
    Member

    @chdot

    Not ready to give up milk/cheese, partly because the vegetable ‘milks’ are not great.

    I disagree. Oat milk is bloody delicious (although not a vegetable milk...)

    Posted 3 years ago #
  6. chdot
    Admin

    Preferred brand/type?

    Posted 3 years ago #
  7. crowriver
    Member

    Almond milk is quite pleasant. The rest? I'll stick to the real thing or just water...

    Posted 3 years ago #
  8. CocoShepherd
    Member

    @chdot as with everything you get what you pay for. The cheap supermarket own oat milk taste is not great. Oatly/Moma oat/Minor Figures are all tasty. £1.50-2.00 per litre roughly, so it's much more pricey than coo's milk

    Posted 3 years ago #
  9. steveo
    Member

    don't these alt-milk require massive amounts of water to produce, not that cows milk is low water but in the UK cows don't require much additional irrigation so local dairy shouldn't be too bad.

    (worth noting that the single largest consumer of electricity in Scotland is Scottish Water and they generate quite a lot of their own energy.)

    Posted 3 years ago #
  10. Dave
    Member

    Oatley Barista is where it's at. If you want it for cereal or something, you can use lesser milk (Asda own brand long life oat milk, not from the fridge section, is perfectly acceptable).

    In my experience - kids with dairy allergy - it's easy to substitute milk and yoghurt and ice cream and basically not notice the difference, but non-dairy cheese is no good.

    Posted 3 years ago #
  11. chdot
    Admin

    Perhaps counterintuitively, there is no climate culture war in the UK. Recent polling found 71% of people concerned about climate breakdown – putting it above anything else (including Covid) for the first time. Wider evidence shows the public broadly agreeing – across age, education and leave/remain divides – that climate breakdown is real, human-caused and something the government should be dealing with.

    However most people, quite understandably, don’t know what is needed to avoid climate catastrophe. Agreeing you want action isn’t the same as agreeing to wish your boiler farewell, even if the former comprises the latter. Nor does it mean you’re ready to use your car less (or even give it up), or think about changing what you eat. To pretend there isn’t a risk to necessarily rapid carbon-cutting would be foolish.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/25/britain-climate-policy-heat-pumps-public

    Posted 3 years ago #
  12. crowriver
    Member

    "non-dairy cheese is no good"

    The vegan "cheddar" is vile - smells like vomit. Vegan "feta" is not too bad though.

    Posted 3 years ago #
  13. LaidBack
    Member

    I'll give a shout out for customers Untitled Oats as they were getting a lot of good press till they suddenly stopped three months ago.

    Oat milk and other food stuffs is swayed by marketing and the big brands can do the local food coop and also the specialist isle in a supermarket. Cue up quirky hand written fonts and eco packaging and get word out on Instagram, BrewDog style.
    Oat milk is now mainstream I reckon and with that there's lots of competition. Fuel is still so cheap that driving oat milk up to Scotland is no problem either - dump your brand with a nice offer to retailer and you might knock out any local resistance. Then market is all yours. Milk market gets that a bit too.

    People might like glass bottles and delivery by bike but in the end they won't pay more for it (?)

    Exactly why Untitled stopped is unknown. Guys there were a nice team and hope they go on to another enterprise.

    Urban Arrow XL

    Posted 3 years ago #
  14. chdot
    Admin

  15. wingpig
    Member

    I'll try and find a thing I read which describes the various water costs/carbon udderprints of non-mammalian milks...

    Posted 3 years ago #
  16. chdot
    Admin

    Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford, has championed the idea of forcing fossil fuel companies and other big emitters to pay for the permanent storage of the carbon they emit, through a “carbon takeback obligation”, using carbon capture and storage technology.

    He said: “On current progress, we’ll close the 2030 emissions gap some time in the 2080s. There is no appetite for reducing fossil fuel consumption globally at the rate required. The only remaining option is to scale up safe and permanent disposal of carbon dioxide, such as storing it back underground, instead of fly-tipping it into the atmosphere.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/26/world-wasted-chance-build-back-better-covid-un

    Posted 3 years ago #
  17. neddie
    Member

    A professor of geosystem science at the University looking for funding to do geosystem science stuff says "there's no possible way to succeed without doing geosystem science stuff"

    Hmmm

    Posted 3 years ago #
  18. chdot
    Admin

  19. crowriver
    Member

    Interesting graph from former CTC here. At first glance looks like cycling produces more CO2, until you see that these are reductions in CO2...

    Posted 3 years ago #
  20. Baldcyclist
    Member

    Yes, interesting to see what 'per person' means. ie is the graph figure x 2 or x3 for ammount saved per house.

    Also cycling only 2.5 miles.

    Probably still the case that 'fixing your house' saves more than 'bike' on comparison - especially if household using public transport. That said, people should do both, but many cyclists think they 'have done their bit' so no need to change the boiler or insulate their house. And many drivers as mentioned above will think they have done their bit by going electric.

    *Everybody needs to do everything*

    Also interesting the ambiguity over electricity, many stats/publications say UK now around 80-90% green (my tarrif is 100%) electricity, but folks above saying much electricity still gas powered. What to beleive?

    Posted 3 years ago #
  21. steveo
    Member

    but folks above saying much electricity still gas powered. What to beleive?

    tl:dr: it depends on where you live.

    Southern Scotland is largely wind and Nuclear depending on the weather with gas only to supplement. High density areas of the UK (without a nuclear plant) are very gas dependant. The UK as a whole can be mostly wind depending on the weather and demand.

    I've got an android app which uses this data and I get a bit obsessive at times.
    https://carbonintensity.org.uk/

    The only thing that really matters is the UK general amount, as its a grid and everything is averaged out, so even though I might be running a fully green tariff, Mrs Jones in South Wales is running a normal tariff and is almost 90% gas at time of writing. Whilst my carbon intensity might be 13g/kwh and Mrs Jones is 325g the grid in total is somewhere in the middle at 140g (right now). So no matter what you do your kw/h of electricity is still producing 140g everything else is irrelevant.

    Some maths would be required to workout how much less carbon that is than petrol but I'm guessing its pretty good.

    Posted 3 years ago #
  22. Morningsider
    Member

    @Baldcyclist - you can believe both. The 90%+ figure for renewables is for Scottish electricity generation vs. consumption. The below 50% renewables figure is UK generation vs. consumption. Scotland is connected to the UK grid and while an overall net exporter, also relies on imports from time to time to keep the lights on.

    Posted 3 years ago #
  23. crowriver
    Member

    You can monitor UK National Grid demand versus generation, and mix of generation sources, pretty much in real time here.

    https://gridwatch.co.uk

    For the last last update 2021-10-27 17:45:00 GMT the generating mix included 34% gas burning.

    There's an archive going back over the past two years which shows how the generation mix evens out. One thing to note is the significant role of electricity imports via sub-sea interconnectors. It's not quite clear whether these imports are generated mostly from renewables, nuclear, or fossil fuels. Most likely a mix depending on export location and the weather...

    Posted 3 years ago #
  24. LaidBack
    Member

    Rishi Sunak show today is good news for frequent fliers, boozers and drivers. A veritable Faragist heaven!

    "But today I can announce that the flights between airports in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will from April 2023 be subject to new lower rate of air passenger duty. 

    "This will help cut the cost of living with nine million passengers seeing their duty cut by half. We will bring people together across the United Kingdom.

    "And because they tend to have a different proportion of domestic passengers it is a boost to regional airports like Aberdeen, Belfast and Southampton."

    The cut to air passenger duty is controversial with the announcement coming just ahead of COP26 with the UK under pressure to cut carbon emissions.

    Sunak’s Budget is an embarrassment for the COP26 hosts just a week before the international climate summit, the Scottish Greens have said.

    Posted 3 years ago #
  25. chdot
    Admin

    See title of thread, this isn’t.

    Posted 3 years ago #
  26. Frenchy
    Member

    See title of thread, this isn’t.

    Maybe not. But still absolutely vital for some disabled people.

    Posted 3 years ago #
  27. chdot
    Admin

    “But still absolutely vital for some disabled people.“

    Perhaps, but I wonder what percentage are bought by/for them.

    Posted 3 years ago #
  28. chdot
    Admin

    Across 40 different areas spanning the power sector, heavy industry, agriculture, transportation, finance and technology, not one is changing quickly enough to avoid 1.5C in global heating beyond pre-industrial times, a critical target of the Paris climate agreement, according to the new Systems Change Lab report.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/28/world-failing-make-changes-avoid-climate-breakdown-report

    Posted 3 years ago #
  29. chdot
    Admin

  30. chdot
    Admin

    We are now, though, beginning to learn how much the real forces of nature on our planet will care for any of that, as we enter an age of profound disruption.

    And if our species lives to tell the tale, some future historian may pause to wonder at the sight of an intelligent, sentient human being, in the year 2021, standing up to give a financial address to the nation so profoundly incoherent; so ideologically broken and irrelevant, and so clearly – perhaps tragically – inadequate to the moment in which he spoke.

    https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/autumn-budget-2021-rishi-sunaks-vision-for-britain-has-been-stunted-by-a-lifetime-among-a-self-serving-elite-joyce-mcmillan-3436459

    Posted 3 years ago #

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