Green Power Rules!

ISIS Report 16/12/09

A ground-breaking launch conference for Green Energies - 100% Renewable by 2050 and turning point for renewable and sustainable energies Sam Burcher

The Jubilee Room in Westminster was packed to the rafters for the launch conference (25 November 2009) hosted by Michael Meacher MP and Alan Simpson MP, just weeks before the Copenhagen Climate Summit. Every seat, every spare inch of table space and standing room was abuzz with expectation.

It was an extraordinarily high- powered panel of speakers assembled for the occasion; half of them coming from abroad.

UK not green

Prof. Peter Saunders, co-Director of ISIS opened the conference bang on time by delivering an opening salvo to the UK government for its reliance on nuclear power, carbon capture and storage and carbon credits. “It’s hard to believe they take renewable energies seriously when despite all the talk, out of the 27 countries in the EU we come 25th in the proportion of our energy that comes from renewables.”

As to UK’s reliance on carbon credits:”Either these reflect CO2 that was never going to be emitted, in which case they are bogus, or they mean people who are poorer than us are going to have to cut more than their fair share while we cut less, which is immoral.”

Green power to the people

Dr Mae-Wan Ho, Director of ISIS and lead author of the Report gave the first speech (see Power to the People, 100 Percent Renewables by 2050, SiS 45) Her message was “Power to the people!” in all senses of the word power. Renewable energy is inexhaustible, it is free once you installed your equipment to capture it, and it is available to all, so no need to fight over it. People themselves are in control.

Basically, green power is renewable, environmentally friendly, healthy, safe, and sustainable. It is especially amenable to distributed, decentralised small scale

generation that give people energy autonomy.

She emphasized that climate change is real and human activities have a lot to do with it, especially by burning fossil fuels. “That happens to be the best explanation of

all the observations, past and present.” She said, alluding to the hacked e-mails from East Anglia University that has been blown up by climate sceptics. “But being green is a good end in itself, regardless of whether you believe in climate change.”

The potential for renewable energies are huge. Top of the list are wind, solar and anaerobic digestion of biological wastes. She warned against false solutions such as nuclear, carbon capture and storage, and in particular biochar that’s in many ways intended as a successor to the already disastrous biofuels boom, and could really endanger life on earth by accelerating the depletion of oxygen.

And being 100 percent renewable by 2050 is realizable. Germany is well on course, thanks to enlightened government legislations and subsidies to stimulate the internal market, especially feed-in tariffs.

She ended by giving a peek at the fantastic possibilities “over the rainbow” that’s also covered by the Report.

As though on cue, the next two speakers gave brilliant examples of green people power

Find out what the other speakers had to say here

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GreenPowerRules.php

Or read other articles about energy generation here

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/scienergy.php

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This article can be found on the I-SIS website at

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GreenPowerRules.php