Energy, environment and growth

 

The Cambridge Econometrics’ report for WWF last year claimed that the UK climate plan would by 2030 add £565 to the average household income, increase GDP by 1.1% and create 190,000 jobs while cutting emissions by 60%.

www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/tackling_climate_change/how_we_re_tackling_climate_change/our_climate_work_in_the_uk/the_value_of_a_low_carbon_britain

DECC has made similar claims about the benefits and viability of it’s ‘green growth’ plan: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prosperity-and-growth-hand-in-hand-with-carbon-reduction

So is it really possible to have economic growth, while cutting carbon emissions? Some say that this might be possible in some affluent countries, since they can export their dirty industrial activities and /or import produce produced (along with emissions) elsewhere. But the report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate ‘Better Growth, Better Climate’, says that economic growth and action on climate change can now be both be achieved everywhere.  It claims that there are major opportunities in three key sectors of the global economy – cities, land use, energy. By improving efficiency, investing in infrastructure and stimulating innovation across these sectors and the wider economy, governments and businesses can it says deliver strong growth with lower emissions.

The Commissions chair, former President of Mexico Felipe Calderón, said the report ‘refutes the idea that we must choose between fighting climate change or growing the world’s economy. That is a false dilemma,’ and  ‘shows how technological  and structural change are driving new opportunities to improve growth, create jobs, boost company profits and spur economic development.’ http://newclimateeconomy.report/

Lord Stern, one of the Commission team, has stressed that what’s changed is that, crucially, renewables are now getting cheap and we are also realising that the cost of continuing to use fossil fuels is not just their ever rising direct costs, as resources deplete, or the huge social and environmental impacts of climate change, growing long term, but also the huge and immediate health costs of emissions from coal - as witnessed by the air pollution crisis in some cities in China.  It’s said that this is costing around 10% of their GNP. It’s getting similar elsewhere. So now making the transition to renewables and fuel use efficiency  makes massive economic sense and will strengthen economies.

It’s certainly clear that innovation, increased efficiency and fuel subsitution can reduce impacts, but on a finite planet surely there have to be limits on consumption at some point? Renewables can, at least in theory, progressively replace all fossil and fissile fuels. We can haggle over how long that might take (30-50 years?), and over what to do meanwhile. But by 2050 we ought to be on the way to a sustainable energy system, in terms of energy resource use. However there may be other resource limits which might constrain that global project- the most obvious being land. That could limit how much biomass we can rely on.  Wind (increasingly offshore), solar (on roof tops) may not be land use limited, but there may be material constrains – ‘rare earth’ minerals especially, although substitute may be found and recycling practiced.   Water is another issue. Unlike fossil and nuclear plants, most renewabes do not need it for cooling, with the exception of Concentrated Solar Power plants, and water is not something easily available is desert areas where they would be mostly located.  But they can also be air cooled and water can be piped from the sea.

The general point is that there are, potentially, technical fixes to most problems like this.  Which means we can have growth in energy use, should we want it. Of course we must reduce energy waste as much as possible- energy efficient energy use is vital. It saves money and resources and makes it easier for renewables to meet needs.  It also reduces any social and environmental impacts from using renewables- they may be small and local, but we want to minimize them. 

What about other limits to growth?  There are absolute limits to how much energy we can extract from natural energy flows and the sun’s energy input to the planet, but these are some way off- e.g. there are plenty of desert areas for solar and sea for offshore wind, wave and tidal projects. By contrast, if we continue to expand our economic, industrial and agricultural activities, we may come up against other limits much sooner. Again land - and water- are obvious issues. To some extent you can use energy to make fresh water (by desalination) but you can’t make land, and although we have learnt how to use energy to increase the productivity of land, this can be at the expense of soil quality.  And, more generally, the continued growth of a consumer society of the current type is perhaps not something everyone wants – except perhaps those who are currently excluded from it!

The ‘green growth’ view is that all can share in it, but of course that ignores the vast inequalities and imbalances that exist at present. As with all economic growth, the benefits may only trickle down slowly and partially to the poorest, reinforced by competitive pressures and the grim reality that the poor don't consume as much as the rich. And at best, as the global population grows, and if affluence spreads, we may still hit material limits imposed by the carrying capacity of the planet.  Some greens think we already have and in any case object to what they see as soulless consumer lifestyles. They seek a shift to a steady state global economy, freed from endless pressure to keep expanding so as to sustain the skewed social structure and rapacious economy. Certainly a shift to a more sustainable approach to consumption would have many benefits, as Tim Jackson highlighted in his seminal study ‘Prosperity without growth’, although winning over the global majority to that view may prove hard: rising consumption is an endemic expectation in most cultures: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781844078943/

Ultimately though we may have no choice. The big question is whether we need to start on that now, or, if as some fear, it’s already too late and we have it forced on us.  

For an optimistic ‘deep green’ views see: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-11-04/how-to-shrink-the-economy-without-crashing-it-a-ten-point-plan and http://earthconnected.net/egaia-2nd-edition/buy-or-download-egaia/