Zero Carbon Britain

Is the Answer in the Arts? Emergence: 28 October 2010

A recent seminar for artists, Creative Practice for a Sustainable Future, explored the role of the arts in sustainability and behavioural change. Paul Allen offered zerocarbonbritain2030 as a ‘positive vision’ of society free from fossil fuels, and questioned the effectiveness of utopia compared to apocalyptic and dystopian visions such as The Day After Tomorrow and Age of Stupid that offer shock and despair as catalyst for action.

The one day seminar by Sustain-Wales held at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff last month, is the first of a series of seminars to circuit Wales in 2011, including in Swansea, Caernafon and here at CAT in the Wales Institute for Sustainable Education.

CAT Urge Politicians to Be Brave and say 'We Will': 4 December 2010

Staff and supporters of CAT joined thousands of demonstrators in London on Saturday 4th December for the Zero Carbon Britain by 2030 rally where 1000's of people participated in a March organised by Campaign against Climate Change to coincide with the international climate talks at COP15 in Cancun.

CAT responds to DECC’s Energy Mix Model: 5 October 2010

The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) released a new energy calculator in July, 2050 Pathways, that demonstrates the alternative ways to meet the governments current emission target of an 80% cut in emissions by 2050.

CAT responded to a consultation of the new tool with an adapted version. The zerocarbonbritain2030 matrix integrates key areas essential to our scenario that were not considered in DECC’s. These include:

far greater resource efficiency – in the transport and building sectors

reduced aviation demand – through effective behavioural change

reduced meat consumption – for a healthier more localised diet

far greater use of renewables, particularly offshore wind – for a 100% renewable energy mix

no new nuclear or CCS

to achieve net greenhouse gas emissions of zero by 2030

As our evidence shows, we can decarbonise faster and quicker than the current UK target using existing renewable energy technologies. In the case of offshore wind, DECC’s tool falls short of recent research that even they have endorsed.

DECC intends to make an updated version of 2050 Pathways available by early 2011 in light of the submitted evidence. The new version will be one source of evidence used to determine the UK’s new carbon budget for 2023 - 2027.

CAT’s Peter Harper at the 2010 Schumacher Society lectures, themed ‘Zero Carbon Britain’: 16 October 2010

CAT partnered with the Schumacher Society on October 16 to present the 2010 Schumacher Conference to over 300 delegates, chaired by Paul Allen, Director of zerocarbonbritain2030.

Keynote speakers included Juliet Davenport (Good Energy), Peter Harper (CAT) and Jacqueline McGlade (European Environment Agency) followed by workshops from 10:10 on campaigning, WWF & Sustain on prosperity without growth, University of Bath on challenges to technological change and CAT on the new Feed-in Tariffs and Land Use change.

'Climate Change is mainly an energy problem ... [and] will change your lifestyle. People will change, we just need to give them the pathways to enable them to do that'
Juliet Davenport, Good Energy.

'We must get the end to end narrative clear so that we may get over the yawning chasm'
Jacqueline McGlade, European Environment Agency.

For more videos of the Schumacher lectures, follow this link to vimeo.

Author of the Land Use chapter Peter Harper, at Zero Carbon Bristol: July 2010

More Articles...

ZCB2030

Download the full report.

ZCBlog

ZCBlog: Winds of Change
Electricity production from wind power in the UK has increased dramatically over the last few years, as this graph shows. Plotted using National Grid data, it shows the proportion...
ZCBlog: Educating for a zero carbon future
This week on ZCBlog Sarah Everitt, a long-term volunteer at CAT, describes her work linking between different parts of the CAT team: Education, and Zero Carbon Britain. Within the first...
ZCBlog: Catalysing the shift we need
As we press ahead with our new Zero Carbon Britain research, we are all motivated by the clear evidence that our climate and energy challenges have not gone away, and...
ZCBlog: the Energiewende
As we write up the research for our third ZCB report on how Britain can decarbonise, it’s interesting to look around at what’s being suggested in other decarbonisation strategies. Germany,...