Fracking in the Cotswolds

This was the title of a presentation given by Dr. Jonathan Whittaker today to the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network. A good number of us crowded into the so-called Jerusalem Room over College Green from Gloucester Cathedral to hear it. "I'm a dentist," Jonathan began, "so I know a little about drilling..." He was modest: fracking is clearly a subject he's studied carefully, and puts well into context.

Explaining why the Government is so keen to promote it, he uses the analogy of tobacco. The tax revenues from both shale gas exploration and cigarette sales are a pot of gold too tempting for Chancellors to resist - but the cost of encouraging fracking may outweigh its income stream in the long term, just as the cost of treating lung cancer patients puts the tax from tobacco sales into perspective.

Fracking is, Jonathan concludes, less likely a bridge to the future - more a gangplank. What if - instead - as much were spent on developing (for instance) the Anaconda wave energy converter, pumped hydro energy storage and peak demand control as is scheduled for HS2?

Jerusalem was already on my mind from last night, as we watched Henry IV Part 2, relayed from Stratford-upon-Avon. The king's death in the Jerusalem Chamber takes place off stage, but on stage there's plenty of fine business in Greg Doran's excellent production, in which Oliver Ford Davies as Shallow if anything outperforms Antony Sher as Falstaff. What a play!

"Stop the world"?

Littlechap's plea comes to mind. We are hosting this very sweet Japanese 15-year-old for a few days: she is part of a large school party over here - but all that way for the inside of a week only!

And at lunchtime, members of the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network met (the first time in some while). Where? The Grange, Bishop's Cleeve, now part of the Zurich/Capita empire. On a mild Spring day, a gale of heat greeted us as we made our way into this gaunt temple of commerce, a handful of Daniels into the lions' den.

Commercial and environmental

Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network arranged a site visit today at the premises of the Commercial Group. Though barely 500 metres from where we live, I had never before ventured down their road, which runs through the site of the former Leckhampton Station. Commercial's sustainability tsar, Simon Graham, gave us generously of both his time and his experience - a most impressive performance!

Since their Damascene moment, six years ago, Commercial have achieved in excess of a 75% reduction in carbon, and - as from Friday last - are able to say they do zero waste. The effect on both customers and suppliers must be very considerable.

Simon outlined three drivers for business to move towards sustainability. Seeing the need to be part of the solution, in looking at responsibility to shareholders. Resource constraints: durability necessitates stewardship. And finally the need to be able to look our grandchildren in the eye.

 I have probably quoted before the question asked by Sir Toby Belch, "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Ale was there sadly none, but Simon did produce a packet of chocolate biscuits.

At Laud's

The Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network met today in the auspicious surroundings of Church House, Gloucester's Laud Room. The full-length portrait of William Laud - for many years Dean of Gloucester before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury - dominated the proceedings. I guess he might have lifted an eyebrow at the ecumenical nature of our discussion.

One of our number recounted a visit to her father's office, just off the Laud Room, when she was a lot younger: it was during the Three Choirs Festival, and there was a party in full flow. Dashing up the stairs, she ran into a large elderly man, nearly knocking him over: it was Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Three guests joined us: the Gloucester Diocese Churches Officer ("Solar panels can be eco-bling..."), a Vision 21 volunteer ("The question for me is how can I reduce my carbon footprint?") and a permaculturalist ("Nothing can be done without an internal change...").

A stimulating hour or so.

edible open gardens

John and his wife Ann have lived, these past six years, on the side of one of those steep valleys near Stroud. Their back garden rises vertiginously to way above the level of their chimney pots, with narrow tiers of productive level ground carved out as you ascend. They fight the good fight against the woodland scrub that encroaches from above, and the badgers which lumber destructively, right down as far as the bird feeders by the back door of the house. And they seem to be winning: seldom have I seen so much cultivation within such a small area, with 30 fruit trees, a greenhouse and a polytunnel all loaded and stuffed with produce. When if ever can they go on holiday I wonder? It certainly makes me feel inadequate, achieving so little, on our flat, badger-free patch.

The garden we visited is one of 37 open this weekend under a scheme devised by Transition Stroud: only by chance did I hear about it on Thursday, via the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network.

Talking the talk

Over the past 48 hours, I've attended three meetings where sustainability or resiliance have been the watchwords. On Tuesday afternoon, there was quite a heated discussion in the RCE Severn Steering Committee about the extent to which we needed to sock it to our stakeholders. Should our working groups challenge businesses' CSR policies, and challenge too the whole notion of the sustainability of continuing economic growth, given Peak Oil and that we are already in ecological debt? Are children being equipped by our schools for a society based on the realities of resource depletion and global warming? What is our positive vision of a low-carbon, steady state economy or our plan for energy descent?

Some of these questions were addressed by Ben Brangwyn of the Transition Network at the University of Gloucestershire's IRIS Seminar that evening. Ben's "excited by local currencies," he tells us - not as a replacement for the pound sterling, but as a complementary process. And he's big on visioning: "Where will we need to be in 20 years' time? How do we get from here to there - year by year?" "We don't know," he stressed, "if this Transition thing is going to work: it's an experiment; but we cannot sit around and wait for someone to do a pilot." And he cautions, "complex systems can never return to a prior state." Sustainable Bungay was an example of what could be achieved with faith-based communities heavily involved. Or, talking of adaptation, what about Cheltenham becoming a City of Sanctuary? (There's a challenge!)

My photograph was taken at the well-attended meeting of the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network yesterday, where Professor Daniella Tilbury spoke of the UoG's work in the sustainability field. What is it about our lives that has got us to where we are, was the question she posed. Not, "Who dropped that plastic wrapper?" but, "What sort of society makes it necessary to have such wrappers?" Strategies to change behaviours don't work: the consumer culture is here to stay. How do we influence without preaching? "The biggest problem we have in this institution [the UoG] is students."

"Never again..."

For today's meeting of the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network, we travelled to Wallsworth Hall as guests of Nature in Art. Simon Trapnell, its Director, joined us for part of our discussion.

What a vision! To take on that vast building (set in the middle of nowhere at the end of a long drive) and to establish within it a vibrant collection of works depicting things bright and beautiful, and in particular all creatures great and small!

So as to mark the second anniversary of the dire flooding in this part of Gloucestershire, we read together familiar words from the Book of Genesis about Noah, "a man of integrity among his contemporaries." God's covenant (made after the flood subsided) was: "Never again will I curse the earth because of man... Never again will I strike down every living thing as I have done. As long as earth lasts, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall cease no more."

In these days many prophesy the end of humanity as a consequence of human greed. In his latest encyclical, Pope Benedict says that if people destroy their environment, they will also destroy their own life source. No complacency in virtue of Genesis 8!

Tranquility House

Members of the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network met today at Rodborough, for a visit to a remarkably energy-efficient building. We were shown round by its owner, Mike Hillard. On his website, he describes himself as a pioneering environmental architect and designer, his enthusiasm and commitment being born out of his conviction that We are facing total environmental catastrophe.

Tranquility House is certainly not low tech: never, in a private home, have I seen so many gismos, nor so many computer screens flashing away: hibernate doesn't seem to be a relevant term to Mike (let alone shut down) - nor indeed does the concept of virtual tourism, judging from the number of Lonely Planet guides in his bookshelves, his beautiful photographs of tribesmen laid out on his second floor work table, curtain materials carried back from Uzbekistan and the Amazon, not to mention the odd spear leaning casually up against a doorway. Mike speaks with passion about the generosity of primitive people in Africa.

Apart from its enormous two-storey conservatory/solar room, the house looks conventional enough from the outside. No sign of a domestic wind turbine here nor photovoltaic cells - both decried, along with combined heat and power, compact fluorescent light bulbs, multi-foil insulation, ground source heat pumps (assuming you are using a gas boiler), biomass, biodiesel. It was a somewhat controversial meeting, you can imagine!

What impresses are the costs he quotes for water and energy consumption: space heating, £30 p.a.; water heating, £8.25. The walls - two feet thick or so - have a U-Value of 0.12. My photograph shows the black-painted copper tubes in the solar room, collecting heat for water on its way up to the cylinder. This room, filled with huge ferns, orchids and banana trees, provides 19 degrees C in Winter daylight: its internal walls are the thermal mass soaking up the almost horizontal sunlight, the room's warmth being ventilated into the main house.

The house is not just about low energy use: each room features unique curtain rods, hollow tubes filled with macaroni, sunflower seeds or something similar. PVC lines the walls of one of the bathrooms, and the floors and staircase are all made from different timbers, the most spectacular being horse chestnut.

A fascinating visit even for someone as scientifically illiterate as I am, so thanks to the hecticly busy Mike Hillard for sparing us time: after our animated dialogue he ran around to ensure that we saw all aspects of the building, talking ten to the dozen as he went. The name "Tranquility House" is obviously aspirational.

"Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip"

This is the title of an 11-minute animated video made last Autumn by Leo Murray of the RCA. Here is a link to his site. I recommend it.

Yesterday, at the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network meeting we heard about Transition Towns from the green economist Molly Scott Cato. She lives in nearby Stroud, which has followed Totnes down the Transition path. As Molly says, "We are in a situation of total unpredictability." Her message: we face the challenge of how to move to a steady-state economy. We have to respond positively, or succumb to fear and depression, our two great enemies. A Transition Town aims at becoming a more stable, resiliant society, whose members enjoy closer, more convivial relationships within their community. We can start by smiling at people we pass in the street.

Clean coal?

I took this photograph standing at the window of a Chinese train: we were visiting Agnes during her gap year. I don't know if the smoke is belching from a power station or - more probably perhaps - from a factory. But it was a common sight then, six years ago.

What reminded me of it was a talk I heard this lunchtime by Dr. Andrew Minchener of the IEA's Clean Coal Centre. Most of Andrew's work is in mainland Europe and China, but he lives near Gloucester, and the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network was astute in nabbing him to speak.

We heard some horrifying energy use forecasts: that worldwide coal requirements would increase by 50% before 2030; and that energy-related CO2 emissions could increase by 60%. But we also heard positive news about the development of carbon capture technology, albeit at a steep price: the scrubbing is expensive because new plant is required; because any viable CO2 storage space may be a long way away - horizontally and vertically, and because the energy loss in turning coal into electricity having captured the carbon is considerable - meaning that we need to transport and then burn more coal to produce the same amount of energy. And our existing power stations are mainly old and unsuitable for retrofitting.

But with 50% of our present energy use coal-based, we cannot leave it out of the equation. So, we need government investment and regulatory pressure, at both national and European level, to clean up the technology, and quickly. Andrew said the most advanced countries at the moment in the necessary technology were America and China! A sobering talk.