UpBEAT

From the editor

A rather late happy New Year to everyone. This issue has been delayed as we have been trying to create the newsletter as on online version rather than in the present pdf format. However, we have not succeeded yet. 201 4 could be an interesting year for community energy projects in Calderdale. On 27 January Calderdale Councils Cabinet agreed how the council can support community owned renewable energy projects across the borough. 201 4 will also see book reviews appearing in UpBEAT. We encourage our readers to send us reviews of books about any issue related to sustainability, such as the environment or the social or economic aspects of creating a more sustainable UK/world. Finally, there will be fewer public BEAT meetings in 201 4, although we will still hold at least one every quarter. At our January meeting at the New Delight it was suggested that in 201 4 we should organise bird, fungi and wild flower walks and talks; a visit to Gibson Mill to see their renewable energy technologies; a talk about the weather in our area; how to insulate the type of houses we have around here and a workshop on pruning fruit trees and how to deal with tree diseases. You may also be interested in the wildlife walks and talks for 201 4 listed at www.calderdalewildlife.blogspot.co.uk. The website has a lot of resources about our local wildlife.

Jan - Mar 201 4

Issue 29

Newsletter for Blackshaw Environmental Action Team (BEAT) www.blackshaw.net/b-e-a-t and www.blackshawbeat.info

If you know anyone suitable who might be willing to give a talk or lead a walk on any of these topics, please contact finn.jensen@rocketmail.com.

Contents

From the editor Great Rock Co-op Village clean-up Energy Social Green News Solar panels? More green energy... Book review Slow progress in Warsaw
on Saturday 26th April. We meet at 1 0.30am at the Chapel. The next BEAT public meeting is currently being organised. Steve Welsh - manager of Incredible Aqua Garden at Todmorden High School - will be speaking.

We will have a walk on Saturday 4th October in the Hebden Bridge area to see fungi - lead by Alison Galbraith. The walk will start at 1 0.30 and finish1 4.30-1 5.30 ish. We will not be walking fast as there will be lots of species to stop and look at along the way. Foraying is usually quite a slow affair. So it would be suitable for all ages. Great Rock Co-op is one year old and will celebrate it in the shop on Saturday 5th April 1 0am - 2pm. Fizz and cake for everyone. Our six-monthly village clean-up is

Great Rock Coop Dec 201 3 - see next page

Great Rock Co-op

Great Rock Co-op had a fantastic response to their December Saturdays, from producers, customers and volunteers. Downstairs was busy all the time and several food items sold out each week. Locally-reared turkeys brought people from far and wide and once they were over the door, they couldnt resist all the other great things on offer.

Some of the many stalls in December at Great Rock Co-op the warm, friendly atmosphere. GRC couldnt do what it does without its wonderful band of keen volunteers. They turned out en masse each week, lending us and delivering the fete tables, setting up, helping behind the counter, running the Christmas Caf and workshops and mucking in wherever they could. This is another precious part of what GRC does bringing people together from across the community to do something valuable for the community. Visitors constantly commented on the great quality of the produce, what a great enterprise it is and how much they love the local-ness of it all. GRC would love to hear what you enjoyed and any ideas you may have about how to make it bigger and better next year. And if you fancy getting involved in any way, whether you are a baker, maker, mover or shaker, get in touch at info@greatrockcoop.co.uk or via the Great Rock Co-op Facebook page. Once again, a huge thank you to everyone. Keep on Keeping It Local in 201 4!

A couple of happy customers at the Great Rock Cafe Tasting sessions were really popular, with people placing orders to collect later as well as buying on the day. Customers love contact with makers, and makers value the direct feedback from them whilst networking with other local producers. All of this reinforces the links between the two and strengthens the overall market for local produce, one of GRCs primary aims. Upstairs was buzzing with a fantastic range of arts and crafts items, plus wreath-making, kids' activities and willow weaving, not to mention mulled wine, adding to

Activities for the children

Birthday celebrations
Great Rock Co-op is one year old. You are welcome in the shop on Saturday 5th April 1 0am - 2pm to celebrate and have some fizz and cake. The Great Rock Co-op is based at Staups Lea Farm, Nr Blackshaw Head, OL1 4 8RR. You can find more information about the shop at www.greatrockcoop.co.uk and you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter. If you want to contact the shop email info@greatrockcoop.co.uk.

Village clean-up on Saturday 26th April

Time for our six-monthly village clean-up! Like any other town or village today Blackshaw Head attracts all kinds of litter. The debris of daily life finds its way to our hedgerows and verges, some of it from residents and some from drivers passing through. Over time the accumulation can make the place look shabby and also pose a threat to our local wildlife. For an hour or two on a Saturday morning, residents of Blackshaw come out in force armed with gloves, litter pickers, bin bags and high visibility vests to gather what they can for proper disposal. It's a real family affair with locals of all ages mucking in together and the array of items found seems to get more and more bizarre each time everything from cans and plastic bottles to car tyres have been found. The event starts at the Chapel at 1 0.30am where you will get the equipment and ends there with free refreshments for everyone. Children are welcome if supervised by an adult.

Community Energy Social on 1 7th April

Carbon Coop and Kindling Trust are inviting people interested in community energy schemes to a social in Hebden Bridge. 6-9pm, Thursday 1 7th April 201 4 Fox and Goose (co-operatively owned and run pub), Hebden Bridge http://www.foxandgoose.org/ You cannot buy food at Fox & Goose but you are welcome to bring your own food and eat it in the pub. The invitation says: "After four years of Fuelling Manchester we're branching out, collaborating with friends in Calderdale to run a Fuelling North social for community energy organisations in Greater Manchester, Leeds, Calderdale and beyond!

Great Rock Co-op is run by and for the community, selling locally produced food, arts and crafts. The shop is open every Saturday from 1 0am until 2pm. It sells fantastic local food made on your doorstep. Farm fresh meat, handmade breads, cheese, homemade pies and cakes, lots of jams and chutneys, even wines and beers from Calderdale. Plus beautiful ats and crafts made by local artists. On 5th April Great Rock Co-op will have its first AGM to celebrate their acheivements, tell about where they are up to and what comes next. Everyone is welcome!

As always, the evening is without structure or agenda, Many thanks to Phil Knowles for simply a chance to meet likeminded individuals working and organising this event. volunteering in the community energy sector - everything from solar, wind and hydro to energy efficient retrofit and smart grids. Whatever the technology, a community angle is required to attend."

Result of a previous clean-up

Green news

proportion of power in Scotland generated from renewable sources is significantly higher than in the rest of the UK. While 29.8% of electricity generated in Scotland was from renewables, in England the sector produced only 8.2% of electricity, while in Wales and Northern Ireland renewables accounted for 8.7%and1 5.9%respectively. Source: BBC News The UK now has over 1 9 GW (gigawatts) of renewable energy installed capacity. Our most recently built nuclear station Sizewell B generates 1 .91 GW, about a tenth as much.

While 1 0.8 GW of that is wind power (up from 6.5 GW in 2011 ) over 2.5 GW is solar, up from just under 1 GW in 2011 . Lurking in there, and not easy to tease out, is a growing amount of energy generation owned and managed by local communities. The best estimate is that community energy schemes have a total capacity of about 60 megawatts. Thats only about 0.3% of renewables capacity: compare with Germany, where that figure is 46%. There are currently over 1 30 registered community renewable energy schemes across the UK - some already up and running, others in the process of being established.

UK government figures showed that 40.3% of energy consumption in 201 2 was met by the renewable energy sector up from 36.3% the previous year and 24.1 % in 201 0. The Scottish government said it was on course for half of electricity used to come from renewable sources by 201 5, an interim target ahead of the goal of having the sector generate 1 00% of the country's electricity by 2020. The

Solar panels?

this is exported at the 4.64p/kWh guaranteed export rate. The current FIT is 1 4.9p/kWh. Therefore FIT and export revenues are (3,800 x 0.1 49) + (1 ,900 x 0.0464) = 654.36 tax free worth 81 8 when grossed up. The 1 ,900 kWh that is used in the household substitutes 1 ,900 x 20p = a 380 per year saving. When grossed up, the taxpayer would have had to have earned 475 to have paid for the 1 ,900 kWh, had it not been saved. Therefore the FIT, export and substitute benefit to a 20% taxpayer is 654 + 475 = 1 ,1 29 in Year 1 , RPI linked and guaranteed for 20 years. This is a Year 1 ROI on the 5,500 invested of 22.6%. If RPI averages 3% pa for the next 20 years, as it has done for the past 25 years, the 20 year benefit will total 30,336.

More green energy...

Last year Spain generated 21 .1 % of its electricity from wind turbines. Hydro power produced 1 6%. Including solar panels, a total of 49.1 % of the energy produced came from renewables. Wind energy produced more than any other source, including coal, oil, gas and nuclear. In other words, it was possible for Spain to supply a large proportion of its energy needs from renewable sources without experiencing blackouts. Power demand was reduced by 2.1 % in Spain last year. Overall CO2 emissions were reduced by 23.1 % in 201 3 compared to 201 2. Portugal was also doing well, with over 70% of all electricity generated from renewable sources in the first quarter of 201 3. Turkey commits to a third of its electricity coming from renewables, while the Scandinavian countries have set targets of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

The Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) consists of payments for all electricity generated. FIT payments are income tax free and electricity substituted would have been paid for out of taxed income. For a basic rate taxpayer (20%), the 1 6% return is actually 1 6 divided by 0.8 = 20%. Daytime domestic retail grid tariffs are typically 20p/kWh (kilowatt hour). A basic rate taxpayer needs to earn 25p to pay for one kWh of grid supplied electricity. Lets assume that the 4 kWh (kilowatt peak) array generates 3,800 kWh per year and half of

Book review
Jeremy Rifkin: The Third Industrial Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 , 291 pages.

neighbourhoods and communities, as well as hundreds of thousands of businesses, will be able to produce their own green electricity locally and share it on a national energy Internet, just as they now create and share information online. The second industrial revolution has been totally based on cheap fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), which are coming to an end. This process is described in another of Rifkins books, The Hydrogen Economy (2003), which is also well worth a read. The third industrial revolution (TIR) is based on five pillars, all interlinked and all necessary. These consist of (1 ) shifting to renewable energy, (2) transforming the building stock of every continent into micro-power plants to collect renewable energies on site, (3) deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies, (4) using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy-sharing intergrid, and (5) transitioning the transport fleet to electric plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell electricity. Rifkin is not so nave as to think that the TIR will happen just because politicians and large corporations sign up to it. As he says (p. 71 ): There is no inevitability to the human sojourn. History is riddled with examples of great societies that collapsed, promising social experiments that withered, and visions of the future that never saw the light of day there is no guarantee that the European Union will stay the course. As an American, Rifkin is aware of

the power of the fossil fuel industry, in the mass media and in the US Congress. However, he does not advise on how to win this titanic battle. He seems confident that renewable energy will soon become cheaper than fossil fuel and that we humans will not allow our own extinction by out of control climate change. Renewable energy is already on track to becoming competitive with fossil fuels within a decade or two (see the example of solar panels elsewhere in this newsletter). Solar panels in sunny countries like Italy and India are already on parity with coal when it comes to costs per kWh produced. However, avoiding runaway climate change is far from a certain outcome. Rifkin does not have much to say about the role of social movements and civic society in this transition to a new industrial revolution. He does not question whether capitalism, which stands for permanent consumer growth and increased use of all resources, is compatible with getting climate change under control. He may feel that it is necessary to downplay the role of capitalism in order to gain influence with governments and corporations across the world. He is, after all, the chairman of Third Industrial Revolution Global CEO Business Roundtable, which includes many of the worlds leading Fortune 500 companies. Rifkin writes in a nice, easy prose, not typical academic writing. He does get a bit carried away at times on how the TIR will create a completely new and more humane culture. However, his book is well worth reading and can teach us a lot.

Jeremy Rifkin is a man with a big vision of how to save the world from climate change, peak oil, hunger, consumerism and a few other things. However, unlike many other visionaries he is also a man with a lot of influence around the world. The president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and a senior lecturer at the Wharton Schools Executive Education Program at University of Pennsylvania, Rifkin is the author of 1 9 books that have been translated into more than 35 languages. He and his team are advising governments, capital cities such as Rome and large businesses on how to make the transition from our current second industrial revolution to the third industrial revolution. Among them is the European Union. Another is San Antonio the seventh largest city in the USA. Kazakhstan is working on it. China is getting on board too with millions of people in

Slow progress in Warsaw

The 1 95 governments who are part of the UN climate convention made some progress in Warsaw in November 201 3. It was agreed that by early 201 5 each country should make a voluntary commitment as to how much they would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This would then form part of an international agreement in Paris towards the end of 201 5. However, the Paris agreement if there is one will not come into force until 2020. So far, the national targets set by the governments do not add up to the level needed to avoid catastrophic climate change, defined as over an increase of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The Warsaw agreement does not deal with what will happen if the voluntary targets set in 201 5 still do not add up to being enough. The world would experience an increase in global average temperature of at least 1 .7 degrees Celsius, even if all emissions of greenhouse gases stopped today. This is because there is a time lag while the gases work their way through the climate system. The Arctic and Antarctic areas around the poles warm two to three times as fast as other parts of the world, so the temperature increases are not evenly distributed around the world.

fuels (coal, oil and gas). This process is called positive feedback, and it is already happening. We are seeing ice that once covered large areas of land (permafrost) now melting, exposing large amounts of biomass to the air. This is resulting in the release of methane (a greenhouse gas). In other places we see trees and other plants dying due to droughts, releasing more methane. At the moment we do not know

oceans get warmer, the water expands. The UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that sea levels could rise by one metre this century. This would lead to increased flooding, with tens of millions of people having to move away from the areas where they currently live. Rising levels of greenhouse gases also lead to the oceans becoming more acidic. This makes it more difficult for a lot of marine life to survive. We are already seeing corals die the so-called bleaching. Around a billion people rely on proteins from fish in the oceans. Most animals and plants are affected by rising temperatures. Many move to cooler climates when it gets too warm for them. However, most species cannot change habitat fast enough to keep pace with climate change, or do not have new habitats to move to, and therefore face extinction. Climate change results in more extreme weather events, which will affect food production around the world. Developing countries are hardest hit although many of them are the least responsible for climate change. Food shortages, flooding and large numbers of climate refugees can easily lead to conflicts.

how much these positive feedbacks will increase global temperatures, or when, but if we do not act quickly enough there is a risk that we could end up with runaway climate change which we would be unable to stop. Of course, it is not only the use of fossil fuels that is warming the planet. Deforestation, change of land use and increased meat consumption around the world also contribute. A growing world population and increased consumption of all types of goods contributes to increases in the use of fossil fuels and other resources.

The book review in this newsletter describes how one author believes we can avoid the worst effects of climate change if we take action The warming of the planet will now and several governments result in nature releasing large and organisations agree with him, Increased temperatures result in quantities of greenhouse gases, including the European Union. rising sea levels. More melted ice even if we no longer use fossil . runs into the oceans, then, as the Contact BEAT; Ashley Sharp (secretary) tel: 07855 746295 email: secretary@blackshawbeat.info Finn Jensen (treasurer) tel: 01 422 846863 email: finn.jensen@rocketmail.com