When I was doing my PhD I met Brenda Boardman who was doing her PhD investigating the then little known or understood problem of fuel poverty. Brenda and I were both funded by the joint committee of what was then the Science and Engineering Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council (I think those were the proper names) – anyway – it was radical stuff for the early 1980s having inter-disciplinary people combining technical subjects with economic and social subjects.

Since then, in a large part down to Brenda and her excellent work, fuel poverty has become an industry and I mean that in a positive way. Of course it should have been an industry that worked itself out of a job by solving the problem. In 2000 the government set a legal target of eliminating fuel poverty among vulnerable consumers by 2010 and all households in England by 2016 (2018 for Wales).

So how are we doing? The numbers in fuel poverty are going up – an estimated 6 million people now spend more than 10% of their income on energy and some estimate it could be 9 million within 3 years. That is shocking. It is a crisis with huge costs to individual health as well as to the health service.

Even more shocking – ‘On average, at least 7,800 people die every year from living in cold homes – more than four times the number of people who die on British roads.’

The solution is clear. Use the money from the carbon tax it collects to super insulate homes in fuel poverty. The Energy Bill Revolution has got it right. Sign the petition and tell the government to ‘just do it’.

http://www.energybillrevolution.org/whats-the-campaign/

The ‘Aspen Daily News’ reported yesterday that the city’s energy efficiency programme is ‘working too well’. To be fair the comment was journalistic and the Mayor of Aspen actually said the issue is ‘a good problem to have’. Aspen’s electricity demand has been declining by 1.3 per cent annually since 2008 even while the number of electricity accounts has gone up by about 2 per cent a year. Two years ago the city had estimated that electricity consumption would fall by 1 per cent a year. Although the article doesn’t give data on the state of the Aspen economy over the period a quick internet search suggests that the upmarket ski resort is doing well – employment has risen 7.38 per cent in the last year (compared to a US average of 0.35 percent) and tourism continues to thrive with a 10 per cent increase in lodging occupancy in the year from July 2011.

The impact on electricity demand seems to have been achieved by a combination of a tariff structure in which large users pay higher rates – sometimes as much as four times more than the base rates – and energy efficiency programmes including weather proofing, energy audits and the installation of upgraded equipment. The effect on the city’s utility was that electricity revenues were 5 per cent ($370,000) down on budget – a ‘significant shortfall’ – and as a result rates will have to be increased.

The interesting thing about this story is that Aspen’s experience shows that it is possible to decouple electricity usage and growth in the economy – something that is still considered impossible by many energy analysts. Other cities (and countries) should look closely at the Aspen example.

As soon as there is discussion of energy efficiency and the potential for improving energy efficiency, someone counters with the argument that reducing energy use per unit of output only leads to more energy use as people and firms spend some (or all) of the money saved by greater efficiency on more consumption, resulting in more energy use. This is the Jevons Paradox – first put forward by William Stanley Jevons in 1865 in his book, ‘The Coal Question’. Jevons pointed out that coal consumption in England soared after James Watt introduced his steam engine which greatly improved on the energy efficiency of existing steam engines which used Thomas Newcomen’s technology.

Numerous referred papers, articles, blog posts and even whole books have been dedicated to the Jevons paradox and some people have used it without really understanding it to rubbish energy efficiency. I don’t want to start any more debates but I would say that that we don’t say the same things about the use of other resources e.g. metals – you do not hear the argument that we shouldn’t improve productivity of metal use as it will only result in more metals use. It may be equally true in metals as it is in energy but the argument isn’t made nearly so often.

Fundamentally improving the productivity of resource use, whether it be metals or energy or land, is one of the basic drivers of increasing wealth. Another driver is our ability to create resources out of ‘thin air’ by creative thinking, for example, turning something that has no value or is currently thought of as waste into a productive resource.

There is an interesting area for research, as yet under-researched, on the importance of improving energy efficiency in driving economic growth. Some recent research from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy suggest that it may be more important than we generally think. For some more information see the work of Skip Laitner and the ACEEE here and here.

I saw a video of a great TED talk today by Justin Hall-Topping, ‘Freeing energy from the grid’.

The video, along with my current re-reading for the nth plus 1 time of one of Arthur C. Clarke’s great science fiction novels, ‘Imperial Earth’, reminded me of the expression ‘the future isn’t what it used to be’ – usually attributed to the famous baseball player and manager Yogi Berra. If we look back only twenty years, and certainly when we look back forty years ago, the future and specifically the energy future looked very different to what it looks like now. Official energy forecasts in the UK in the 1980s foretold of a future based on ‘CoNucCo’ – coal, nuclear and conservation, and increasing energy demand. As it turned out energy demand in 2011 was pretty similar to energy demand in 1970, despite very significant growth in real GDP. Coal use has declined but still makes up a significant proportion of power generation and of course the use of gas grew dramatically. It seems as if we serious under-estimated the effects of improved energy efficiency.

Anyway, back to the theme of the future. I am a technological optimist and the presentation by Justin Hall-Topping focused on the fascinating area of nanomaterials for energy. Examples given included materials that are only a few molecules thick but could convert windows into active components that can allow energy into a building or let it out at will (an old idea which is also being worked on using some other technologies), super efficient water filtration systems, and super-efficient storage systems. Friends of mine at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign have developed and are commercializing self-healing materials – itself an amazing technology. Now they have applied them to batteries and have technology that can extend battery life and prevent battery fires (note to Boeing – you should check this out for the 787 problem).

It doesn’t matter whether the specific technologies described in any examples are really viable, that is the nature of new technology development, some will be winners and a lot will be losers (along with their early investors). The point is that world-wide there is an incredible number of new and amazing technologies, many of which will change the world’s energy system and greatly improve energy efficiency, either at the level of individual devices or by completely changing the way we do things. These are the ‘unknown unknowns’ I referred to in an earlier post that will change the future. It is likely that the energy future in twenty years time will look very different to what it looks like now as some of these technologies – particularly in smart and nano-materials – will have emerged and started to be widely applied. I suspect the future vision then won’t include such basic and archaic technologies as combustion based systems of all kinds, nuclear fission, wind turbines and photovoltaics as we know them today. I look forward to seeing that exciting future.

I recently attended a meeting of the Chop Sticks Club – a group that has been promoting Anglo-Chinese relations for the last twenty years. Although of course the projected future where the Chinese economy continues to grow dramatically may not be totally assured it’s phenomenal growth over the last twenty years, along with similar rapid transformations in many other countries, coupled with a lack of growth in Western economies, certainly means global growth will be driven by the developing countries.

Here in the West there is only one clear path to growth and job creation – exploiting the huge potential for resource efficiency – especially energy – that we know exists. In buildings alone the UK spent in 2011 £42 billion. We know that we can achieve savings of c.10% by better management (much more in many cases), c.20% by low cost investment in better controls and monitoring technologies, and far more by extensive investment in holistic retrofits. A 20% saving would produce £8 billion saving for consumers. Studies from the USA suggest $1m spent on energy efficiency produces something like 20 jobs. If we assume 20 jobs per £1 million and capex to produce the £8 billion of £40 billion, that would produce 800,000 jobs and free up a lot of cash flow for consumers.