Go back to previous list...

Blog: Global Apollo Programme to combat climate change

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
Thomas Edison (1931)

On Friday 4th September, I had the great honour of presenting at our now normal Friday evening slot in the Orkney International Science Festival in Kirkwall. I was presenting, along with Kris Hyde of ITM Power, on a project which will begin to utilise hydrogen as a means to circumvent the grid restrictions we face in these energy rich islands.

The audience of around 160 heard how we are planning to use tidal and wind energy to produce hydrogen on the island of Eday and use it to help us develop marine renewables. By doing this we can harness Orkney’s energy resources to break out of the carbon maze we all seem to find ourselves in. The evening marked the start of a series of events planned in Orkney to explain how we see hydrogen production as way to begin to leave the carbon age behind.

Of course electrolysis is not new, having been discovered in 1800, nor is the compression and storage of hydrogen, nor transport by ship, nor turning it back to electricity in a fuel cell (invented in 1839). Even the fact that we are using tidal energy to provide the energy in the first place is not really a surprise to people here in Orkney as they have seen the work done on tidal energy over the years and ‘get it’. What seemed to be a surprise was the fact that once you have hydrogen you have the tool to hand to really tackle climate change.

As Kris pointed out: taking hydrogen and reacting it with CO2 or nitrogen allows you to create hydrocarbons, or fertilisers, basically out of thin air. It seems like alchemy, but the chemistry is well known and there are no impossible leaps in the process.

Walking down the street in Kirkwall on my way to another Festival lecture the next morning something happened I have never seen before. I was stopped by several people who thanked me for the lecture and I was touched by the passion expressed about how great it was to hear about something uplifting and orientated for the future. People said they went home thinking of ideas and could see there was another way to use our abundant energy.

Interestingly the lecture I was walking to was on the exploration of Mars and Venus by Geoffrey Landis of NASA. He showed the remarkable engineering undertaken by NASA and others to understand adjacent planets. When asked about the work done in this exploration he pointed out that the technical challenges were addressable; the reason we are not doing more of this are political and financial. So they are more matters of vision and of will than of fundamental physics. In other words we have free-will to choose to succeed or otherwise.

A Global Apollo Programme to Combat Climate Change

A Global Apollo Programme to Combat Climate Change

So in the week that the Global Apollo Challenge was issued by Sir Nicholas Stern, Lord Adair Turner, Sir David King, Lord John Browne, Lord Richard Layard, Lord Gus O’Donnell and Lord Martin Rees calling on all governments to dedicate a meagre 0.02% of GDP to tackling climate change, it was encouraging how much resonance there was in the hall in Kirkwall. The atmosphere in the room and in the street the next day showed that people want to tackle climate change. They see the present threat if we sit idly by, but more importantly they see opportunity and hope. People are excited by seeing that things can be better and I detect there is a weariness with the negativity associated with constant bleating about the need to scrimp and save.

The authors of the Challenge – the informed centre of the UK establishment -point out on page 4 of the report that we are spending 5 times as much on incentivising damage to the atmosphere ($550 billion is spent on subsidies for fossil fuel energy) than we spend on fixing it ($101 billion is spent worldwide on production subsidies for renewables), and nearly 100 times more than on energy research ($6 billion spent on renewable R&D).Clearly this is madness!

However it seems to be very deeply engrained in the corporate consciousness that we need to keep supporting oil and gas. Really? If we are deep in a hole caused by carbon emissions I do struggle to see how digging the hole deeper is really going to help.

But it will take a major shift of mind to break out of the ‘groupthink’ that carbon technologies need more support, particularly if the means of getting out of the hole are also being systematically destroyed.

But how will this change of mind be accomplished? Naomi Klein points out in her book ‘This Changes Everything’ that we are fooling ourselves if we think public hearts and minds are going to be changed by Government. She points out that other major changes have come about as a result of changes in public opinion and cites the national rejection of slavery once people woke up to the issue. She suggests that the reduction in sexism and racism both occurred when the public, supported by legislation, chose to stop being so sexist or so racist.

Of course sometimes legislation does have a direct effect. Seatbelts keep people alive, making smoking socially less acceptable and slightly uncomfortable has had an effect on health. But if there had been implacable opposition to these changes they would not have gone through as there would have been civil disobedience. So it is about picking the moment for the change and working with the grain.

So from what I saw on Friday and experienced through the unsolicited and enthusiastic feedback in the street I believe the time has come to change the rhetoric. The old messaging of ‘let’s just screw the climate a bit more by burning a bit more carbon’ has really run its course. People want to see innovative, inspiring and effective attempts to tackle the climatic challenge. And they want it now.

When Kennedy announced the plan to go to the moon he specifically said ‘…..We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone……’

So I for one, and on the evidence of Friday at least a hundred more from these small islands alone, wish to choose to tackle climate change. I agree with the authors that the time has come for a global equivalent to the Apollo programme and I want to be part of it. I sincerely hope all the delegates at Paris Climate Change Conference 2015 take the bold steps we all need to make that the new normal.

This is the time for statesmanship. This is the time for vision. This is our time.

Neil Kermode
Managing Director

Neil Kermode, Managing Director, EMEC (Credit: Tom O'Brien)

-

EMEC CLIENTS

Alstom

Alstom

hammerfest

hammerfest

Aquamarine

Aquamarine Power

atlantis

Atlantis Resources Corporation

Nautricity

Nautricity

Naval Group

Naval Group

openhydro

Open Hydro

Home_Orbital-Marine-logo

Orbital Marine

pelamis

pleamis

scottish_power

ScottishPower Renewables

seatricity

Seatricity

Sustainable Marine Energy

Sustainable Marine Energy

voith

Voith Hydro

Wello

Wello Oy

Supported by: