MOT: the way of the future?
An Englishman’s home may be his castle, but it should still be subject to a yearly MOT, says the government’s chief scientific adviser John Beddington. People may think they’re being “greener than thou” by recycling and flying less, but good old-fashioned loft insulation will make the biggest difference in the fight against climate change, he says. If we really want to save the planet, we must make the buildings we live and work in more energy efficient; and there should be penalties for those who don’t.
Meanwhile, transport minister Andrew Adonis comes out in rare agreement with the Conservatives; arguing that we urgently need to upgrade our rail network. Not only are the environmental benefits obvious (rail passengers account for barely half as much carbon per mile as motorists, and a quarter as much as air passengers) but there will be social payoffs too—better trains will help to overcome the north-south divide and connect up our regions. “Britons still love their trains,” Adonis writes. “But we can do better.”
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I don’t know about men who live in castles, but one loftless female is sick to death of being invited to insulate this interesting space.
What penalties would Mr Beddington suggest for those of us who live in flats with, variously, flat roofs or solid walls, and are unable to become more energy efficient without moving?
A new report from the London Assembly Environment Committee discusses the problems London is facing in getting its homes insulated.
It suggests solutions to some of the issues put forward by John Beddington, such as the lack of effective incentives and support, but also the inadequacy of current schemes in helping people when cavity and loft insulation is not suitable for their home.
http://www.london.gov.uk/assembly/reports/environment/lagging-behind.pdf
Your summary of the Adonis article is eyecatching – that’s your business – but I’m not sure that it’s fair: it was not announcing any government investment in HST, merely offering a pious aspiration of the kind that Blair became expert in in the environmental field. We have no reason to suppose that HSTs in Britain aren’t as far off in the indefinite future as they were before.
The main part of Adonis’s piece was (that’s his business) celebrating government achievements in the rail sector, and of course it conveniently ignored the price issues – for example, that franchising was introduced as an improvised and transitional arrangement pending an open market, but that when the open market was dropped no attempt was made to extend regulation, so that the most fares most convenient to passengers remain unregulated; or the consequential fact that the line from Bristol to London is per kilometre the most expensive in Europe, with First Great Western taking full advantage of congestion on the M4; or the lack of effective public debate on the balance between taxpayer funding and user funding for road and for rail, and how this stacks up with the government’s environmental policies; or the growing tendency of the rail companies to make the travelling environment more user-hostile, by squeezing the seats so close together that you cannot see a laptop screen, or by introducing compulsory (but revenue-earning) television (the days when Clement Freud successfully agitated for better standards in restaurant cars are long gone). It is such knottier questions which need discussion.
Andrew Adonis, the government at large (and the Tories) seem to have abandoned the search for a transport policy which makes sense.
Passenger and goods traffic and fares have risen on Britain’s railways because road congestion has been allowed to become so costly. That may be largely a sensible balance: but we cannot know until road pricing is introduced to allow people to compare the costs and benfits of different ways of getting there (or of staying at home). Our government has shied away from its previous policy of introducing road pricing.
So Andrew Adonis is now flirting with High Speed Trains as a policy. There are two – linked – things wrong with High Speed Trains. First, they take remarkably little traffic. On the Continent, the contrast beyween the fully used motorways and the rarity of actually seeing a train on the parallel High Speed track is painful; as are the real losses on the investments in those largely vacant tracks. Second, at these train frequencies, the seats available have to be rationed by price. The price is relatively high. So the losses on the investment mean a whacking subsidy to the benefit of the better off able and willing to pay the high fares.
One day, the problem of getting a reasonable density of traffic on these lines will be solved – possibly by automatic train control. That day may not be far off. We have solved it for airport runways and reduced the time between plane movements on a runway to 90 (or 60?) seconds. When we can manage that gap between trains, High Speed Trains will be a paying proposition as well as a benefit to the environment.
Beddington talks a great deal of sense about the problem with our leaky buildings, but repeats the same garbled, specious nonsense as the aviation industry about priorities:
“But air travel contributes a few per cent to global emissions. Meanwhile activities in British homes and offices make up more than half.”
Make up more than half of what? British homes make up more than half of global emissions? No: Beddington is acknowledging that the relevant scale in policy terms is National.
Air travel in fact contributes around 13% of UK greenhouse gas emissions presently, a DfT figure which is set to rise steeply under the current expansion policy – hitting 100% some time in the 2030s, as emissions from other sectors fall. For individuals who fly more than once per year, aviation is already almost certain to account for the majority of their personal carbon footprint. As the government’s chief scientific adviser, Beddington should know better than to obfuscate things with this tosh. Nobody is saying that we don’t need to insulate our homes – it’s absolutely vital, and should be prioritised as one of the few win-win moves within reach. But this government doesn’t have a policy of ripping out loft insulation and double-glazing – if it did, people would no doubt be protesting about it. An aviation policy which actively seeks to treble passenger numbers at UK airports, when we already have higher per capita emissions from flying than anyone else in the world, is the reason why campaigners and the media focus on this issue. It’s a stupid policy. Beddington should be advising his government to change it, as well as talking about housing and buildings.
If you get your roof replaced, 2006 building regs require that it is insulated to a certain u-value – but most bob-a-job builders and roofers are totally unaware of the changes in Building Regs, and your typical homeowner completely unaware too – or even of the fact that it is they who are responsible for getting building control round to approve the works their roofer has just done. And for that matter, would a building control officer even make a proper assessment of the insulation level, or would the roofer be correct in saying it is pointless insulating the roof if the eves are open (as they are in many Victorian houses).
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