Community Energy Literature Review

A Westminster Forum conference held in January was entitled “Priorities for UK climate policy following COP28”. Topics included financial markets, legal commitments, the Climate & Ecology Bill, a just transition, buildings and energy, and the Global Cooling Pledge. The introductory session addressed broader issues such as public attitudes to greenhouse gas reduction; arguments against climate action; climate and the social contract; and the role of citizens’ climate assemblies. Following the UK Parliament’s decision in 2019 to set in law a commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, a citizens’ assembly on climate change was set up to consider how this target should be reached. The issues which it addressed included how we travel; what we eat and buy; how we heat our homes and generate our electricity; how we use the land; and the trade-offs involved in reaching decisions on these issues. The Climate Assembly UK Report, The path to net zero , is the outcome of this as...

A recent BBC news item about global climate change included the claim by a UK academic that we have only to stop emitting carbon and the temperature will start to fall. The speaker perhaps intended to provoke thought rather than to be taken literally; this post will consider some answers to the question of what would happen to earth’s temperature if greenhouse gas emissions could indeed be suddenly and completely stopped. In 2007 NASA’s Earth Observatory Climate blog responded to the question: “Even if all emissions were to stop today, the Earth’s average surface temperature would climb another 0.6 degrees or so over the next several decades before temperatures stopped rising.” The single reason given was that “a great deal of the excess energy is stored in the ocean” and the thermal inertia associated with its huge heat capacity would result in a time lag of several decades before temperatures stopped rising. NASA pointed out that “If we wait until we feel the amount or impact of gl...