Community Energy Literature Review

The previous post referred to the view that fundamental law “already includes our obligations towards the future interests of people living now or of people who will live in the future.” (Behrendt, 2024). Legal obligations towards future generations were seen as grounded in the human rights expressed in texts such as the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Olsson (2023) examined the relation between Climate Change and Human Rights in the context of the European Convention on Human Rights, giving prominence to Article 2 which establishes the right to life and Article 8 which states that everyone has the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence and referring to Article 34, which addresses the nature of victimhood in climate change. She cited three cases which were pending at the time of writing but have now been decided: KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland, Carême v. France, and Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal...

The Summit of the Future is a United Nations event planned for New York in September. “ At the Summit , countries are expected to adopt a Pact for the Future that covers five areas: sustainable development and related financing; international peace and security; science, technology, innovation and digital cooperation; youth and future generations; and transforming global governance” (UN news, 2023). According to Pham (2024) the summit is “intended to revive a multilateral system built for a different era”. She claims that “no other platform for reforming global governance can compete with a summit that convenes all countries, great and small.” Pham described the initial draft of the Pact for the Future as “a timid text” characterised by reaffirmations rather than decisions and stressed the need for it to “look ahead to the governance of new and emerging global challenges”. However, she regards a proposed Declaration on Future Generations as an inspired idea. The Declaration “would...

On September 20 th , 2023, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak announced changes to the UK’s policies described as a ‘watering-down’ in a Guardian article ( Horton, 2023). The date of the proposed ban on the sale of new combustion engine cars was changed from 2030 to 2035; the plan for a complete phase-out of gas boiler installations by 2035 was changed to a reduction by 80%; plans to fine landlords who failed to upgrade their properties to a certain level of energy efficiency were dropped; and the prime minister confirmed that his party would not take forward policies “such as taxing airlines properly and informing the public of the carbon footprint of meat”. On April 18 th , 2024, Scotland’s Net Zero Secretary Mairi McAllen stated that Scotland’s 2030 climate change target could not be met, though its 2045 target remained. Fankhauser (2024) pointed out that the 2030 target of a 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 had been set in law in the Emissions Reduction Targe...

In May and June 2019 four short articles on this blog discussed heat loss from buildings through air changes, air quality in buildings, and methods of measuring rates of air change.  “ A Change of Air” noted that an appreciable proportion of the total energy supplied to a building may be lost through excessive air change rates and outlined methods of measuring the rates through pressure testing, energy balance calculation, and CO2 decay. “Indoor air quality” described the main groups of pollutants which affect indoor air quality, and “CO2 in the Home” discussed indoor CO2 levels, how they might affect the health of occupants, and their measurement.  CO2 decay methods and their limitations were discussed in more detail in “Measuring Air Change Rates by CO2 Decay”. More recent work will be outlined below, referencing papers published from 2021 to 2024. Nazaroff (2021) presented a review of field studies that measured residential air-change rates. These were mainly in north Am...

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...

“Fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks has reached USD $5.5 trillion in the seven years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement”, according to the report Banking on Climate Chaos (2022). It was published by a group of environmental and campaigning organisations, and its topics include the commitments of banks to fossil fuel finance, their policies, and fossil fuel expansion and trends. The group’s website lists the twelve banks which have done most to finance fossil fuels globally and data are provided for sixty banks with the sums involved for each year from 2016 to 2022. The policies of the banks are summarised in terms of projects, expansion, and phase-out. The funding data can also be searched for each of the several hundred companies supported. A graphic shows the funding flows from ten key banks to twenty top fossil fuel companies. Data on financing are also given for sectors such as tar sands, Artic oil and gas, fracking, and coal mining. An Oil and Gas Poli...