Global Problems, Global Solutions

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Hello! I'm Richard Priestley: writer, environmentalist, speaker, teacher and gardener. Contact me at rjp@richardpriestley.co.uk

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• 100% renewable energy and 100% organic agriculture as a Herefordshire, UK or Global policy
• Is the Tide of History turning our Way?
• A Sustainable Alternative to Slash & Burn
• UK needs a million more farmers!
• Evening Classes
• Deutsche Bahn: 100% renewable energy for German Trains
• Go Local Radical Green
• Car Sharing, in Hereford?
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• Anaerobic Digestion helps wet pasture biodiversity

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Richard will be speaking at the following places in the coming days and weeks

Shrewsbury. Saturday 19th May. ‘Go Radically Green: Be inspired to join the battle’. 6.30 pm at Coleham Primary School as part of Belle Vue Arts Festival http://www.bellevueartsfestival.co.uk/

Leominster. Tuesday 22nd May. ‘Transport for the future.’ Leominster Transition Town, 7.30 pm at the Community Centre.  http://www.leominstercommunitycentre.com/page10.html

Hellens, Much Marcle, Herefordshire. Saturday 9th June, 1.30 pm. ‘Resilient Gardening: Inspirational Food Production for a Sustainable Future.’ Part of ‘The Garden Festival’ http://www.thegardenfestival.co.uk/speakers.html

Much Birch, Herefordshire. Sunday 17th June in the Village Hall. ‘Is a better future possible? Emphatically Yes!’ Christian Aid. More details to follow soon.

My report ‘Localising Herefordshire’s Energy Economy, Eco² Herefordshire: A Vision of the County’s Future’ is now available in full. To read the full report click here.

I’ll paste-in the executive summary below. Of course many of the arguments and examples will be familiar to readers of this blog, but hopefully still well worth reading in full. I’d be grateful for any feedback via this website.

Executive Summary

Currently Herefordshire spends about half a billion pounds per year on energy. The vast majority comes from fossil fuels, which are projected to become increasingly expensive. Nearly all of this money leaves the county; most leaves the UK altogether.

By investing in radical energy reduction and renewable energy generation, Herefordshire could turn this £0.5bn annual outflow into a major financial inflow. At the same time it could surpass carbon reduction targets, increase energy security, reduce fuel poverty, improve health and wellbeing, and develop education, training, and employment opportunities.

Pioneering communities in Europe have already achieved very high levels of energy autonomy. For example, over the last 20 years, the small Austrian town of Güssing (pop. 3,800) has turned their €6m annual energy bill into a €15m annual income through the local ownership, generation and supply of renewable electricity, heating and transport fuels. The transformation was instigated by a pioneering mayor and driven forward by a supportive and highly engaged local council. Among other benefits, 1,100 new jobs have been created, helping to reverse the outflow of young people from the area.

Similar transformations have taken place in many places, notably in the Bavarian town of Wildpoldsried and in Frederikshavn in Denmark. In fact, as of March 2012, the goal of achieving 100% renewables for all sectors of the economy (electricity, heating and transport) is now official government policy in Denmark.

Partnership working is a key aspect of the proposed changes. Dialogue between political, business, environmental and community groups will improve further as we work to form a common set of goals and priorities. This report sketches out how such a future might be achieved in Herefordshire, as a contribution to current debates about visions for the county. Against a background of ever-increasing energy bills, the time is now right for a revolutionary shift in the county’s energy economy.

To read the full report click here.

(Organic Farming in India)

I often start my talks with a slide of Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, with a quote of his “this is a crucial century. The Earth has existed for 45 million centuries. But this is the first time when one species, ours, can determine — for good or ill — the future of the entire biosphere.” Of course there is plenty of evidence to suggest we are wrecking the biosphere and therefore our own future. There is, as readers of this blog will be aware, also a growing body of evidence to suggest a radically better alternative is possible and is in many places being made manifest.

Two key footsteps toward a better future are renewable energy and organic agriculture. Some small places such as Varese in Liguria, Italy, have long worked toward 100% renewables energy and 100% organic agriculture. The really exciting news this week is that 100% renewables, for heat, electricity and transport fuels is now official government policy in Denmark. The aim is to achieve this ambitious goal by 2050, with lots of key dates along the way, such as banning natural gas boilers in new build from next year.

The other really exciting thing I heard this week is the growth of organic farming in India. The Indian state of Sikkim hopes to be 100% organic by 2015 and Uttarakhand, Nagaland and Mizoram intend to follow. Some of the ways organic farming is being developed in India are really innovative. Ashmeet Kapoor and his team at Jagriti Agro Tech are using modern communications technology to help lots of small organic farmers link together and market directly to consumers, by-passing very inefficient, wasteful and exploitative supply chains and so getting cheaper, fresher organic produce to consumers while helping small farmers make a better living.

What about 100% renewable energy and 100% organic agriculture as a Herefordshire, UK or Global policy goal!

What an extraordinary time we are living through! Change certainly feels to be in the air. For the last 40 odd years I and millions of others have been arguing for a radically more ecologically sustainable future. Since those early days we have seen the emergence of countless groups around the world seeking greater environmental protection, social justice and peace. In 2007, Paul Hawken argued in Blessed Unrest that there were perhaps 2 million such groups, more recent estimates suggest the figure could be as high as 10 million, but the numbers are not the critical factor. It is our collective energy, creativity, actions and influence that will create the change we need. I find much in this movement that is inspirational and which gives me hope for the future. Perhaps we are approaching a historical tipping point. Most of us are active in lots of ways. A few examples:-

• Avaaz, the internet based global civic society organisation was founded in 2007, and now has nearly 14 million members. Its influence is growing in line with its membership. One wonders where it’ll be in five years time at this rate of growth. What would a global activist network feel like with a billion members?
• Meanwhile on the local scene things are developing in exciting ways. At the Hereford in Transition Alliance meeting on Friday I met John Oubridge from the newest local group, Archenfield Community Transition, which seems to be getting lots of local interest.
• Herefordshire New Leaf has been doing some work under the DECC/LEAF programme, for which I’ve just finished a report, which has kept me very busy these last few weeks, and which I hope to have up on this site in full within the next couple of weeks.

It feels to me like we are just beginning to get traction, that some at least of our politicians are starting to listen, and in some places and in some ways taking action. Will it be too little and too late to save humanity from being victims of the sixth great extinction, the only one to be caused by the actions of a single species? Only time will tell.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/
http://www.herefordshirenewleaf.org.uk/p/hit-alliance/page/about-hit-alliance
http://archenfieldtransition.wordpress.com/

(maize and Inga alley cropping)

When human populations were tiny and the forests seemingly limitless slash and burn may have been a sustainable form of agriculture, but that era is long since passed: now we need something better. Feeding 7 plus billion of us, lowering atmospheric Co2 and overcoming poverty requires humanity to find better ways to manage fragile tropical forest ecosystems.

One of the best practices has been pioneered by British tropical agronomist Mike Hands and the organisation he founded, The Inga Foundation. He has worked with communities in Central America who practiced slash and burn or swidden agriculture. They were forced to move-on every few years into new areas of forest, but as populations have grown the long periods of fallow are no longer possible and the forest cannot properly regenerate. This is particularly a problem with the poor acidic soils so common in rainforest areas.

The Inga is a family of trees with about 300 species occurring in the tropical Americas, each suited to particular soils and altitudes. Most of these species of Inga germinate quickly, grow rapidly and are tolerant of the poor acidic soils of the region. They fix nitrogen, host mycorrhizal fungi and so aid soil fertility, and their leaves make a wonderful water and soil conserving mulch. They are perfect for alley cropping with maize and beans, provide good shade to valuable cash crops such as coffee, cacao, pepper and vanilla and can be used as a nurse crop to establish mahogany and the inga themselves provide valuable edible fruits and fuelwood.

With the increased fertility afforded by Inga alley cropping, maize, beans and other crops can be grown and rotated year after year on the same land, taking the pressure off the remaining forests and allowing communities to settle permanently, grow more valuable perennial cash crops, increase their incomes and send their children to school.

When I first read about all this in an article in The Ecologist Magazine in 2005 I was really impressed. I’ve cited this as an example of really good land use in numerous talks. Now it is very good to hear that Mike Hands and the Inga Foundation have received a grant of $3 million to fund a 10 year programme to develop this work in the Rio Cuero area of Honduras. See more here http://www.ingafoundation.org/

(Cultivate Oxfordshire: 5 people, 5 acres)

The Food Programme on Radio 4 is often a very good listen. The edition that was first broadcast on 22/1/12 was particularly good. It looked at a number of examples of new models of growing, buying and selling food, and of people trying to influence the global food economy in positive directions. Colin Tudge and Graham Harvey founded the Oxford Real Farming Conference which is now in its fifth year. Colin Tudge sums up his arguments in nine words “plenty of plants, not much meat, and maximum variety”. A diet that is best for our health, for the environment, and that will feed nine billion of us in years to come should be based on lots of local, ideally organic, fruit and vegetables, with smaller quantities of good quality, local, organic, pasture fed meat. Colin Tudge argues that the UK needs a million more farmers.

These new farmers will be very different from most modern farmers. They will need to pioneer all manner of new ecologically sustainable farming systems that connect in new ways to the people who will eat the produce. They will tend to run very labour intensive operations, using polyculture, permaculture, aquaculture, horticulture, greenhouses and polytunnels. They will be largely community supported, often having social, educational and energy generation roles alongside food production. The food programme mentioned lots of ideas and projects, two of my favourites were Incredible Edible Todmorden and Cultivate Oxfordshire.

The Cultivate project is a group of five young people just starting a five acre market garden in South Oxfordshire. Note the people to land ratio: one person to one acre. At a time when conventional agriculture is arguing that we need ever bigger farm units to make a living these new entrants are moving in exactly the opposite direction. They are a not-for-profit social enterprise, currently raising capital via a community share offer, strongly linked to their local community and pioneering new methods of marketing their produce directly to people wherever demand in the local community seems to be, at school gates, railway stations or wherever. To make this work they’ll need very good support from and communication with their local community. I wish them well.

When I first heard about Incredible Edible Todmorden a few years back I was a bit sceptical as they seemed to be promoting guerrilla gardening which to me as a long time veg grower seemed a bit too chaotic. They’ve certainly proved me wrong. They’ve gone from strength to strength, gaining massive community involvement with every school, the fire station, railway station, council and it seems just about everyone in the town of 15,000 people involved. They have ambitious plans for community self-sufficiency in food and are initiating projects galore, including an integrated aquaculture/horticulture project at the High School that seems to draw on some of the ideas from The New Alchemy Institute and Growing Power systems that I wrote a couple of blogs about in April 2011. Exciting stuff!

Listen to the programme here and follow some of the many links
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019rd9c#related-links
http://www.cultivateoxford.org/
http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/home

The evening classes are all up and running, in Ledbury, Hereford and Kington. All three groups are quite different. The Ledbury group is organised by the Workers Education Association and meets in a very comfortable and well equipped church hall, in Kington we are just a very small group meeting in a large room in a pub, and in Hereford we have the biggest group meeting in the smallest venue, the Rocket Café. All the promotion and publicity are over, which is the bit I don’t much like. Presenting my material and meeting and hearing the ideas and views of the diverse range of people who come along to these classes is the bit I love. Hopefully out of these classes may come practical projects to increase our community response to problems like climate change and peak oil, such as new community owned renewable energy projects like the Leominster Solar Roof I wrote about on this blog in December. Also we should all learn about some of the utterly amazing and positive things that are going on in all countries on Earth, which seldom get mentioned in the media, and which can give us inspiration, hope and renewed enthusiasm and commitment to engage in the struggle to help create a better future. It’s early days and it’ll be really exciting to see how the three groups evolve over the next seven weeks.

Meanwhile several people have been in touch about the possibility of me running these classes in other locations starting in September. So far the most likely look like being Malvern, Monmouth and Shrewsbury. If you live in any of these places, or elsewhere and are interested in me running these classes, or giving one-off talks in your area, do please get in touch via this website.

In the UK there is still the idea that renewable energy is nice and cuddly, great as a small part of the energy mix, but not reliable enough for people to have confidence that it could provide 100% of the energy for a modern economy. People still think that when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining there will be no electricity. An evolving mix of demand management, super and smart grids and a multitude of methods of energy storage are gradually solving these problems of intermittence and variability. (Last January I wrote on this blog about this and will write more on this subject over the next couple of months).

Today I want to write about one decision that demonstrates confidence in renewables perhaps better than any other, and that is the announcement by Deutsche Bahn that it will run its entire operation on renewable energy by 2050, and that it will increase the renewable percentage from 20% to 28% by 2014. They are investing in windfarms and solar panels and are buying in power from renewable energy companies. The German Rail system is the biggest in Europe and is one of the Continents’ very biggest power users. It has a reputation for reliability. Its decision to move toward 100% renewables has been very much lead by its customers. It’s what the German people want, and is considered technologically and practically achievable.

I wonder how long it’ll be before major power using companies in the UK or USA will have the confidence in renewables to make similar announcements, or how long before our citizens have the confidence to ask this of our industrial, commercial and infrastructure companies?

2 articles on the Deutsche Bahn announcement:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/22/us-germany-renewables-railways-idUSTRE77L2B920110822

http://inhabitat.com/german-trains-will-run-on-100-renewable-energy-by-2050/

(Leominster sun roof)

The business case for going radically green has never been stronger.

In a number of recent talks I’ve stressed the business case for going radically green. For most places we import all, or virtually all, our energy into the local economy, which is a tremendous drain on that economy. A growing number of places are now generating all, or a large proportion, of their electricity, heat and transport fuels from locally owned and controlled renewables. My blog posted on 12th September was about how the small Austrian town of Gussing turned an annual outflow of 6 million Euros into a locally circulating beneficial turnover of 15 million Euros. They are achieving falling carbon emissions, increasing biodiversity and rising prosperity based on locally owned and controlled renewables.

I’ve done a rough calculation and estimate that Herefordshire spends something close to half a billion pounds per annum on energy. This is for all fuels, oil, petrol, gas and electricity for all sectors of the economy. Virtually all this money leaves the County never to return and so represents a huge drain on the County’s economy. I am currently doing some research on the possibilities of transforming the economy of the County with a revolution in how we use energy. The scope for radically improving energy efficiency in buildings, transport and farming systems is immense. A lot of money will need to be invested and by doing so many exciting new business opportunities and jobs will be created. At the same time as investing to save energy we will need to invest in renewable energy. It was very exciting to be at the launch of the Leominster solar roof on Tuesday, our first community owned renewable energy project in the County, and hopefully the first of many!

To find out more, sign-up for my evening classes!

Leominster Solar Roof http://www.sharenergy.coop/leominstersolar/

Sharing resources can have many benefits, and many challenges. A group of us in the Bartonsham area of Hereford are trying to start a car share club. For those of us who use our cars only a couple of times a week or less and mainly for fairly local journeys there are cost savings. For those neighbours who currently do not have cars they’ll get access to the use of one without the costs of buying and running one. Many of our neighbours have cars, sometimes second cars, which seldom get used. Sharing seems a very logical way forward. There are of course powerful psychological attachments that some of us have with our cars. There are also untold fears of doing something new and different.

We plan to follow the very successful model developed by the Colwall car club. A year or two back Robin Coates came over from Colwall and gave us lots of help and advice. Their club, like other community run car share clubs is very much cheaper than the commercially run ones, but it does require some organisation and commitment. Our goal is to get the locally designed Riversimple hydrogen powered cars as soon they become available in a couple of years time. Again, Hugo Spowers of Riversimple has been very helpful and supportive, so too has Judith Whateley at Herefordshire council.

The benefits seem many and obvious: saving money and carbon emissions are the main ones, but freeing up space in the streets, having access to a greater range of vehicles, an increasing number of which would be at the cutting edge of ecological design. One wonders what is holding people back from action: could it be the fear of giving up our own cars with all the status and symbolism that that implies, or is the shared organisation just too daunting. Time will tell. We are actively seeking new local members. In a couple of months we should know if this is a project whose time has come.

Colwall car club http://www.greener.colwall.info/carclub/index.html
Riversimple hydrogen cars http://www.riversimple.com/

Politicians and the media seem out of touch with what the people want: they struggle to make sense of the Occupy movement, the Spanish Indignados, the Arab Spring and what all these groups have in common. Clearly they, or should I say we, have no single coordinated leadership. This is an emergent process, it is up to each of us to offer ideas, and below I offer my personal list of demands.

Basically we all want an end to brutal dictatorships and gross inequality. We want more than regime change: we want systemic change. We want a world that is ecologically sustainable and socially just. Here are a few policy recommendations that would help.

Raise, and save, funds of approx £/$ 10 to 20 Trillion per annum by:-

• Introduce Pigovian taxes on pollution of all kinds, especially carbon taxes and nuclear fuel rod taxes. Close tax loopholes, tax havens, crack down on tax avoidance and tax evasion, and increase income taxes on the top 1% of global population. Introduce a one-off wealth tax, as advocated by Greg Philo and tie-in with increases in death duties.
• Introduce Robin Hood tax on global financial transactions. Take the ability to create money as debt away from banks, as advocated by Positive Money.
• Slash perverse subsidies to the fossil fuel, fishing, farming and infrastructure industries that currently subsidise ecologically unsustainable practices.
• Slash global defence spending by 90% and put the remaining forces under UN control.
• Also slash spending on roads, airports, high speed rail and other unnecessary and energy hungry projects.

Invest funds to maximise ecological sustainability and global social justice by:-

• Many millions of jobs and apprenticeships could be created by improving the global housing stock: in cold countries building to Passive House standards and planning new settlements to One Planet Living standards.
• In hotter poorer areas ensuring good water and sewage services is a key to improving health.
• Even more jobs could be created in creating a global good food revolution. Amazingly good and useful examples should be studied, expanded and replicated: examples are Growing Power in Milwaukee, SEKEM in Egypt, Machakos miracle in Kenya, Zai pit cultivation and reforestation in Burkina Faso, Seawater Greenhouses for expanding possibilities in the deserts and the old New Alchemy Institutes super greenhouses for cold climates, plus of course the many community supported agriculture and other farms and allotments that help people have access to good fresh organic produce.
• Converting the global economy to 100% renewables: everywhere needs to follow the Gussing model and look to their local resources and plan an energy efficient, balanced mix of local renewables, which especially in the case of bigger cities will need to be augmented with distant renewables like Desertec Solar.
• Good governance will need to be promoted: the Aalborg Commitments expanded from local governance to include national and global standards of governance.
• More funds will need to be invested in globally universal health care systems that are free at point of use and of the highest standards. The same applies for education.
• Global full employment, with a legal minimum and maximum wage, and a good work-life balance…

I could go on. I do, in talks, evening classes and in the book I’m writing.

I’ve just got back from London, where I spent a few hours with the Occupy group outside St Paul’s Cathedral. The level of organisation was impressive. Great care was being taken not to block access to the Cathedral, toilets and kitchens all seemed to function pretty well, a first aid post was manned by volunteer doctors and nurses, the information desk and library were well staffed and efficient. The fact that the Cathedral authorities had previously felt it necessary to close the Cathedral for a week seems to have been a case of ‘health and safety gone mad.’

The protesters have organised a ‘Tent City University’, open to anyone to present ideas, to listen, debate and to learn. Anyone can propose a session via their excellent website, http://tentcityuniversity.occupylsx.org/. They have attracted an impressive list of speakers including Richard Wilkinson, co-author of ‘The Spirit Level’, George Monbiot, Rupert Read and dozens of others, some well known, others not. I gave a talk on ‘Ideas for a Sustainable Future’, which generated a good level of interest and debate. This afternoon, Wednesday 9th November, there will be a demonstration and folk concert featuring many of the best known political singers of the last half century, including Peggy Seeger, Billy Bragg, Roy Bailey, Leon Rosselson amongst others.

These demonstrations and occupations are the tip of an iceberg. Rage against the increasing inequality that debt driven consumer capitalism is generating is on the rise globally. Reports that UK directors pay rose by 50% last year while austerity measures forced more of us into financial difficulties are provoking anger on a scale I’ve not seen since the days of Thatcher and the Poll Tax protests.

Global political and financial leaders seem ever more out of touch with the people, and remind me more and more of the Communist leaders in Eastern Europe in the months and years before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, mouthing political and economic rhetoric nobody believes any longer. The people and the planet are crying out for change. The next blog will be my Global Wish List!

There is something profoundly important and good going on in the World today and our political commentators simply do not understand it. Jeremy Paxman’s interview of Michael Moore on last nights’ Newsnight was a case in point. Gone are the days when mainstream political parties offered meaningful choice, as Moore pointed out, virtually all politicians have sold out to corporate interests, the greed of the richest 1% seems boundless and their indifference to the suffering of the 99% seems inhuman. The global media like the political parties are in hoc to the corporations.

2011 may go down in history as the year when citizens around the World “have gotton up off the sofa”, said “enough is enough” and got out on the streets. The Arab Spring with the toppling of dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya may on one level appear to have little to do with the emergence of ‘the outraged’ or ‘los Indignados’ in Madrid, Athens and many other places in May or the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy the City movements in New York, London and elsewhere in September and October. Everywhere the yearning for freedom, justice and fairness is palpable. This is an overwhelmingly and explicitly non-violent process for change.

(Madrid May 2011)

Capitalism has protected the interests of the dictators, the rich elites and the privileged for far too long. The people are fed-up and want change. Governments around the world have failed in the challenge to do anything meaningful to address climate change.

Meanwhile the peoples of the world are becoming increasingly networked together, via the internet and mobile technology. Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest suggests that there are between one and two million organisations around the world working for global social justice and ecological survival and renewal. Just one, Avaaz, has grown from 5 to 10 million members in the last few months, and it reflects the nature of this interlinked global movement better than perhaps any other organisation, and certainly better than any established political party. But the strength of this movement is in its diversity and in its solidarity. The opportunities to create a more ecologically sustainable and socially just world are almost infinite, and I will continue to advocate change through my writing, speaking and teaching, knowing that there are many millions, billions even, who share my hopes and aspirations, and who are working in their own ways to help bring about a better future. Exciting times to witness emergent, grassroots, bottom-up, non-violent, socially and ecologically conscious participatory democracy in the making. How truly historic a movement this is only time will tell.

The organisation Occupy Wall Street has a good website. http://occupywallst.org/

Paxman’s interview with Michael Moore:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/9619110.stm

(The Bavarian town of Wildpoldsried that sustainably produces three times more energy than it consumes)

The business case for going radically green is becoming clearer by the day. While those economies that are still addicted to oil slide ever further into debt and financial chaos those communities that are at the cutting edge of the transition to a post fossil-fuel economy are experiencing rapid economic growth, falling unemployment, falling carbon emissions, increased local economic resilience and increased biodiversity. The last two blogs looked at Gussing, an example of sustainability, and the unsustainable US debt, a result of an unsustainable economy.

Gussing is not alone. Many other places around the world are showing what can be done. Varese, in Liguria, Italy, is one such. The island of Samso and the town of Frederikshavn are two of many possible examples from Denmark. These and a growing number of other communities are pretty well 100% self sufficient in local renewable energy: heat, electricity and transport fuels. The small Bavarian town of Wildpoldsried is perhaps even further advanced in that it produces about three times as much energy as it consumes. All these places have seen tremendous economic and ecological advantages as they have made the transition to a post fossil fuel economy.

In Herefordshire, where I live, we have tremendous opportunities to make a similar transition with multiple benefits. There are a few great businesses striving to do good projects, and there would be strong community support if people could see what has been achieved in some of these examples of best practice. I’m taking this message out into the community of Herefordshire: in January I shall be teaching an evening class in Hereford, Kington and in Ledbury, each course will consist of 8 sessions. Watch this blog for all the latest on that. Meanwhile:

• Saturday 15th October I shall be speaking at the opening of the Clehonger Village Hall Community Solar Roof, 11.00 am to 4.00 pm at Clehonger Village Hall. (Drop-in event)
• Tuesday 18th October I’ll be giving a presentation to the students doing the Bulmer’s Masters Degree in Sustainability Advocacy. (Not open to the public)
• Thursday 20th October I’ll be talking at the REconomy event at the Bishops Palace in Hereford, 7.30 to 10.00 pm. REconomy is a process that seeks to Re-imagine, Re-view and Re-create the local economy, and is a project of the Herefordshire in Transition Alliance. (Booking required via Nick Sherwood, text 07957348885 or e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address))

There is a terrific youtube video of Wildpoldsried here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9mnrKdI_QY

I’ve just returned from Austria, visiting friends and family, and also some remarkable renewable energy projects, including the small town of Gussing. In October last year I wrote a blog about Gussing. It has won lots of awards for innovation and ecological sustainability. It is one of the few places in the world that truly has entered the post fossil fuel age and so affords a glimpse of a green future.

(Gussing Anaerobic Digester)

So what does a green economy look like? One commonly held view in England is that a green economy will look older fashioned, rather quaint, somewhat poorer and with people using simple low level technologies; the ‘bananas environmentalism’ approach. (Bananas meaning Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) Gussing is in some ways the polar opposite of this. A small historic town of 4,000 people, comparable to Kington in a Herefordshire context, has built a huge and growing industrial park and created 1,100 new high quality jobs, transforming the area from one of economic decline and out-migration to a boom town and employment hub. It has turned a 6 million Euro outflow of money formally spent on fossil fuels to a locally circulating annual turnover of 15 Million Euros spent on locally generated renewable energy. Again confounding stereotypes there are remarkably few solar panels and virtually no wind turbines. This is an economy based on biomass, primarily on wood chip gasification and the anaerobic digestion of grass.

One of the most impressive things was how they have evolved ever greater ecological sustainability with their changing uses of anaerobic digestion. Formally they used a lot of maize, but as this used energy to cultivate they have shifted to grass. Lowland wet permanent pasture is managed to maximise biodiversity, full of wonderful wildflowers and healthy grasshopper populations providing a vital food source for a growing stork population, while also being regularly cut for biomass digestion. These meadows were a joy to any ecologist! Renewable energy and enhanced biodiversity rolled into one!