There are three commonly held misperceptions of renewable energy: that the available resource is too small to be useful; that its inherently variable nature is too difficult to manage; and that it is too costly to develop.

A slew of new reports, profiled at a conference organised last Friday by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), fundamentally challenge these myths.

This past week saw the publication of The Offshore Valuation, a major new study supported by a broad consortium of Government and industry bodies and coordinated by PIRC. It is the first report to attempt a full economic valuation of the UK’s offshore renewable energy resource. Its findings have been startling: by developing less than a third of the practical wind, wave and tidal resource around the British Isles, we could become a net electricity exporter, generating by 2050 the electricity equivalent of 1 billion barrels of oil per year. Doing so could bring multiple benefits to the UK: £31 billion of revenues from electricity exports to Europe, 145,000 green jobs, and insurance against fossil fuel price volatility.

Matthew Nisbet over at Framing Science has an excellent blog post on the potential over-reaction by climate scientists to the events of the last few months. The piece is written from a US perspective, but I think it applies equally here in the UK. He notes:
Multiple surveys show a decline in public concern with climate change and it’s clear that political momentum for policy action has stalled. But there are several likely causes, the direct efforts of the climate skeptic movement just one of them, and probably one of the more minor causes.

These other factors include the economy, confusion over colder weather and other perceptual biases, general distrust of government, climate policies such as cap and trade that are not easily sold as effective or in line with public values, the absence of strong Presidential leadership on the issue, institutional barriers in Congress and at the international level, and the continued belief by some scientists and advocates that public support and policy action will turn on science rather than on a calculation of values and trade-offs.

Good morning! Welcome to the first day of British Summer Time. With luck you’ll have remembered last night to set your clocks forward by one hour: one more hour of sunlight to enjoy each day, as we adjust our hours of activity to fit better with the changing seasons.

Today also marks the launch of a campaign to see the UK’s clocks changed permanently – shifting them forward by two hours in summer, and one hour in winter – in order to boost tourism, reduce road accidents, and cut carbon emissions.

The campaign – called Lighter, Later – is being coordinated by 10:10, the civil society movement working for a 10% cut in the UK’s emissions in 2010. It is being backed by a wide range of organisations, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), Age Concern, the Tourism Alliance, and Sport for England.

A recent report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) boldly declared that the UK had already failed in its quest to prevent dangerous climate change:

“With only four decades to go, the UK is already losing the climate change mitigation battle. The greenhouse gas emission targets set by the Government require a rate of reduction that has never been achieved by even the most progressive nations in the world. If the UK is realistically going to reach an outcome equivalent to a reduction of 80% by 2050, we need to start mapping out an alternative solution using all engineering methods possible and not only relying on mitigation.”

Can you see where this is going yet?

There’s an emerging economic consensus — in parallel with the scientific consensus — that investing in mitigation and adaptation is good value for money.

Joe Romm points out an overlooked conclusion of a recent IIED study by Martin Parry and others on the underestimated cost of adaptation, Romm notes:
In the “aggressive abatement” case (450 ppm), the mean “Net present value [NPV] of climate change impacts” is only $410 trillion — or $275 trillion with adaptation.  So stabilizing at 450 …

Imagine for a moment that all manmade greenhouse gas emissions ceased tomorrow (go with it). What would be the likely consequence?

Unfortunately, the answer may be: runaway climate change.

As the Climate Safety report points out, the melting of the Arctic summer sea-ice is accelerating beyond even the worst-case predictions of the IPCC, potentially disappearing in the next decade. As Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) puts it, “for a number of reasons, we’re on …