Can the invisible hand have green fingers?

Editorial from the latest Energy Engineering magazine responding to this speech made by Prime Minister David Cameron:

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Addressing energy ministers from over 20 leading economies at April’s Clean Energy summit in London, David Cameron reiterated his government’s green credentials. “When I became Prime Minister, I said that Britain would have the greenest government ever,” he stated. “And that’s exactly what we have.”

Rhetoric and political leadership are all well and good, but they are ultimately hollow if not backed up by a meaningful policy agenda. Paying closer attention to Cameron’s speech, perhaps it is little wonder that it was received frostily by the environmental lobby and renewable energy trade associations.

The Prime Minister might claim that he “passionately believe[s] that the rapid growth of renewable energy is vital to our future”, but what is the coalition government doing to promote it?

The three initiatives Cameron selected as evidence of progress, namely the renewable heat incentive, the green investment bank, and a carbon capture and storage programme, have all dawdled into being and, although promising, are yet to have a significant impact on the development and deployment of renewable technologies.

Perhaps more worryingly, Cameron used the speech to give tacit approval to the slashing of the Feed-in Tariff for small and medium scale solar photovoltaics. He said it was right that as costs fell, consumers should pay less in subsidies for new projects. The reason solar costs did fall was because the sector was supported by an ambitious policy mechanism – government backtracking has since left the solar industry in a state of dangerous uncertainty.

Offshore wind and marine generation technologies will need subsidising for the foreseeable future as they move towards cost competitiveness. Yet, despite paying lip service to the renewable capacity off our coasts, the speech gave the impression that the coalition might be losing its appetite for supporting these sectors.

According to a report released by the Renewable Energy Association this month, renewable technologies could support 400,000 jobs and be worth close to £25billion to the UK economy by 2020. Of course, the industry will not be able to fulfill that potential if the government does not follow through on its promises of support.

Generally, the tendency to focus on cost is unfortunate. To get cold feet on the renewables agenda now smacks of short-termism. Nobody wants to pay more every month for their energy, but the fact is that supporting the growth of renewables adds relatively very little to the average energy bill. And, the small amount you might have to pay pales into insignificance set against the potential environmental, economic, and social benefit of a world-leading renewables industry.

Whilst capital costs of, say, a deep-water offshore windfarm might be significant; the running costs should be competitive with conventional sources. The offshore wind sector has taken it upon itself to explore any and all possible means of cost reduction. To flourish, it and other renewables sectors must be allowed to mature in a climate of confidence rather than uncertainty.

It’s refreshing that the Prime Minister recognises the potential of renewable energy and publicly still professes commitment to his green agenda. However, he must now demonstrate the political will to get behind renewable energy on the ground, beneath the ground, on rooftops, in rivers and at sea.

UK:OK

My review of the V&A’s summer exhibition: British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the modern age. A preview of New Design 97.

Jamie Reid for The Sex Pistols
Image credit: V&A Museum

“Look, stranger, on this island now, this other Eden, workshop of the world, Cool Britannia! Us Brits, as a people, are obsessed with celebrating, and fretting about, our sense of national identity. In a boom year for flag-waving, an Olympics and a diamond jubilee no less, the V&A takes up the patriotic baton with its major summer exhibition British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age.”

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Offshore Wind Engineering

Features from the Spring issue of Offshore Wind Engineering.

Writing includes: interview with The Crown Estate’s new head of offshore wind energy; focus on opportunities in the Scottish supply chain; and a report on crew transfer vessels.

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Energy Engineering

Latest writing from Energy Engineering magazine.

Includes: Atlantis Resources Corporation’s activity in the tidal sector; analysis of London 2012′s sustainable credentials; interview with John Moore of Windcrop focussing on wind micro-generation.

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Green shoots

Editorial leader for Energy Engineering magazine, Issue 40 addressing the Green Investment Bank’s role in financing renewable energy development:

Whilst the Scots are celebrating the decision to locate the headquarters of the Green Investment Bank (GIB) in Edinburgh, the whole of the UK’s renewable energy industry should welcome the news that the GIB has taken a major stride towards becoming operational.

First mooted in 2010 by the then Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling and subsequently taken up by the coalition government, the Green Investment Bank was touted as a major financial policy mechanism in supporting the UK’s renewable energy infrastructure.

However, to this point, the GIB has, substantially, lain dormant as it was forced to weather the raft of coalition spending cuts. Now emerging from a two-year hiatus with an initial capitalization fund of £3 billion (potentially rising to £15bn in four years), the GIB will begin lending from April.

To stakeholders in the UK’s renewable energy industry, the GIB represents more than a pot of money, it’s a symbol of the government’s commitment to following through on its green promises.

I have lost count of the number of industry figures I’ve spoken to over recent months who, when asked about the future of the renewable energy market, talk about the potential of the GIB to catalyze significant progress.

Developers working in the offshore wind or wave and tidal sectors, in projects with high initial capital expenditure, need a climate of secure and accessible investment in order to move forward. The extent to which the GIB is prepared to embrace risk in supporting such projects will be the real test of its mettle. For the bank to fulfil its raison d’être it must differentiate itself from existing lenders and help projects that are struggling to secure funding from investment banks or clean-tech investment capitalists.

For the GIB to be unduly cautious would be a missed opportunity; it must reflect the ambition and innovation that exists in our industry. I am not saying that the bank should sign blank cheques with gay abandon to anyone with a wave tank and an idea. Nevertheless, for the GIB to play things too conservatively would be a betrayal of its founding principles

We are at a crucial moment in the development of the UK’s offshore wind industry and meaningful investment from the Green Investment Bank could help the sector to drive down the cost of energy towards the target of £100/MWh, a level seen by many as the benchmark for commercial viability.

Likewise, the wave and tidal sector, albeit at a more nascent stage in its development, needs appropriate investment if it is to make the most of the significant marine energy capacity around the UK’s coasts.

Concerns have already been voiced that the GIB will be reluctant to support early-stage marine technologies; we must hope this does not turn out to be the case. The UK is leading the world in marine energy, being home to a number of device developers, including Aquamarine and Marine Current Turbines, and leading test centres in Emec, Narec, and Wave Hub. The time for investment is now.

GIB funding will doubtless attract further private investment. For offshore wind, marine, and other low-carbon sectors, securing the interest of the private sector is a key step on the path to delivering technologies that are commercially viable and reinforce the credibility of renewable energy.

Over the coming months the renewable energy industry will be scrutinizing the bank’s initial activities keenly. We are entering a pivotal period of development for a number of sectors and stakeholders will be looking for evidence of a clear appetite to help the industry progress. Administered properly, the Green Investment Bank could make all the difference.

 

Wheels of fortune

For the latest issue of New Design I interviewed Gerry McGovern, design director at Jaguar Land Rover.

We discussed the successful launch of the Evoque and the Warwickshire man’s uncompromising approach to automotive design.

“McGovern harbours a strong philosophy on automotive design and short shrift for his critics. Although he has spent his career in the car business he is not the petrol-head one might expect. An industrial design graduate, he is an admirer of mid-century modernist architecture and interiors.

In his most recent project, McGovern guided the evolution of the Range Rover Evoque – a vehicle intended to broaden the appeal of the brand to younger, urban and design conscious customers.”

Read the full interview: I’m not a flower arranger…

Gerry McGovern (centre) poses with the award winning Evoque

New Design 95 also contains our 2012 Yearbook – well worth a look.

Guy Nelson’s legacy

I recently attended the pre-launch of the Design Museum’s new site, the Commonwealth Institute in South Kensington (pictured below). As I walked around the building, which has stood unoccupied for the best part of a decade, I was transported back to Warwick School’s own 1960s behemoth, the Guy Nelson Hall (GNH).

Commonwealth Institute exterior

Commonwealth Institute interior

The Commonwealth Institute was completed in 1962 and with its low brickwork and paraboloid copper roof is regarded by English Heritage as one of the key examples of post-war British modernist architecture. However, this style is admired by few (typically only certain echelons of the architectural elite) and, before the Design Museum took on the building, many were lobbying for its demolition.

Our own GNH, commissioned in the late 1960s and operational by 1970, is a somewhat more humble building, yet in local architects Rayner and Fedeski’s combination of brickwork and building-height windows, alongside a cavernous central hall tapering towards a proscenium stage, we can sense the guiding hand of the Commonwealth Institute’s Brit modernism.

Now the future of the GNH hangs in the balance as whispers abound that it has reached the end of its useful life. Can a case be made for preserving the GNH as an example of a particular moment in British schools building? If it is to be flattened, how will it be remembered by Warwickians?

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The Guy Nelson Hall has always been an unpopular edifice. From its building, through its opening, to its current occupation, it has resisted affection.

For a Warwickian of my vintage (1993-2004) the GNH meant being corralled by prefects in advance of full school assembly, or, once one got the tie, doing the herding. It was no mean feat squeezing the entire school into the hall and, as numbers swelled, assembly became standing room only and, latterly, the foyer had to be utilized – albeit offering the occupants a restricted view of the headmaster’s platitudes.

I recall there to have been a certain amount of politics and social maneuvering associated with where one positioned oneself. Lower School oiks had no option but to occupy the front few rows beneath the watchful gaze of the be-gowned staff flanking the headmaster onstage.

Reaching upper school gave the conscious assembly-goer more options. You could opt for one of the rows elevated by the steps three-quarters of the way back in the hall; this gave you an uninterrupted view over hundreds of greasy scalps – a dress circle for would-be toffs and peacocks.

You might be tempted to mix it with those standing around the fringes, although, this was primarily the reserve of the sixth-form and the presence of an upstart 5^th former could be unwelcome. Perhaps counter intuitively, to mill around the edges was an indication of status – a marker that one was too important or too bored by proceedings to bother sitting. This thinking extended to the staff, with left-leaning members of the common room preferring to slum it, gownless, with the hoi polloi.

Perhaps the only other position of note, which came into play only in my later years, was to find a seat in the foyer such that one was completely disguised from the main hall, allowing one to go about the important business of texting or cramming Latin vocab unnoticed.

I digress but it is interesting to note that, according to original correspondence, the GNH was intended to have a capacity of 1,000. To anyone who has sat, or stood, through an assembly the hopeless ambition of this figure is evident. The safe, comfortable seated capacity is probably closer to 600.

Even worse than assemblies, the GNH meant public exams. You knew revision time was limited when, returning for the summer term, the rows of stacker chairs were replaced by utilitarian exam desks. In place of the headmaster’s plinth came the green baize info boards and those strange clocks on stalks, frequently glanced up at in mild-panic mid-paper.

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If the GNH meant anxiety for me, it was source of considerable frustration for the bursar, school handymen and senior staff who oversaw its construction. Sadly, from its conception, it seems to be an edifice of which the school has never been truly proud.

The GNH was one of the school’s first status projects of the modern era and, costing £84,000 in 1969, represented a sizeable investment. Unlike the contemporary construction of other out buildings, which strived to mimic the school’s prevailing architecture, the GNH was to be staunchly 1960s in style. Perhaps one of the problems was that by the time construction began it was 1969 and, as Withnail and I has it, “the greatest decade in the history of mankind” was coming to a close; as such the GNH was anachronistic in its own time.

According to Gervald Fykman (Warwick School: A History, Frykman & Hadley, 2004) funds were raised following an appeal to old boys, governors and the FOWs. However, it seems there was some shortfall in moneys collected and the balance had to be covered by a loan. The consequence was that if a costly corner could be cut, it probably was. Even during construction, back-and-forth correspondence between the bursar (Major PB Waterman) and various contractors suggests that controlling cost was becoming a serious concern.

Evidence shows haggling over unsatisfactory furnishings, a debate as to the cheapest means of installing gas pipes, and the bursar accepting the services of a parent, Mr DJ Watkins, to manage the landscaping and gardens gratis.

Furthermore, a number of problems seem to have beset the building from its opening. Radiators malfunction, doors are stiff and the ladies W.C suffers from a number of “loose seats”. The bursar appears to be engaged in one trouble-shooting exercise after another.

We ask now whether the GNH is fit for purpose. Perhaps the question ought to be: was it ever?

I am indebted to the kindness of school archivist Gervald Frykman who shared with me a number of documents relating to the commissioning and building of the GNH.

Offshore Wind Engineering – Winter 2011

Four articles from the Winter 2011 issue of Offshore Wind Engineering:

Project planning

Interview with Anne Savage, the Crown Estate’s manager of marine planning and consents

Writing the risk

Energy insurance specialists GCube assess risk in offshore development

Foundations for the future

New foundation technologies are being developed at Belfast heavy industries firm Harland and Wolff

Shipping forecast

Update on a business providing workboats for offshore projects

Flirting with Pseuds’ Corner

My analysis of Private Eye’s contribution to the fabric of magazine design.

The article appeared (fittingly) in New Design 94 in response to the V&A’s exhibition that closed in January.

Cover image courtesy of the V&A

“A design magazine might seem an unusual place to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Private Eye. After all, the fortnightly satirical organ has remained stubbornly anachronistic in its design and layout. A relative latecomer to digital publishing, the magazine’s appearance still betrays its roots in Letraset and the photocopier; Private Eye might appear to be as anti-design as it is anti-establishment.”

See page 94

A & E Violence

Design Council project covered in New Design 94 by me (aka Dave March)

“Dave March reports on an attempt by designers to make a visit to Accident & Emergency more bearable for patients and safer for staff”

Warding off aggro