A Plymouth Church is set to save hundreds of pounds a year on its electricity bills and lower its carbon footprint, after getting state-of-the-art solar PV panels fitted to its hall roof.

Saint Matthias Evangelical parish church, which serves Mutley, the city centre and Plymouth University, has had 16 solar PV panels fitted to the south-facing roof of the church hall. In addition to reducing the church’s carbon dioxide emission by more than 2,000 kg per year, the solar panels will generate around £1,600 in electricity bill savings and government ‘Feed-in Tariff’ payments.

The Reverend Paul Bryce, Chaplain of the church, said: “One of our major running costs is our electricity bill, so anything that we can do to reduce this – and ensure that it doesn’t rise over the coming years – is hugely beneficial.”

The idea for solar panels started last summer when the church carried out a sustainability audit as part of the Church of England’s national Shrink the Footprint campaign, which is aimed at reducing emissions by 42 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050. The audit clearly showed that installing a solar PV system would deliver both environmental and financial benefits.

Congregation member James Mclellan, a Royal Navy engineer who is currently doing an MSC in renewable energy, initially had the idea of putting the panels on the church itself, but it made more practical sense to use the roof of the hall.

“We have a high number of community groups that use the hall,” added Reverand Bryce, “particularly our Little Angels nursery group, which uses the facility every day. This means that almost all of the free energy we generate is used by us, rather than being fed back into the national grid.”

In addition to providing sustainable energy, the solar panels also guarantee the church a generous income over the next 25 years as a result of the government’s Feed-in Tariff scheme.

The solar system, which took three days to install, was installed by Devon company SunGift Solar, who are the South West Green Energy Awards Installer of the Year. The job was particularly tricky as the roof was so steep, with no a ‘ridge’ to hang a roof ladder on, but SunGift staff overcame this by utilising the system’s panel rails.

Gabriel Wondrausch, managing director of SunGift Solar, said: “It’s always satisfying to install renewable energy systems for local community groups, as so many people benefit from the work. As the costs of utilities rise, many more churches are looking towards renewable energy, as it guarantees them lower costs over both the short and long term and it reduces their environmental impact.”

St Matthias’s Church has already given its congregation an information sheet about the system and access to its online statistics package so that they can monitor how much energy the panels are generating minute by minute.

The Reverend Bryce added: “Using a reliable local company like SunGift Solar to carry out work has its definite benefits. Not only did they fully accommodate the needs of all of the groups that use the hall, but they saved us valuable time and money by carrying out additional maintenance work on the roof and replacing a number of broken slates. I can’t recommend them highly enough.”

Ahead of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June 2012, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Progressio and Tearfund are organising a public discussion, considering the distinctive arguments and solutions offered by Christian perspectives to the vital topics for debate at Rio+20.

The panel will include some of the most influential leaders in the field. The Secretary of State for the Environment, the Rt Hon. Caroline Spelman MP will provide the keynote address. There will also be contributions from Rt Rev the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells and Nanette Antequisa, a member of the Beyond 2015 Advisory Group from the Philippines. The event will be chaired by Richard Black, the BBC News Environment Correspondent.

The event will hear responses from panellists on four key questions, followed by an opportunity for questions from the audience.

The four key questions that will be addressed are:

• What is the world that they want to see? Is the green economy the answer?
• What barriers need to be overcome and what progress must be made at Rio +20 to help achieve this vision?
• How can the global economy be re-shaped to ensure greater equity and environmental sustainability?
• What kind of measures would be helpful in driving the right kind of progress?

The event will take place on Wednesday 23^rd May in Central Hall Westminster, London SW1H 9NH (Tube: Westminster, St James) at 6.30pm.

This is a public discussion, but if you are planning to attend, please RSVP to jennie.breukelman@tearfund.org.

In 1992 the world’s biggest ever political gathering – the Rio Earth Summit – marked one of the first times that world leaders met to discuss the environment. Twenty years later, they’re meeting again for Rio+20 to see how well they’ve done – and how much more they need to do.

Come along to a Whose Earth? event this June to explore how we as Christians can live on God’s earth God’s way today. Expert speakers from Tearfund, A Rocha and New Frontiers will unpack the Bible basis, the science behind the issues and how we can all play a part in responding, especially as world leaders meet in Rio, Brazil for Rio+20 to discuss their response to these issues.

Check out the attached flyer or visit www.tearfund.org/rio to find out more. If there’s not an event near you, check out Stop Climate Chaos’s website for other activities around Rio+20 – http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/rio-connection

It would be great if you could promote these events through your networks. Links to order the flyer or download the poster can be found at www.tearfund.org/rio

New dash for gas puts UK action on climate change at risk

“Gas is cheap,” said the Chancellor of the Exchequer in last month’s budget speech, “has much less carbon than coal and will be the largest single source of our electricity in the coming years.” The case for increasing use of gas in power generation in the short term has some obvious attractions.    Times are tight, and people’s wallets are already overburdened. Ofgem, the energy regulator, is expecting a “tightness” in electricity supply in the period between the closure of coal-fired power stations in 2015, and the opening of the Hinkley Point Nuclear station in 2019 at the earliest. We are going to need some more gas, the government reasons, to bridge the gap. Replacing coal-fired generation with gas, which produces less emissions, provides a quick route to reducing emissions in the power generation sector.  The North Sea oil and gas reserves are a valuable resource, of which the country could make good use in these difficult times, and will reduce our reliance on foreign power, so lets get fracking!

However, the Committee on Climate Change states that during the 2020s the UK must achieve a substantial decarbonisation of the power sector.   The Government’s proposal for an Emissions Performance Standard, as it currently stands, would enshrine a limit on carbon emissions of 450g/KWh for each new plant which would be retained until 2045. This could hardly be called ‘decarbonisation.’ Moreover, as more investment in gas is encouraged, there is a risk that this could come at the expense of low carbon energy sources.  In an open letter to Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the Committee points out that this policy risks allowing gas power to over step the limits on carbon emissions implied by the reduction targets to which the UK is committed. They state

“If the 30 GW of gas-fired capacity were to generate as baseload plant in 2030, this would raise average emissions to 200g CO2/kWh (i.e. beyond the limits implied by carbon budgets).”

These proposals on gas power, and the government’s intention to simplify and weaken the Carbon Reduction Commitments, suggest carbon reduction may be slipping in the government’s priorities, in favour of incentives for wealth creation and increased business efficiency. While these are important, so is our care of the planet. We encourage you therefore to write to your MP and alert them to the criticism expressed by the Committee on Climate Change.

Further Information

http://www.theccc.org.uk/news/latest-news/1160-ccc-comments-on-emissions-performance-standard-eps-for-gas-fired-power-generation-27-march-2012

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/enough_is_enough_2012.pdf

http://www.foe.co.uk/what_we_do/clean_british_energy_35564.html

Churches in Europe use the term ‘climate justice’ to speak about our response to the concurring global economic, ecological and energy crises. See the  WCC report at the following link:

http://www.oikoumene.org/fileadmin/files/wcc-main/documents/p4/pwe/View-INCEC.pdf

This was a working meeting, in the Houses of Parliament, chaired by Caroline Lucas, the Member of Parliament for the Green Party on Tuesday 10 January 2012, on ‘Tackling Climate Change and the Economy’.

The economist Ann Pettifor introduced the discussion and her points included:

· The financial crisis has created both urgency and confusion. People need an umbrella of where they can go to express their opposition to a fossil-fuel intensive society, and a focus for the movement.

· Before we launched Jubilee 2000, there was a movement in the South and there was a movement in the North against debt but it was disparate. Jubilee 2000 created a banner under which to mobilise.

· There is mass unemployment, and to repair our badly damaged and heavily indebted economy we’re going to need full employment.

· Tackling climate change is going to be a very labour-intensive transition. We’re going to have to learn to grow our own vegetables, to maintain and repair, to make things last much longer: it just so happens that jobs is the answer to both the climate and financial crisis.

· There is also a lot of work that needs to be done which is not be fossil fuel dependent, e.g. caring for an ageing population.

· We want to make these links and draw together not just organisations but also societies.

· I am so frustrated to hear the Labour Party today saying ‘in an era of no money’. Yesterday the government has issued £1.7bn of gilts. The idea that there isn’t enough money to tackle climate change (is missinformed).

· The issue is who produces the money and for whom: two institutions– the central bank (BoE) and private banks (credit) – the ideological battle is to make sure the money is produced for the wealthy and not for everyone else.

· I recognise that this is a huge intellectual wall we have to get through. But I’m hopeful about how people have already talked about 245% GDP debt after WW2. Ireland’s debt has spiralled after cutting spending. To me that intellectual economic argument is one of the biggest challenges we face in order to be able to say we can afford to tackle climate change.

· Big social movements have demanded specific structural changes to the way society is organised, e.g. anti-apartheid, votes for women. We need to focus on an ask that involves some kind of structural change.

Films – I have added a ‘Films’ page to the ‘Resource’ page. It could really do with some added input. Over to you for some suggestions.

Mike Shrubsole

Domestic Durban Demonstration

On the march again, ergo it must be anorher climate change conference: COP17 in Durban to be precise.  So what was the message?  From the high proportion of rather elderly campaigners, a somewhat deflated giant globe and the well-worn rucksacs, probably: “We are not going away!”

Regular readers  may recall that two years ago I concluded:  “The gap between the science and the politics is . . . growing and the Government . . . is still relying heavily on voluntary action.  No one expects a fully worked out treaty [at Copenhagen].  We won’t hang up our marching boots yet!”

Two years is a long time in burgeoning climate chaos.  All honour to those who went to the October Manchester rally but where were the crowds on this Global Day of Action on climate change, in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in poor and threatened countries?  Christian Ecology Link, of course, was there but even the deniers did not bother to turn out!  The police, however, were very sweet, barricading side streets and cordoning off Government offices as if we were a real threat.

The call for climate justice was clear: “50% of greenhouse gases are produced by 7% of the world’s population and 50% of the world’s population are responsible for only 7% of emissions.”  Partly, this represents the shocking divide between rich and poor that we have long battled – but it is doubly unfair because many of the 50% are those who suffer most from the climate consequences.  The UK will even, on balance, probably benefit from substantial global warming!

Nor was this call for justice a pious generalisation.  Looking round at the emotional placards, there were many proposed solutions that added up to a plan of sorts, even (or especially) in a time of economic crisis. No more airports or runways, no fracking gas, no first-generation biofuels, no hyper-rich bankers obstructing a deal (and, you’ve guessed, no nuclear).  Lest all that might sound negative, there was a call for a million green jobs to kick-start real growth, massive help for poor countires to develop without high carbon emissions and for Mr Cameron to live up to “the greenest government ever.”

At the end of the march we were marshalled into groups with the ratio of (roughly) 7:50 to mke the point.  Those who lingered listened to some rousing speeches by enthusiastic representatives of the activist groups.  It’s a little worrying that most of them looked even younger than the police!

Now, some would argue that the protest was simplistically anti-capitalist or an opportunity to press a left-wing agenda.  I feel that such a view is itself dangerously simplistic and no reason for leaving a vacuum for extremists to fill.

The scientific consensus is clear: for much of the world to have a good chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, we must slow mean global temperature rise and limit the median to significantly less than 2^oC above pre-industrial.  This in turn means that atmospheric carbon dioxide must be returned to less than 350 ppmV (currently about 390 ppmV and rising fast).  A global plan to achieve that would require the UK to be essentially carbon zero by about 2030.  As responsible guardians of God’s Creation, watchmen on the wall or whatever metaphor seems apt, we need both to proclaim and act on this. [Mark 9:38-40] Those who are not against us are for us.

Charles Jolly December 2011

WHAT DOES DURBAN MEAN?  (A PERSONAL VIEW)                     Charles Jolly 12/12/11

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Around sixty years ago, Saturday morning cinema was the high-light for us boys.  Following community singing, improving documentaries and some Tom & Jerry we ended with the next episode of Superman, the film always stopping short just before catastrophe.  We spent the next week speculating how our hero would get out of this one!

Well, how will they get out of it?  Chris Huhne and the EU may not be everyone’s heroes but in return for extending the Kyoto commitment period by 5 years (objectives due May 2012), and to the cheers of many African countries,  they got the ‘villains’: USA, China and even India, signed up.  But signed up to what?  An ‘historic deal,’ a ‘legally binding’ agreement to cut greenhouse gases, with as yet no agreed targets or  sanctions,.with (as foreseen by the more pessimistic commentators) up to four years to work out the details and another five years to implement?  When what we needed was to start now to have even a 50:50 chance of keeping within a 2 ^oC rise above pre-industrial.  At least the ‘Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action’ will (we are told) set to work quickly and will take on board the next IPPC report, due shortly.

One has sympathy with the negotiators from developing countries: we all want to see the hundreds of millions of poorest people work their way out of grinding poverty (without being caught in the trap of contrived demand and dependency) – that needs energy.  (It also needs attention to several other critical boundary issues, but Durban was about climate in particular.)  One has sympathy with the negotiators from the EU – however much we cut emissions, it is unlikley to cancel the growth from the BRIC.  One even has sympathy with the negotiators from the USA – the Tea Party would drive me to despair.  The science, however, is non-negotiable: unless most of the remaining coal, tar-sands and fracking-gas are left underground (maybe for far future generations to access) humankind and much of the rest of God’s Creation are probably in bad trouble.

It could have been worse.  With no agreement it would effectively have been ‘game over’. The voluntary emission cuts on the table after the Copenhagen conference (even if fully implemented) would imply a disasterous global temperature rise of 3 to 4 ^oC, with a risk even of run-away warming.  Even with the new potential-agreement, however, many poor nations still face severe disruption from rising sea levels etc.  (Here’s irony: the UK, which started the coal-led industrial revolution, is one of the few countries that will, on balance, benefit from moderate global warming.)

Oh yes, it was agreed that by 2020 the poor nations will share $100 billion per year to adapt (Green Climate Fund: farms, water, fisheries, renewable energy etc).  It’s not clear where all this will come from (Tobin tax?), or why it is better to pay this (loan? grant?) than to cancel existing debts, trade fairly and then top up where necessary.  Were I CEO of a transnational, I might cheerfully see some potential profit from all those dollars, not to mention from some nifty carbon-trading.  Were I the leader of a poor country, I’d prefer the only reasonably likely way of stabilising the climate and saving the oceans from acidification, which is rapid decarbonisation of the atmosphere from about 390 to less than 350 ppm of CO_2.

We don’t require amazing new technologies and some Superman – what we have will suffice.  It is not even necessary for us ‘rich’ to wear sack-cloth. (We should, of course, work urgently to ensure a fairer, sustainable, distribution of  Earth’s resources, but that is a separate, if parallel, moral issue.)   We do need some imaginative win-win governmental thinking like tax-and-dividend on all carbon extraction, so that it makes sense for corporations and individuals to leave fossil carbon where it belongs – plus more familiar ideas, such as paying indigenous peoples to look after their forests.

Will humanity survive?  Next edge-of-seats thrilling instalment: Qatar, 26^th November – 7^th December 2012  .  Meanwhile, we need the faith to live the change, educate society and build up the pressure for effective international action.  Laborare est orare, as Benedict said..

NEWS RELEASE

13 December 2011

Church leaders welcome breakthrough at climate change talks – but warn of future dangers

Leaders of the UK’s three largest free churches have welcomed the breakthrough announced at the climate talks in Durban on Sunday morning – 11 December – but warned that time is running out for climate calamity to be avoided.

Commenting on the agreement of a roadmap towards a new climate deal, the Revd Roberta Rominger, General Secretary of the United Reformed Church, said: “This eleventh hour consensus on charting the way towards a legally binding agreement on greenhouse gas emission by 2020 is good news for developed and developing countries alike.  Now all governments must follow it through and take urgent action to cut carbon emissions significantly; failure to do this could have devastating consequences for the world’s most vulnerable communities.”

Revd Dr Martyn Atkins, General Secretary of the Methodist Church in Britain asked, “Why should people with the lowest carbon footprints on earth have to bear the brunt of the increasingly frequent and extreme climate events? Climate change is now threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people who live in some of the poorest countries in the world.  We have a moral obligation to challenge the voices of wealthier countries that place their own economic recovery ahead of the urgent call for climate action. Effective action to create low-carbon economies will require internationally agreed restraints on the production of greenhouse gases.”

Revd Jonathan Edwards, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, pointed out that taking climate change seriously was also a moral and spiritual issue. He said: “As Western nations we urgently need to address our individualistic, consumer lifestyles which are the major drivers of climate change – and recover an understanding of the richness that is related to sufficiency.  We simply cannot celebrate the wonder of God’s creation in one breath and then destroy it in the next.”

Mr Edwards added: “Living more sustainably and simply to enable others to simply live is a crucial part of our Christian calling.”

The three denominations have supported proposals to reduce the carbon footprint of their churches, help members of congregations to reduce carbon emissions, and engage politically to work for national and international change. These proposals are part of the report Hope in God’s Future: Christian Discipleship in the Context of Climate Change which examines the issue of Christian discipleship in the context of climate change. It can be downloaded here: http://www.methodist.org.uk/downloads/10-hope-in-gods-future-210509.pdf