Countdown to COP17: UK Youth gather for ‘Climate Change Question Time’

Members of the DECC Youth Advisory Panel were invited to a Climate Change Question Time event hosted by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office on Tuesday.

The event also had an international focus, given that we’re less than a month away from this years UN climate change summit (COP17) and was also webcast live to the nation (now available to watch online) as well as international viewers. Audience members were all young people, representing organisations such as PlanUK, UNICEF, UK Youth Climate Coalition and Oxfam.

[Pictured above: DECC YAP panellists, Helena, Elizabeth, Ella, Reuben and Sasha with Chris Huhne (centre)]

We were joined by an interesting line-up of speakers: William Hague (Foreign Secretary),Chris Huhne (Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change), Ambassador Mxakato-Diseko (South African Ambassador for COP17, Durban), and Martin Davidson (Chief Executive at the British Council).Rick Edwards (of Channel 4 fame) chaired the discussion and put questions from the international audience to the panel.

Audience members got to ask questions on a number of topics, including: the UK’s key role in the international climate negotiations, the need for engagement of the wider public (especially young people) on climate change, and most importantly the expected outcomes of this year’s UN climate summit.

Here are just a few of the things to emerge from this discussion.

Climate Change: Still an Inconvenient Truth?

Whilst the entire panel acknowledged the severity of the current economic downturn is extremely relevant in the approach to tackling climate change, it was also agreed that this could not be used an excuse not to act. The South African ambassador described our “opportunity as humanity to stop and think and reassess how we’ve been doing things.” .

“What I do know is that it changes everything we’ve ever known, about economic prosperity, the emancipation of women, and the freedoms that young people have enjoyed in Africa; and will undermine the basis for achieving the Millennium Development Goals” [Ambassador Mxakato-Diseko]

In South Africa they must know all too well of the importance of securing ecnomic growth without jeopardising vital efforts to end poverty. As the only female panellist and the only representative from a developing country, she stressed that although all countries will struggle with the effects of climate change in some way, these effects would be felt first and worst by vulnerable groups of people, particularly women and those in poverty.

Martin Evans, of the British Council, also agreed that the challenge in climate change actually gives us the opportunity to encourage innovation and supporting extraordinary young visionaries and social entrepreneurs who offer new ways of running businesses and operating in our world.

“Future economic growth will depend upon us tackling the issue of climate change successfully”. “The Economic costs of climate change globally [could be] between 5-25% of GDP... but it would only take 1% or 2% of GDP to tackle it.” [William Hague, in reference to shocking figures from the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.]

The Future of Renewable Energy

Other questions to the panel, raised an interesting debate about the future of renewable energy here in the UK. The UK is known in international circles as a leader on climate change- but there was definitely a sense that greater ambition and consistency is needed as far as our domestic energy policy is concerned. Chris Huhne responded by sharing his hope that new low-carbon goods and services industries would push forward a “New Industrial Revolution”, allowing our economy to thrive whilst moving away from fossil fuels for good.

Chris Huhne was proud to announce that DECC has a “4 pronged strategy” for tackling energy security. He explained that his department’s main policy priorities would involve: reducing energy consumption in homes , government support and targets for increasing UK renewable energy production and developing Nuclear power and Carbon Capture and Storage technologies too.

However, this proved to be a contentious topic, given the recent announcement of drastic reductions on Feed-in-tariffs for solar photovoltaic technology in the UK, a decision which many believe will cripple this important and rapidly growing industry. Investment in renewable energy is widely accepted as an essential step towards ending our unhealthy reliance on fossil fuels and grow the economy. It was unfortunate that the climate secretary’s comments did little to reassure the audience of the government’s commitment to support them with financial incentives.

Climate Change & Conflict : A threat to global peace & security?

Another interesting question was asked about the potential for conflicts over natural resources (water & fossil fuels) to intensify under runaway climate change, threatening international security now and in the future.

The foreign secretary agreed that the UK government would be actively “supporting countries working together to manage scarce resources in a co-operative way”. Young people should be engaged more than ever before in “the evolution of a new diplomacy”, given their unique positions as the future stewards of the world, according to Ambassador Mxakato-Diseko. She was hopeful that young people would be integral in solving global problems such as climate change and that conflict could be successfully avoided by planning ahead and “banking on the future”, harnessing the ideas and dynamism of youth.

Countdown to COP: Hope or despair??

Finally, the panel expressed mixed feelings on the outcomes of the upcoming UN climate summit. This year could be our last stop on the road to climate catastrophe, as far as civil society activists and the scientific consensus are concerned .The pressure must therefore be kept on negotiators to make something happen, and fast, if we are to avoid dangerous levels of warming. For the world’s poor and vulnerable people, the outcomes of COP17 simply must be fair, ambitious and binding, if they are to have any chance of survival.

Unfortunately, the panellists conceded that COP17 is unlikely to yield any unilateral agreement-somewhat understandable if we remember just how many BIG issues are on the table- but agreed it should be recognised as a ‘signpost’ towards the framework we need to achieve. With climate change threatening the quality of life that young people will experience in the near future, it was hardly surprising that this consensus left us in the audience less than satisfied. But, there were some promising elements of the discussion, for example; it was encouraging to hear Chris Huhne reaffirm the UK government’s commitment to a second term of the Kyoto Protocol, with plans to push for this amongst the EU member states, although this is by no means the only action required.

The clear message from this discussion, was that it is essential that we keep up the pressure on our policy-makers here in the UK, before and during the UN climate talks in Durban.

Scottish National Discussion Days

In early July as part of the Scottish Government National discussion days 'Low Carbon Scotland' campaign- YoungScots hosted a collaborative event with different youth groups from around Scotland. I was honoured to be asked to co-host this event; as a Department of Energy and Climate Change Youth Advisory Panelist and as UKYCC Government Liaison for Scotland.
By morning the new Scottish Minister for Climate Change, Stuart Stevenson joined in on the discussion. He genuinely open armed the youth perspective reiterating a need for a long term strategy for tackling Climate Change that exceeds beyond a short term governmental lifespan. A strategy that can only logically be youth led.
The Local Investigation Teams represent urban, semi-urban and rural regions of Scotland and have been looking at different elements within Climate Change.
The teams came from Balfron High School, Rathbone Training and Lochgilphead Joint Campus and all used film to communicate the impact of Climate Change on their local communities. I was astounded by the end product from all those involved and the creativeness used to portray their individual messages.

The afternoon took on another flavour and while the expert panel; Minister Stewart Stevenson, Fiona Page, Catriona Chalmers, Angus Duncan and Ian Williams gave critique the highlight for me was the roundtable discussions. There was mixed opinion between the groups. The discussions, I believe, even started to make the pessimists consider their own energy use The day ended with ‘Top 3 Action Points’ in relation to what they the teams could do to tackle Climate Change, and what barriers they might face in doing this.
The teams cast votes throughout the day sharing their opinion on Climate Change and the results alongside the Scottish Government survey will be available in August this year.

Grabbing the Ministers attention is only half the battle. If we truly want to meet our Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 then we need to align and unite all young people.
This YoungScot event stood testament to this. The event kept young people at the heart of the debate with young representation on the expert panel, young presenters and creatively capturing the top actions of the day by cartoon.
The messages were relevant and this simplicity opened up Climate Change to a wider young audience.


If you would like to know more about YoungScot please follow link to their website http://www.youngscot.org/
If you would like to know more about Graeme's wonderful cartoons http://www.ogilviedesign.co.uk

June Meeting: Carbon Capture and Storage

The new team outside DECC

Last week was the second meeting of our re-launched panel, with still more new faces. We quickly learnt each other's names thanks to Rose's hilarious 'burger & fries' ice breaker. After whizzing through administrative discussions, we split into 5 groups to discuss what we want to achieve this year relating to our 5 themes - SMART meters, Carbon capture and storage (CCS), Land-based renewables, Consumer perceptions and Women in energy.

Below is what the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) team hope to do this year, and what we heard from a member of DECC's office of CCS later in the afternoon. There'll be more about the other teams soon.

Carbon capture and storage does exactly what it says on the tin: you burn coal or gas; you stop the carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere and contributing to climate change; you stick it deep underground instead. Simple! Oh, actually there's a lot more to it than that... For a start, one option is to capture the carbon dioxide after the fuel has been burnt (post-combustion), another is to remove it from the fuel before it's burnt (pre-combustion), or a third option is to burn the fuel in pure oxygen which makes capturing the carbon dioxide afterwards a lot easier (oxy-fuel combustion). Then there's the issue of compressing the carbon dioxide once you've 'captured' it, then transporting it, then storing it in a safe place for... well forever, I guess! Basically, the technology can seem complicated. So our first project is to produce simple explanation, probably in video and printed format, of how CCS actually works and what the technology really involves. That's aim number one.

Aim number two is to evaluate the potential of CCS as a route to affordable, low-carbon energy. There are quite a few CCS-sceptics on the panel, but as DECC currently supports CCS research, we're going into this with an open mind. We'd be more than happy to have all our concerns completely dismissed. So we're going to do lots of research, and report what we find back to you in the form of a mini-report. It will inform you about the following so you can make up your own minds, as well as giving our own overall opinion and recommendations:

Feasibility. To date, there are no commercial-scale CCS plants in operation. A few small pilots exist, including one at Longannet power station in Scotland, which also looks likely to host the UK's first commercial-scale pilot set to be operational by 2015. The fact that the technology hasn't yet been proven to work is of some concern, but already we've seen that research is taking place around the world, and the industry seems confident.

Economics. How much will CCS cost? How can you even guess how much it will cost when the technology is still largely in development? We heard that the International Energy Agency estimates that reducing emissions and tackling climate change will cost 70% more if we don't use CCS. Yet, other estimates claim that CCS will 'probably be cheaper than offshore wind' per MW produced. A lot depends on what you take into account... for example the cost of development, the profits from exporting British technology, and the increasing cost of coal.

Environmental impacts. Ok, so CCS will reduce a power station's carbon dioxide emissions by 90% which is obviously great, but what about everything else - Coal mining, lots of pipelines, the risk of carbon dioxide leaks, and everything else that comes from burning coal. Happily, coal power stations already have very strict pollution controls. And we heard that 'on-land' pipelines will actually be 2m below ground, so natural landscapes are off the hook. Plus there is lots of research currently being done into the potential impacts of leaks and how to deal with them or prevent them. But none of this addresses where the coal and gas is coming from in the first place.

Health. Again, fuel extraction (coal mining etc) and the rest of a power station's emissions are our main concerns. But we'll also look into if there's anything else to worry about. Nothing has jumped out at us yet!

Sustainability. Taking into account all of the above, even if CCS is perfect, how long can we rely on it for, and is it fair to the rest of the world and future generations for us to do so? We learned that in 100 years maximum, the UK will run out of space to store our captured carbon dioxide! So we'll have to find another solution then anyway. Which brings us onto another question... Why not just invest in renewables instead?

Policy. We're also going to look closely at DECC's policies on CCS. How and why have they been created, and are they good enough to reduce the UK's carbon dioxide emissions in line with the 2050 pathways.

So if you have any concerns you'd like us to look into, if you think you can reassure us about CCS, or if you happen to be awarded £1bn from the government to develop CCS and want to help us, we'd love to hear from you. Just comment below or email elizabeth@think2050.org

- Tom M

Smart Meters: what, why, how and when?

This is a digest of the presentation on the roll out of SMART meters by SMART meters team, Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to the DECC YAP (Youth Advisory Panel), London, 5^th May 2011.

The Mass roll out of SMART meters begins in 2014 when householders across the UK will be encouraged by energy providers to switch to next generation meters which enable people to monitor and manage their domestic energy consumption. Unlike traditional meters, SMART meters provide insight into how much energy is being used at any given time and by which appliances in the home. Large amounts of data will be collected on energy use to enable providers to refine their pricing structures to offer flexible and innovative tariffs to consumers.

Established est. 1130am

Hello and welcome, one and all to our very first blog!

Its our very first as, today, we were told that we could drop the word pilot and just be DECC's Youth Advisory Panel! So first off, happy birthday and congratulations to us! As well as a big thank you to DECC!

Before I get any further I suppose I should introduce myself, I'm Rose and I am one of the panel members that has been involved from a time when a youth consultancy in DECC was just a gleam in one's eye, but not even 6 months later here we are, and i have to admit, its a very impressive day to have been part of.

I cannot tell you how many hours in offices or online have been spent discussing, finalising, drafting..planning, but we are here now, which is all that really matters! Aside from me, there are roughly 15 or so of us around the table, representing all sorts from all over, and we hope to be about 25 by the end of the month..Today we kicked off with a short discussion of how the panel would look for the next few months and also the description of a 'youth liaison officer' with regards to what that actually means!

We discovered that the Panel would be effectively a group of young people representing ourselves as young people, a member of the local community and a member of our respective organisation and then consulting with DECC as well a DECC consulting with us. We also managed to establish what a 'youth liaison officer' actually was, which turns out to be our fantastic facilitator Kirsty, who does a wonderful job at organising us as well as organising DECC as far as coming together at the same time and in the same room is concerned, no mean task most of us can tell you!

Now as this beautifully formed and united group of young people representing ourselves et. al we took a bit of time to actually consult on 'the calculator' which was a seriously neat bit of kit [we devised, after a bit of oohing and ahhing which will allow the user to create 'a path to 2050' with there own preferences to whether it is better to ban light bulbs or to make light bulbs as energy efficient as is humanly possible. The path to 2050, as you may like to know is our current focus, meaning that for the foreseeable future [until December] our work will be around this route, what i means to you, us and everyone else, and making sure DECC knows what you think it looks like..

[The road to 2050, by the way, is the idea of how we will all reach the 80% reduction of emissions by...[you got it..]..2050.., more info can be found here]

Our next session focused around our guiding principles as a group and what this would mean for anything we did, in particular 'the report' spelled as such as I am not yet sure what else to call it, 'the report' is as the name suggests, a report on the path to 2050, a document we'll create to present to DECC to show-case your views, however we'll also be doing it in a less papery, readingy type way because, if we're honest, no-one needs another document to read.., 'the report' despite the fact I don't have a name for it was the focus for the rest of our day, which delightfully was spent out side sat on the grass in amongst a park, rattled every few moments by London's building work - a much more glorious a place to talk about saving the planet than an office, no matter how many stereotypes it fills.. even if i do say so myself -[anyway]. It is proposed that we, over the coming months, will under take a series of tasks, much like the 12 labours of Hercules, but far more enjoyable; in groups of three or so, we will visit coal and nuclear power stations, wind farms and cow farms, the good, the bad and the ugly as well as the just plain crazy, with open arms and informed minds...we will visit, learn and share, also talking to the local communities around each site we visit to form a justified, reliable and honest opinion of whichever site we see.

Our second task is that of consulting as many young people as is physically possible, a task seeing us to freshers fares and school assemblies as well as CAT meetings and residentials a like, gathering opinions, sharing knowledge and accumulating the various visions of our road to 2050. By the end of our pilgrimage we hope to have contacted with thousands, if not, dare i say it, millions of young people, as well as local communities [both here and abroad] so that we, as a collective can form a report which can be released informing one and all of our..and your, work with the hope that we have influenced thousands into action, in the war on energy but have also given clear direction and advice on what we, the people [yes I'll paint a red hand on my face soon] want the government to do, i may note now we are also hoping for a formal reply from DECC...however before i go right off into a dream world, I'll talk about how we finished our day and what we want you to do!

We finished our day, surprisingly enough, by doing a similar thing to what I'm doing now, as we we're joined by Charles Hendry who is Minister of State for Energy which was a wonderful session to finish with as he seemed to be brimming with confidence in us as well as an unbeatable enthusiasm, which, as you can imagine, left us on a high!

After a bit of tea, coffee and water melon, we decided the date for our next meeting, which shall be at the end of July, so until then we will be toiling away online, perhaps we will even see you inbetween! But if not, look out for our next blog and have a fantabulous morning, and please, any comments thoughts suggestions or pictures you would like to pass onto us, we will accept them any time, just post them here!

Much green and eco love..

Rose x