Heat pumps are solution
An edited version of this article was published by The Birmingham Post
30 October 2008
I have over the last few years been trying to change my life to reduce my Carbon Dioxide emissions.
There is no doubt that we must all do this if we are to prevent the world heating to such a point that human civilisation collapses and very few humans survive. The dinosaurs lived for 160 million years. We have only existed for 160 thousand years. If we do not change the way we are abusing our planet, we will be gone within a few hundred years.
Most people across the world now accept that there is a serious problem. What we lack is a sufficient sense of urgency to deal with it. By 2020 at current rates, we will have gone beyond two degrees of warming. If we stop there, there will be some terrible damage but we could live on, in a warmer planet. If we don’t stop, the problem will escalate out of control. All the ice will melt so the one third of sun that is currently deflected by the ice will be absorbed. The Amazon will combust and add massively to the Carbon Dioxide emissions. And the Siberian peat bogs will releases masses of methane which will cause more warming. When it gets this bad, it will be unstoppable and very, very hot. The last ice age, when there was a thick sheet of ice above Birmingham and no humans in existence, was only 6 degrees colder than it is today.
But it is the economic downturn that is now on everyone’s mind. People will lose their jobs and houses. My own judgement is that it will be longer and deeper than the terrible times we experienced in the early 80s and 90s.
The crisis has been caused by a massive growth of credit across the world. In the UK, the same old houses increased three times in price in 10 years. People borrowed massively. It was a big bubble that had to burst. And it has burst at the same time across the world. Most banks have over-lent and would have gone bankrupt without state intervention. And confidence has been destroyed, which means a long recession.
We need to use this double crisis as an opportunity to build a new settlement. We need to live more sustainably and this includes investing in the new technologies that will create energy without using fossil fuels. This is a big opportunity for Birmingham. We have lost most of our manufacturing. If only we could get ahead and invest in the new renewable energy technologies, we could generate good quality jobs for the future.
One of the new technologies that can heat our homes, give us hot water, with cheaper bills and massively reduced carbon dioxide emissions is ground source heat. I have just installed it. It meant drilling four holes 40 yards deep and installing pipes that draw in heat from the earth. If you have more space, you can lay them in a long trench. This is simply heat from the sun beating on the earth for billions of years. You then install a heat pump that concentrates that heat and connect it to your central heating system. It works perfectly.
The technology was invented in Britain but developed in Sweden. They now have it all over the country and are no longer allowed to heat their homes with gas or oil. Swedish bills and Carbon Dioxide emissions are massively reduced.
On November 25th, I am meeting with the Deputy Leader of the Council, together with the firm that installed my system to see if we could start to install this system in Birmingham. We could start with the Council housing that needs new heating systems installed. I hope we can also look for ways to make it easy for owner occupiers to join in.
Lots of new jobs, cheaper heating, a massive reduction in Carbon Dioxide emissions. That is the lead that Birmingham could give.
Clare Short MP
