There are some difficult choices when you are trying to be green. What may at first sight be the green option may not always be the case.

Take the ubiquitous plastic bag, attacked from all sides as a blot on the landscape, environmentally unfriendly and forming a floating island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean occupying  several millions of square miles (ish – I can’t find the exact figure quoted). But then if you do the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) comparison between plastic bags and paper bags, the plastic ones come out better. Of course, disposing of plastic bags after one use, is pointless and wasteful and no right minded person would condone it. Disposing of them irresponsibly even more so when every supermarket will take them back for recycling. Personally, I use the Bag for Life (no, not the wife – I disposed of and recycled her years ago) and so don’t use the throw away ones, but I have never seen a paper bag for life. Presumably they rip too easily. Tricky or what?

Then there is biodiesel. The EU has set targets for the use of “renewable” fuels to reduce emissions and reduce the rate of temperature rise of our warming climate. This assumes firstly, that the climate is warming. Try reading Michael Crichton’s State of Fear and then tell me how sure you are. Secondly, if it is occurring, that it is man-made and not the result of sun spots, natural earth rhythms or hot air from MPs on the fudging of their allowances (they don’t count as human). And thirdly, if it is happening, that we can do anything about it.

In Finland, a company has developed a vehicle emissions reduction system which utilises Malaysian palm oil. Reductions of up to 50% are claimed. Already, the market demand for Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil has rocketed for , among other uses, cosmetics. If the biodiesel idea takes off, then the demand for palm oil will increase exponentially. Great! Less reliance on Black Gold, Texas Tea (© Beverly Hillbillies some time way back when). But, and you knew that “but” was coming didn’t you, to grow palm trees, vast swathes of rainforest have been logged and it is considered opinion that the rainforests are the lungs of the world. I don’t know just how important rain forests are. I’m not even sure that there is full consensus between the experts. However, one thing is clear, we won’t be able to just say Whoops and re-grow them over night if we find out that they are as critical as many feel and we have just destroyed them all. I read somewhere recently that deforestation accounts for around 20% of greenhouse gas emissions – more than either the US or China. So, we are creating emissions at one end of the supply chain to remove them at the other. See what I mean by tricky. Is there any way that bio-fuels can be grown without destroying rainforests? Can we grow palm trees anywhere else in sufficient quantity? Rape seed is often quoted as a potentially substantial source in the future but it is now being blamed for all sorts of allergies, justifiably or not I have no idea, and many consider it unsightly blot on the English countryside.

Which brings us onto Government policy. Individuals don’t have the power to change the world. Only consolidated action by many, usually as the result of Government policy or regulation can achieve substantial and lasting change. So, the Government, to encourage the green energy revolution, which it  says is at the forefront of its policy, it is cutting funding to the Energy Savings Trust (EST), the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), The Carbon Trust, Envirowise and the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) (new to me but apparently involved in identifying new uses for industrial waste). Overall the cut amounts to around 25%. WRAP alone had similar funding cuts in 2008. Given the current financial crisis, the Government has to make savings everywhere, but to balance the funding against tackling climate change and waste is tricky (that word again). Save the planet or save the country’s finances. I haven’t the space to go into the arguments for and against wind, solar, tidal, wave or geothermal power.

Then let’s come closer to home. In the UK, VAT is charged on replacement windows at currently 15% returning to 17.5% (or more, perhaps 22.5%, as has been suggested) in January. VAT on fuel is 5%. Logically, it would make more sense to charge the higher rate on fuel to encourage less use of that fuel and the lower rate on energy efficient windows to encourage homeowners to upgrade their existing ones. But this raises a separate problem for the poorer families who are already in fuel poverty defined by Warmer Homes Healthier Homes as when a household needs to spend more than 10% of their household income on all domestic fuel use including appliances to heat their home to an adequate level of warmth.  (Almost 50% of all households suffering fuel poverty are inhabited by people aged 60 or above).

In other words, adding to the fuel costs of these homes would increase the amount of fuel poverty in those homes who would then be even more unlikely to afford to improve the thermal efficiency of their windows.

If the global warming-ists are right, then shouldn’t we be spending money helping those who are fuel poor to improve the insulation of their windows so reducing their fuel costs? Even that is not quite as straightforward as you might think. Leaving the finances alone for the moment, if global warming is now irreversible, as some scientists are claiming, shouldn’t we be designing and manufacturing windows (and wall, roofs, floors)  to keep heat out rather than in? If our climate becomes more like southern Europe, then we will be a cooling dominated society rather than a heating dominated one. Do we spend the extra money producing windows that have a Window Energy Rating of Band A, and it can be quite expensive, when the function of the ideal window may be completely different  in the not too distant future?

Like I said, being green can be very, yes you’re there before me,  tricky

By Paul Jervis

Paul Jervis is a leading PVC-U industry expert and Technical Consultant to the British Plastics Federation (BPF). Visit www.pauljervis.net

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Environmental Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.