100% RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR THE SOUTH WEST
A talk by John Green
Monday 21 September 7.30 – 9.30 pm
Creative Innovation Centre, Paul Street, Taunton, TA13PF
We can produce all our energy needs in the South West from renewable energy sources. Based on the rigorous analysis provided by The Resilience Centre in a report commissioned by Molly Scott Cato MEP, this talk and discussion will focus on how and by when this will be achieved.
His talk, with 2 short films will last for approx. 1 hour, to be followed by questions.
The South West of England has some of the world’s best renewable energy resources. Developing these resources will strengthen our energy security and boost our rural economies, particularly benefiting some of the more deprived rural areas. Will this generation create the political will needed to rapidly transform our energy systems away from its present focus on fossil fuels and nuclear power, or will it be left to the next generation? Passionate engagement is anticipated.
John Green is an engineer with a PhD in Renewable Energy Systems.
He has 25 years’ experience specialising in energy policy, with particular emphasis on renewable energy and climate change. He is a clean energy campaigner and a director and co-owner of Green Electricity Marketplace.
If you can advertise this please do… posters attached. Pass on to anyone who might be interested.
Taunton Transition Town 
Dear Transition Taunton
I have been unable to find a way of contacting you directly so I hope this gets seen!
I represent CPRE Somerset and have just come across some of your advertising for the event taking place tonight about 100% renewable energy for the South West. A couple of our Trustees, including our Chairman, prof Chris Lewis, have asked me to contact you as they are very concerned about the way in which CPRE is portrayed in the flier for this event – found at http://stophinkley.org/Temporary/JGTalkSept2015.pdf
The text on this flier makes it sound like CPRE is working hand in hand with the nuclear industry and we are anti any kind of renewable energy. This is NOT the case at all. We are not familiar with Jonathan Green and have no idea what has caused him to write as he does but people do sometimes extrapolate from hearing that we have opposed a particular wind turbine or solar park, to assuming we oppose everything of that type. We don’t, of course: there is certainly no organised campaign from CPRE and the nuclear industry to stop renewables in favour of nuclear. We need both.
We do maintain that renewable decisions are much more complex than some people choose to believe. You can see this in every letter we write to planning authorities on the subject – many of which are visible on the planning pages of our website http://www.cpresomerset.org.uk. We do oppose renewables in some cases where the landscape or the environment is badly affected as with some wind turbines proposed for the Mendips, Brent Knoll and other beauty spots. However, we do support renewables in many other cases and our trustees have infact visited solar farms in Somerset to see for themselves how they can be sensitively sited. We and CPRE nationally have also campaigned for solar energy to be situated on factories, houses and brownfield sites rather than in open countryside, Our policies on energy can be clearly seen on our website referred to above and on our national website http://www.cpre.org.uk
In Somerset we are in favour of the current discussion for tidal energy that could be produced from the Severn Estuary including the use of Lagoons, providing the issue of transmission lines is examined properly. On nuclear, we understand the need for Hinkley C but oppose the transmission of the electricity generated across open countryside and would much prefer undergrounding or undersea cables. We are broadly in favour of anaerobic digesters, especially those serving a single farm, although we do have some questions when they reach an industrial scale.
We also put a balanced case for renewables: eg. wind turbines do not make electricity all the time so each turbine needs to have a fossil fuel backup. Perhaps the balanced case that we put is not appreciated by others.
We would welcome the opportunity for a discussion with your organisation to clarify our position. We are only sorry that we are unable to attend the meeting this evening but we only found out about it late last week. It would have been nice to have received a direct invitation and to have had the opportunity to defend ourselves considering that we are being directly mentioned in such a negative way in some of the advertising. Please remember that we are a charity which relies on our membership to survive and this type of negative and inaccurate publicity could put that membership at risk.
Becky Collier, Administrator & Branch Development Officer – CPRE Somerset
Becky,
I am so sorry that you were not able to come along to this informative talk this evening.
I would like to point out that it was not Taunton Transition Town that advertised the talk mentioning your organisation. The link that you added was in fact from Stop Hinckley. So your accusation is completely unfounded. We have not in any way mis-represented your organisation. I think you need to discuss that with Stop Hinckley.
I welcome your support for renewable energy in principle. For Transition it is through renewable energy that we believe the local community can get together and contribute to their own energy production. Community interest companies like Brendon Energy have raised money locally to put solar panels on community buildings. But such companies can only be part of the picture. We have to think bigger; whether that is supporting tidal lagoon systems or onshore wind. But of course we have to do that with sensitivity to the environment. John Green’s talk was presenting a potential alternative for our transitioning away from fossil fuels… the potential for 100% renewables. Surely as good citizens we should evaluate all points. John Green’s talk was very compelling but obviously brought up issues of intermittent power from renewables. But there are solutions out there.
‘To keep the lights on’ we may need to have nuclear following the George Monbiot/Mark Lynas argument. I am sure you are aware of these ‘green’ commentators that support nuclear. They have come out today to say that Hinckley C should be stopped because of the expense, and the inefficient design of the reactor. Personally I am inclined to agree with them. So if we cannot rely on nuclear and we need to be transitioning away from fossil fuels to stop runaway climate change then what. It means a major ramping up of renewable energy production. And maybe we are going to have to take some tough decisions as citizens of Somerset.
Apologies that we did not send out a personal invite to your organisation. We just emailed our supporters and some local politicians to encourage them to hear this talk. If we have a similar event in the near future we will endeavour to let you know.
Dear Taunton Transition Town,
Following your response to Becky at CPRE Somerset, we raised this with Stop Hinkley. They’ve now deleted the event flyer from their website. Val Davey from Stop Hinkley said in her email reply to me: “As you probably realise, this was an event organised by Transition Towns. We helped to publicise the event, but I have no knowledge about the origins of the wording for the flyer. Our newsletter and email simply repeated the wording that they had provided in good faith. I understood that it was produced by the Taunton TT organisers, so I am surprised that when you spoke to them they passed it back to us. As you can see, their flyer does not mention our name.”
It’s frustrating that the person or people responsible for the wording cannot be identified at this point. We are clearly keen that the accusation levelled at CPRE (wherever it came from) is not repeated in any way.
Best wishes,
Nick Clack, Senior Energy Campaigner, CPRE National Office.