Urban myths about traffic

 

Greater Cambridge partnership has proposed a “Sustainable Travel Zone” (essentially a congestion charge) for Cambridge City for 2027. FaceBook and NextDoor and probably other social media have lit up with people objecting. Many of the comments trot out tired old urban myths (or alternative truths.), Here is the start of a list and some comments. Feel free to suggest more, add comments or provide references. I will edit and expand this so do come back.

1. Closing roads will cause more traffic elsewhere

Of course, few roads are closed. Many ‘modal filters’ allow busses and other execemt traffic through. Even ‘dumb’ bollards and planters allow pedestrians, wheelchairs, mobility scooters, cyclists and even the odd motor scooter.

The motor traffic using rat runs cause unproportunate disturbance and danger to the residents, so the vehicals diverted to larger distributor roads will often not be noticed.

Closing rat runs has a significant affect in causing people to choose other modes of transport, other times to travel, combining journeys or even not travelling at all. This can be more significant than the increased mileage or journey times of those finding other routes

Few journeys are from one side of the restriction to the other. The increased mileage or journey times for alternative routes may not be very significant.

2. Road pricing/congestion charges penalise the poor.

Two thirds of all private vehicles are owned by the richest half of the population. Two thirds of the poorer half have no car at all.

Lots of people will have to pay to drive in the STZ and the GCP hopes to raise 50 million pouns from them, but in general better off people will use the STZ more and pay more.

(£50M collected from the GCP area of about 250,000, means we all pay £200 on average.)

3. Cyclists don’t pay for the roads they use.

Roads are mostly paid for from general taxation. Most of the construction and maintenance of roads is paid for by the local authority from the local rates and grants from central government.

“Road tax” is properly called “Vehicle Exise Duty” and is collected by central government and added to general tax receipts. In any case, VED does not cove the massive costs of road traffic, which does not just include construction and maintenance, but the cost of policing, accidents and pollution.

4. Electric cars will solve the pollution/climate change problem.

Electric vehicles are not pollution free. The electricity is not emissions free, its just created somewhere else. An increasing proportion is generated from renewable sources, but we will not get to 100% for some time.

Even if all electric cars were charged with 100% renewable electricity, we still have to account for the materials, energy and pollution from the construction and maintenance of the vehicle. There is also a problem the tyres slowly degrade and emit tiny particles (PM2.5) which contribute to urban pollution, causing respiratory and other health issues.

It is unlikely all new cars will be electric, as some people’s travel demands will be incompatible with the range or charging times. Lots of vans and most HGVs will continue to be diesel powered for some time.

Given cars last for 10- 15 years, it will be 2035 before we see the majority of petrol and diesel cars replaced by electric cars.

Of course, replacing every car with an electric model will do nothing about the congestion and parking problems.

5. Cyclists ride irresponsibly

“These are the restless roads, every one a war” (Mark Knopfler)

Most cyclists recognise in any collision between a bike and another vehicle, the cyclist comes of worst. It is true a small minority break the law and take unnecessary risks. However, actions that drivers may find surprising are often taken by the cyclist to protect themselves. For example:

• Cyclists may use the centre of the lane to discourage cars from overtaking and to give the cyclist room to manoeuvre if vehicles come to close. (This is now advice in the new Highway Code)
• They may also cycle in the middle of the road because the space next to the kerb is full of potholes, broken drain covers and the risk of pedestrians stepping in to their path. 
• When turning right, it may seem safer to dash across the road than to wait in the middle of a stream of traffic. (The highway code advises you may wait on the left and then cross both lanes when they are free, but can be equally problematic.)

Cyclists will use cycleways when they are well designed and safe, but often they leave something to be desired. In particular, in Cambridge there are sections that:

• end because the road has got narrow.
• end so there is room for two vehicle lanes at a junction.
• end before a junction or a roundabout
• have a stop line at each side road
• are too narrow for two cyclists to overtake
• are not signed, so you don’t know they are available.
• Are shared use and too congested to use
• are shared use but require you to get over the curb to join it.

If more facilities were designed and constructed to the national standard, more cyclists would follow them.

And of course, while most people drive carefully, its not as if some motorists do not do irresponsible or unexpected things, like speeding, parking in cycle lanes, passing too close to cyclists, turning with out indicating, talking on their mobile phones.

Dog walking in the Mill Road Cemetery

This week I have been mostly writing about dog walkers!
I have been suggesting that dog walkers in the Mill Road Cemetery might be asked to consider keeping their pets on a lead and under control during the spring and nesting season.

A Thrush in the Cemetery (Andrew Dobson)

As well as all the signs of new growth, I have also noticed small birds checking out the undergrowth for nesting sites. I have also noticed uncontrolled dogs chasing birds from the bushes and across the open spaces. While it is unlikely that any dogs will either catch a bird or eat a hedgehog, the continual disturbance must make it increasingly hard for the wildlife in the cemetery to breed successfully.
I am aware that the dog walkers in the cemetery have been vociferous in the past at any suggestion that there should be any restrictions, but I would like to remind everyone:

• Dog walking has only been allowed in the cemetery in the last 20 years
• The council declared a biodiversity emergency in May 2019
• Mill Road Cemetery is included on the register of Cambridge City Wildlife Sites
• The restrictions would only apply during the nesting seasons. 

All we need is for the City Council, Friends of Mill Road Cemetery or the Parochial Burial Grounds Management Committee (who represent the parishes that actually own the ground) to put up a sign in March until May reminding dog walkers to respect other uses of the cemetery and in particular to protect wildlife by keeping their dos on the lead during this sensitive season.

So here is a list of people I have bothered. Maybe others might also email them too, use their social media to promote the issue or post objections below.
Parochial Burial Grounds Management Committee

Friends of Mill Raod Cemetery
Cambridge City Parks and Rec.
Streets and open spaces team
Council Dog Warden

Local Councilors:
Richard Robertson
Kelley Green
Mike Davey

Executive Councillor for Climate Change, Environment and City Centre 
Executive Councillor for Planning Policy and Open Spaces 

and also:
Wildlife Trust for BCN, who list the Cemetery as a City Wildlife Site

Local Plans

It seems that the Mill Road "Ironworks" development is not the only place where Hills/CIP are getting away with  ignoring planning guidance. There was a long and detailed letter from Sonia Spinks of Friends of St.Albans Road Rec, "Our green space is not up for grabs" in the 09/10/19 edition of the Cambridge Independent. [No link to letters page, but a number of article including this.] So I had to write a comment:

"It was good to see the long and detailed letter from Sonia Spinks (Friends of St.Albans Road Rec, Our green space is not up for grabs) detailing the contradictions between the local plans and supplementary planning guidance and the projects submitted and approved by the Cambridge/South Cambridgeshire planning department. I could write an equally long tale about the 2018 Local Plan, the consultation process, the agreed SPD (all at 167 dwellings),  the phase 1 planning application (182 dwellings) and the subsequent planning approval (231 dwellings) for the over development of the Mill Road Depot  site. [Planning slip on Mill Road Depot has featured at length in previous blogs!]

The City Council has asked us to comment on the "Making Space for People" SPD  and is now asking us to engage in the development of the next Local Plan. If developers are allowed to ride roughshod over both the local plan and any subsequent Planning Guidance, it is difficult to understand the purpose of these consultations. Until Cambridge/South Cambridgeshire has a planning department that is able to understand its own planning guidance and stand up to pressure from developers, we can only anticipate people becoming more and more disillusioned with the planning process and more unhappy about the developments that are being forced on them. If Cambridge residents do not think the councils are engaging in these consultation exercises in good faith then the responses will we limited and local democracy will suffer. "

Mill Road Depot Phase II

 My objection to the previous application for this site can be seen below. The 2019 proposal (19/0175/FUL, The erection of an apartment building (45 dwellings)) extends the development and increases the density. This is my objection to Patricia Coyle at Cambridge City Planning Services

I wish to object to the further development of the Mill Road Depot site as proposed by the planning application 19/0175/FUL as it contravenes the adopted SPD for the site on a number of grounds:

Housing Density

Urban Grain

Size and views

Sustainability

Introduction

This proposal completes the development of the Mill road depot site, which was subject to extensive planning consultations in 2015 and ‘16 and resulted in the “Mill Road Depot, Planning and Development Brief” published and approved by the Cambridge City Council in March 2017 and “carried forward for adoption as a Supplementary Planning Document at the same time as the Local Plan” to become effective in April 2018.

In December 2017, between the agreement to adopt the SPD and its activation, the CIP applied to develop 75% of the site. The plan, approved by the planning committee exceeded the recommendation of the SPD in terms of both density, number of dwelling and height of building, but provided none of the community facilities that were recommended by the SPD. It was suggested that these would be addressed in a Phase II proposal.

I submitted an objection to the phase I development sent to the planning officer [Sav Patel] on 1^st Feb 2018 and posted on the council’s planning portal “idox” site. The text of the objection can be read at http://goldfin.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-page.html.

This application fails to meet the recommendation of the SPD in terms of density, urban grain, sustainability and the size of the building.

Density

The 2017 application increased the proposed density of the site by almost 40% from the SPD. Since then the developers have submitted two further applications:

18/1947/S73 “application to vary condition 2 of planning permission …” and

19/0175/FUL “The erection of an apartment building (45 dwellings) ...”

Both of these applications request that more dwellings are developed on the site. The table below summarises the process of development creep:

Proposal	Number dwellings	Site area (Ha)	Density (dph)
Mill Road Depot SPD	167	2.7	62
Phase I application 17/2245/FUL	182	2.1	86
Section 73 application	186	2.1	88
Phase II application 19/0175/FUL	231	2.7	85

It must be noted that this density is substantially more than the surrounding St. Mattews area and more than almost all of the development sites listed in the Cambridge Local Plan 2014. Indeed the site opposite the depot of Mill Road, R9, Travis Perkins DevonshireRoadhas a proposed density of only 35dph.

Urban Grain and Scale

The SPD states:

“3.2.3 Proposals should provide a contextual approach to scale and massing in response to the typical domestic scale of development on surrounding streets”

The proposal for the apartment building B.01, as shown for example on page 13 of the “Views assesment” document, dwarfs the existing buildings as seen from Mill Road and the railway bridge.

Having relocated the building from the position in the SPD adjacent to the Old Library, B.01 is now more closely related to the language school buildings and the buildings opposite on Mill Road. To respond to the “ scale and massing” of these buildings, a 5 storey building, orientated North/South is entirely out of context.

Figure 27 on Page 40 of the SPD shows a block as “new mixed use zone with courtyard” of appximatley 13m x 37m located in the 3 and 4 storey zones of figure 42 on Page 54 which would suggest a height of no more than 13 metres. Ignoring the suggestion of a courtyard, the potential block has a volume of no more than 6,253 cubic metres.

On p31 the D&A states:

“The site layout is also consistent with the framework plan (Fig 27) in the Planning and Development Brief (SPD) with the exception of the location of the linear building, which has moved further east to mitigate any impact on the Language School ...”

The plans show a block B_01 as 18m x 50m and the elevation shows 5 stories and 16m to the eaves. The volume of B_01 exceeds 14,400 and so is almost two and a half times more massive than the allocation in the SPD.

Sustainability

The SPD specifically mentions the importance of sustainability issues, for example:

4.8.3 A combination of passive design solutions and building design solutions should form the basis of site energy strategies for future schemes.

4.8.11 There are likely to be opportunities to enhance the ecology and biodiversity of the site.

4.8.13 Flat and low pitched roofs could provide an opportunity to improve the ecology of the site and contribute to the general increase in biodiversity.

However, there is no evidence that Block B_01 has been designed with sustainability in mind.

The Cambridge Investment Partnership’s Design and Access Statement (prepared by Allies and Morrison) does refer to issues in the SPD, but then refers to the Ecology and Tree reports by consultants, Property Risk Consultants Ltd for more information These make no specific recommendations or design proposals.

The statements in the Design and Access statement refer Block B_10. Block B_01 is the most massive structure in the proposal and contains the greatest number of dwellings. However, it is orientated east-west, limiting the use of passive solar design or PV solar panels. It has no measures to enhance the ecology and biodiversity of the site

Conclusion

The current proposal exceeds the requirements of both the SPD and the Local Plan and does nothing to enhance the site in relation to Phase I.

I hope the Council will recommend rejection of this proposal to the planning committee.

Climate emergency

In response to a (more demanding) e-petition, the Cambridge City Council declares a "Climate Emergency".

Cambridge Extinction Rebellion say "There were no new targets and no new policies. An existing “aspiration” for zero carbon by 2050 remains. This is far too late. The council promised to widely publicise this state of emergency, a concession to our demands.The feeling overall was that the council displayed a lack of political courage.Politics-as-usual will not suffice in the face of an emergency. The fight goes on, as we knew it would."

So
To Councillor Rosy Moore, Executive Councillor for Environmental Services
Dear Ms. Moore

Congratulations for proposing and approving the Climate Emergency declaration on
the 21st. Feb.

I am concerned that the councils motion is to respond to this emergency by
promising that it "Will continue" with its current actions and will establish a
Cambridge Climate Charter which is a repeat of its actions in 2009.

I am also concerned that the motion is complacent in its self congratulations
for being on target of a 20% reduction in emissions by 2021, a trajectory that
merely follows the trend since 2015 and only touches "net zero" after 2042 if
the council can continue to make reduction at that rate. The IPCC says we must
reach this target by 2035 if we have any hope of avoiding catastrophic climate
change. [In reality, after you have exhausted the low hanging fruit, you may be
pressed to make reductions of 20% of the last five year plan (not the 2015
figure). The exponential decline could result in the council only reach 33% of
its target.]

At the same time, your strategy seems only to be concerned with projects which
have a real financial payback time, and therefore should be seen primarily as
good management.

I am also concerned that your concept of carbon reduction is only concerned with
direct emissions. Can you say when the council will become concerned with:

The impact of continued growth in the city and the Greater Cambridge area

The impact of the embodied carbon in the materials to deliver the significant 
infrastructure projects proposed by the Greater Cambridge partnership and CIP.

and how these will be considered in your "Net Zero" aspiration.

I look forward to your comments.

Best wishes, Andy

--
"If I knew the world was to end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today."
attributed to Martin Luther (1483-1546)

List Of Tips

It is a relief that the latest IPCC report Global Warming of 1.5°C has been largely well received. We can tell because there has been a spate of Lists Of Tips for people to reduce their emissions. Many repeat some of the old Urban Myths. Carbon Conversations shied away for giving List Of Tips (although we did list over 100 actions with their comparative impact) but presented Rules Of Thumb for sustainable housing, travel, eating, consumption and talking to friends and family.  I have extracted them below from the old "In Time For Tomorrow, the Carbon Conversations Handbook"

Making New Housing Sustainable and Energy Efficient.

A short talk to the Calder Valley Community Land Trust on the 22nd August 2018

"I have a little to add to the presentations by Duncan Roberts[1] and Marianne Heaslip[2].

I started work as a building services engineer, the job of making sure the heating, ventilation, lighting and plumbing work. These are essential elements for creating sustainable buildings and have been involved in low energy projects, modelling and measuring for some years.

I would like to introduce 3 ideas that I think helps keep sustainability on the project agenda.

Avoiding sustainability slip,

The value of measurement,

And on being a good citizen.

Recent allegations against Oxfam

Dear Oxfam
Thank you for your email and the concern over your employees actions.

Mill Road Depot redevelopment

The Cambridge Council Depot on Mill Road is being relocated and the site redevelopped for housing. This has been on the cards since 2014, when the Local Plan idenified the site as suitable for housing. After a consultation exercise, the council approved a Planning and Development Brief, but also set up the Cambridge Investment Partnership, a jount venture with Hills to undertake the development. After further consultation, the CIP have developped a proposal, which I feel is significantly flawed.

In general, the proposals offered by the CIP are not in keeping with the Mill Road Depot Supplementary Planning Document adopted by the City Council in March 2017, and have not taken into account the views of local residents expressed at previous meetings about the site.

In particular, I have concerns about issues relating to:
Density
Urban Grain
Open Space and Gardens
Community facilities and additionality
“Affordable” housing and alternative tenures.

Rejected by the Labour Party

Subject: Re: Supporter Application
To: Supporter Applications
Cc: daniel@cambridgelabour.org.uk
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2015

Dear Labour Party
Thank you for your email.
I do not understand why you have rejected my application. Your email is
particularly unhelpful since it does not explain the process of pursuing "an
application to join Labour as a full member" and the phone number given does not
work.

Cambridge Carbon Footprint is 10 years old!

When Rosemary and I delivered a workshop in Bristol for the Climate Psychology Alliance , on the 10th July, talking about our new book, we realised it was 10 years to the day since we started talking about Carbon Footprints.

First Cambridge ITFT? talk

Rosemary and I had a chance to try out our 'launch' presentation at Cambridge Architectural Research on Wednesday. It seemed to go down a treat.
Rosemary starts with a slide, saying that in polite society you were not supposed to bring up sex, death or religion and now you must add climate change.

So at the end, no one asked about sex, death or religion or climate change!
I think we need to add psychotherapy to the list too.
I hope there are no climate change deniers amongst my colleagues, so I guess we got off lightly. Next week we are at the Scott Polar.We hope lots of friends will be there too.

Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh

In Time for Tomorrow is being published on the 14th Jan. Rosemary and I will be speaking about Carbon Conversations and signing books at at least 3 events in February:

Cambridge: Monday 9^th February, 6pm – 7.30pm.
Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge.
In time for tomorrow: Why is climate change so easy to ignore? A talk and reception.
Further details from Rosie Amos ra395@cam.ac.uk.



Oxford: Thursday, 12th February 2015, 7:00 – 9:00 pm,
Blackwell’s Bookshop, 51 Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BQ.
To book click here

Edinburgh: Thursday, 19th February 2015, 5.00 – 7.00 pm,
Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI), High School Yards, Edinburgh EH1 1LZ.
To book  click here.

In time for Tomorrow?

"One of the twenty most promising solutions to climate change..." The Guardian

Why is climate change so easy to ignore?

In Time for Tomorrow? offers empathy, encouragement and a practical path to anyone who feels concerned but lost, angry or powerless about this urgent topic. Rosemary Randall and Andy Brown help us confront our everyday denial and collective resignation. Written as the handbook for the ground-breaking Carbon Conversations groups, In Time for Tomorrow? will help you minimise your impact and give you the courage to speak out.
 "...explores the landscape of hope and generates lasting enthusiasm." George Marshall

Publication date: January 14th 2015
Price: £11.99
212 pp, full colour, illustrated with more than 80 stories from people initiating change in their personal and collective lives.
Available to pre-order from: info@surefoot-effect.com
The Surefoot Effect Community Interest Company, 17 Victoria Place, Stirling, FK8 2QT
www.surefoot-effect.com www.carbonconversations.org

Values and Frames

A short explanation given for the Alternatives to Economic Growth, Cambridgeshire Green Parties, 18th February 2012.

While there is nothing ‘new’ in this approach, a number of threads have been bought together by WWF and Oxfam and others. I’m an engineer, but I am going to tell you about a social psychology experiment.

Tim Kasser, Social Psychologist at Knox College, http://www.knox.edu/tkasser.xml, Intrigued by a flyer for a college car share scheme, which talked mostly of saving money and time, set up a small experiment to probe the values involved:

He took 3 groups. One shown a flyer with all the positive reasons: meeting people, helping others etc. (but nothing environmental), selfish reasons: saving money, time etc. and a mixed control group. After asking the subjects to design a logo Tim watched where they disposed of their paper. A higher percentage of the students who had had intrinsic engagement put their paper in the recycling!

I am no psychologist, I am an engineer. I have worked in the area of energy in buildings since the 70’s because I thought it was important and that things should not just be done better, but in some way done right. I spent a lot of time thinking that if people were given good advice, they would make the correct decisions. We talked about ‘whole life costing’ or ‘cost benefit analysis’ An information led approach. But did clients and developers build any better buildings?

The 80’s and 90’s, saw a changing ideology driven by Thatcherism, New Labour and Neo-liberalism stressing the power of the market. Did a market based approach to housing development make any difference?

Cambridge Carbon Footprint initially drew on advice from social marketing experts and worked on training volunteers to think about the audience in terms of marketing typologies and targeting messages to their concerns. If your contact is acquisitive, stress the money saving from not overfilling the kettle.

But we also realised that to change the way people behaved also needed them to change the way they saw things. That they could only deal with frightening ideas if they felt that others were there with them. Persuading people how to fill the kettle was not going to lead to cultural or systemic change. Carbon Conversations was our contribution.

The work of Tom Crompton, (from Oxfam) shows how values may lie at the heart of much of how we act. http://valuesandframes.org/download/reports/common_cause_report.pdf Values are our guiding principles. Research has shown that there are a number of clearly identified values that are common to a wide number of societies and cultures and that their relationship to each other are also common. The big map(below) shows how this works.

Interestingly, we also see that people hold all values to some extent , but the relative importance may change with time and context. But all the same, if one value is being engages, the associated or adjacent values may also be engaged and of course the antagonistic values will be subdued. The map shows the groupings that have been identified and the pie chart –the circumplex – shows another way of thinking.

The key concept is that on the top right we see labels Universalism and Benevolence, grouped as Self-Transcendence by the academics and Intrinsic by campaigners and ‘bigger than self’ by engineers like me.

At the bottom left is self enhancement, or extrinsic values related to power and achievement.

Linked to this is the concept of ‘Framing’. Here we are recognising that all communication puts the subject in a conceptual frame. George Lakoff in the evocatively titled Don’t think of an elephant (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Think-Elephant-Values-Debate/dp/1931498717/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329592290&sr=1-1 )reminds us how the metaphors we use frame the values that we link to the concept.

National insurance contributions vs. taxpayers money
Tax relief vs. tax cut
Charity, Rogue trader

And the metaphors: Nanny State Mother Earth

So my message is to be careful of what you wish for.

If we sell insulation because it saves money, we have activated frames and values to do with money and self interest. The same frames used by cheap airlines.

Andy Brown, andy@goldfin.co.uk

The value of an 80% carbon reduction

Few people seem to appreciate the scale of change that is required if we are going to meet the carbon reduction targets needed to prevent climate chaos.

When Rosemary and I founded Cambridge Carbon Footprint (CCF) in 2005, we were aware that in spite of some thirty years of government advice on saving energy, (whether to conserve oil reserves, control pollution or delay climate chaos) little has been achieved, particularly in the domestic sector.

Tackling carbon reduction in your home is clearly a complex task, involving both understanding of the technical working of the building and appreciation of your own and your family’s feelings about your home. What has been clear in the work of CCF, is the difficulty of focussing on the latter and the ease of slipping into detailed discussion of the technical details, kilograms of carbon and rates of return.

There are a number of reasons why this can be counter productive. To begin with, I suspect a lot of talk about details is prevarication, avoiding the actual work of making reductions. While it is important to get things right, it may be more important to make a start! I also think that concern for the details can also be a way of avoiding thinking about the size of the task.

Diminishing returns

We talk in Carbon Conversations about the need for 80% savings, which is no easy project. We help participants create a plan that may have to span several years to make it both possible and affordable. In making plans, it becomes obvious that the conventional rhetoric about saving energy and saving money does not hold water. In fact it gets progressively more expensive as the project goes on.

Of course there is the low hanging fruit, with little or no cost and significant savings. How many times are we told about over filling our kettle!

Then there are a number of things that have payback times we can relate to. But if filling cavity walls is such a winner, why are there still several millions houses still needing to be treated?

With the help of subsidies, some of the more expensive projects are promoted as having payback times of ten to fifteen years. The sums are not easy and they need to be weighed up with other things we may also not fully understand, like pensions and mortgages.

But more importantly, there are still a load of tasks that make no economic sense at all. While the cost of replacing the windows may be compared with the future value of the house, how do you cost the disruption of lifting and insulating below the floors? To achieve the 80% savings we need, we are up against the laws of diminishing returns. And while the costs are immediate and ours, the benefits are less specific and well in the future.

One response to these arguments has come from the theorists of Social Marketing. In CCF we found it helpful to listen to people who told us again that we must know our audience, that we must address their concerns and talk about things that matter to them. We recognised that we could talk about the status that might accrue from the solar panel on your roof, or the importance of recognising actions that fitted with the expectations of your friends and peers.

We have spent some time learning the techniques of motivational interviewing to help us scratch below the surface and work with people’s less overt desires and concerns.

Common Cause

But I am still nonplussed when friends and colleagues repeat that we just have to get over the message that saving carbon will save money and people will sign up to the 80% agenda.

So it has been a delight to find the Common Cause report, published last September by Tom Crompton, Change Strategist at WWF. It joins together two threads: values and messaging. I draw three points from it.

• We have to be careful what we wish for. If we sell actions on the principle that it saves money, we will attract people who want to save money. They won’t then want to hear that they have to spend money to reach the next goal.
• We have to realise that everyone is concerned about ‘bigger than self’ issues. The research on values shows that people are complex and often hold conflicting values at different times. While opinion surveys regularly throw up about 30% of the population who say they are not concerned with things that do not benefit them or their family, more careful research shows that they will hold more altruistic values too, although with less conviction or for less of the time. In the long run, we will achieve more if we speak to and reinforce this aspect of people’s values, than promoting the short term goals of small personal gains.
• We have the same agenda as lots of other civil society organisations. Many of the other campaigns we support are also promoting ‘bigger-than-self’ values. While many other organisation’s concerns may not be environmental, they are as significant and intractable as climate chaos and it may also be the case that we have to solve these problems together.

I am convinced that we will make more progress if we make ’common cause’, speak the same language and reinforce the same values. So we have to promote eco-renovation because it matters; to the environment, to other people, to the future, but not to our bank balance or our image.

Ventilation for Fires

It' another "Ask Andy" for the Cambridge Carbon Footprint newsletter
Question:
Our builders are insisting that we install a ventilator in the living room, as we have an open fire. We don’t want more draughts. What should we do?
Answer:
Your builders are correct. Requirements for ventilation are set out in the Approved Document J “Combustion appliances and fuel storage systems” of the Building Regulations and applies to alterations. It says you need a "permanent open air vent" and that the vent should be at least half the area of the 'throat' of the fireplace chimney. That would be an air brick in the wall or a grille in the floor. It’s a lot of ventilation, but would be justified if you have gone to a lot of effort to seal your windows, doors and floor. I have done this myself and found the room filling with smoke when the fire was lit, as the chimney would not draw properly from the sealed room!
Open fires can look lovely and become the central attraction for the home. But they have two problems. When the fire is not lit, the flue will continue to suck valuable heat from your home, and cause draughts in the room. This is easily solved with a ‘chimney balloon’ or an old pillow in a plastic bag. At the same time, you might place some temporary obstruction over the fixed vent.
When the fire is lit, the amount of air drawn up the chimney is huge. A modern fire place with a properly deigned ‘throat’ at the base of the chimney will control this, but it will still draw much more air than is needed to ensure efficient burning of your wood. This will also cause a draught from the fixed vent, so the best place for it is in the floor near the fire.
If you replace the open fire with a stove, you remove the need for a ventilator and you still have a wonderful feature for your home. A stove with less than 5kw output does not require fixed ventilation, and when the fire is not lit you can close the vents and the room is well sealed. Some stoves have efficient “air washers” on the window, so you can see the logs burning. On ours, we leave the door open if we are wanting to enjoy the fire, but actually closing the door makes it easier to control and uses less wood.

Paper Logs

As a guardian reader with a log burning stove, it seems an obvious synergy to burn the huge pile of paper that collects each week. Here is my simple recipe for paper logs.

To ensure the paper burns slowly and efficiently, it must be made in to a tight roll. Folding the paper in 4 and rolling the sports section first and then the supplement creates a tight core and the rest is easy to roll around that.

Three or four editions roll up to a bundle about 8 cm across. It is then slid in to a wire former to contain it while it burns through. The wire frame is retrieved from the fire and allowed to cool before the next Dry Rolled Newsprint Log (DRNL) is made up.

The former was made from a piece of 2mm (14 SWG) galvanised wire. The prototype Brown DRNL used an old coat hanger and lasted a bit over a year. I knocked 2 nails half in to a seven centimetre dia log, wound the wire round the nails and the log with the help of a heavy duty pair of pliers and a lot of grunting. I then put the log in the stove and retrieved the former and nails when it had all burned away. See:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22755595@N08/sets/72157625558981303

Research

Initially we bought an “Original Logmaker” from the Centre for Alternative Technology. it says

“Easy and safe to use - just soak the paper, place into the mould and squeeze. After complete drying, the log will burn as well as wood …”

We saved a load of paper over the winter, did all the soaking and pressing in the summer. It took weeks for the paper bricks to dry out and they had to be stacked in the wood shed.

The Brown DRNL can be made up from this weeks paper and put straight in to the stove.

Environmental Benefits

A little research indicates that there is not much difference in the environmental impact of burning paper and recycling it.

• Much of our recycled paper is transported large distances from depot to de-inking plant to paper mill so that the energy and pollution balances the value of the recycled fibre.
  
• I have heard that co-mingled recycled collections results in low grade paper (with contamintion from broken glass) so it has to be burnt anyway.)
  
• Claiming that wood is a low carbon dioxide source of energy is not universally accepted. Growing trees is a carbon sink and the rest is offsetting!
  
• Contaminants, such as ink, lead to more pollution in the smoke.
  
• Making newspapers to support the renewable heat market is not sustainable
• Significant uptake of the use of stove in urban areas will not help air quality.
  

In the long term, I will finish insulating the house and got the measure of reading the guardian on line.

However, if you want to post some links to online sources of information on these issues, that would be great.

In the words of Rodger MacGough “Although I live in a smokeless zone, I still enjoy the odd woodbine under the stairs”

Should I install PV solar panels?

This is my "Ask Andy" contribution to the Cambridge Carbon Footprint December 2010 newsletter:

Last Saturday the Guardian devoted a four page supplement to the Feed-In
tariff, the scheme that earns you money for installing photovoltaic
solar panels on your roof. "Fit" as it is known, guarantees you 41p for
every unit of electricity the panels generate, as well as the 14p you
save from not having to buy the electricity.

The Guardian's Miles Brignal, says "So what's the catch? There isn't
one." For home owners this may be true. But is 'fit' a good policy? And
is it an equitable one?

The issues of Climate Change are wider than electricity generation and
must include proper concern for social justice, both in Europe and the
Global South. So who pays for 'fit'? Unfortunately, we all do, and as
usual, when we all pay, the disadvantaged pay more. The subsidy is paid
by the electricity producers, who in turn will claw it back from our
electricity bills. While I have been able to afford to insulate the
house, buy energy efficient fridges and boilers and reduce my
electricity demand to less than 2,000 units (1 tonne CO2 emissions) a
year, there are 3 million households classified as 'Fuel poor', who can
neither afford to pay their electricity bills nor make the improvements
that might help them economise. They will face a further £300 on their
electricity bills to cover the cost of 'fit'.

So should you install PV? Yes – if it's part of your plan for the
complete upgrade of your house and this is the right moment in that
plan. We are going ahead because if we don't do it now, while we are
fixing the roof, technical issues means we will have missed the
opportunity.

Climate change work is full of these contradictions, but we hope that
Cambridge Carbon Footprint can help you work through them. But it sticks
in the craw that this tiny contribution to UK renewables comes at such
personal gain to us and such personal cost to others.

And some more notes:

Corroboration from George Monbiot!
There is more discussion in the Ethical Consumer magazine september/october 2010 issue, which also provides rankings for PV panel manufacturers. Top of their list were GB-sol (manufactured in Wales) , Solarcentury
and Solarworld, Suntech, Yingli . At the bottom were Schott, Sanyo and BP .

More about Fuel Poverty and the inability of current policies to address it in Brenda Boardman's latest book, "Fixing Fuel Poverty" (Earthscan 2010)

More info about FIT at DECC and EST and Cambridge info from Transition Cambridge.
There
I can't really recommend installers, but various Cambridge Carbon Footprint supporters have been happy with
Solarworks Ltd , Chelsfield Solar and Midsummer Energy

Heat exchange units

Another "ask andy" Query!
Hi
The market leader is Vent-axia (who have acquired Roof Units, who were
my favourite manufacturers ten years ago) see
http://www.vent-axia.com/range/heat-recovery-and-mechanical-extract-systems
The HR100 range are the room sized units.

We installed one in our bathroom. It cost about £120 plus installation and is effective but noisy.

Also
http://www.applied-energy.com/en/xpelair/products/range/1908
http://www.silavent.co.uk/products/heat_recovery/energex-features.asp
http://www.johnsonandstarley.co.uk/ventilation/single-room.asp
http://www.kair.co.uk/khrv150.htm
(distributors: http://www.kiltox.co.uk/products/hrv.htm)
and
http://www.admsystems.co.uk (I am not sure if they are installers or
manufacturers. Their illustrations seem to be other peoples machines!)
I will send this list to Tim, to help his research.

---
Penny wrote:
Hi Andy,
I have been going round and round various websites trying to find good
single room heat exchange units ....Any ideas of UK providers and how to find costs?