In the world of politics, energy is all too often around building shiny new power stations – whether gas or nuclear. Rather more positively it is about renewables – erecting wind or solar farms, and wind arrays off-shore.
Just recently, with Lib Dems in Government and in charge of DECC, we’ve got rather more sophisticated. Nowadays we also think about the demand side of the equation. Why not spread demand more evenly and avoid having to build all that expensive excess capacity? Or even better, increase energy efficiency to such a degree that we don’t need to generate so much power and heat in the first place.
But there is one area that has been left out of our energy debate almost completely, and some estimate that it already accounts for up to 14% of our energy usage. What is it? It is ‘cold’.
At a time when we rightly worry about the fuel poor in our society we sometimes forget that with temperatures rising and with it the demand for air conditioning, increased demand for chilled foods, imported ultra-cold liquefied gas, and low storage temperatures for medical supplies and similar sensitive products, the demand for cooling rather than heating is growing apace.
And it’s not just a UK or rich world issue. The scandal is that some 30% of the world’s food production is grown but never consumed. In our developed world the culprit is waste from use-by dates, and throwing away what’s filled our fridges for too many weeks.
But in developing countries it is because food is lost either due to spoiling by infestation, but just as importantly because it spoils before reaching its market. That’s due to a lack of cooling and temperature control.
So, as someone that was involved in refrigerated supply chains in my industrial career, and Lib Dem spokesperson in the Lords on energy and climate change, I was pleased to be asked by the University of Birmingham to chair a new commission they are setting up. It will look at the whole area of ‘cold’ in the energy mix and giving it the better profile it demands.
Over the next six months the commission, made up of industrialists, academics, experts on international development, and energy professionals, will look at how we can make the cold chain far more efficient and climate friendly.
We will be seeing how all the vast and wasted energy that derives from turning liquefied gas back into – well – gas, is captured and reused. We will be focusing on how we can help rural farmers in developing nations get their goods to market in a condition that boosts their income. Not least we will be looking to give UK industry a head start in this new world of increasing demand for cold.
The whole climate change agenda that we as Lib Dems champion means that we have to look not just at decarbonising our energy, but making its use as efficient as possible. Factoring in our need for cold as well as heat is going to be an increasingly important factor in that efficiency equation.
* Robin Teverson is a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords.
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7 Comments
A really good piece. A related area, once you start thinking about ‘cold’ is the reduced oxygen climates that are also much used in food storage.
I have two issues with this article.
First, there are too many properties built before heat conservation was an issue, and with all the will in the world many of them are unable to be adequately insulated without throwing money at them. Further, we have the anomoly of not being able to alter grade one listed buildings like the one I grew up in. A tied house it had mullioned windows in some of the rooms and huge sash windows in others. The estate (our home was a tied house) was not allowed to replace the windows with anything other than like for like, the walls were solid (some of them two feet thick) so not able to apply wall insulation and the roofing spaces were huge and would have been far too expensive to have had roof insulation installed.
So, do we knock down the millions of homes which cannot be adequately insulated? Do we repeal the listed building legislation in order to allow meaningful insulation?
Second, on food. Yes, much food is thrown out because of sell by dates – but are you seriously considering changing the law and taking us back to the bad old days of fish and meat that was off, vegetables being sold which were not fit to be eaten? A lot of food being thrown away is a side effect of consumer protection and something I would rather we didn’t lose.
A Social Liberal 19th Mar ’15 – 6:28pm
Your personal experience of living in a grade one listed building is quite unusual isn’t it? I do not think that there are millions of ordinary family homes in grade one listed buildings.
You are right to say there are millions of homes with inadequate insulation. This is a disgrace more than 40 years after coal councils began helping with grants for improvements. The answer is it to insulate the homes not demolish houses, we have a shortage of houses.
Unfortunately Robin Teverson’s article is a bit muddled. Is he trying to make too many points at once and thereby confusing the message he wants to get across?
@JohnTilley 19th Mar ’15 – 7:47pm
To a Social Liberal 19th Mar ’15 – 6:28pm … “Your personal experience of living in a grade one listed building is quite unusual isn’t it? ”
Not sure about that John. Several regular contributors to LDV appear to have views originating from an age when Social Liberal’s home was new and others of us would have been regarded as dangerous outlaws!
“Unfortunately Robin Teverson’s article is a bit muddled.”
I agree with your point John and would add that Robin could of ‘sold’ this new commission better, I simply focused in on the different perspective Robin offered, having been asked to chair a new commission to look at the energy efficiency of our man-made ‘cold’ environments that are so important to refrigerated supply chains, of which Robin gave a few examples to illustrate the breadth to which we utilise ‘cold’ and the benefits it brings.
However, it was clear the article (or the commission Robin mentions) wasn’t about home insulation or changing the law over food sell by dates.
My build noted that additionally, we are also using controlled atmospheres, particularly ‘ultra-low oxygen’ (used in fresh fruit storage for example so apples can be harvested when ripe and be released to market many months later); the creation and maintenance of these atmospheres requires energy. Whilst controlled atmospheres probably don’t consume as much energy as ‘cold’, it is still a significant and identifiable usage of energy in the supply chain.
If you live in somewhere like Bath or Cheltenham its not unusual to live in a Grade 1 listed building (usually a flat). Plenty of Liberal Democrats live in both.
There is another aspect of ‘cold’ worth considering. We are importing Liquefied Natural Gas by sea from Qatar into Milford Haven. Some years ago someone investigated the energy implications of liquefying and transporting natural gas and found that 10-15% of the energy content of the gas was used in cooling it down and a similar amount used in transporting it, from Australia to California in the case of this particular study.