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 Self-styled environmental economist, Prashant Vaze is on a mission to reduce his carbon footprint. He is Chief Economist at Consumer Focus and previously worked at the UK’s Office of climate Change, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and the Department of the Environment. He recently published “The Economical Environmentalist” which charts his attempt to live a low-carbon life in London and what it cost...
Q1. Your book charts your attempts over a year to reduce your emissions. What did you manage to achieve?
I called the effort a hexathlon because I cut emissions from 6 areas of my life; from my diet, day to day transport, heating, electricity use, waste and lastly holidays. Overall I will have cut my emissions by 35% once everything that's planned is completed...
We decided to defer some of the eco-renovation work a year or two since it makes sense to co-ordinate these with other projects we plan to do around the home. Many of the changes are 'behavioural' meaning they involve making relatively small changes to actions to get quite big carbon cuts. The simplest ones simply meant wasting less: for instance throwing away less food, remembering to set the heating system's thermostat and timer on correctly, ensuring that seldom used devices are unplugged instead of being left on stand-by. Wasting less also includes less frequent replacement of items with lots of embodied carbon like electronic goods. The next easiest changes were choosing the lower carbon option when there is a choice of similar products. Quorn or sustainably managed fish like mackerel are carbon friendly substitutes for beef or lamb, as is eating more pulses and beans. Similarly a lap-top uses much less energy than a desk-top especially if it means avoiding the unnecessary powering of peripherals like printers, speakers or external hard drives.
Q2. What was the hardest part?
Some of the changes needed to reduce our emissions bump up into our ideas of what a good and successful life looks like. I am not unusual in finding flying - especially long distance flying - hard to give up. Cutting back means seeing my relatives less frequently, and no-showing at weddings. I still fly but less frequently and I try and go on longer duration trips and seeing more people. These kind of changes are hard and I suspect unpalatable to the majority of people. I think Government and bodies like the CCC need to invoke the same emotional and rhetorical forces that Churchill used when economic output had to be diverted to the war effort. More prosaically a major eco-renovation of an old home is difficult in the sense that it takes a lot of effort, and the construction industry isn't great in terms of providing acceptable customer service or price. This needs to change if large numbers of people are to make the necessary investment in their homes. Decc's recently published HEM has many good ideas in it; but the idea of working with RICS to ensure estimates of house prices capture eco-renovation efforts is particularly important.
Q3. How much will it cost us to tackle climate change?
There has been a lot of revisionism on this issue sinceNick Stern estimated the cost of stabilising concentrations at 500-550 ppm as being around 1% of GDP by 2050. Environmentally conscious economists like Dieter Helm put the figure much higher reflecting his view that in the real world imperfectly designed policies lead to "dead-weight" losses. My own humble opinion is there are a great many opportunities to save money and reduce emissions through reducing waste and switching to goods with low embodied carbon. But this won't be enough to hit the targets CCC has set us. The cost of incentivising zero carbon power and heat will carbon prices much higher than those experienced so far even after we sort out all the other barriers. Also Dieter is right in saying the present suite of policies is imperfectly designed and will result in unnecessary high costs to consumers. I and colleagues at Consumer Focus sometimes get frustrated at some policies which, in our view, don't save much carbon, don't kick start an economically sustainable micro-renewable industry but do increase customer bills.
Q4. What work does Consumer Focus do around the environment?
Sustainable development is one of our key cross-cutting themes. Around a third of our funding comes from energy customers so the interface between consumers and energy, and between customers and sustainable product choices is an important one. In our work programme for next year we plan to do some work with EST looking at consumer attitudes and acceptability about substantial eco-retrofit projects like district heating and external insulation compared to other large changes to the home like kitchen refits. Ed Mayo and I recently wrote a think-piece looking at the way local authorities might plan, fund and franchise the delivery of area based energy infrastructure projects at a low cost to consumers. We also undertake strands of work on product labelling and smart metering.
Q5. Have you got any advice for fellow concerned citizens that want to make a difference?
I hope this book has helped to show that the personal changes while sometimes awkward, sometimes odd, sometimes boring are not unachievable. But individuals cannot do everything by themselves. I think it's also important to work through the community. It's worth looking around and seeing if there are groups like Carbon Reduction Action Groups, Cambridge Carbon Footprint, perhaps Transition Town to become involved in so you support others locally striving to reduce their emissions. Where I live I am involved in running a website to share information on reliable builders and installers to undertake eco-renovation work. Membership of these groups represents maybe 1 - 2 per cent of the people that live in my local authority but they are friends, brothers and sisters and colleagues of others. As such they are more eloquent spokespeople for the cause than politicians or distant Government agencies. The Economical Environmentalist |
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