Sustainability is a word which is often heard but rarely understood. When asked the question ‘what does it mean?’, it is easy to quote the usual definition of sustainable development from the Brundtland Commission as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Which all sounds fine and dandy, but may not be so simple when we look deeper.
The on-line Oxford dictionary gives two definitions of sustainable: 1) able to be maintained at a certain rate or level and 2) conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources. But both these and the Brundtland definition make a key assumption: that future generations will want or need to do what we do in the way we do it. They also take a typically blinkered approach to the future, which is to assume a straight-line projection of current trends.
Lastly, the second of the OED definitions encapsulates a common misconception: that if we conserve resources and protect the environment all will be well. However, the practical approach to sustainability is to consider three interlinked aspects, namely the environment, social equity and economics (the so-called three Es). According to the Wikipedia entry on the topic ‘achieving sustainability will enable the earth (sic) to continue supporting human life’.
So, there is recognition that environmental protection does not trump everything else, that any actions should be economically supportable. However, the broadness of the concept is an invitation to use it to justify actions which are conceived to put a greater emphasis on the environment and the overall message is that there are more important things than economics. The social equity pillar of sustainability is a case in point. In an ideal world, it is surely highly desirable, but do wide disparities in income and living standards truly jeopardise the human race’s continued existence?
But the point of this newsletter is in particular to draw attention to the thoughtless way in which the word sustainability is bandied about. Take, for example, renewable energy. What could be more sustainable? The wind always blows (well, sometimes), the sun always shines (but not for long this time of year) and the waves continue to roll (but we don’t know how to harvest their energy efficiently). The problem is that, with exceptions for a few special cases, none of these superficially attractive technologies is economically viable. Neither can they be used as stand-alone energy sources, given their intermittency.
And yet, wind and solar continue to be talked of as sustainable sources of energy. In practice, they only exist because public subsidy (our money, in other words) is pumped into them. If this was to be cut off, no new solar panel arrays or wind farms would be erected and the existing ones would, by and large, be left to rust. The UK government has recently announced a tinkering at the edges of the structure of the subsidies, with offshore wind farms being favoured more than onshore ones, which are unpopular with nearby residents. The overall message, however, is that it’s business as usual, with guaranteed prices paid via feed-in tariffs.
This might be tolerable as a means to get a nascent industry off the ground, but there is no practical possibility of either wind or solar power being economically viable for the foreseeable future. We hear from time to time that the electricity they generate has reached parity with conventional sources, but that is surely a misrepresentation. If the overall economic picture was so rosy, developers would be planning unsubsidised installations, whereas even uncertainty about the level of future subsidies currently shakes their confidence.
The argument is that using coal, gas and oil as primary sources of energy is unsustainable both because they are (semi-)finite resources and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is pushing the climate in unwanted directions. The prescribed replacement is renewable energy, which is an effectively infinite resource and is deemed to help minimise climate disruption. On the other hand, it fails on both the economic and social criteria; it can only exist with public subsidy and the higher energy prices are pushing more people into fuel poverty. And on top of these failings, it can make no conceivable difference to the climate unless the world’s biggest carbon dioxide emitters (including China) drastically cut back their use of coal, which is just not going to happen in the medium term. Given this, can renewable energy still really be regarded as sustainable?
Finally, let me briefly come back to the question of making projections about the future based on current trends. Previous dramatic shifts in energy generation and use have all occurred because they allowed greater productivity and/or improved quality of life and made economic sense, but they could barely have been predicted a decade or two ahead.
Introduction of the steam engine, electric light, cars, gas-fired power stations and the personal computer were not dictated by governments and supported with taxpayers’ money. They all made a huge difference to prosperity and our quality of life and have continued to evolve and be supplanted when even better technologies come along. None of them was planned or foreseen, but they were rolled out rapidly because they met a real need.
That is surely the sensible path to continue to follow. Let’s put our efforts into developing economic sources of energy generation and storage which supplant fossil fuels because they are better, not spending public money on technologies which are not yet mature enough to warrant deployment.
Martin Livermore
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge CB4 0WS
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