Zero Carbon Britain

Date: 6 Mar 2012
Speaker(s): Paul Allen
Venue: University of Leeds

To help us understand how we can meet our 21st century challenges, CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain project assembles and integrates cutting-edge findings from a wide range of leading researchers to show what a genuinely sustainable future could look like.

We can create a new kind of economy; stable in the long term, locally resilient, but still active in a global context, rich in quality jobs, a strong sense of purpose and reliant on indigenous, inexhaustible energy.

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Abstract from lecture

It is now almost 40 years since a bunch of young idealists adopted a derelict slate quarry in Mid-Wales. This original community set out to prove, by a positive living example, new technologies that would provide practical solutions to energy, economic and environmental crises we face today.

Today the sense of urgency has increased. Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) has become a ‘living laboratory,’ exploring and pioneering ways in which we can rapidly reduce our addiction to fossil fuels whilst increasing wellbeing of our communities and of the bio-diversity upon which we all depend.

Never before have we witnessed such a time. On numerous fronts, the consequences of the past 150 years of industrialisation are all simultaneously coming home to roost. Yet never have the opportunities been so exciting yet so vitally important to grasp.

Many still haven’t really grasped the serious nature of our predicament. Even senior experts, scientists, NGOs and political leaders fail to appreciate that the most recent evidence reveals a situation more urgent than had been expected, even by those who have been following it closely for decades. A clear and widening gulf has now emerged between present policy targets and the rapid de-carbonisation our most recent science tells us is urgently required.

Through focusing on individual gratification, our society itself has become weak and short sighted. We have, for decades, been partying on our natural and social capital, rather than building and planning for the long-term challenges ahead. Left unchecked these challenges will synergise, resulting in collapse and dislocation unseen in modern times. But crisis, as always, contains opportunity….

To help us understand how we can meet our 21st century challenges, CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain project assembles and integrates cutting-edge findings from a wide range of leading researchers to show what a genuinely sustainable future could look like.

The immense sums of money governments are releasing to revitalise economy can be invested in a manner which can mitigate the climate and energy crises and offer a tangible return – from the energy saved or generated.

So rather than residing precariously at the end of the peaking pipeline of polluting fossil fuel imports, Britain’s rural communities can head an indigenous renewable energy supply chain powering a lean, re-localised economy.

Every field, forest, island, river, coastline, barn or building holds the potential to become an energy and revenue generator, with different technologies appropriate to every scale or location. As with powering down, accomplishing this will require a carbon army of re-skilled workers, and a revitalised UK manufacturing base.

Such an investment will not only create employment and invest money in the economy, it will offer a very tangible dividend from the sale of the energy harvested, reflected in a more favourable balance of payments. By their very nature, these renewable reserves will not peak. In fact, as the technology matures and becomes economic in a wider range of applications, the annual available reserve actually increases. Additionally, such a transition vastly reduces our vulnerability to overseas politically motivated blockades or price hikes.

We can create a new kind of economy; stable in the long term, locally resilient, but still active in a global context, rich in quality jobs, a strong sense of purpose and reliant on indigenous, inexhaustible energy.

Paul Allen biography

Paul holds an Honours degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Liverpool University. Paul joined the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in 1988, responsible for design, development, production of a wide range of renewable energy systems, including solar-powered medical systems for use in Bosnia, Eritrea and many other parts of the world. Paul worked to develop CAT’s spin-out engineering company Dulas Ltd in 1990, which has now gone on to become a successful independent business with a turnover in excess of 8 million.

In 1995, Paul took up the newly created position as CAT’s Media and Communications Officer. This involved proactive and reactive work with radio, television and the press, acting as principal spokesperson for the centre.

In 1997, Paul was a founding director of EcoDyfi, the local regeneration organisation for the Dyfi Valley. Ecodyfi has established a number of community-based water, wind, solar and wood-fuel schemes.

Paul is currently CAT’s External Relations Director, heading the ground-breaking Zero Carbon Britain strategy programme, liaising directly with key policymakers in Government, business, public sector and the devolved assemblies to disseminate the findings of the evidence-based scenario development work.

Key positions

  • Member of Wales Science Advisory Council (2010)
  • Board member of the International Forum for Sustainable Energy (2008)
  • Climate Change Commissioner for Wales (2007)
  • Fellow Royal Society of the Arts (2005)
  • UK Millennium Fellow (1996)

Download presentation slides (PDF, 9MB)