Let sleeping koala's lie

UKERC Phase II issues have been occupying my mind for the majority of the week; however, there have been some news stories that have captured my interest.

I should point out straight away that both the Energy Act and the Climate Change Act both entered the stature books this week, having received Royal Assent.

The first was an interview with Wulf Bernotat, the boss of E.ON, who essentially told it like it is. In relation to the UK's energy predicament he said "You have old nuclear plants, old coal, expensive gas, a need to invest in renewables to reach unrealistic targets, and a slow [planning] process. Doesn't that sound like a problem to you?" he said. "The situation in the energy sector in the UK is more difficult than a number of other countries in Europe, without people fully realising it." And the solution? "We need a framework that enables and encourages investment." Fair enough.

The second was two articles highlighting how different the religions are approaching the climate issue. The Vatican has responded by covering the roof of the "Nervi Hall", where popes hold general audiences and concerts are performed, with 2,400 photovoltaic panels. In a broader gathering, hundreds of representatives of the worlds leading religions have met at a summit in Sweden with an aim to set a manifesto to encourage far-reaching policy goals from the United Nations. Although, as we'll see below, jetting vast numbers of people to far flung locations may not exactly be the way to solve climate change.

The carbon footprint of climate scientists has come under scrutiny in an article in Nature. The scrutiniser was an environmental scientist named Andreas Stohl. Andreas estimated that his colleagues at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research were responsible for around 5 tonnes additional carbon dioxide each due to all the air travel required for them to attend meetings all over the world. The figure is comparable to scientists from other disciplines and also business people. Andreas points out that whilst climate scientists should be setting an example, the Norwegian funding system in fact encourages collaboration with follow scientists in North America and elsewhere, thus leading to additional travel.

Finally, I was delighted to read a story about how researchers have used mobile phones to eavesdrop on koala bears. "Koala bellows can go from really quite short, sharp, and quite agitated sounding bellows to long, slow, deep bellows that can last for over a minute," said researcher Bill Ellis. "Interestingly most of the bellowing seems to occur around midnight, not around dawn or dusk when we thought it might've occurred." Are they absolutely certain that weren't recording koala bear snores? The tenuous link to energy here is that the mobile phones were charged by solar panels.