Renewable Energy Electricity Supergrid

WHAT IS THE SUPERGRID?

This month the G8 Summit agreed the first steps towards a significant global strategy on climate change by agreeing that global warming temperatures should not exceed 2C of 1900 levels and that member nations will work towards an 80% reduction of green house gas emissions by 2050. The USA has taken a major step-change in its attitude towards the climate and President Obama who chaired the discussion stressed that the issue of climate change could no longer be ignored and that we should look towards December and Copenhagen.

This is positive news for the environment and energy industry. It shows a real commitment at last, by the world’s most powerful nations to act to arrest global warming and this commitment can only add to the industry’s growth. But how are we going to supply the world with renewable energy?

When Dr. Czisch first published his ideas outlining a European "Supergrid" a few years ago, in which he explored a concept to supply the continent’s electricity demands by using only the renewable energy technologies that are now available, the world didn't take much notice.

However now, European policy-makers, as well as the global business community, are gradually taking note of the significance of his ideas.

Mark Vidler, Energy Group Manager at Allen & York Environmental Recruitment took the opportunity to speak to Dr Czisch on a recent visit to the UK:

Mark Vidler - What is the Supergrid and why is it important to us?

Gregor Czisch - We are faced with the fact that Renewables are not steadily producing; there are fluctuations depending on where you are in the world, what the climate is, whether it is summer or winter for example. In the longer term we need steady, smooth production of energy which can be employed to cover the demand at any time. In order to achieve this to best effect it is important to expand the range of energy sources, to have a strong mix of climate zones and to expand the km2 of land for wind and solar energy. In summary the creation of a Supergrid, a place where ‘the world’ could feed its renewable energy into, would solve the problems of source intermittency and smooth out the production to a consistently high level.

MV - Who will be the main beneficiaries?

GC - The main beneficiary is the climate, because the Electricity sector is currently emitting about 50% of the world’s carbon emissions from fossil fuels. The Supergrid - preferably a High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Transmission System - will only be fed by renewable energy sources and would therefore ‘clean’ the environment significantly.

Consumers would also benefit, firstly because it would be cheaper and because they are getting fully renewable electricity.

Lastly the economies of some countries would benefit. If we think about establishing wind and solar farms in Africa for example, then there could be investment made in these countries and so they could profit from an extra growth in their economy and significantly reduce their unemployment by exporting parts of their energy to European countries.

International corporate business would also benefit as they have the potential to invest in global energy production and fight climate change which could ultimately be very costly for them.

MV - What in your view is preventing this from happening?

GC - There are many players, firstly the decision makers - The first applications for the concept of the renewable Supergrid - as it resulted as being the best solution from my research - were made in late 2001 and it has been very difficult get the facts in front of the politicians to create awareness and crucially to give them the correct information on the huge potential of this shared international and intercontinental grid.

The utility companies, who have their own grids and own production, often resist strong links to other countries and competitors. Consequently they will not lead on this at least not as a fast approach, however I believe that if the politicians lead the corporate organisations would have to follow and ultimately might also benefit.

Ideologists and de-centralists are also looking at this from a ‘small is beautiful’ perspective and nothing else. They fight the large scale renewables, which are sometimes far away from the consumer, believing the home grown production is better.

MV - How financially viable is this?

GC - There is a simple answer. If the international system is properly designed the costs of renewable electricity are not higher than the today’s costs of electricity. Therefore it basically is absolutely viable.

A key to this is provision of capital outlay provided by financial backers such as governments and corporate business. An internationally agreed feed-in tariff (e.g. the amount of money a renewable energy producer is paid for the energy they supply to the grid) that guarantees that the costs of production and transmission are covered would be extremely helpful to attract investment. If you have good tools for investment based on loans renewable electricity will be cheaper than supply from oil, gas and coal with their fluctuating prices.

MV - Do we have the right skills?

GC - All the necessary technology is there, some parts have to be adapted to the highest HVDC voltage available today e.g. the circuit breaker necessary for a meshed HVDC system. Another engineering project will be developing the cables for this voltage to connect under the sea between countries. However, no crucial part of the technology is missing and there is no question that we have the right skills for the job.

Summary

GC - Really it is all about co-operation between energy supplies and political backing groups and countries. Increasing awareness and knowledge are crucial and I am confident we are moving in the right direction. If I could make one change now it would be the introduction of an international feed-in tariff, which I believe would make a huge difference.

Allen & York are interested to follow this story as it developes and we'd love to hear your opinions, so please join in the discussion.

Visit the A&Y Website to find out more about Dr Gregor Czisch and Supergrid Renewable Electricity

GLOBAL RENEWABLE ENERGY RECRUITMENT AWARDS

Allen & York are pleased to be entering the 2009 Renewables Recruitment Excellence Awards

So if you are in the Renewables Industry and you like us - vote for us!

Renewable Energy Jobs online is launching the first Global Renewable Energy Recruitment Channel Survey. This global survey will explore current and future trends in recruitment and analyse the effectiveness and popularity of various recruitment channels used across the renewable energy industry and around the world.

So, if you are currently involved directly within the industry please take part as it is valuable to us to receive your feedback and it only takes 5 minutes!

The information collected from the survey will also be used to decide all of the winners of the 2009 Renewables Recruitment Excellence Awards which will be presented in September/ October 2009 - Awards will include: Best Recruitment Agency & Best Recruitment Consultant and will include global and regional categories.

Your votes count!

If you would like to vote for Allen & York, please take part by clicking on the link below - Complete the Survey - Vote for Allen & York

Thank you and we look forward to speaking with you soon.

Best wishes from everyone at Allen & York

Allen & York Race for Julia's House Children's Hospice

DRAGON BOAT RACE TO HAWAII FIVE-O!
Submitted by miriam on Mon, 06/01/2009 - 12:09.
Article Date:
06/01/2009

Allen & York were delighted to race for charity on Bank Holiday Monday 25th May, raising money for Julia’s House Children’s Hospice in Dorset. A BIG thank you to everyone, especially friends and family who sponsored us, we really appreciate your support and are delighted to continue our support of a very worthwhile charity. To find out more about the fabulous work they do visit the Julia's House website.

We spent a fabulous sunny morning at the Sherborne Castle Country Fair, pitting our paddling skills against Dorset’s finest. Getting off to a great start and accompanied by the Hawaii Five-O music (as were all the races), we won our 1st and 2nd races, shaving 2 seconds off our time as the crew of HEADHUNTER dug deep and got more and more competitive! Well, what do you expect from a boat full of recruiters? The paddles flew, everyone got very wet and our drummer managed to balance rather precariously, on a very small seat jutting out just above the dragon’s head!

Our supporters cheered enthusiastically and thank you to everyone who came along to spur us on. Unfortunately, our 3rd heat didn’t go quite to plan, a quick reshuffle of the team and some uncoordinated rowing resulted in us not making the final. As much as we wanted to win, we were very happy to take part and we plan to do it all again next year.

Fundraising in a Dragon Boat Race!

Allen & York are delighted to be raising money for Julia's House Children's Hospice, by taking part in a Dragon Boat Race.

17 plucky Recruitment Consultants are pitching their paddling skills against Dorset's best at the Sherborne Country Fair on Bank Holiday Monday 25th May 2009.

Last year the army team won, so we're going to need a strong wind and lots of luck behind us to even attempt to win the race.

If you would like to sponsor our team, please click on the link below, and Thank you very much!

http://www.justgiving.com/allen-york

Allen & York Win UNEP Award

Allen & York were delighted to be recognised as one of the first 100 participants of the Climate Neutral Network (CN Net) an initiative led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The UNEP has been established to promote global action and involvement in moving towards low carbon economies and societies.

As a leading specialist Environmental Recruitment Consultancy, Allen & Yorke recognise and understand the importance of protecting the environment and promoting best practice, which led to the ‘greening' of their offices.

Envirowise - a government initiative providing practical environmental advice for business - were brought in to offer guidance and identify further ways to improve their environmental performance.

Waste to landfill, energy usage, water usage and transport were areas that were categorised to have significant environmental impact.

The main measures take by Allen & York include:

• Establishing a wormery to reduce waste to landfill by an estimated 50%.
• Removing individual waste bins and introducing communal recycling bins for plastic, glass, tins, cans, paper and cardboard.
• Offsetting travel emissions to and from work, including client visits.
• Removal of water coolers and fitting of charcoal filter to the mains water pipe, saving on energy.
• Installation of thermostatic controls to heating system, to save energy.
• Ordering only recycled toilet roll and fair trade tea & coffee.
• And where possible, sourcing from local & environmentally assured suppliers.

For more information visit the A&Y profile: http://www.climateneutral.unep.org/cnn_members.aspx?m=503

Allen & York intend to drive their ‘green strategy' forward into 2009/2010 and are looking for more ways to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Mark Allen, the Managing Director said that;

‘We are delighted to accept the Climate Neutral Network Award, from such a prestigious organisation as the UNEP. I strongly believe in our ongoing corporate social responsibilities towards preserving and protecting the environment. This award will spur us on to seek further improvements and continually focus on improving in this area".


The CN Net is helping to achieve significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by making the best knowledge on climate neutrality available to all and sharing practical experiences. To find out more visit their website at: http://www.unep.org

ALLEN & YORK SUPPORT SUSTAINABLE RURAL HOUSING

Allen & York are a global environmental recruiter working internationally throughout the Middle East, Australia, Asia - as well as across the UK . We are based in rural Dorset and have our hearts and environmental minds embedded firmly within the countryside and rural issues. With this in mind, we are encouraged by a recent Government report on housing in rural communities, in which Liberal Democrat MP Matthew Taylor warned dozens of villages are in danger of dying out because of the shortage of affordable housing.

This has been a developing problem for us in the South West and as Margaret Beckett the Housing Minister is quoted as saying;
"All too often the high cost of homes and low wages are pricing young families out of their communities, with the average rural home costing up to 10 times the average salary in some rural areas,"

A series of measures have been announced and most interestingly for Allen & York, councils are being encouraged to develop sustainable new housing, rather than the concrete housing estates of years gone by.

On the downside Mrs Beckett also suggested that more "exception" sites on greenbelt or other restricted land be made available, which might not be so popular within the rural communities. It may be argued, as does Kate Gordon - Senior Planner for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, that instead the Councils should be rebuilding derelict buildings and developing brownfield sites.

Allen & York strongly believe in Sustainable Building & Planning and support the career progression of Natural Environment & Sustainability Professionals at all levels. We hope that affordable rural housing can be achieved without destroying our beautiful countryside!

If you work within the Natural Environment & Sustainability sector and are interested in career opportunities, browse our website for the latest Natural Environment & Sustainability Jobs

Women In Waste

The current climate can not be described as prosperous whatever the profession that you are in. It is not a way of ‘living’ but merely a means of ‘surviving’. This has never been more accurate than for the women in waste.

The name Jane is defined as one of the many feminine forms of John whereas John is defined as an English masculine name. In the workplace in many industries today, focussing on the Environment Industry in particular, the name John should now be classed as the masculine form of Jane in an evident reversal of roles.

Jane Davidson and Jane Kennedy are two women impacting the Environment Industry through leadership as Environment Ministers. Many other women now sit on the Board of Directors in Environmental organisations that were previously male dominated.

Jane Kennedy was appointed the Minister of State for DEFRA – Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs - in October 2008. In the waste world she has recently been in the news with plans for building 1000 anaerobic digestion plants to process food waste and farm manures into heat, power and fuel. These plants aim to be built by 2020 to help meet targets of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 26% and furthermore reduce greenhouse gasses by 80% by 2050.

As the new Minister for Farming and the Environment, Jane Kennedy has many responsibilities including animal welfare and health and more relevantly waste and recycling. She is one female minister out of three male ministers at Defra.

Jane Davidson – Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing – was voted Number 1 in the Resource Magazine’s ‘Resource Hot 100’ - a current list of who is influencing and actioning change in the sustainable waste management industry in the UK.

Her role as Minister includes leading on Climate Change and Sustainability on behalf of her Cabinet as well as planning, energy, water, waste and promoting walking and cycling. As a result of her ambitiousness and support, Jane Davidson was awarded 3rd place in the Independent on Sunday’s Green List of the top 100 environmental campaigners in the UK.

Published lists as mentioned, awarding individuals on their efforts in environmental positions in the environment and related industries, and headlining the news are increasingly being dominated by influential, powerful females such as CEO of WRAP, Liz Goodwin, Head of Waste at EA, Liz Parkes, the Environmental Officer at Lush, Ruth Andrade and most recently the new Head of Consultancy at Mistral Group, Amanda Barry-Hirst.

Over the past year, Allen & York – global leading recruitment specialists in the environment and related industries – have moved from a 100% male management team to a 50:50 ratio of men and women, managing the individual teams of expert consultants, to the Company as a whole.

Successful, professional females is still a fairly new concept today as Women’s rights including the right to vote, to work, equal and fair pay, to be educated etc, changed at the beginning of the 20th Century. For centuries, women fought for the same rights as men and it finally changed from women having limited rights to the equal existence of men and women today.

Environmental history focuses on men’s roles and generally ignored any female involvement; evidence of this has been identified in texts that centred on elite male concerns and generally disregarded or marginalised females resulting in numerous gaps in the environmental history of women.

In recent decades, women have openly and noticeably expressed concern about environmental issues from all social classes, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. This change increased alongside the increased number of movements in support of women’s rights, put together women recognising that they have the right to participate in environmental dilemmas.

Women have worked together to effect change by establishing NGO’s – Non-Governmental Organisations – which has made them increasingly powerful as they acknowledge to the world that not only do they have the right to act as catalysts for change but theories have stated that women could better protect the Earth than men if in power. This combination of feminism and environmentalism has lead to the new approach, Ecofeminism.

Ecofeminisim or Ecological feminism was a term born in 1974 by Francoise d’Eaubonne, a French feminist, who believed that the social mentality that leads to the domination and oppression of women is directly connected to that leading to the abuse of the environment.

The core belief of Ecofeminisim is that of male domination, exploitation of women and of the degradation of nature by men, overall proposing patriarchy as the root cause of many of the problems in the world.

Gender and Urban Waste Management is a topic that has been researched into and it was discovered that the empowerment of women is critical in the support of new initiatives in urban services and environmental protection to increase project effectiveness, avoid costly mistakes and ensure equitable access to resources or benefits which the project makes available. The latter supporting ecofeminstic beliefs that male domination has hindered the environment in the past.

Womens movements such as Ecofeminism and earlier movements like the NUWSS, National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, and the WSPU, Women’s Social and Political Union, existed purely for freedom and to fight for what they believed in.

However, forty years after the Equal Pay Act, surveys still show women getting paid significantly less than men for similar work therefore the question can be raised, are women truly equal to modern men and in the current economy will this be a deciding factor for the future of the women in the waste industry?

A recognized figure in this industry like Jane Kennedy has been able to advance in her field and career but she is still outnumbered by men in the boardroom which would possibly signify that a discriminatory “glass ceiling” still exists for women.

The TUC – Trades Union Congress – general secretary Brendan Barber said, at the beginning of March, that the recession was going to be an ‘equal opportunities recession’. However, a study conducted by the TUC showed the redundancy rate among women had risen by 2.3% which was almost double the rate for men in 2008.

With this in mind, are women still fighting an uphill battle to gain the respect and authority they deserve from a previously male orientated industry? Or has the balance changed to sit in favour with a female majority?

Paul Gosling, Operations Director at Allen & York says, “It has been apparent over the last 3 years that many of our clients have recruited more women in what used to be male dominated roles and at all levels from Graduates to Directors.” He continued by saying, “This change is not sector specific, but noticeable across the Environment and all related industries that we serve.”

It is obvious that it is the beginning of a changing era where women will continue to fight for the top jobs and succeed. The nature of business will never really change, people will take on certain roles, make changes, or not, and then move on. The challenge is how long you can hold on to that position and be seen as a success. Certainly from the ‘Resource Hot 100’ Jane Davidson is ranked number one but amongst a male majority, how long will she be able to hold on to the top spot?