The road to the One Planet Life

We only have one planet!

Just one. Obviously. But the way some people carry on you'd think we had five - in some cases even eight - wonderful blue, vibrant orbs just like planet Earth, rotating round our life-giving Sun.

Perhaps they imagine these worlds - duplicates of ours except minus human beings - are hiding on the far side of the sun. Sitting there conveniently, so that when we've used up all the resources on this planet, we can go and tap into those. How simple the future might be if we could.

We’d probably need more than one extra planet. But hey, you never know what might turn up.

As far as I know, astronomers haven't detected any more earth-like planets in the attainable vicinity.

What a shame.

Enter the concept of One Planet Living.

We crossed the one planet threshold of our global ecological footprint back in the late '60s: the amount of resources we can sustainably use.

In the 1990s the environmental group WWF developed the concept of the ecological footprint. It measures in a form that is very easy to communicate, the environmental impact of our activities compared to the number of people on the planet and the resources it contains and its ability to absorb pollution.


In the UK we use over three planet's worth of resources on average. In the United States it is much higher.

In 2002, the Beddington Zero (fossil) Energy Development, or BedZED as it is known (pictured below), was completed in south London. Designed by BioRegional for an affordable housing association with architect, Bill Dunster, the 100 home development aimed to create a whole sustainable lifestyle.

Pooran Desai and Sue Riddlestone are the husband and wife team behind BioRegional. They analysed BedZED, measuring its performance against its ecological footprint, which led them to come up with the term ‘One Planet Living’.

In 2009 “One Wales One Planet” was published, with a vision of putting sustainable development at the centre of government delivery, encouraging others to embrace sustainable development as their central organising principle.

The following year the then Environment Minister for Wales, Jane Davidson (right), saw through the introduction of One Planet Developments into national planning guidance in Wales with the dry-sounding Technical Advisory Note 6: Planning for Sustainable Rural Communities.

The accompanying planning guidance also allows for one planet dwellings and communities in urban areas (though none has yet been tried).

Jane says: "I am a passionate believer in creating an effective and fair planning system that is responsive to ecological challenges and encourages innovation."

Since that time various cities or smaller developments around the world have signalled a willingness to move towards one planet living.

Bioregional operates on four continents.

Brighton in the south of England has fully declared its intention to be a one planet city and Bristol is thinking about it. I'm going to a meeting to discuss this in Bristol next week.

All of this is very exciting and it is the subject of my new book, The One Planet Life, out this month, to which both Pooran and Jane have contributed. In fact some of the above text is direct quotation from the book.



During the course of the writing of the book, together with many existing or aspiring one planet development practitioners, we have founded the One Planet Council. This exists to support all of these trends and those who want to live the one planet life. We are beginning to deliver training programs.

I believe this is the beginning of a trend. It's the thin edge of a wedge that is being driven into planning policy and thinking about the use of land, and who – or what – it is for. Because land is fundamental to the question of sustainable development, of regeneration, of the resilience of communities – the use of the land as well as its ownership.

Pooran Desai said in conversation to me recently that he believes that land speculation should be banned. It artificially drives up the price of land putting it outside of the reach of most of those who need to use it. I believe this is true. It is a fundamental injustice and incompatibility with sustainable development.

With this in mind The One Planet Life acts as a manifesto, stating the following demands and supporting them with a 15,000 word essay of evidence:

We ask:

1. That to aim towards one planet living should become an underlying principle of planning and official policy as de facto the only objectively-verifiable sustainable strategy
2. That the same set of social and environmental criteria should be used to assess all planning applications to create a level playing field
3. That these criteria, amongst others, should be informed by ecological footprint analysis which enables all projects to be compared for their environmental impact
4. That official attitudes to land use should change to help rural areas use one planet living methods to become more productive and more populated, and urban areas more green.

We make this call for the following reasons, which are substantiated in the book:
The one planet life:

1. results in more productive land use with far fewer environmental impacts
2. creates more employment than conventional agriculture
3. promotes greater physical and mental health and well-being, reducing the burden on the welfare state and health service
4. requires no taxpayer subsidies, unlike much conventional farming
5. improves the local economy, resilience and food security
6. therefore is more sustainable and gives excellent value.

Readers of this blog can obtain a 20% discount on the price of the book by going to this website and entering the code FLR40 at checkout. Tweet using the hashtag ‪#‎OnePlanetLife‬!

Jane Davidson says of it: "Throughout this book you will read how those who have embraced this lifestyle fully feel liberated by their choice: they have reconnected with nature; they understand the seasons and where food comes from and the limitations of what can/cannot be grown or reared where they live; they can offer a different, more sustainable future to their offspring. Not everyone will want to take the great leap into the unknown, but all of us can use this book to help us demonstrate the principles of one planet living in one or more parts of our lives."

Pooran Desai adds: "This thought-provoking book summarises some of the approaches which can help us on the journey - so please read, learn, practise and share. There are many already on the journey and we can, together, co-create a better future."

Some other recommendations include:

• "A wealth of practical detail" - Oliver Tickell, editor, The Ecologist magazine
• “Shows the journey to a new life.” – George Marshall
• "What it means to live a 'one-planet' lifestyle" – Prof Max Munday, Cardiff Business School.

The Energy Bill is still just a lot of hot air

The UK Government has come a long way in preparing the ground for massive carbon emission cuts in the future, but still lacks a coherent plan that will actually deliver energy efficiency in practice.

The Energy Bill, which is supposed to lay the foundations for the Green Deal, carbon price floor, market reform, carbon capture and storage, and a mass roll out of energy efficiency and renewable energy, is currently approaching the Report Stage in Parliament.

However, although many of its aims are laudable, there is no chance of them being realised unless there is more joined-up connection across Government departments and across the country as a whole that lays out exactly how they will be achieved.

Although the Bill makes reference to fuel poverty, limiting or eliminating it is not one of its stated aims. It should be, otherwise there is no guarantee that it can happen.

Furthermore, although the Bill currently contains a long-term aim to meet the 2050 carbon reduction target, by not tying actions to interim carbon budgets there is no way of ascertaining whether measures taken in practice actually are commensurate with the requirements of these budgets, and whether the country is on the right path.

In fact, there is no mention of the interim carbon budgets in the Bill at all.

Carbon budgets are set by the Committee on Climate Change to act as milestones along the way to the overall target of reducing emissions by 80% by 2050. Its latest report says that already the UK may not meet the current period's budget by 2012.

Businesses and investors are unlikely to see the Green Deal as an opportunity without the certainty that interim targets will provide.

In order to arrive eventually at the 2050 destination, each sector within the economy needs to have a staged plan to work to, with interim goals along the way, and be effectively monitored.

In the building sector for example, the mechanism by which the Green Deal is implemented will be crucial to its success. It will require the cooperation of local planning departments, Building Control, the Treasury, trade associations, and the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Deciding on whether carbon emission reduction targets from this sector are being met will be estimated based on nominal values for the carbon saved as a result of specific measures carried out, such as the number of solid walls or lofts insulated.

But in practice, work may be poorly executed, some of it may be DIY of dubious quality, and Building Control is not currently mandated or equipped to judge whether or not this work is to the appropriate standard. Monitoring of results is going to be crucial to telling whether the predicted emissions are really saved or not.

Nowhere in Government will you find a plan that pulls all these threads together.

WWF, along with the National Insulation Association, the Mineral Wool Insulation Manufacturers Association, and the Gypsum Products Development Association and many more, tabled an amendment to this effect in the committee stage of the Energy Bill called the Warm Homes Amendment.

Unfortunately, MPs voted the amendment out, instead inserting their own - now in as clauses 107 to 108. But there is still time to get it in, and MPs continue to be lobbied by the campaign.

Another objection to the Green Deal has been raised by Andrew Warren, director of the Association for the Conservation of Energy and himself picked by the Energy Minister Greg Barker to chair an industry-based advisory forum on the scheme.

The scheme is expected to contribute to a 29% reduction in carbon emissions from homes and 13% reduction from non-domestic properties by 2020.

Warren makes the valid point that the way the financing of the Green Deal currently set up could well cause it to backfire and shift public opinion against it. This is because it is financed by an increase on electricity bills, which will not be reduced by most of the actions taken under the Green Deal.

Instead, the reductions in energy use made from the measures taken will appear on heating bills which, for 78% of our homes and other buildings, is provided by natural gas.

Where participants get gas and electricity bills from the same company and when they receive joint bills, then allocating the Green Deal to the gas part should be achievable.

But most people still buy from two different providers, and when they discover that their electricity bill has risen and carries the Green Deal loan costs on it as well, then this, Warren says, is when they will be asking “why on earth they ever got involved with this Government flagship policy at all".

As WWF's campaigner on the issue, Darren Shirley, says, a high level framework is missing from the Energy Bill. Without a plan for saving energy, it will not happen. It needs many similar issues defining and joining up to make it deliverable.

In short, the strategy around the Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation needs more incentives and checks to improve energy efficiency in the large proportion of the housing stock that currently lacks adequate insulation.

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) and Display Energy Certificates (DECs) should be introduced into all non-residential buildings to incentivise emissions reduction.

At the moment, the Bill is still hot air. But isn't that what it's supposed to be eliminating?

The government puts all of the UK's environmental legislation under threat

Environmental groups are horrified by the coalition government's inclusion of every single one of the UK's 278 environmental laws in a list of legislation that it is offering for the axe, under its new, populist "Red Tape Challenge".

The list includes the Climate Change Act, laws protecting air and water quality, rights of way, national parks, animal safety and promoting energy efficiency, rules against flytipping, litter and environmental pollution.

The above website states that "Good regulation... protects consumers, employees and the environment, it helps build a more fair society and can even save lives."

It goes on then to add "But over the years, regulations – and the inspections and bureaucracy that go with them – have piled up and up. This has hurt business, doing real damage to our economy. And it’s done harm to our society too".

The crowdsourcing exercise is designed purely to make businesses think that the Governmnet is on their side. In reality, much of this legislation cannot be repealed - especially those of European origin like the EcoDesign Directive or the Waste Directive - without encountering severe penalties. The rationale for including them is to look at instances of ‘gold-plating’ – where the UK has gone beyond the minimum required by the EU legislation.

But even Lord Davidson himself stated in his report on the topic of gold-plating two years ago: “it is sometimes beneficial for the UK economy to set or maintain regulatory standards which exceed the minimum requirements of European legislation. The EU may not always set the most appropriate level of regulation. The decision to introduce or maintain higher standards or stricter regulatory regimes than is required by EU directives could bring benefits as well as costs”.

The Climate Change Act is a flagship piece of recent legislation - the first in the world to commit a government to emission reduction, and something which business has been calling for to provide the certainty necessary to inspire investment.

Last month, a campaign was launched by climate change sceptics to repeal the law - but it is not coming from business and is not popular - the only news on its website has been Tweeted just four times.

So why is the act also included? Margaret Ounsley, Head of Public Affairs at WWF-UK said: "Allowing precious and hard-won environmental laws to be repealed in this manner would be ridiculous. Frankly we credit the Government with more sense than to tear up incredibly important legislation such as the Climate Change Act in an attempt to appear consultative or dynamic."

And John Sauven, director of Greenpeace, added: "We don't yet know if this is cock-up or conspiracy. If it's a cock-up, David Cameron needs to come out and say the Climate Change Act, central to the push for a clean technology revolution, is safe from the axe. But if ministers are serious about scrapping it and other vital environmental regulations then we'll be looking at something akin to the worst excesses of the Bush-Cheney White House. When did clean air and green jobs become a burden?"

Adrian Wilkes, Executive Chairman, The Environmental Industries Commission, said, "BIS’ latest deregulatory threat is dangerously misguided and poses a potentially major threat to the UK’s environmental industry – bizarrely at a time when the Chancellor is promoting green job creation in his Plan for Growth".

The Red Tape Challenge website says that ministers and government officials will use the feedback they get "to help them cut the right regulations in the right way".

Every few weeks the laws relevant to different topics are up for feedback. Environmental laws affect multiple and various categories such as transport, waterways, energy, manufacturing and quarrying.

The Government has already axed the Eco-Driver Training bill, which would have trained drivers of large goods vehicles and passenger carrying vehicles to drive more cost-effectively, that was consulted upon by the previous administration.

An end to 'gold-plating'

The Department for Business, Industry and Skills (BIS) has also already begun (last December) an initiative to end the practice of going beyond the requirements of European Directives so that they "are not unfairly restricting British companies".

This initiative, however, is far from new - it was begun under the previous administration, in a review by Lord Neil Davidson QC who published his final report on 28 November 2006.

BIS has now adopted Guiding Principles for EU legislation to tackle what it calls 'regulatory creep'.

In the past, in the environmental arena, this exercise has been largely about avoiding duplication. For example, in the Waste Framework Directive it's possible for there to be exemptions made from the standard requirement to obtain a waste permit. Defra is consulting with the Environment Agency to update guidance on waste to make more effective use of the permit exemption provision. Inert waste was being controlled twice and this has been amended. The Environmental Permit Programme (EPP) has merged and streamlined the regulatory regimes for Waste Management Licensing (WML) and Pollution Prevention and Control (PPC), which means that a site now only needs to have a single environmental permit for these activities.

Sometimes, however, it is necessary to increase environmental protection.

Business leaders in Scotland agreed with Davidson's view that sometimes gold-plating is necessary. The Scottish Chambers of Commerce response said: "the gold plating of EU directives will not necessarily lead to increased business compliance costs; there is a need to simplify and streamline the nature of regulation; ensure implementation in the clearest and most efficient way".

Friends of the Earth has argued that the charge of gold-plating Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) was misplaced and believes the term itself is "unhelpful and inaccurate".

CIWEM (the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management) goes further, calling it "a pejorative term" which "implies that any environmental regulation that goes beyond the absolute minimum is an unnecessary burden and to be accepted only under extreme circumstances".

Instead CIWEM believes that the UK should be seeking to have "the best environmental regulation in Europe rather than the weakest, where this can be achieved at reasonable cost and particularly in cases where there is clear benefit-cost advantage."

The new red tape challenge exercise seems to be designed as an exercise in pandering to prejudices - it is hopefully not serious, since in practice not a huge amount can be changed.

Nevertheless it is clearly important for every business in the green sectors to tell the government that they need the laws to protect them as well as us and our environment.

What lunacy, and what a waste of time from the so-called "greenest government ever".

Treasury told carbon floor price would subsidise nuclear

Green groups have said Treasury plans to impose a floor price on carbon used in electricity generation amounts to giving billions of pounds to the nuclear industry – something the coalition government said it would not do.

They said that it was a secret way of subsidising the nuclear industry, which could benefit by up to £3.4 billion.

The Treasury's consultation on the “carbon price floor" closed at the end of last week.

Greenpeace and WWF said this would breach the coalition's agreement not to subsidise nuclear power.

The £3.4 billion figure is based on a minimum carbon price of £40 per tonne. However, sources suggest it is more likely to be lower, perhaps half that figure. Nevertheless the resultant amount going to the nuclear industry, of £1.7 billion, which would be over 13 years, is still a considerable amount.

These figures are based on the existing amount of nuclear capacity and do not take into account any new nuclear plants, which would increase the amount.

WWF and Greenpeace are calling for a windfall tax on existing nuclear generators alongside the carbon floor price mechanism, that would be used to support energy efficiency and emerging renewable technologies through the Green Investment Bank.

They have issued scenarios which describe how the world could power itself by up to 95% renewable energy by 2050, and regard nuclear power as unnecessarily risky and harmful.

Dr Douglas Parr, Chief Scientific Adviser and Policy Director, Greenpeace UK said: “This is yet another taxpayer handout to a failing nuclear industry. The economics of nuclear power have never added up and it has been continually propped up with money from hard-working families."

The eventual policy is to be determined in concert with the ongoing Electricity Market Reform (EMR) consultation.

Your name on a paper plane

I had a nice letter from Asi Sharabi asking me to promote "the WWF (World Wildlife not the wrestling...)'s new campaign to strengthen the UK Climate Change Bill".

I agree with him when he describes the Climate Change Bill (which was hard fought for by grassroots groups) as "one of the most important pieces of legislation ever to go before the UK Parliament".

But surprise, surprise a funny thing's happened on the way to the statute book - it's been watered down. 

What's needed from you and me is pressure to include carbon emissions from international aviation and shipping – the fastest growing sources of emissions – in the bill's targets.

"Excluding them is  a bit like going on a diet but not counting the calories from chocolate!" he says.

So WWF plans to build a massive paper boat and paper plane, put all the names of the people who signed the petition on the boat/plan, and then deliver them to the Houses of Parliament. 

Your name could be on it, if you click here.!

He adds: "PS: Funnily enough my wife bought me Hybrids recently (she said I spend more time with my laptop then with her but thats just not true.... ) I didn't have the chance to read it yet but looking forward!"

While we're on the subject I've also been asked by the Energy Saving Trust to encourage people to pledge to commit to save their 20% of their energy use.

Currently only 106,000 have signed up, and they aim to reach one million by Christmas!

Energy Saving Week is next week, so I suppose I'll be banging on about this again then.

The "most affordable" solution to climate change

The building, transport and power sectors in the G8 countries, together with five leading developing countries (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa) have the biggest potential for saving energy.

In fact, they could increase energy efficiency by a total of 20% by 2020, according to a report commissioned by WWF.

"There is no one silver bullet to stop dangerous climate change, but energy efficiency is the largest and most affordable solution available to avert the current crisis," says Hans Verolme, Director of WWF's Global Climate Change Programme.

He claims that endorsing these targets is technically and economically feasible for all countries. The report estimates the efficiency potential for each sector by the year 2030 as:

• the transport sector: 25-50%
• the building sector: 30-45%
• the power sector: 4-45%, depending on the country.

Recommended measures include standard setting, labelling for energy efficiency, fiscal instruments such as subsidies or tax credits, and a CO2 or energy tax.

Increased energy conservation would result in cost savings, an increase in energy security, and provide new business opportunities and increased employment.

> Read the report, Making Energy Efficiency happen: From Potential to Reality [PDF link]