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Department for Energy and Climate Change Youth Advisory Panel DECC YOUTH PANEL REPORT
The Youth Panel was established in February 2010 to provide a direct route of communication between youth organisations in the UK and the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Young people’s views on climate change are incredibly important: it is they who will live with the effects of decisions taken today. But getting their opinions heard where it matters — at the UN negotiations and in government — is very difficult.
Why the panel was set up
In the build-up to the Copenhagen conference (COP 16), young people in the UK made a number of approaches to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), requesting their views to be fed into the negotiations. In particular, we asked for a youth panel to be created in DECC so we could contribute young people’s views into the actual process of how climate change policy is developed, because without a formalised channel of communication and interaction between the government and youth groups, our views would be left on the sidelines and closed off from the vastly important decisions being made.
The panel’s role and purpose
Role
The Youth Advisory Panel has a dual role: the panel will advise DECC on the thoughts and proposals of the youth community whilst also relaying information from DECC out to the wider youth communities and organisations that support the panel.
Purpose
Intergenerational equity is a vital component of democratic and responsible governance. As such, DECC’s Youth Panel is a body that advises DECC on climate change matters relating to young and future generations, in particular on how the UK will reach its 2050 target of an emissions reduction of 80 per cent. The Youth Panel will have the interests of safeguarding young people’s future at the heart of their work and will ensure that DECC and wider government proposals made on behalf of young and future generations stand up to scrutiny.
The panel’s structure
The Youth Panel is composed of a core group of 16 members of youth organisations as well as other engaged youth advocates and individuals from the UK. It was agreed that the panel would be co-ordinated by an ‘independent’ individual who has been involved with DECC’s youth engagement work but who is not representing one particular organisation.
How the members were selected
To begin with, there was a three-month period where DECC convened a ‘pilot’ Youth Advisory Panel to work out the finer details of the role, functionality and structure of the actual Youth Advisory Panel. The pilot panel was selected to represent the many different youth stakeholders and groups that DECC had worked with on the 2009 Act on Copenhagen campaign. The scope of the membership of the panel was extended once the pilot developed into the functioning panel and the different organisations nominated young members to sit on the panel.
How the panel performs its role
The panel meets at DECC on a monthly basis and discusses key issues relating to young people and energy and climate change. This particular project has had a specific focus on pathways to 2050, and this report is the culmination of five months’ work. The panel uses these meetings to question DECC policy officials as well as discuss and debate between themselves. The members of the panel take this knowledge and information back to their various organisations. Each organisation that supports a member of the panel can then submit a response back to DECC; this is to ensure that the youth voice is heard — and responded to — by the government.
Summary
In order to better understand how different types of energy are produced in this country, the panel travelled around the country to visit places such as power stations and community-owned renewable energy projects. What is clear from the different calculator outputs is that we have not always completely agreed on what is best for young people! But this is to be expected when dealing with such a varied group. We want to emphasise that the pathways we suggest are illustrative of the kind of effort that needs to be made to achieve the necessary reductions of 80 per cent by 2050. These pathways are up for debate, and the panel would very much like to hear your responses to the proposed scenarios.
A strong impetus for developing new ways of generating energy in this country has been reducing carbon emissions. This is absolutely vital in a world that is already suffering from impacts of climate change. As young people, we will inherit the legacy left to us by decision-makers, and this will significantly affect the rest of our lives as well as the lives of future generations.
It is also important to ensure that there is enough energy to go around and that everyone has equal and fair access to it. However, it would be irresponsible to only focus on providing energy to keep us living the same way that we are today. We must also consider what efforts need to be made to reduce the amount of energy we need in the first place.
How fair is it?
Fairness between the generations is a fundamental guiding principal for the panel. This is something that we call ‘intergenerational equity’, and it is important to think about the impacts that a decision made today will have on people tomorrow and in the future. We know that history informs us, but we also want the future to inform our decision-making and actions. We look to the future well-being of our older selves and future generations when we have debates about the ethics of making a decision, and we hope that in doing so we have made, and continue to make, morally responsible decisions.
We have judged the fairness of the different types of energy developments based on the guiding principles of the panel as well as the responses to the surveys. In an age of economic uncertainty and government spending, we urge the government to think hard before further cutting investment in renewables. We believe that no deficit is so large that our future should be gambled.
Requirements
In this report you will read that we have outlined ‘recommendations’. But in order for young people to have a safe, clean and healthy world to live in from now until 2050, we require the government (as well as other business leaders and energy producers) to work hard to help us safeguard our future.
Overall, however, the panel believes that the arguments laid out in this report and the recommendations that we submit are morally appropriate. The panel believes that in the interest of intergenerational equity any decision made today must consider the impacts that will be felt in many years to come. To this end, we challenge decision-makers to guarantee young people that we will have a liveable planet in 2050. Anything less would be morally irresponsible.
Summary of recommendations
Above all we believe that the government must:
• Ensure a fair deal for young people in the decision-making process
• Actively work hard to ensure that government does not lock young and future generations into ecological debt
• Continue engaging in dialogue with the youth constituency and stakeholdership to ensure that the youth perspective is heard, and responded to, by government.
How we use energy
Housing and building sector
• Focus on reducing demand for energy in homes, schools and other buildings
• Meet the target set that all new-build homes should be zero carbon by 2016
• Set PassivHaus as a minimum standard for 30 per cent of new homes by 2016 and 60 per cent of new homes by 2025
• Maintain incentives for home-owners to retrofit their houses by committing to continue the ‘warm front grant’ for insulation
• Offer specific grants for students to retrofit their accommodation that is not owned by themselves
• Zero rate VAT on home improvements that deliver a measurable reduction in energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Transport
• A rapid roll out of electric cars
• More public transport incentives and infrastructure whilst phasing out petrol-powered vehicles
• Greater incentives and infrastructure for cycling
• Affordable alternatives to transport, including increased high-speed broadband and telecommunications’ infrastructure to replace the need for travelling long distances for meetings
• Greater regulation and accounting for the true costs of aviation and shipping and including aviation and shipping in the energy pathway calculator.
Producing energy ourselves
Micro-generation
• Demand side-energy reduction as possible and essential. The government must continue with the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) scheme to develop micro-generation
• In addition to the FiT as it is currently, financing options for less wealthy families must be investigated. We recommend a commissioned report to find out how the FiT could be used to benefit the least wealthy members of society to ensure equity within the system
• Some charities are now using the FiT to secure funding — the government should facilitate the process of community-led groups working together to develop micro-generation and benefit as a community from the FiT
• The British Gas ‘Green Streets’ programme is an excellent example of a business supporting community-led renewables projects. The government should introduce a scheme to encourage business-led ‘social enterprise’ support to other community projects.
Connecting people to energy
National Grid
• The government should facilitate a more joined-up approach to realising the most efficient delivery of new technologies, notably off-shore wind, to the main grid system
• The government should take a leading role in facilitating the pan-European SuperGrid so that the immense export potential of the UK wind resource can be optimised
• The government must further support current work upgrading the grid to allow localised electricity micro-generation to be delivered and the development of a Smart Grid, including smart appliances and meters, to manage variability in demand and supply.
Producing renewable energy on a large scale
Off-shore wind
• To facilitate the development of electricity connections between the UK and Denmark. This will allow the UK to export electricity from the off-shore wind developments as well as receive electricity from other countries in Europe if the UK needs more
• To assist with financing and facilitating the development of the ‘floating turbine’ technology that is proposed in the off-shore wind valuation
• To establish and set the regulations for the off-shore wind industry to give certainty and clarity in the rules surrounding the development of the technology
• Lower up-front costs of off-shore wind development by directing innovation support, thus mitigating the risk that deters investors
• To commit to making the UK the leader in off-shore wind by 2020. This will safeguard electricity supply to the UK and also provide needed income to the country that has relied on oil and gas reserves, which are now massively depleting
• The DECC Calculator needs to include the recommendations from the off-shore
• Valuation about what is possible to achieve for off-shore wind.
Bio-energy
Bio-fuels
• To apply a holistic approach to decision-making surrounding bio-fuels and remember that ‘before I decide that a bio-fuel should be used I must first consider the butterfly effect of that decision’
• To not allow bio-fuel palm oil to be used as an energy crop
• To not allow any bio-fuel crop to be grown where a (rain) forest has been cleared or agricultural land used
• Bio-fuels must only form a small part of the energy mix and come from sustainable sources.
Bio-mass
• To develop a sustainability certification process for bio-mass material
• Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) should be the absolute minimum certification, and the government should not allow importing of non–FSC material for bio-mass
• Bio-mass co-firing in coal power stations must not be an excuse to extend the life of coal power stations and allow unabated coal to be burned. The government must introduce regulations to ensure that co-firing is used only to reduce carbon emissions as coal is phased out.
Bio-gas
• DEFRA should continue to help landfill sites install gas-generation and user facilities, and the implementation of bio-gas production facilities using landfill waste should be investigated
• Efforts to reduce the amount of waste going into landfill should be ensured to take precedence.
Producing energy from power stations
Coal
• To ensure that unabated coal-fired power stations are phased out within the next five years
• To invest in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology to find out if CCS is viable within the next two years. If it is not technically feasible to be rolled out by 2015, then coal must be phased out as above
• Any CCS technology funded by public money should be open-source
• Bio-mass co-firing in coal power stations must not be an excuse to extend the life of coal power stations and allow unabated coal to be burned. The government must introduce regulations to ensure that co-firing is used only to reduce carbon emissions as coal is phased out.
Gas
• Gas should be given priority over other fossil-fuel forms of energy when looking at applications from new power stations
• The use of carbon capture and storage technology on gas-fired power stations should be investigated fully and, if feasible, be used widely
• Ultimately, gas-fuelled power stations should be phased out in favour of renewable technologies
• The development of a smart grid and energy storage infrastructure to handle the peak load that gas is currently required to cover
• Home insulation and thermal-efficiency programmes, education and subsidies must be offered across the country to reduce the use of gas for heating in the home.
Nuclear
While opinion on nuclear power will remain divided, there are certain actions that we believe must be taken for the good of future generations:
• The government must develop a transparent and viable long-term strategy for dealing with our legacy of existing nuclear waste. This long-term strategy must forecast beyond the current parliamentary term to at least a minimum of 150 years
• The government must make sure that adequate funding for the decommissioning of current, and any future, nuclear power plants is assured in the long term and that this financial burden is not unfairly placed upon future generations
• Any funding or governmental support for further nuclear power development must not detract from any funding or support for alternative, renewable forms of energy.
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