This morning I chanced upon some interesting documents that set out the vision for the UK of Friends of the Earth. The docs are FoE's contribution to the 2050 Calculator site set up by DECC's former chief scientist David Mackay a few years ago. The site allows users to set down how they think the UK's energy mix should be achieved in the future.
In the graph below (click for larger), we can see that FoE believe that we are going to reduce demand by 30% or so, which strikes me as optimistic. More interestingly they seem to have recognised that we are going to need standby gas powered generation right through to 2050. However, in their wisdom, they seem to think that three quarters of this gas should be imported rather than produced locally. Their stance on oil is similar. Given their stance on unconventional gas this is probably the only choice, but the conclusion must be that FoE believe that when calculating the trade off between environmental posturing and carbon emissions, it is environmental posturing that should win out.
So much for caring about the planet.
;)
Also interesting is the effect of FoE's plans on the the landscape. Here is the 2050 calculator's estimates of the amount of land required:
;)
As you can see, FoE want quite extraordinary areas of land to be handed over to renewable energy production. From the map, it's around 40,000 square kilometres.
One assumes therefore that a very large proportion of our food will be imported too. Or at least so you would think, but unfortunately FoE think we should be growing and producing food locally too.
Perhaps they think that mass starvation is the way forward?