On 13th May 2016, the Natural History Museum (NHM) submitted plans to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s Planning Committee for permission to transform its grounds.

The intention, according to the Design and Access Statement, is to improve existing access arrangements.

There is no doubt that much could be done to improve the grounds, improve access and boost its biodiversity – one of the Museum’s ‘three big narratives’ is the ‘Diversity of Life’.

However there is a major flaw with the plans. Drawings submitted with the application (ref PP/16/02942) show that the museum’s Wildlife Garden would be largely replaced by an area labelled ‘Western Grounds’.

Although the plans for the Western Grounds, including new paths, a circular pond, terraces and planting, do not seem objectionable in themselves, the problem is that to build these new features would involve destroying most of the existing Wildlife Garden.

That is not acceptable. I am certain that better ways of bringing more people through that part of the site occupied by the Wildlife Garden, without destroying the Wildlife Garden in the process, can be found. If it was made clear to the designers that the Wildlife Garden must be protected, they would find a way to achieve that.

Origins of the Wildlife Garden

In the early 1990s, Clive Jermy (1932-2014), a fern specialist and one of the Museum’s scientists, had approached the London Wildlife Trust (LWT) to discuss the possibility of transforming part of the Museum’s rather sterile landscape of lawns and rose beds into something that could demonstrate the potential for creating habitats by planting native species in natural associations in urban areas.

I was running LWT’s consultancy arm at the time and together with landscape architect Mark Loxton and my ecologist colleague Denis Vickers, we worked with Clive and other scientists in the Museum to put together plans for a wildlife garden.

Our inspirations were projects like the temporary William Curtis Ecological Park (established on a lorry park by Tower Bridge in 1976 and re-developed in1985) and Camley Street Natural Park (which was established in 1984 on a derelict canal-side coal yard behind Kings Cross Station. It thrives still).

Clive Jermy succeeded in persuading the NHM management to back the project and, supported by a grant from English Nature, and sponsorship and help in kind from many others, the garden opened in 1995.

The site is relatively small (one acre) and shaded by huge London plane trees, which were, and are still are, protected by Tree Preservation Orders, but a range of habitats and features were squeezed in, including woodland, ponds, meadows and a chalk bank.

Sir Neil Chalmers, who was the Museum’s Director at the time, said at the opening, “Our wildlife garden symbolizes a unique interaction between two important elements which underpin our work: science and education. It creates for the first time an outdoor classroom combined with a living laboratory.”

The magic begins

That’s when the real magic began. Nature colonised the garden and museum staff and volunteers monitored and documented the process – and have now identified over 3,000 species of plants and animals there. Monitoring of habitat creation schemes is often inadequate and patchy and sometimes absent altogether, usually because of problems with funding and continuity.

In contrast, at the Wildlife Garden, dozens of specialists have been sampling and recording and pondering the significance of each find for the past 20 years.

Plants (including algae, bryophytes, lichens and vascular plants), invertebrates (including dragonflies, butterflies, flies, beetles, bees, spiders, mites, molluscs and earthworms) and vertebrates (including birds, bats and other small mammals) have been monitored according to the methods chosen by each specialist and the results have been put into a database that has been maintained since 2002.

Thousands of schoolchildren and others have visited the garden and have learnt about Britain’s lowland habitats and wildlife through hands-on activities that cannot be replicated indoors.

Around 3,000 species have been recorded in the Wildlife Garden during the last 20 years, including 2 new British moth species, 28 Notable species and 7 UK Red Data Book species. The total list of beetles stands at 356 species in 47 families, representing 10% of the British beetle species, a remarkable tally considering that the garden is only one acre in central London.

There are 34 species of bee and 17 species of digger wasp confirmed and most of these probably nest on site, because immediately adjacent areas are unsuitable. There are mining bees nesting in the meadow and bumblebees nesting under stumps. The earl wasp Rhopalum coarctatum nests in a beetle burrow in an old fence post.

The spider and the fly

207 species of fly from 50 families have been recorded. Museum staff have confirmed the presence of 2 Endangered species of fly (Chrysopilus laetus and Acinia corniculata) and 4 Notable species of fly (Beris clavipes, Solva marginata, Vanoyia tenuicornis and Neoleria propinqua).

The Endangered tree snipefly, Chrysopilus laetus (Rhagionidae) is known from a single male specimen caught in a Malaise trap in June 2015. For many years this snipefly, a species which requires dead wood, was thought to be restricted to Windsor Great Park.

The Wildlife Garden has a richer spider fauna than expected, with 80 species altogether. Amongst them is Theridiosoma gemmosum, a Nationally Scarce (Notable B) species. Two spiders of note are Anyphaena sabina and Cryptachaea blattea, first found in the UK in 2011.

I was particularly interested to read that Anyphaena sabina was also found on the green roof on Transport for London’s HQ in above St James’ Park Station. I could go on. The point of including these examples is to demonstrate the depth and breadth of information gathered and the commitment on the part of Museum staff and volunteers in making these observations.

Those who would like to know more about the species that have been recorded and the impressive roster of recorders should read the forthcoming London Naturalist article, which is now available online in draft.

Leading the way

The Natural History Museum has led the way in showing what can be achieved in restoring nature in urban areas and boosting biodiversity. It has meticulously documented that process – a process that has ecological, scientific, educational and cultural significance.

This is a process that has taken 20 years and demonstrates to others a new culture of working with nature. It is true that what has been done before (that is, creating wildlife habitat on cleared or impoverished sites) can be done again. Once the Wildlife Garden is destroyed habitats can be created again around the new access routes.

It may be possible to compensate for any losses or even achieve a net gain in the long term by undertaking enhancements across the whole estate (although this has yet to be demonstrated). That misses the point though. The garden is not an asset to be replaced but a process that should continue – in line with the Museum’s mission to “challenge the way people think about the natural world – its past, present and future.”

If an institute ostensibly committed to the conservation of biodiversity can propose the removal of its own patch of biodiversity, the hidden message to the wider community is that the conservation of biodiversity is not such a priority after all. There is also an implication that the efforts of museum staff in nurturing and documenting the garden are inconsequential and that the lofty ideals of those who launched the project were never understood or have been forgotten.

The destruction of the garden would constitute the unnecessary termination of an important long-term demonstration project. In its current form, the Natural History Museum’s application must be rejected.

Petition: The online petition signed by 37,000 people to halt the plans is here: online petition.

More information: The NHM’s planning application can be found and commented upon by clicking the link and searching on the reference PP/16/02942.

Gary Grant FCIEEM is a consultant ecologist specialising in urban greening. He is a Director of the Green Infrastructure Consultancy, where he works on bringing biodiversity to the most severe urban environments with green roofs, living walls and rain gardens.

Books: Gary’s most recent book is The Water Sensitive City, published in April 2016 by Wiley. Also available is Ecosystem services come to town – greening cities by working with nature, published by Wiley in 2012.

2015 was a record year for renewable energy installations. Renewable power generating capacity saw its largest increase ever, with an estimated 147 gigawatts (GW) added. Modern renewable heat capacity also continued to rise, and renewables use expanded in the transport sector. Distributed renewable energy is advancing rapidly to close the gap between the energy haves- and have-nots.

These results were driven by several factors. First and foremost, renewables are now cost competitive against fossil fuels in many markets. In addition, government leadership continues to play a key role in driving the growth of renewables, particularly wind and solar, in the power sector. As of early 2016, 173 countries had renewable energy targets in place and 146 countries had support policies. Cities, communities and companies are leading the rapidly expanding “100% renewable” movement, playing a vital role in advancing the global energy transition.

Additional growth factors include better access to financing, concerns about energy security and the environment and the growing demand for modern energy services in developing and emerging economies.

Christine Lins, Executive Secretary of REN21, said, “What is truly remarkable about these results is that they were achieved at a time when fossil fuel prices were at historic lows, and renewables remained at a significant disadvantage in terms of government subsidies. For every dollar spent boosting renewables, nearly four dollars were spent to maintain our dependence on fossil fuels.”

2015 was a record year not only for new installations, but also for investment – reaching USD 286 billion worldwide in renewable power and fuels; if investment in large hydropower (>50 MW) and in heating and cooling is taken into account, the total is far higher. With China accounting for more than one third of the global total, developing countries surpassed developed countries in total renewable energy investments for the first time.

With increased investment came an increase in technological advances, cost reductions and jobs. There are now 8.1 million people working in the renewable energy sector – representing steady growth in stark contrast with depressed labour markets in the broader energy sector.

REN21’s Renewables 2016 Global Status Report presents developments and trends through the end of 2015, as well as observed trends from early 2016 where available. This means that accelerated action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions stemming from the Paris Climate Agreement in December is not reflected in the results.

While trends are generally positive, the report highlights several challenges that remain to be addressed if governments are to fulfill their commitments to achieve a global transition away from fossil fuels. These include: achieving effective integration of high shares of renewables into the grid; addressing policy and political instability, regulatory barriers, and fiscal constraints. Further, there is far less policy focus on transport and, particularly, heating and cooling, so these sectors are progressing much more slowly.

Arthouros Zervos, Chair of REN21, says: “The renewables train is barreling down the tracks, but it’s running on 20th century infrastructure – a system based on outdated thinking where conventional baseload is generated by fossil fuels and nuclear power.

“To accelerate the transition to a healthier, more-secure and climate-safe future, we need to build the equivalent of a high-speed rail network – a smarter, more flexible system that maximises the use of variable sources of renewable energy, and accommodates decentralised and community-based generation.”

About the REN21 Renewables Global Status Report

First published in 2005, the annual Renewables Global Status Report is the most comprehensive and timely overview of the status, recent developments and trends in renewable energy markets, industries, investments, and policy developments worldwide. By design, it does not provide analysis or forecast. Data is provided by a network of 700 contributors, researchers, and authors from all over the world.

www.ren21.net/gsr

A number of developing countries, led by Ecuador, Guatemala and Bolivia are now calling for concrete measures to define how the public policy making process interacts with the private sector in climate change negotiations. What they want is special attention to be given to concerns over potential conflicts of interest between the industry and the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Many business communities and the media too are actively engaged with climate change issues all over the world. Having their views heard and considered by negotiating Parties is not necessarily a bad thing. However, concerns are being voiced about the undue influence of the fossil fuel lobby, which yet has to prove whether it is willing to align its polluting business models with the agreed goal of keeping global warming below 1.5°C.

According to Jesse Bragg of Corporate Accountability International, (CAI) one of the key concerns is that there is already a welcoming place for groups and corporations representing the fossil fuel industry, but that the Paris Agreement takes it a step further. It extends an invitation for the private sector to get deeply engaged and involved in climate action.

“This can be a good thing, but it can also have challenges”, Bragg says. “If we are going to do that, we need to have policies in place, before that level of engagement begins”.

The Break Free campaign, that engaged thousands of citizens all over the world last month (May), added pressure on governments to do their best in order to strengthen the commitments they made in the Paris Agreement, ensuring that its implementation is not directed to false solutions. For Bragg, “climate action should be based on the interests of citizens and the planet, not those of the industry. The private sector will definitely have a role in climate action. The question is whether it is also going to be allowed to write the rules for it”. 

Developing countries and civil society believe that sound climate policy affects the profits of the fossil fuel industry and so there must be a process in place, by which the legitimacy of the UNFCCC will be protected. This should make sure that conflicts of interest with the private sector are avoided. 

“These are the same companies that, for decades, have undermined attempts to find solutions to climate change, although they knew of its existence for so long. Now that they are singing a different tune, we cannot just allow our memory to fall short,” reminds Bragg. The process leading to Paris has been a 20-year negotiations, largely due to their opaque ways of doing things. 

“We should be able to make the distinction between the PR that certain corporations are putting out, and what their true intentions are. If their business models are predicated on extraction and burning fossil fuels, negotiators should ask themselves whether they really have a role that is consistent with the interest of this convention,” Bragg adds.

For civil society such as CAI that seems doubtful and until that changes, there’s a good argument to say that they should not be considered as stakeholders in the negotiations. But this does not seem to be the case. French energy giant Engie, for example, was one of the sponsors at COP21. The corporation owns 30 dirty coal plants and, unsurprisingly, they were in there Paris to say that renewables are not the answer.

Feelings ran strong last week and in the closing Plenary of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation of the UNFCCC, representatives of more than 75 Global South countries banded together to challenge Global North governments and the SBI Chair himself for unceremoniously silencing their voices.

Once again, countries proposed that the UNFCCC begin considering the process of creating common sense measures to ensure that the UNFCCC is safeguarded from the interests of the fossil fuel industry and others advancing its agenda. And, once again, the US, EU and others blocked their requests in the name of protecting their country’s’ fossil fuel industry interests.

It is unacceptable but unsurprising that a much smaller proportion of Parties, who represent some of the biggest polluters in the World, continue to stand in the way of progress. Led by Ecuador, there were Parties who refused to accept bullying from both the Chair and the countries trying to silence them and vowed to bring the issue up in future meetings.

The fossil fuel industry has no interest in ambitious climate policy and it is using its access to Global North governments to stymie action at all levels. If we are to slow warming to remain below 1.5 degrees Celsius, we must first acknowledge the barriers in the way. And, some of the largest of those barriers are most certainly Big Oil, the rest of the fossil fuel industry, and those countries that continue to do their bidding in this space.

It has become clear that what is needed in these negotiations instead, is a platform for the exchange of experiences and sharing of best practices on mitigation and adaptation in a holistic and integrated manner. This should aim to strengthen knowledge, technologies, practices and efforts undertaken by communities of practice all over the world. With the present gap in relation to the effective participation of indigenous peoples and local communities in the engagement of observers, the private sector should not get an “access all areas” in decisions so important for the future of humanity on Earth.

Further Resources:

Corporate Accountability International: www.stopcorporateabuse.org

Climate Trackers: www.climatetracker.org 

Related Previous Article on The Ecologist:

 http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2986443/cop21_brought_to_you_by_200_mt_a_year_of_coalfired_co2.html

The Authors:

Pavlos Georgiadis, Renee Karunungan and Anna Perez Catala are members of the Climate Trackers, an international network of young environmental writers tracking the climate negotiations. They tweet at: @geopavlos, @jrkarunungan, @AnnaPerezCatala @ClimateTracking

Today the Financial Times is staging a conference on strategies for the revolution unfolding in global energy markets. I am on a panel discussing the role of innovation.

I have a thrilling example to recount based on the work of Solarcentury’s innovation team. In the limited time I have available, I will struggle to do their accomplishments justice, so I plan to try and do so here.

Theirs is a story of belief and design brilliance in the face of adversity and doubt. It offers an inspirational microcosm of the potential for fast deployment of clean energy in the future, with all the social good that entails. It creates a talisman for the widespread underestimation of the transformative power of solar energy that persists across society.

A few years ago, the innovation team told Solarcentury’s management and board that they were aiming for a fully building-integrated solar roof system that would be comparable to a standard system bolted on to an existing roof, whilst winning accolades for aesthetics.

I and others doubted such a world-first would be achievable. But their belief was solid, strongly backed up by CEO Frans van den Heuvel, and the prize if it could be realised was potentially huge: market research suggested an in-roof product price comparative with an on-roof product would be extremely popular. So the project went ahead.

Sunstation – the launch

On May 10th, the team launched their product, called Sunstation, in a reception room high in the Tate Modern. Sleek black solar laminates decked a mock-up roof around which politicians, officials, press, and industry representatives quaffed champagne with sweeping views of London as a backdrop.

Two days earlier, Germany had generated almost all its power for renewables for a while, and through the windows the guests could see tantalising hints of how such progress might be possible even in cloudy Britain: the biggest solar bridge in the world crossing the Thames at Blackfriars, and a simple array below the launch venue on part of the Tate’s roof, both designed and installed by Solarcentury.

The fact that the iconic art gallery had once been a fossil-fuel power plant added to the aura of excitement at the launch event.

How the team achieved their goal technically is a fascinating story. It centres on minimising components and speeding installation via click-together design with minimal points of attachment to the roof battens. As for aesthetics, Sunstation has aleady won an iF Design Award. But the team’s technical and design achievements, in order to be fully appreciated, need to be viewed in the context of a wider evolving narrative of innovation.

Let me start at the beginning. Solarcentury’s first full commercial year was 2000, when the global solar PV market was a mere 287 megawatts. That market has since doubled in size seven times, every two years or so, and now stands at more than 60 gigawatts.

Coincidentally, Solarcentury’s annual installed capacity has also roughly doubled every two years: from a tiny half megawatt in 2000 to 196 megawatts in 2015. We install roofs both residential and commercial, and ground-mounted solar farms, operating in nine countries. In the UK, by far our biggest market to date, we are the largest installer, and were the first company to deploy 500 megawatts.

The wrong sort of success?

The scope for innovation and design is much greater in building-integrated solar than in ground mounted solar. Figuring that building-integrated solar had to be a mainstay of a sustainable energy future, we began innovating early. Our first product, a solar rooftile called C21, went on trial in 2003, and was in production by 2005. In 2006 it was the main reason a Silicon Valley venture capital fund, Vantage Point, invested in us.

By 2007, we had offices in France, Spain, and Italy. We were building a decent business in building-integrated solar, including installing solar barn roofs for farmers all over France, and supplying roofing products to Italian utlity Enel. We had our first professional CEO, Derry Newman, formerly boss of Sony UK.

In 2010, the UK introduced feed-in tariffs for solar: a mechanism for improving economics to speed market development and drive costs of products down. Notwithstanding the ongoing recession after the financial crisis of 2007-8, things were looking rosy.

Cue, in 2011, the first of two ambush cuts of the feed-in tariff by the UK government. Governments seeking to enable new markets using feed-in tariffs are supposed to have two vital objectives:

• First, the tariffs are meant to decrease steadily on a glide path to zero, allowing the embryonic industry to execute business plans en-route to ‘grid parity’ (a price equal to the cheapest fossil-fuel electricity) without facing precipitious drops in support, and hence demand and income.
• Second, investors must be able to have certainty that policy will not be reversed. Without that confidence, they will take fright and be difficult to persuade back to the market.

In its 2011 ambush attack, the UK government consciously elected to drop both these goals: their aim, so informants in Whitehall and Westminster told me, was to suppress the embryonic solar industry so that investors in gas and nuclear power would not be put off.

Hence Solarcentury found itself in a bizarre situation that year: taking the government to the High Court over the legality of their actions (we won), meanwhile winning a Queen’s Award for Enterprise for our product innovation.

Surviving and thriving under attempts to close down the UK solar industry

The UK government was not alone in sabotaging its own solar policies around this time, sadly. Similar dramas played out in Spain, France and Italy, forcing Solarcentury to close all its offices in those countries.

My point here is not to whinge so much as highlight the difficulties innovation teams face in a highly politicised sector like energy. To say the very least, they cannot afford to rely on budget continuity. The first budgets to be cut by boards under duress tend to be innovation and marketing. Accordingly, it is a matter of great pride to me that Solarcentury kept the faith with innovation through these troubled times.

What saved the company from bankruptcy, amid the ruin inflicted by politicians on our rooftop markets, was in part our increasingly international business, but mainly the fact that solar module prices had fallen so unexpectedly fast that we could install solar farms economically in the UK, drawing on a market enablement mechanism originally meant mainly for wind power – the Renewables Obligation.

We began to install solar farms in 2011, and grew fast in 2013 and 2014 as a consequence. All the while the innovation team was making progress with Sunstation.

2015 saw another government ambush attack on solar subsidies, this time revealing the full extent of Whitehall’s collective obsession with nuclear and fracked gas, and its willingness to sacrifice clean energy on the altar of those increasingly incomprehensible doomed causes. Thousands lost their jobs in the UK solar industry, especially in the companies that chose to work only domestically.

For the second time after an ambush, it seems that the UK markets will survive the unanticipated cliff in support. Notably, IKEA announced a partnership with Solarcentury for solar roof sales via their UK stores, having earlier stated their intention is to be the number one global retailer of residential solar roofs. Both companies affirmed their commitment to the UK market. Other companies have done the same.

Solar in the UK is not going away any time soon, accordingly, whatever the state of market support mechanisms. The fact that in-roof solar is now available for the same price as on-roof solar will surely help to cement that.

The future will not be like the past. Thank goodness …

A direction of travel is beginning to take shape as context for ongoing innovation in the global energy transition. Solar costs will continue to come down, until they are cheaper than everything else. So too will battery costs. The two technology families will increasingly be married. Other smart clean technologies will overlay their union, enhancing its potency.

Meanwhile supporters of nuclear and gas will increasingly struggle to deliver their flawed visions. Nuclear costs will march ever further into the realm of the unaffordable. Gas prices will continue to render fracking uneconomic, even if the oil industry can persuade a reluctant British public to accept it.

The solar revolution will continue to unfold, and the better that innovation teams in the clean energy industries deploy their design magic – in the broadest possible sense of that word – the quicker it will all accelerate.

In this upbeat context, Solarcentury’s innovation team should be filled with pride over their pioneering leadership with Sunstation.

As for myself, I am intensely proud of them, and their product. But I am also ashamed over my doubts about their original goal, and mindful that many men of a certain age like me, raised amid the fuming paraphernalia of the hydrocarbon age and not the smart electrons of the 21st century, have an awful lot yet to learn.

Dr Jeremy Leggett is a British green-energy entrepreneur, author and advocate who is founding director of Solarcentury, one of the most respected international solar companies; founder and Chairman of SolarAid, a charity set up with 5% of Solarcentury’s annual profits; and Chairman of CarbonTracker, a financial-sector think-tank warning of carbon-fuel asset-stranding risk to the capital markets.

This article was originally published on Jeremy’s own website.