horsemouth has attended the last pre-bid consortium meeting, the bid should now be in (or be going in). ok it's gone in - looks like they pulled an all-nighter to do it (eek.).
they've pushed the big green button and it has gone in (huzzah).
the consortium don't find out until january if their bid has been successful. and if they are successful the heavy lifting of membership engagement, consultation and design doesn't start until march (with actual works not starting until september). the time until march is taken up by legal consultations and agreements, making sure the consortium is properly legally constructed to do what it wants to do.
the plan? to insulate social housing stock and thus save carbon emissions.
the target(s) to insulate all social housing stock up to EPC C standard by 2030, to reduce the space heating required to 90kwh/m2/ year (horsemouth is not quite sure if he has followed the units correctly but you get the picture), to reduce energy expended heating/ lighting the home (but mainly heating) and to reduce carbon emissions by 68% by 2030.
horsemouth quite likes this summary - he may steal it for something more official.
now of course these targets are not the same thing at all.
for starters insulating houses to EPC C standard (from the Ds and Es where it currently is) does not give 68% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions - that's a lot more insulating measures off down the line. (measures for which government money is not available).
horsemouth imagines this is the work of 2025 -2030.
there is an assumption that as the property is better insulated people will need to use their heating less - but it may be that currently people do not use their heating at all (because they cannot afford to use it, particularly this and next winters) and that with insulation their use of their heating may rise (because the heat actually stays in the building and they get the benefit of it). ho-hum.
insulating these draughty old houses so that the heat stays in is hard work, it is not guaranteed to work and could lead to problems with damp the measures may well take time to fit and require people to move their stuff out of the way. people may not like the measures that would most effectively insulate their homes and prefer others that do not get the house up to EPC C standard (and thus enable the government money).
anyway. all this is a while off. the other side of the bid being successful.
out in sharm-el-sheik (having flown there on jets) the diplomats of the world struggle to produce 'climate justice' on the uneven playing field of the world. the climate crisis will fuck lots of things for billions of people - where the world's food will grow will change, where people can actually live will change. in a world divided up by borders and immigration controls millions (possibly billions) will have to flee.
anyway everyone knows this.
the 'green technologies' do not begin to solve this (horsemouth is frustrated by both the slowness of the future to arrive and the failure to recognise that the myriad activities engaged in solar panel production (for example) are themselves carbon generating).
hell writing, storing, accessing this blogpost generates carbon and contributes to global warming.
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it's a grey cold morning. (but colder is coming).
last night horsemouth was reading his pandemic prognostications (he was reading his old blog posts) - the middle-class world has not gone all 'work-from-home' as he thought it would but the post-pandemic inflation boom has come, the governments are scrambling to recover 'their' money from the people. strangely it is horsemouth's more 'dire' prognostications that seem to have come true.
he watched a little of a C4 news focus group up north. krishnan guru-murthy was there with the great and good of some northern town (darlington?). everyone wants to speak knowledgeably and sensibly about the crisis (for it is 'the crisis', the crisis that has not gone away) and they are all well schooled in the contemporary discourses. they opt for that knowledge economy, training and education, good jobs future when faced by the not enough money to buy food and heat the house present. they acknowledge the sacrifices in the present that will be necessary to achieve this hopeful future (and in doing they condemn themselves to a future of having to choose between buying food and heating the house).
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