2019 had its ups and downs and one of the latter was the death of Godfrey Boyle..
In his
pioneering 1975 book Living on the Sun,
Godfrey Boyle argued that “… it is
entirely possible for the industrial nations of the world to terminate their
dependence on non-renewable sources of energy and to create a gentler, fairer,
more ecologically conscious civilization based on the indefinitely-sustainable
energies of the sun, the geothermal heat of the earth and the tidal motion of
the oceans”.
That was a
bold assertion, for the mid 1970s, but by the early 2000s it had begun to look
much less utopian- although still some way off. In a
chapter in a 2007 compilation of reviews of the sustainable energy options, in which he looked at a range of global energy scenarios,
he concluded: ‘There seems leave little
room for doubt that a rapid deployment of renewable energy and energy
efficiency improvements can - and should - play the leading role in enabling
the world to make the vital transition to a zero-carbon energy future. Doubts
remain, however, about the willingness and ability of national & international
political and economic systems to implement the measures required to make such
a transition a reality’.
However,
the way ahead seemed clear. He noted that ‘In
the scenarios surveyed... those that lead to the lowest atmospheric carbon
emissions during the 21st century are generally those with the
highest proportions of energy from renewable sources, coupled with rapid
improvements in the efficiency of energy use. Renewables and energy efficiency
ought therefore to be given the highest priority in national and international
programmes of research, development, demonstration, deployment &
dissemination’.
12
years on, its clear he was right, though scenarios debate rumble on- ever
more convolutedly and with contrarian
views emerging. Godfrey, who sadly died
recently, was a pioneer in
computer scenario development (the DREAM model) and he would no doubt have been
amused by that. But he was not just a system modeler- he also tried to change the system. And not just the
energy system!
He was maybe best known for the book he edited on Renewables Energy- based on an earlier
OU teaching pack. That involved corralling together a bunch of OU and other
renewables energy buffs to do chapters of each area. He covered PV solar and
also contributed to an incisive analysis of integration issues, helped by Bob
Everett, who, with Janet Ramage and others, also helped him on the less well
known, parallel, but also excellent book on Energy
systems covering all the non-renewable energy options. These two books were
produced for various OU energy courses, and like the courses, they went through
upgrades/updates, with Godfrey at the helm. He also set up and ran the OU
Alternative Technology Group, later to become the Energy and Environment
Research Unit which carried out a range of hardware and policy research
projects- as well as supporting NATTA, a renewable energy outreach network and
its sill running journal Renew.
However, he also did many other thing- not least setting
up a housing co-op in Milton Keynes (still running), helping to plan a wider
Green Town project in MK (sadly it was blocked), and producing a brilliant OU
teaching text on community technology. It identified community-scaled energy
and craft based systems as being a key way ahead. That and his early book ‘Living on the Sun’,
represent some really original thinking ‘out side the box’. Which is what you’d
expect of a 1960’s student
radical who went on to set
up Undercurrents, the pioneering Alternative
Technology magazine in the 1970s, and co-edited the splendidly wide-ranging 1976
Undercurrents book, Radical Technology.
But he didn’t just write or
edit innovative books, he also made things
happen, helping to create a vision that we are all still trying to turn
into a reality.
Legacy
texts and videos
As, latterly, an academic and professor of renewable
energy at the Open University, Godfrey left us a body of valuable work. In
addition to the various editions of the Oxford/OUP text book Renewables Energy, and the Community Technology OU unit (for T361
Control of Technology), he also edited a pioneering monograph on the technical and policy options
available for managing variable energy resources such as wind and solar power,
in 2007 for Earthscan ‘Renewable
Electricity and the Grid’, with contributions from many of the UK top
experts. He also wrote a range
of papers and book chapters looking at PV solar and other renewables, as well
as scenarios (as in the example above). But scholarly text books & papers
aside, his solo book ‘Living
on the Sun: harnessing renewable energy for an equitable society’, set out his
pioneering views. So does
the epic Radical Technology which he
played a major role in shaping, along with Peter Harper. It was the subject of
the retrospective conference in 2016. All the above are available
from Amazon and
other stockists. All the back issues of
Undercurrents, up to its demise in 1984, are available on line, thanks to the late Chris Hutton-Squire,
another key Undercurrents team member, who archived them digitally.
There are also some web-accessible videos. Godfrey
revisited the scenario field in one of his last public lectures, at a CND conference in 2018. In a somewhat different
context, his Professorial
Inaugural lecture at the OU
in 2011 is worth viewing. And, in a less formal setting, so is the talk he gave at the Small is Beautiful Festival in 2012. It was one many such grass
roots talks he gave, around the country and at CAT in Wales, where he spent some
time – he also helped with their Zero Carbon
Britain plan. What
a guy! We will all miss him.
Please
note this will be the last posting
in this monthly Renew Extra blog. It is being replaced by a new Renew Weekly: https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com
Back
issues of Renew Extra will remain accessible from the old link.
