Godfrey Boyle- visionary and activist

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 21^st 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.