– 7 til 9pm, Monday 9th March

- Dempseys Pub, opposite the castle

- £2 entry (to cover room hire)

Alan Gillard and Daniel Stollar from Gillard Associates, a Cardiff based firm of sustainable architects, will be presenting their ideas on community based housing and low carbon design and refurbishment.

Followed by an opportunity for questions and facilitated discussion.

The Bioenergy Action Plan for Wales aims to generate at least 5 terawatt hours of electricity, about 20% of our current needs, from renewable biomass by 2020. It also aims to have biomass provide 2.5 terawatt hours of usable heat energy, about 3% of our current needs. This will result in a reduction of about 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year in comparison with generation based on fossil fuels. It will also create new jobs.

Biomass is organic material that can be used to create renewable energy. This includes plants, trees and vegetations, as well as sewage and animal waste. Biomass is ‘carbon neutral’, in that the amount of carbon it absorbs while growing is the same as the amount it produces when burned. The Assembly Government wants to ensure that biomass is obtained from sustainable sources, whether these are in the UK or overseas, and take into account the carbon emissions associated with growing, harvesting, processing and treating it.

Welsh designers are making a strong showing with show gardens designed by some of the country’s leading gardening talents. Confirmed show gardens include one from South Glamorgan-based Michele Fitzsimmons and Sara Bentley. ‘Eats Shoots and Leaves: A Permaculture Garden in April’ is a garden based on the main themes of permaculture: productivity, lower maintenance, multi-functionalism, use of local resources and biodiversity.

Last year’s Gold medal winner Anthea Guthrie will also be at the show with ‘Slugger Off’ – a garden resistant to slugs. Another highlight is a garden from a Category B local prison in Bridgend – HMP & YOI Parc. The prison’s horticulture team is designing a show garden called ‘Choices’ based on the choices made by individuals while incarcerated. A water feature using stepping stones will symbolise personal journeys and after the show the entire garden will be rebuilt within the internal grounds of the prison.

Doctor Who’s Tardis will also be touching down at the show, with the ‘Garden in Time’ garden featuring a time travel theme. Much of the BBC series has been filmed in Cardiff and this is the perfect chance for those who missed the garden’s debut at the world famous RHS Chelsea Flower Show to enjoy the garden.

Visitors can also sample the true taste of Wales in the Experience Wales marquee which will once again filled with the very best Welsh food, drink and crafts. Other highlights at the show include the Interactive Allotment which returns by popular demand. Nature trails, street entertainers and live music will also be on hand to keep the whole family entertained.

Feeding cities has a greater impact on us and our planet than anything else we do, yet few of us are aware of the process. Industrialisation has made it seem easy, but with peak oil looming and climate change upon us, that illusion is wearing off. We urgently need a new urban model – one that treats city and country as a single, organic whole.

Carolyn is an architect and prize-winning author. She has run successful design units at Cambridge University, London Metropolitan University and the London School of Economics, where she was inaugural studio director of the Cities Programme. She was Rome Scholar in 1995-6, researching the historical urban order of the Ghetto. She has presented on BBC TV’s One Foot in the Past, has written for Blueprint Magazine and is a regular columnist for Building Design. Her book Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (2008), won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-fiction and was recently featured on a special edition of Radio 4’s The Food Programme.

This FREE talk will take place on Tuesday 17 February 2009 at 7.00pm in the Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning, Senghennydd Road, Cardiff. Room E0.15. All welcome – no booking required.

On MONDAY 12TH JANUARY 2009, between 7 – 9pm,

@ DEMPSEYS PUB, on CASTLE STREET (CORNER WOMANBY STREET) CARDIFF.

Entry: £2 on the door (to cover cost of hiring room)

All welcome.

Speaker is… Molly Scott-Cato – Reader in Green Economics and Economics Speaker for the Green Party who will share her thinking about what transition means for the way we organise our economic life, and specifically in relation to trade and money. Followed by an opportunity for questions and a facilitated exercise/discussion

For further information, please contact info@cardifftransitionproject.org.uk

At a Walking and Cycling and Conference in Cardiff, the Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing, Jane Davidson, said the Welsh Assembly Government would be investing £250,000 to train more than 100 instructors to teach the new standards across Wales.

The aim is to increase the number of qualified instructors that can deliver cycle training to a consistent standard that prepares children and adults to cycle on today’s roads.   Ms Davidson said:

The Welsh Assembly Government is committed to getting more people to cycle – as a form of transport; as a means of becoming more physically active; and as a way of getting out and enjoying our countryside.

We all need to reduce our carbon footprint, and cycling can help to make a real difference here – especially since the majority of car journeys are less than 5 miles long. With the cost of motoring on the rise, cycling is a cheap, healthy, and sustainable means of transport.

So I’m delighted to announce today this new initiative which the Assembly Government is funding this year to encourage more people to cycle.

The Cycle Training National Standards have already been adopted by a small number of local authorities in Wales, but the new money and the partnership with CTC – the UK’s national cyclists’ organisation – will help ensure coverage across Wales.

Working with the CTC Charitable Trust and the Sports Council, the £250,000 funding over three years will be used to get the National Standards adopted across Wales alongside the successful Bikeability brand.

CTC Director Kevin Mayne said:

We call Bikeability cycling proficiency for the 21st Century. It gives parents and children the confidence to make their daily journeys by bike under real conditions. We are delighted that the Welsh Assembly is encouraging more people to cycle. The funding will also enable us to employ a Cycle Training Development Officer who will be dedicated to supporting all the providers of cycling activities in Wales as they get more people on their bikes.

Ms Davidson said:

CTC estimate that around 10% of year 6 pupils in Wales receive some cycle training, but rarely is this undertaken on roads. We want to see this changed dramatically through a programme of work to get over 100 instructors trained in the National Standards who will then provide appropriate cycle training to schools and to adults. A new project officer is also being recruited to help co-ordinate this work.

Nestling in the shadow of Conwy’s town walls, an unloved patch of scrubland contains the last remnants of a centuries-old orchard containing rare varieties of apples, pears and the unusual Denbigh plum.

But a campaign has now begun to restore the untended site, crammed with the finest Welsh fruits of yesteryear, to its former glory.

Mark Watson-Jones, organiser of the Conwy Community Orchard Group, said the trees still bear fruit every summer and autumn although many decades have passed since the trees received any tender loving care. Most of the fruit now goes to waste because the site is so overgrown.

Fulls story on the Icwales website here

This will be designed to help member organisations achieve the investment necessary for them to be sustainable long-term social enterprises. Cylch has been working with the Assembly to secure this fund for the sector and are delighted with the outcome.

The fund will be used to provide suitable investment that will help the sector in Wales deliver waste minimisation, reuse, recycling and composting activities. In order to avoid any conflicts of interest the Cylch Capacity Building Fund will be administered independently of Cylch, following selection of a contractor by the end of March.

At an Energy Summit this week the First Minister said that since he last met delegates at the annual summit, the pace of change in the energy sector has continued to accelerate at European, UK and Wales levels culminating last week with the publication of the Wales Renewable Energy Route Map, the first to be published by a UK administration. Mr Morgan said:

The energy world has been a tremendously busy one, both at project and policy level, since we last met a year ago.

The key to our aims is to maximise Wales’ contribution to the abatement of global warming, not to produce a set of strategies that make the Welsh figures look good.

I am pleased to say that in Wales we have been equally busy meeting the tasks of securing our energy needs for the future.

It represents another big step by our small country on the path to making Wales a low carbon energy economy.

Expanding the production and use of low carbon and secure energy is one of the Assembly Government’s key One Wales commitments.

The Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing, Jane Davidson, told the Summit that the Assembly Government was unique in Europe in having a legal duty to promote sustainable development:

Tackling climate change is my top priority and I believe the Route Map, which I launched in Cwmbran and London last week, is one of the ways that we can achieve this.

Climate change is with us. We have to deal with it but we cannot tackle it alone. Everybody in Wales needs to be taking part in the consultation around the Route Map as this will inform our Energy Strategy which we will be publishing before the end of the year.

I was pleased with the warm welcome that the Route Map received and it is good to meet people at summits like this to exchange views with all the stakeholders so that we can get the strategy right.

There is no magic bullet for tackling climate change. The Assembly Government is determined to do all that it can to ensure that we:

• All stop wasting energy
• All invest in more energy efficiency in our buildings and processes
• Reduce the carbon intensity of energy generation as quickly as practicable.

Wales is blessed with the kind of natural resources – geography, climate, tides – which can reach 33 terrawatt hours of renewable electricity by 2025 – a level that is equal to electricity demand.

The First Minister outlined to the Summit the major projects that have been developing in the last year including:

• The LNG terminals in Milford Haven nearing completion
• RWE are completing major flue gas desulphurisation installations and boiler upgrades at Aberthaw power station
• Rhyl flats offshore windfarm has started construction – one of the UK’s largest.
• Consent for Welsh Power’s 800 MW gas-fired power station at Uskmouth and Prenergy’s 350 MW biomass at Port Talbot – the latter being the world’s largest biomass-fired electricity power station
• While Tower Colliery close other coal developments are progressing across South Wales and longer term underground coal gasification prospects are being intensively studied at Cardiff University.

Other renewables milestones include the Bluestone biomass project and the announcement of multi-megawatt tidal stream projects off Pembrokeshire and Anglesey.

An announcement is due shortly of the outcome on the Forestry Commission Wind-farm tendering process.

The Commission’s report, Tidal Power in the UK, draws on extensive research and public and stakeholder engagement to reach the conclusion that, the UK’s outstanding tidal resources could provide at least 10% of the country’s electricity through a combination of technologies. A Severn barrage alone could potentially supply just under 5%.

However, the report insists that commitment to public leadership and ownership of the project is the only way to ensure the public gets a fair share of the rewards and to avoid short-termist decisions. It also asserts that a publicly-led project is the only way of ensuring that the network of estuary habitats protected by European law is not compromised as a result of a Severn barrage.

Sustainable Development Commission conditions for a Severn Barrage:

• A Severn barrage must be publicly led as a project and publicly owned as an asset to avoid short-termist decisions and ensure the long-term public interest

• Full compliance with European Directives on habitats is vital, as is a long-term commitment to creating compensatory habitats on an unprecedented scale

• Development of a Severn Barrage must not divert Government attention away from much wider action on climate change

Jonathon Porritt, Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, said:

“The enormous potential for a Severn barrage to help reduce our carbon emissions and improve energy security needs to be balanced against the impact on the estuary’s unique habitat, as well as its communities and businesses. This is why we believe that any development must be publicly-led as a project and publicly-owned as an asset, in order to ensure that the Government takes full responsibility for taking a sustainable, long-term approach.”

The report also highlights the fact that the lower rate of interest available to a Government-led project would provide the only realistic way of financing a large-scale compensatory habitat package, as well as providing electricity to consumers at a competitive price.

“The Sustainable Development Commission is issuing a challenge to Government to embrace a new way of managing this major project,” said Porritt. “We are excited about the contribution a Severn Barrage could make to a more sustainable future, but not at any cost.

“It is vitally important that all parts of Government – including the Welsh Assembly Government and the South West Regional Development Agency – are actively involved in the project, to ensure that work is fully integrated into regional economic and development plans.”

The Commission also warns that the development of major tidal power resources should not be seen as a licence to ignore the need for dramatic reductions in our energy consumption, increased energy efficiency, and the wider decarbonisation of our energy supplies.

A barrage would be only one part of a major long-term sustainable energy strategy for reducing carbon emissions. Reviewing the different types of tidal technology, the report asserts that the way is open for the UK to exploit all some or all of its rich tidal resources for tidal barrages, tidal lagoons or tidal stream devices.

Tidal stream technologies

Emerging tidal stream technologies present exciting opportunities for low carbon energy production, and the report cites potentially huge rewards in terms of export potential from developing this technology. The Commission concludes that Government should ’stay the course’ to make tidal stream technology a viable proposition, whilst putting in place a robust regulatory framework and supporting the research required to understand potential environmental impacts.

Tidal lagoons

The report concludes that there are few direct conflicts between tidal barrages and tidal lagoons, with the exception of claims made for large scale lagoon development in the Severn Estuary. Although there is little authoritative evidence available on tidal lagoon technology, which proposes using hydropower turbines in an offshore impoundment, lagoons could potentially be developed in a number of shallow coastal areas with sufficient tidal range. The Commission would like to see the Government investigating their long-term potential by funding a demonstration project. This would allow a full evaluation of the costs and the potential environmental impacts.

Download the report Turning the Tide, Tidal Power in the UK here