One giant leap for the US green transition

For those outside renewable energy circles, the White House’s decision to green light the US’s first commercial-scale wind farm might have passed them by. 

But it is huge move and one that is expected to herald the roll out of offshore wind farms on the other side of the Atlantic.

One of the first things I was told when starting to cover the US offshore wind market was the strange fact that, despite having one of the largest number of turbines on land, only two small-scale demonstration projects have ever been approved in US waters.

The second of these only came onstream last summer, four years after the blades started turning at the first four years earlier. 

To say progress has been slow is somewhat of an understatement.

The granting of Vineyard Wind, off the coast of Massachusetts, approval to construct a 84-turbine site generating 800MW (enough to power around 400,000 homes) has been long in the waiting. 

This has been due to a number of factors, such as alleviating the concerns of fisheries and environmental groups, as well as the inevitable nimbyism.

However, the largest spanner in the works was a clear lack of will from the last US President to progress this technology and the renewable energy that it created. 

It was clear from Donald Trump making unfounded and frankly bizarre claims about the impact of wind turbines on public health that offshore wind did not have his support.

While oil and gas leases were handed out regularly, permits for offshore wind were rare occurrences. 

This delay led to the US waiting in the wings for more than four years, while across the Atlantic wind farms grew, thousands of jobs were created and electricity prices dropped.

It also meant that Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between Spanish and Danish developers, has had to cancel and re-tender for suppliers to build the wind farm. 

With these $billion projects, changes like these do not come cheap, and can knock investor confidence in the market, leading them to look elsewhere. 

The Biden administration finally greenlighting the project should provide the reassurance that offshore wind in the US is finally going ahead, bringing with in a wealth of economic benefits. 

Vineyard Wind alone is expected to create 3,600 jobs and generate around $200m in economic activity. 

But with nine further projects currently lined up for federal approval, the American Clean Power Association believes around 84,000 new roles could be created. 

This is just one economic benefit, along with revitalising port areas and investment in coastal communities that offshore wind is expected to bring. 

But, arguably, the biggest win, would be for the environment, with a new renewable energy source to meet the country’s growing electricity demand, which has the potential to further reduce the US’s reliance on fossil fuels. 

President Biden has set out an ambitious target of 30GW of offshore wind capacity created by 2030 alongside other measures to “green” the nation’s post-Covid economy.

In ten years’ time, Vineyard Wind will be seen as a key stepping stone on the US’s path to zero emissions. 

Post-Covid solutions: a national social care academy

One of the unforeseen silver linings on the all-encompassing big black Covid-19 cloud is the important work social care providers do has come to the public’s attention.  

Coupled with the mass redundancies that are the unfortunate side effect of the global pandemic, resulting in a pool of potential workers, there could be an opportunity here to recruit new social care staff and, more importantly, keep them.  

Working in social care settings has traditionally been only considered by people who have had contact with the sector or are desperate for a job. The latter are expected to be off once the latest supermarket opens in their area offering an easier ride for similar or better wages.  

Part of the reason for this is not everyone is cut out to work in social care but there are many transferrable skills from industries that have been hit by the virus such as retail and hospitality. Apart from excellent people skills, this group knows how to work hard.  

Another reason is the low pay on offer to carry out a highly-skilled job that is still not taken seriously as a profession.  So how can this situation be changed?

One option is to formalise the training every member of staff needs into one body. This would have the double benefit of ensuring every worker is trained to a basic level and the prospective employee would have to invest the time in doing a course. It becomes far harder to leave a job once you have invested the time into completing the training and would offer a clear and simple progression path to someone thinking of entering the sector.  

This could be further enhanced by adding a healthcare element to the training, expanding the offering to also work in healthcare settings.

Care England’s Martin Green has called for a seamless career path between the two sectors and opening up the opportunities a social care qualification can offer would be one way to do this.  

It would give workers from both sides of the NHS/social care divide an understanding and, crucially, an appreciation of both disciplines, paving the way for better joint working practices. Furthermore, a healthcare aspect would make it far more attractive to potential workers, capitalising on the status working for the NHS currently holds. 

Of course, there have been attempts in the past by some of the larger care providers to set up these academies which have floundered for various reasons. But having a national programme, backed by the Government, to earn a uniform qualification that includes training on dealing with outbreaks on the scale of Covid-19, could further boost public confidence in the care workforce while offering workers a similar status to that afforded to those working in the NHS.  

But, of course, this all costs money and with the current fragility of the care home market, putting the responsibility for having a solid and stable workforce on providers is not going to work. There is a strong argument for making the academy publicly funded as it would need to be a long-term investment.  

The Government could do worse than put in place funds for a national health and social care academy as part of a strategy to fend off future pandemics. There would be wide-spread support as both a creator of jobs and a barrier against outbreaks.  

With a social care White Paper apparently on the horizon, this is the perfect time to push for this workforce investment. Over to you Boris... 

Post-Covid solutions: Should councils be cut out of the social care loop?

If anything has become apparent during the Coronavirus crisis, it is that the current social care system has got some serious structural problems. The roll-out of PPE, testing and now infection control funding is just not getting through fast enough and on the scale needed. And who are providers blaming? Why local authorities of course. 

In the nine years I have been writing about social care, the public-facing half of the sector has been severely underfunded with councils citing budget cuts as the reason. When challenging DHSC on this, it points to all the cash it has handed over to local authorities for social care services. Devolving the problem through the social care precept appears to have limited success. So is it time to stop this never-ending blame game between councils and Whitehall and just cut out the middle man? 

There is a strong case for doing so. With providers and service users forced to deal with individual local authorities, each with a diverse range of political ambitions and priorities, a postcode lottery has been created at a cost to vulnerable people. Furthermore, as the vast majority of care providers have only one site, a change in council policy could wipe out their business. 

With one single commissioning body, practices could be standardised and operators with more than one site would not have to tender for up to 152 contracts, each with their own idiosyncrasies. Imagine how much time and money could be saved? By standardising the process  social care providers would be able to plan properly for the future and the system would be far easier for service users and their families to understand. It would also help create an accurate, up-to-date, national picture of the performance of social care services in England and the factors impacting on the sector. 

After all, there is only one regulator so why not just a single commissioner? 

“A-ha” local authorities will point out “We are best placed to know the needs of of our vulnerable residents”. And they would be right as the requirements of people in Sunderland are very different to those in Surrey. But while social care is councils’ largest financial cost, they have many other priorities. When it comes to deciding between creating a new shiny leisure centre and sustaining a meals on wheels service, it is often towards the vote-winning former that the money flows. Local authorities have been, by their own admission, struggling to provide social care services thoroughout the age of austerity. Maybe it is time for another body to have a try? 

However, a “one size fits all” approach for everyone in England would not work on the ground and there would be a real danger of block contracts squeezing out the smaller providers that are the lifeblood of the sector. Instead could an arms-length commissioning collective made of social care experts from each local authority area, accountable to central Government, provide an alternative? This body would focus solely on the commissioning of social care services and offer a single point of contact for everyone who uses them. And if there is another pandemic, as scientists say is inevitable, it would be just one body co-ordinating a strategic response for the sector.

It would be a significant structural change, causing upheaval across the board. But the current system cannot continue to struggle and offer the protection service users need. With social care now sitting at the top of the political agenda, is now the time to push for reform and cut councils out of the equation? 

Could my brush with the Australian bushfires be a taste of things to come?

The scene that greeted me stepping out of the house in an Australian suburb

One week ago I was stood on a suburban Australian street in the middle of the day watching a huge plume of smoke spread across the sky. I wasn’t the only one. Several people were on their driveways hypnotically gazing as the black cloud grew and grew. 

After two weeks of watching the devastation almost five months of bushfires had wrought on the eastern side of Australia, now in this small town on the other side of the continent I was getting a small taste of what they had experienced. 

Evacuees were sat in a nearby cafe, leaving after receiving a text that they needed to go. Other customers, the waiter confided, had rushed back to home to rescue belongings in case the fire ventured near to where they lived. The freeway was immediately closed and an emergency warning was put in place. Helicopters criss-crossed the sky, each dropping a bucket of water to dowse the flames in what appeared to be a well-practiced routine. It was bushfire season after all.

This was my first experience of being near a fire of this scale and the thing that struck me was not the flames but the smoke. The acrid smell of burning was everywhere, still lingering in the air, clinging to everything it comes in contact with. It was hard to breathe and unpleasant to be outdoors. Hours later, while going outside to check my phone, small fragments of ash landed on the handset despite now having travelled more than 50 kilometres from the source of the fire. Smoke haze hung over Perth Airport, obscuring the landscape as darkness fell. It was all encompassing. 

And, while is was a large bushfire fuelled by strong winds, that took around 150 firefighters to control, it is not even close to the scale of the bushfires in eastern Australia that have been raging since September 2019. The New South Wales Rural Fire Services has described the damage as “unprecedented”  in the state at this point in the bushfire season. To watch those relentless daily images of people’s homes destroyed and reports of lives lost was heartbreaking. But, for me, the most iconic image broadcast during my time there were helicopter shots of kangaroos fleeing for their lives as the flames chased them. 

There was talk of government’s, both state and central, not doing enough to prevent the fires with controlled burning to clear out low lying flammable material. Witnesses, however, report many fires spreading via the treetops, bone dry from a lack of rain and scorching temperatures. Residents and firefighters alike have said these are different types of fire than the ones they are used to. 

Links with changes to the global climate could mean that more and more people will lose their homes, the environment that surrounds them and even their lives to the flames and toxic after effects. After having a small taste of being near a bushfire, it is not an experience I would like to repeat in a hurry. 

Is the best way to save water to stop drinking milk?

Following my post last month about London’s imminent water shortage, there has been a deluge of rain in the UK. It seems counter intuitive to talk about water scarcity while people are being flooded out of their houses. But this extreme weather has been attributed to climate change which is expected to significantly change access to water across the globe. I, like many, thought water scarcity was caused by the demands from the rising number of humans on the planet. It is, but not in the way we think. 

According to the OECD, demand for water is set to soar. By 2050 we will need 55 per cent more water than we did in 2000. And farmers will account for three quarters of this use. It isn’t the human race who accounts for most water being used, it is the animals raised for meat and dairy. 

The Water Footprint Network says that each kilogramme of beef produced uses 15,415 litres of water, compared to 4,055 for pulses. Beef requires almost six times more water to produce the same amount of protein as beans, lentils and peas. Starchy roots such as potatoes use 387 litres of water per kilogram compared to 1020 for milk. They both, however, produce the same amount of protein per litre of water. 

Chicken meat needs 4,325 litres per kg, eggs 3,265 litres, pigs 5,988 litres and sheep 8,763 litres, compared to just 322 for vegetables. Almost all (98%) of the water used by the meat and dairy industry is used to grow the animal’s feed. Of the water required by global animal production, one third is used in the rearing of beef cattle, while 19% is for dairy cows. 

National Farmers Union statistics show livestock farming is concentrated in the north and south west of England where water scarcity is less of a problem. However, it is these areas that have suffered some of the worst flooding in England, leading to agricultural waste to run into British waterways. 

All over the world, including the UK coastlines, dead zones are being created by algae as a result of this waste. These are being highlighted by a growing number a scientists, most recently biochemist and wildlife biologist Lisa Bonin in the BBC documentary, Meat: A threat to our planet. Another devastating side effect is the deforestation in the Amazon, the number one cause of which is to make way for cattle. Meanwhile, further north in Brazil, the vast tropical savannah that is the Cerrado region, home to 5% of the planet’s animals and plants, is being transformed into farmland to feed the world’s livestock. 

The oceans are being stripped of small fish such to create fish-based animal food. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation, in 2018 15.8 million tonnes of fish were used for animal feed, almost 9% of all fish caught or farmed, the latter coming with its own environmental impact. 

Other scientists have questioned the efficiency of eating meat on human health, most notably this year on Netflix’s The Game Changers. Their argument is that livestock act as “middle men” when it comes to getting the nutrients we need. Cutting them out and eating a plant-based diet would result in fulfilling the same dietary requirements without needing as much water and land, the documentary claims. 

So should we reduce how much meat and dairy we eat, or even stop altogether, in order to prevent water scarcity in the future? It certainly is food for thought. 

Why isn’t social care solving the NHS’s winter woes?

In recent weeks I have been commissioned to write two features on how the NHS and social care providers can work together more closely. The reason. Winter is coming and with it many hospitals will face their annual challenge to meet demand. November to February is the busiest time of year for NHS, with more than 20% of patients being admitted from A&E last December and January according to NHS figures. And while the number of people entering hospitals soars, the problem is compounded by those who are unable to leave following treatment. 

Delayed transfers of care, or its less kind moniker “bed blocking”, remains one of the most serious problems facing the NHS. Initiatives to solve this problem are many, most recently the integrated care vanguards, but few appear to take root strongly enough to be adopted at a national level. 

In the eight years I have been writing about social care, I have asked why not many times. The answer, it seems comes down to cultural differences between the NHS and social care. Social care providers, especially for-profit ones, often feel they are being excluded from these initiatives despite providing the largest number of care homes in the UK. They say they are seeing very little of grants such as the Better Care Fund. Those who do successfully manage to engage with the NHS say they are often seen as the junior partner, having to adapt to hospital trust’s way of doing things.

And for a large provider, working with a range of NHS trusts, each with a different way of doing things, this can be incredibly time consuming. As is care home managers having to visit hospitals to assess each potential client to determine if they could take them or not. This can’t be the most efficient way of doing things. 

However, some NHS managers lay the blame at the door of social care providers, saying they are having to repeatedly treat patients due to the poor quality of care received in the community. Clearly there are some trust issues on both sides. 

There are far-reaching benefits to both care providers and NHS managers coming together to create a smooth pathway to leaving hospital. After all, the cost of a care home bed is dwarfed by its hospital equivalent. Furthermore, a patient transferred to appropriate care is less likely to bounce back into hospital. A good transfer of care, with equal input from both parties, would save the NHS time and money at a period where both are scarce.

As well as the general public, both health and social care sectors are crying out for a solution to this problem. But that can only happen when the latter is given a seat on the top table and an equal voice in how services are provided. 

How I stopped procrastinating at work thanks to an old school favourite

I didn't mean to start procrastinating at work but falling down an internet rabbit hole while supposed to be producing my latest assignment was increasingly becoming a problem. On top of this, since becoming a full time freelance journalist, working from home all day, those little screen breaks have grown into long stints away from my desk, encroaching on my productivity with every passing week. Never has my flat been so clean, my garden so well tended and the cat been stroked and played with so much that even she's had enough. But I don't get paid to do any of these things. I get paid to write. 

So last month, while listening to a podcast when I should really have been developing story ideas, I came across Nir Eyal and his idea of scheduling the day in order to stop getting distracted. Knowing how ill-disciplined I'd become, I decided to take this one step further and introduce my old school timetable into my working life. 

It's pretty similar to the sheet of paper I was handed as a bewildered 11-year-old when I first stepped through the doors of my high school. After five years it was so ingrained in my brain that I can recite it to this day. Now in the form of a bespoke Excel spreadsheet, it is structured exactly the same with an half an hour break in the morning and one in the afternoon, plus an hour for lunch so I have time to both eat and get some fresh air. 

But while the structure is almost identical, the lessons have changed. Instead of every day starting with registration with my form tutor, it is now checking emails, social media and reading new articles that have come online in the past 12 hours. I spend an hour doing exactly the same thing at the end of the day. Not only does this ensure that I'm up to speed on everything, it reduces the temptation to waste time surfing the web when you have work to do. And instead of the dreaded double maths, I now have double interviews which are usually far more interesting and easy to understand than algebra ever was. 

Maths was not the only subject that I didn't really look forward to at school. The only real bright spot on my school timetable was triple Design on a Thursday morning. It was a time when you sat at your drawing board and created your coursework in a very relaxed, non-school-like atmosphere. 

My working equivalent is Golden Time, a concept introduced to me by career coach Garret Keogh and something Eyal subscribes to as well. This is the period during the day where you are most productive and do your best work. Between 10:30am and 12:30am each day I close down my emails and put my mobile on silent and the cogs of the sparkling copy machine whir into life. Then I produce my best work, whether it be my latest feature, a copywriting assignment that I've been commissioned to do or even this blog. This is the time where I hit my creative peak during the day. I've even coloured it dark yellow on my timetable to remind me that this time is sacred and not to be sacrificed. 

Other tasks that need focus but not as much creative energy, such as co-ordinating speakers for the events I produce or sending out requests to potential feature interviewees, take place between lunch and the afternoon break. After this, when my energy levels are beginning to fade, comes any research I need to do and those administrative tasks that you need to get done in order to keep the business running smoothly and successfully. 

By discarding a lengthy to-do list in favour of a weekly timetable, I can also organise myself better and group similar tasks or subject matters together. For example, it makes more sense to do all my social care writing and tasks on the same day. I can then focus on my environment or investigative journalism on different days time without constantly having to swap subject matter or discipline. 

But I have learned some lessons since bringing my timetable back to life, mainly around not  packing everything into my working day so it becomes near impossible to complete. As well I now leave at least a morning and/or an afternoon free for those last minute requests from clients. If they don't materialise, you have some bonus time to plan or get out of the house and do some exercise (I'm always tempted to put this down as PE on the timetable). And at the end of the week, it is a helpful document to review where you have progressed, where you are spending too much or too little time and whether a sustainable work/life balance has been achieved. 

In the two months I've embraced timetable culture, productivity levels have sky-rocketed, with new business and opportunities gained as a result. It seems I did learn something valuable at school after all. Maybe I should invest in a bell next?

Achieving a work flight balance

It’s hard trying to be green in your professional life, particularly when you have to fly for work. The increasing awareness about the damage caused by putting tonnes of carbon directly into the atmosphere is making myself and other environmentally concerned commuters think twice about air travel. And while cutting back or eliminating flights when going on holiday is simply a matter of choosing a destination where you don’t need one, getting on a plane for work can be more problematic.  

As someone who doesn’t own a car and usually only travels on public transport, my carbon footprint is pretty low. But air travel is the dirty black stain on my record. If I can get to a work meeting or conference within a reasonable time by train I will take it. But sometimes a plane is the only way to travel. I attended a science conference in Austria last week. I would have loved to have followed Greta Thunberg’s lead and taken the train from London all the way to Linz. Unfortunately I had to be in Birmingham the day before so a two-day train trip was out of the question. Also the possibility of patchy wi-fi and phone coverage, plus the fact working on a lap-top while on a train makes me travel sick, means productivity levels would plummet - something you can ill afford when self-employed. 

So what to do? 

Not attending at all would work if there were webinar facilities to watch presentations from the comfort of my own office. But, as someone who produces events, it is expensive and often not cost-effective to use these services, particularly if it is a niche event. Also it means missing out on networking opportunities, which as a journalist is one of the main reasons to attend conference. 

Carbon offsetting is the conscience salve of choice for frequent flyers. A quick browse through the UK Government’s website, however, appears to show environmental tax relief only applies to big businesses not tiny operations like my own so I would have to bear the full cost, meaning I would effectively have to pay twice. 

So I decided compromise was the only way forward. Instead of flying from London to Frankfurt and getting on another plane to Linz, I flew to Vienna and completed the remainder of my journey to Upper Austria by rail. It was far from the ideal solution but at least one flight is better than two right? 

This was the best I could do to achieve a work flight balance. If anyone has a better solution, please let me know. 

Climate change knocks on London's door

A couple of weeks ago, an engineer paid me a visit to check I was not wasting water. Being a good journalist I asked “Why is this necessary?”. “There is going to be a water shortage in London soon”,  he casually replied. 

What? A water shortage in one of the wettest countries (in my opinion) on the planet? But this is actually happening, according to a report from Leonie Cooper, deputy chair of London’s environment committee, released this summer. Bursts from the Capital’s ageing pipes, the city’s loss of green space and a growing population are all factors, as is “the capital’s changing, and increasingly extreme, climate”. 

Climate change has finally come home for me. No longer just a problem for emaciated polar bears stranded on rocks, Bangladeshi villagers having their homes washed away or Amazonian tribes trapped in a burning rainforest, it literally turned up on my doorstep in a Thames Water uniform. 

And while I’m sure the gadget to strengthen the water pressure in my kitchen taps and the cute egg timer to measure how long I spend in the shower may help a little bit, it seems a long way from alleviating the problem facing London.

The big solution appears to be bringing forward the construction of a new reservoir in Oxfordshire. But wouldn’t that have an impact on the eco-system there? Shouldn’t we be thinking of big solutions in capital itself instead of sticking plasters outside of it? While replacing the pipes is the obvious (yet very costly and disruptive) solution, and limiting the city’s population would be contentious to say the least, surely addressing the loss of green space should be a long-term aim. 

The capital’s parks, wetlands, forests and plains are well used - important places not just ecologically but socially. They are an essential source of wellbeing for London’s residents, who more often than not have no green space of their own. It is sad to see a succession of little patches of green being developed, more often than not into some new flats. 

And while the demand for new homes in the capital is real, so is the impact of losing the green space they are built on. Instead of paying lip service to sustainability plans, councils and the Mayor of London should be held responsible for this decline and urged to make a significant commitment to reversing it. Change starts at home after all. 

Yellowhammer blow forecast for social care under no deal

After Parliament managed to wrangle the contents of the Operation Yellowhammer documents out of the Government, its forecast for social care providers was alarming but only a revelation to those working outside the sector.

"An increase in inflation following EU exit would significantly impact adult social care providers due to increasing staff and supply costs, and may lead to provider failure…”. May? I would be astounded if it doesn’t. There is a real possibility of thousands of vulnerable people losing their home. And it is unlikely to mirror the collapse of Southern Cross in 2011 where residents were easily transferred to other homes. Those homes would be at risk themselves. 

Small providers have been given a 2-3 month window before experiencing the harmful impact of a no-deal Brexit, larger providers being afforded the luxury of a 4-6 month stay of execution after 31 October, the forecast states. 

The Government has stressed that this is the worst-case scenario and measures to alleviate this situation have been put in place since it was drawn up at the end of August. If they are referring to the funds allocated in this month’s Spending Review, that this not going to go far. This latest sticking plaster seems to be a curled up, recycled one, almost as if it had been picked up from the floor of a swimming pool changing room.  It won’t be of much use for long.

Social care providers, particularly those relying on local authority funding, are already close to the edge, absorbing financial losses while striving to provide the best quality care. Imagine what the smallest of hikes to the price of food, heating and fuel might mean to the average family. When caring for up to 100 people, it would be the final nail in an already battered coffin for many providers, large and small. 

Crashing out of the EU will hit all social care providers, even those luxury ones with private paying clients. The current staff shortages will be exacerbated by workers no longer having the right to stay or come to the UK. The fight for the best managers will intensify further, leaving some care homes without one for long periods of time, driving down the quality of care provided. 

This is not something that can be brushed off. If the Government is insistent on pursuing a hard Brexit, it need to put some serious cash it place to soften the landing for social care. Otherwise the results will be catastrophic for the sector and society as a whole.