Green Blogging

I was intrugued to read in the Observer today about a vision for Europe which has been developed by Dutch architects firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).

It is called “Roadmap 2050: A Practical Guide to a Prosperous, Low-Carbon Europe“.

The backgroup to the report is as follows:

In October 2009, European leaders’ committed to an 80-95 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050; Roadmap 2050 was commissioned to determine how these emissions reductions goals could efficiently be met. The technical and economic analyses of the report outline why a zero-carbon power sector is required to meet this commitment and illustrate its feasibility by 2050 given current technology.

I was a bit disappointed to find that the video presentation n the OMA web-site not play and that the link to the full report went to a 404 page.

However from the Ob article, it looks as if they are suggesting different parts of Europe specialise in different green energy technologies, so that if one fails energy can be supplemented by another.  So if the British wind farms stop producing when the wind fails, energy needs can be supplemented by solar energy from Southern Spain and even (perhaps) North Africa.

This is interesting because something very similar was suggested by Chris Goodall in his book Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, which I reviewed a while back.

The plan sounds sensible, although I have not seen much of it other than the Observer/Guardian review.  However the author claims that proposal is being considered by the EU Council of Ministers, for their possible endorsement. So it could happen!

The map by the way is:

Europe redrawn as “Eneropa”, with regions defined by their energy source. Ireland and the western half of Britain become the “tidal states”, while the eastern half forms part of the “isles of wind”. Former Yugoslavia is miraculously reunited as “Biomassburg”. Most of Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece become “Solaria”.

.