In the Green

Lib Dem targets: 30% renewables by 2020, zero-carbon cars by 2040, longer-term aspirations to reverse climate change and form liberal government

Time for another quick link to the Guardian post. This time it's about the Lib Dems' new proposals for a zero-carbon Britain (here they are).

The total replacement of petrol-driven cars by 2040 and an end to civil nuclear power stations were only passing details in Zero Carbon Britain: Taking a Global Lead, the densely argued 50-page policy statement...  says the Guardian.

In politics, as in many difficult life decisions, the idea of a fuzzy, warm, yellow middle-ground is instinctively attractive. This story could be an example of:

- the yellow chasm that exists between the ambition of these proposals and the Lib Dems' chances of ever having to put them into practice
or
- the magical yellow haze that fills the gap between the zero carbon objectives and the policies outlined in the Lib Dem document
or
- the gaping hole between the impression given by the Guardian article and the Lib Dems' interesting but significantly more modest proposals.

We'll stick to the latter two since this isn't a political blog.

The document's proposals seem well-meaning enough, if not particularly astounding. These include:

- a carbon tax
- Feed-in Tariffs to replace the Renewables Obligation
- Fuel Duty indexed to GDP Growth
- Promises to think very hard about finding ways to support renewable heat
(which sounds suspiciously similar to the current government's RH policy)

They do mention advocating more ambitious stuff on the international stage such as EU-wide targets for zero-carbon transport in 2040 and the allocation of next-level EU ETS and Kyoto targets on a per-capita-emissions basis. So the headline-grabbing measures are definitely in the 'seriously aspirational' folder at the bottom of the filing cabinet. Perhaps the Guardian concentrated on the seductively vague Appendix which implies that the UK's 2005 GHG emissions can be turned into 'residual' 2050 emissions almost by magic.

Recycling posts

I meant to return to the recycling post, but never got round to it. It was one of the busier discussions recently. The In the Green writers came to the defence of recycling, while guests like Bishop Hill (and others) had criticisms with regards to the economics of current recycling implementation. In spite of these differences, I don't think there is a particularly far gap between us. We all value the environment, but don't subscribe to options that are simply uneconomical or don't do their job. I think there was some haziness about definitions and precisely what should be considered when we make an assessment for recycling.

To add a few thoughts:

Comparing the "true cost" of landfilling vs. recycling needs to take into account a number of costs - both internal and external. To list them out explicitly:

MC(Landfill)  = MC(Transport) + MC(Labor) + MC(Transport Ems) + MC(Land and Mgmt Costs) + MC(Landfill Ems) - MC(Landfill Energy)

MC(Recycling)   = MC(Transport) + MC(Labor) + MC(Sorting) + MC(Transport Ems) - MC(Virgin Extraction) - MC(Extraction Ems)

MC = marginal cost
Ems = emissions

With respect to cost of emissions, this is the monetary impacts on health and the environment of air, water, and land emissions. Also, we can assume the virgin extraction costs are equal to how much will be paid for the final recycled product.

So, if MC(Landfill) ≥ MC(Recycling), recycling is economically optimal. This is site- and implementation-specific. Just because recycling works in one place doesn't necessarily mean it is worth doing in another. It needs to be established that the recycling offers (or can offer) a better option. But to suggest that a waste market will be the panacea neglects two things. Firstly, emissions are an externality not borne by the players, and therefore the costs need to be internalized. This can be done via a permit market or tax on the emissions.

More importantly, there is a 'split' of the burden of the costs listed above. The transport/labor/sorting costs are borne by whoever picks up the waste (usually the council). The costs of virgin extraction are borne by the materials companies (aluminum/glass producers). Thus, to answer the question "If recycling is so good, why aren't we paid to recycle?". Citizens will only be paid by the materials companies to recycle if:

MC(Virgin Extraction) + MC(Extraction Ems) ≥ MC(Transport) + MC(Labor) + MC(Sorting) + MC(Transport Ems)

This may be the case for some materials, but not for others. Just because we aren't paid to recycle doesn't mean it isn't optimal for society. Waste needs to be picked up by someone - and if the materials companies won't do it, someone else will have to. So while the virgin extraction costs are "optional", the transport+labor costs for waste collection aren't.

Furthermore, I wholeheartedly endorse the use of incentives for managing waste. At the consumer side, this could take the form of a charge for each individual's unit of garbage (by weight, or bag). This would replace the broad-brush contribution from council tax, which does absolutely nothing to provide incentives for (say) producing less waste.

Yet waste collection is a service that people simply expect - like the fire department - they may not want to pay-as-you go for it. Plus, if you have to pay for each bag you discard, it will lend itself to fly-tipping. Also, I'm not sure how you would pass on the cost of waste collection to the individual in the case of apartment blocks either.

I'm away this week, so I won't have time to respond, but I'm interested in hearing comments.

Under no Obligation

Last week saw a leak in which the Government 'privately' admitted that the UK would not meet its share of 2020 European energy-environment commitments. (See here)

This week a study by Cambridge Econometrics claimed that the UK would fail to meet its own more modest targets for 2020 - although only narrowly - and questioned the Government's own Updated Energy and Emissions Projections while they were at it.

The Cambridge group's modelling didn't include all of the measures outlined in the latest Energy White Paper (mainly because these hadn't been turned into proper policies of any sort) but did include the most ambitious of the policies currently on the table - namely the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation - RTFO (5% bio-blend in transport fuels by 2010) and the banding of the Renewables Obligation

[ok quickly - a given % of electricity supplied has to come from renewables, this is paid for by the awarding of a tradeable permit (a ROC) for every MWh of renewable electricity. Banding is a proposal to award more ROCs/MWh to technologies that are expensive at the moment but have long-term potential (solar PV, tidal etc.). If done right, this should encourage maximum use of technologies that are cheap now (onshore wind, co-firing) and development of more advanced technologies].

To sum up, we might just meet the UK 2020 targets and it all hinges on 'obligations'. You might be forgiven for thinking "oh well, at least we'll have 15% renewable electricity in a couple of years". But sadly no, see you've fallen into the trap of thinking that the Renewables Obligation - like its predecessor the Non-Fossil Fuels Obligation - is, well, an obligation to do what the title implies.

Sadly this is not the case. The Renewables Obligation features a buy-out fund that allows suppliers to pay around £30/MWh if they don't have enough ROCs. The implications of this are explained in detail here. Basically it means the ROC price falls when there's more renewable electricity on the market and would fall to zero if there was more renewable generation than is required by the Renewables Obligation. This means no generator is going to invest in a renewable energy project once the level of renewables gets anywhere near the level of the obligation - and obligated suppliers can always pay the £30 instead.

In 2005/06, for example, the Renewables Obligation stood at around 18 million ROCs, but only 12 million were actually submitted, the difference being handled by the buyout fund. This sounds bad but it's just rational economic behaviour and the inherent design of the obligation scheme. There are ways the Renewables Obligation can be improved, and thankfully they're being considered by the Government (it's explained here and here).

The moral of the story? Don't believe any government spokesperson next time they say "Britain is leading the world in renewable energy - and we've got an obligation to prove it"!

Biofuel bashers come out of the wood work

An article in Science last week compared competing carbon reduction strategies for the next 30 years: Righelato, R. & Spracklen, D. V. (2007) Environment: Carbon Mitigation by Biofuels or by Saving and Restoring Forests? Science, 317, 902.

The assertion is that forests and grasslands would need to be cleared to enable production of biofuels for a 10% substitution of petrol and diesel fuel in the US and Europe. This is because arable land is insufficient. Their argument goes that forestation sequesters more carbon dioxide than is reduced by the use of biofuels by 2-9 times, and so climate policies should conserve savannahs and forests and even reforest arable land not needed for food.

This is quite a serious accusation, that pursuit of biofuels should be abandoned in favour of forestation. The authors make the concession that woody biomass from managed forests holds strong potential, e.g. via cellulosic ethanol, but stress that in the short term the upfront carbon dioxide released during the land use change will outweigh the carbon benefits of renewable fuels.

Clearly land-use change should be taken into account in life cycle analyses where possible, but these are most reliable when situation-specific.  As a result any comparison of options demands a detailed breakdown of the scenarios under consideration. Unfortunately the Science article is only a brief pice with no original research and only a short list of references. Their information on land-use change appears to come from mainly from a 2003 paper in Biomass and Bioenergy. The referenced paper considers a few different forest management options and estimates the associated carbon stocks over time. Amongst its conclusions are that biomass energy from managed woodlands offers the greatest benefits and that changing land-use from arable use to forestry is only of long-term benefit when the forest is carefully managed. It does not consider other energy crops but we can consider these to be on arable land. Deforestation is clearly not good in the long-term and reforestation of arable land has benefits in the order of 75% and not 200%-900% as quoted in the report.

One of the authors is from the pressure group World Land Trust and the Science article (just 630 words) has been used by them in recent press releases. What is interesting is that the press release calls on us to remember the "elephants of India or orangutans of Borneo who suffer in our race to find a so called 'green fuel'." And yet the article itself refers only to cropland in the US and Europe.

I hope that the effects of land-use change become central to any biofuels certification schemes, especially for trading biofuels from places like India and Borneo, but I think that this should be done on the basis of more rigorous studies. It would be interesting to see land use comparisons for the types of biofuel plantations most likely to be used in the tropics, rather than the rapeseed and cereals used in Europe and the US.

Ultimately though, this article is a reminder that if the aim is carbon reductions, much more could probably be achieved though use of more efficient engines for fossil diesel and gasoline than will be realised with the 10% biofuels targets.

 

13 years to come up with a convincing excuse

The EU 20-20-10* energy policy targets are several years away, but the UK is not going to meet them and is already looking for ways to soften the obligation.

This according to a DTI (now BERR) document leaked to the Guardian last week.

See here and here.

* 20% renewable energy, 20% reduction in CO2 emissions, 10% biofuels in transport

Offshore energy? Great idea...but how do we bring it onshore?

Last Friday I attended at BERR (which used to be known as DTI) a workshop on the regulation of offshore electricity transmission. Offshore electricity transmission networks will be required to transfer electricity from offshore renewable generators, mostly wind, to the onshore networks.  Even though it may not sound as the most exciting topic, this debate is particularly important for at least two reasons. First of all, offshore renewables represent a relatively new type of investments worldwide and thus there is no real experience on how to best regulate the wires that connects offshore plants to the mainland. Also there is no general agreement on which security standards to adopt for the transmission, which again affects the regulatory action.
Secondly, offshore renewables are expected to make an important contribution to the achievement of the UK target to generate up to 10% of its energy from renewable resources (and an aspiration of 20% by 2020). Indeed the Government believes that up to 8GW (i.e. more than 10% of the current total generation capacity) of offshore renewable generation (principally wind) will be seeking to connect to the GB transmission system over the coming ten years. And it is expected that the cost of delivering the infrastructure necessary to accommodate this generation is expected to cost up to £2 billion. Therefore it seems essential that adequate offshore networks are developed efficiently to ensure consumers and generators do not face unnecessarily high charges. For instance it has been estimated that an offshore wind farm located in the Thames Estuary might end up paying £31/kW as transmission charge while an equivalent onshore wind plant in the same transmission zone currently pays less than £2/kW.
So far the government and the regulator, after holding several public consultations, have decided the following:
• Offshore Transmission Owner (OFTO) is responsible for the design, construction, financing and maintenance of the offshore transmission assets.
• OFTO is appointed by competitive tender and awarded a transmission licence; this will set out the obligations and entitlements of the OFTO, including 20 year revenue stream and performance requirements.
• The tender would be run by Ofgem and triggered by offshore generator application.
• There will be annual tender windows to co-ordinate the process and minimise costs.
• Competition to select preferred bidder.

If they don’t get it right, chances are that either the offshore renewable energy industry will not take off any time soon or that it will lead to an excessively high bill to final consumers. So prepare for the new offshore revolution!

These Hot Chicks Need YOU!!!

I am all too aware that appeals for information and opinions on this blog are usually as fruitful as a Scottish school dinner, but I'm foolhardy enough to persevere.

A couple of weeks ago I visited an NGO in Kolwezi, DR Congo. They highlighted the familiar local problem of unreliable electricity provision. In the town, the grid supply from the regional hydro station is often interrupted for days at a time. In the nearby villages the lack of secure grid connections means that electrification is rare.

This presents a particular difficulty to small-scale chicken farmers. The current practice of those raising chickens for market is to provide nighttime heat and light insight the shed using a a couple of dangling incandescent lights. The guys from the NGO were very interested in alternative sources of energy and we discussed their available resources: Plenty of daytime sunlight; no reliable run-of-river water source in the dry season (for micro-hydro); limited access to good quality construction materials.

Personally I am no expert on energy for rural development issues. So I am presenting here the few ideas I had in the hope that you can provide some suggestions or ideas for refining them. I hope to get back to the folk in Kolwezi in the next week or so.

1. A rudimentary piped solar thermal system. A flat plate collector to heat the pipes and deliver hot water to a storage tank. The pumping to the tank would probably have to be achieved by heat convection alone. As the closed loop pipework may not be guaranteed airtight, stainless steel or polypropylene could be used to avoid corrosion.
2. Simply leaving a black 'bag' of water outside during the day and placing it inside the shed at night. The chickens could warm themselves on this if it had absorbed sufficient heat and released it slowly. Perhaps old truck tyre inner tubes could be used somehow?
3. A biomass stove that is easy to construct and highly efficient. If a closed loop of water pipes could be heated outside the shed by a few embers overnight then a warming temperature might be maintained in underfloor pipes in the shed. The efficiency and simplicity could be crucial as wood can be highly valuable for cooking.

If anyone has any experience with similar ideas or guides to their implementation, they would, of course, be very welcome.

Piers Corbyn: you are my sunshine

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but I wanted to wait until a particular date (see below) to make my point. Anyway, some of you may have seen the articles everywhere a few weeks ago pointing out an article by Lockwood and Frölich that solar activity could not have been the cause of global warming in the last 20-odd years. The Guardian summarized the research here, although Eigil Friis-Christensen and colleague had made a similar point already here a few years ago. The point is, basically, that greenhouse warming theory is not inconsistent with solar warming theory - it's just that solar activity cannot possibly explain the recent warming we've had.

Surprise, surprise, Durkin is the first to write in to the Guardian, bring up the old arguments and not really getting the whole point. He asks a lot of questions, which had he bother to answer would realize he's getting it wrong. Plus he likes to think of himself as the one to bring solar warming to the public attention. Well done, Martin, perhaps you'd like to bring to their attention Milankovitch cycles as well? Lockwood responds, pointing out that Martin doesn't much meat to go on anymore.

But then in comes Imperial's own Piers Corbyn with his own letter to the Guardian. Piers complains about the use of the Sun's 11-year cycle by the study:

The most significant and persistent cycle of variation in the world's temperature follows the 22-year magnetic cycle of the sun's activity. So what does he do? He "finds" that for an 11-year stretch around 1987 to 1998 world temperatures rose, while there was a fall in his preferred measures of solar activity. A 22-year cycle and an 11-year cycle will of necessity move in opposite directions half the time.

The trouble is, the 22-year cycle is a misnomer - as it is just the 11-year cycle reversing polarity. It is the 11-year cycle where the oscillating of the strength of the magnetic fields, sunspots, etc occurs. The polarity of the magnetic field is not what is not what is affecting the climate. It was justified for the authors (Lockwood and Frölich) to use the 11-year cycle. A great discussion is found here at Tamino's blog.

Corbyn continues:

The problem for global warmers is that there is no evidence that changing CO2 is a net driver for world climate. Feedback processes negate its potential warming effects. Their theory has no power to predict. It is faith, not science.

To which Prof. Keith Shine replies in another letter:

CO2 absorbs and emits infrared radiation. This can be measured in the laboratory. It can be measured by pointing instruments at the sky. And the emission, and effects of its absorption, is measured continuously by weather satellites orbiting the Earth.

But the most interesting part of Corbyn's letter is here:

I challenge them to issue a forecast to compete with our severe weather warnings - made months ago - for this month and August which are based on predictions of solar-particle and magnetic effects that there will be periods of major thunderstorms, hail and further flooding in Britain, most notably July 22-26, August 5-9 and August 18-23. These periods will be associated with new activity on the sun and tropical storms. We also forecast that British and world temperatures will continue to decline this year and in 2008. What do the global warmers forecast?

Firstly, note the dates of his predictions. His letter was dated July 24, so I don't know if the first one was a long-term prediction, or he just cherrypicked one he got right. But what about August 5-9? Hailstorms and flooding? Try the sunniest we've had in months! I look forward to next week's sun. Thanks, Piers!

But that's not the point of it. Ok, he gets weather predictions wrong, so do the Met Office. But he fails to grasp (or communicate) that climate isn't weather. Climate (defined by the IPCC) is average weather; weather is just climate noise. So climatologists/global warmers don't need to predict the weather - that's not their job! Why would someone then keep mixing up the two? I can only think to confuse the general public about the state of science.

But then, what do the climatologists predict? This week, the Hadley Centre predicted that temperatures would plateau, and then after 2010 would likely beat 1998 - the current warmest year on record (due to El Niño).

TXU: the damn breaks on Green Private Capital

Texus Utilities (TXU) was bought in the largest ever power sector private equity deal for $45Bn earlier this year. So what, I hear you grumble, a polluting behemoth bought by the barbian asset strippers, how can it get worse? Well, the terms of this deal were that the TXU scrapped 11 out of 13 applications for coal-fired power stations that would have emitted as much the UK power sector. Instead, they invested $400m in renewables, effeiency and clean coal. This move has meant the rethink of 150 other planned coal stations in the US.

The reason for this is that the financiers are concerned with making money. TXU was losing money and value (20% in a few months) because these plans were being opposed by local groups. Private equity groups love undervalued big companies and so they bought TXU, they saw that the green changes would add value. This means that the same now applies to the other utilities planning coal expansions.

One of those involved in the deal said "we didn't want to be on the wrong side of history". This hints at the power of public feeling on climate change is affecting the value of companies and shows that hard-nosed financiers think that greening a company can add value.

I have spent a concerning amount of time worrying about the role that finance can play in sustainable development. I've commented on the limited effects that socially-responsible investments have on the behaviour of firms before. I came up with the idea of 'transformative finance' to counteract that. This is about investing in the dirtiest companies and making them 'green'. Sounds like this deal, right? Yes. I have been thinking for a while that private equity in a channel that concentrates power in a few hands and so means that companies can be bought and changed much easier than by the engagement strategies of SRI funds.

To me, this means that the establishment of a transformative private equity fund would do far more good than all the SRI in the world. It would enable the demonstration of the value that a sustainable business strategy could bring to companies.

continued...

Apropos my last post, Bush has today invited the heads of a number of key emitter countries to a climate change meeting in Washington DC in September.  This was proposed before the G8 summit, and is expected to be part of a series of meetings. As mentioned in the G8 declaration, the US still plans to stay under the UN umbrella for the climate negotiations.

The more things change...the more they stay the same

Some of you may have followed the G8 Heiligendamm Summit in Germany back in June, and the climate talks that went on within them. I know this is old news, but I've just been reading more about it recently so I thought I'd drop a short post about it.

As you may know, it's around now that the negotiations for the first post-Kyoto climate agreement are meant to start, but not a lot has happened. While they weren't official negotiations, the G8 talks had climate on the agenda, so it served as an update on how things were likely to pan out in the coming weeks.

The Summit declaration made the following conclusions:

[G]lobal greenhouse gas emissions must stop rising, followed by substantial global emission reductions

Nothing really new there, and vague enough not to be controversial. The US, however, did not agree to commit to halving the current level of emissions by 2050, as the Europeans, Japanese and Canadians had stated.

[A] post 2012-agreement (post Kyoto-agreement) that should include all major emitters

This is in reference to the US's continued refusal to engage in a climate agreement that excludes China or India. I think their arguments fall flat, particularly if you take into account China and India's low per capita carbon emissions and historical contribution to climate change. At a G8 side-event, China's President Hu Jintao confirmed that China would not be willing to go beyond it's current unilateral plan of emissions intensity reduction - and stressed the need for developed countries to take the lead globally. So nothing new there on both sides.

We acknowledge that the UN climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating future global action on climate change.

I think this was a bit of a surprise, as the US and Canada were making noises just before the G8 to try to get climate negotiations into an independent, non-UN context. They (along with Australia) believe that the discussion at the UN table has been taken over by the EU, who are very keen on climate change action. Taking the discussions away from there would give them more power to set the agenda. This was apparent in the non-UN Asia-Pacific Parnership on Climate Change from 2005 which abandoned cuts in favor of technology and voluntary agreements. [Senator John McCain called it a "public relations ploy".] But it remains to be seen how it works out in the coming months.

So... we're in a situation where we can agree on a vague notion of mitigating climate change in the long-term, agree to discuss it at the UN, the US is complaining about China and India, and China is claiming they don't need to do anything yet. Doesn't sound much like any progress has happened in the last ten years, eh?

Where do we go from here? I suppose the good news is that there is a sense of urgency - it's only 4 years until Kyoto runs out, and something has to replace it. And the experience gained in the last round of negotiations will no doubt be massive help. Perhaps people will have a bit more pragmatism when setting goals, and accept that emissions cuts won't destroy the economy. This goes both ways for setting goals: I mentioned in an earlier post the ridiculous situation Canada is in, with the main parties arguing over simply impossible emissions cuts and not getting anywhere useful.

Finally, I noticed this entry in the G8 summit declaration:

a future agreement will work towards] not only climate change but also energy security, economic growth, and sustainable development objectives

The issue of linked issues is mentioned in the recent US Climate Action Report:

The U.S. strategy integrates measures to address climate change into a broader agenda that promotes energy security, pollution reduction, and sustainable economic development

Linking issues seems thus to be an angle that is garnering attention, and could improve the likelihood of action taking place. And it holds a particular place in my heart, given that it's my PhD...

Electrical Fields Generate Health Problems

Keith Jamieson who is a researcher at the Imperial College Centre for Environmental Policy published an article in the August issue of the journal "Atmospheric Environment”. The study is also reported by the Sunday Times, BBC, and NBC news. The study strongly indicates that prolonged exposure to the electric fields generated in everyday indoor environments may cause increased risk of respiratory diseases and infection from small airborne particles such as allergens, bacteria and viruses. The study also found that such risks may be
far higher than previously thought.

The study, published indicates that prolonged exposure to the electrical fields generated in everyday indoor environments may cause increased risk of respiratory diseases and infection from small airborne particles such as allergens, bacteria and viruses.

Keith Jamieson said that many of the factors that can cause high electric fields and increased deposition and contamination are often found in hospital ward environments and in buildings where incidents of sick building syndrome are noted.  Electrical fields are shown by the authors to "significantly reduce" localized concentrations of charged molecular oxygen, which enhances biological functioning and kills harmful microbes.

Over 90 percent of airborne particles are of the size affected by these electrical fields - less than one micron in size, 80 times smaller than a human hair. While they can remain airborne almost indefinitely, the deposit of these particles in people's lungs and on their skin can be greatly increased by electrical field effects, particularly when they are close to oppositely charged surfaces, the study found. Electric field levels can also vary with the humidity levels of indoor air. Levels below 20-30 percent humidity cause marked increases in the level of electrical fields that can be generated, depositing more particles in people's lungs and on their skin.

The researcher report that temporary incidents, such as frictional charging of the sheets when a hospital worker makes up a patient's bed, can further increase likelihood of contamination. Increased deposition of these particles increases the toxic load that the body has to deal with, raising the risk of contamination, bacterial infection and incidence of conditions such as asthma.
Surface contamination can prove harder to remove, as particles' deposition speeds are increased under high fields, making them stick harder to the surfaces they land on.

Keith Jamieson explains: "In the case of electrical equipment, particularly laptops, ensuring they are earthed can often greatly reduce fields. In terms of the electrostatic charge generated by people themselves, careful selection of materials and humidity levels can significantly reduce problems as can balanced bipolar air ionisation. Trying to avoid spending time in areas where high fields are created, and unplugging electrical equipment when not in use, are also good options - so there are a number of easy actions which can already be implemented in the workplace and the home to help reduce the toxic load our bodies have to deal with and the risk of illness and infection being transmitted in this way.""Trying to avoid spending time in areas where high fields are created, and unplugging electrical equipment when not in use, are also good options."

Streets of London closed to traffic

September 23rd is London Freewheel Day. Those of you whose desire to cycle in London has been blighted by self-preservation instincts up to now can take this opportunity to ride between St James's Park and City Hall in Southwark on a route that's completely closed to traffic.

Of course, if cycling is to be encouraged long-term, this isn't really a solution. If anything it reinforces the status quo, as if motor vehicles have generously given permission for cyclists to have their day on the road. A large collection of cyclists could merely choose to cycle along a given stretch of road any time - as the Critical Mass demonstrations point out. Still, Freewheel should be a fun day out for all the family. And you can send off for a free bib! Also there's a festival taking place in St James's Park with music, street theatre, cycling acrobatics, free blood transfusions...

In the long-term, however, this urban cycling safety advice (it's not just about wearing a helmet) is probably more useful.