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If you would like to become involved or have useful skills in the energy field, please contact us....

We all want to do something positive about climate change and we have little choice but to do something positive about the inevitable, geological, terminal decline of oil. That positive something is about creating a vision of what a low carbon society might be like, an energy descent plan and putting the plan into action through very real projects.

Transition Energy Keighley is our local forum for creating that vision and plan. Ultimately it is also about putting the plan into action through innovative energy projects. The vision, plan and actions create greater resilience for our community and make Keighley less vulnerable to the loss of oil, gas and coal to power homes, industry, transport, food, health care etc.

Energy is not just about the fuel and the technology. Solving the problem is not confined to the world of physics. It is also very much about human behaviour and thinking.

We are profoundly wasteful in the way we use fossil fuels and have no technology to prevent climate damaging CO2 emissions. But whether supply dries up or we cannot emit carbon the result is the same: there will be less energy available so we will have to learn to be very efficient, behave differently and use better technology.

1. Change our thinking and expectations : 16deg on thermostats
2. Change our behaviour : travel less, switch off, power down
3. Change our technology : highly energy efficient homes

There is a lot of solar energy about but it is not in the highly concentrated form of oil, gas and coal. Our challenge is to work out how to capture and use the solar energy that passes through our environment.

1. Relocalised generation and distribution
2. Town biogas station (food waste and sewage integration)
3. Use local river and wind resources
4. Grow biomass where it dose not threaten food
5. Photovoltaic roof tiles

We have moved from local supply and social ownership models to global utilities and passive consumers. This makes the local vulnerable to changes in the global. New relationships and models are called for that embody resilience to change. Energy supply companies based on partnerships, community or social enterprise models may provide a way to meet local energy needs in sustainable ways. Energy is at the heart of all we are and do. We can’t create or destroy energy but we can find ways to convert it and do work : whether that is eating an apple or flying a plane!

The planet and each of its complex interweaving ecosystems are essentially processes that capture and use energy for growth and reproduction, this is as inescapable a fact of life for we humans as it is for every other species.

What our species has achieved uniquely is the knowledge of how to build and use machines to convert energy captured by plants to do useful work – tractors instead of oxen. Not only that, we worked out how to use the concentrated energy of plants that died millions of years ago: coal, oil and gas to do even more work.

This abundance has enabled us to think up and satisfy needs way beyond those of just survival. In ecosystems getting access to cheap abundant energy (whatever is eaten or oil in our case) allows expansion and proliferation of the species adapted to use that energy source.

The loss or unavailability of that resource will cause a reversal in fortunes.

Human power to oil ... under construction