Last updated at 10:27, Saturday, 30 January 2010

HESE are good times for Roger Chapman. More than a decade ago he suggested that Cumbria, or at least Barrow, should spearhead an experiment in the use of electric vehicles to improve the environment.

pic of chapman at his headquarters

He wasn’t taken too seriously at the time, but now electric vehicles are one of a basket of climate change options being studied for reducing CO2 in the Lake District.

Those options range from offshore wind, tidal barrages and new nuclear power stations, to geothermal energy using natural heat sources from underground, and proposed carbon capture, using old gas reservoirs in the Irish Sea to store carbon.

Mr Chapman, 64, is a one-time submarine navigator, who worked as an undersea cable layer for Vickers Oceanics, and then set up two successful companies, Sub Sea Surveys, and Rumic.

With a rare career symmetry he went from almost dying 1,575ft below the ocean trapped in a civilian mini submarine in 1973, to later winning the contract to manage the Royal Navy’s Submarine Escape Service for a decade and a half. It had a mini rescue sub and a surface operated susbsea robot on standby 24/7.

That was just one of the roles of his unusual firm, Rumic Ltd of Dalton,which also operated underwater robots at sea for civil work, and devised and ran nuclear robots that removed radioactive sludge at Windscale.

In 2002 Mr Chapman, whose dramatic rescue with a colleague, was the deepest ever rescue of humans from the seabed, sold Rumic to the Barrow-based James Fisher marine services and specialist shipping group (where his Rumic staff achieved world fame saving seven Russian sailors trapped in a Priz small sub at the bottom of the Pacific in 2004).

He now divides his time between his own interests, which include running the Rumic Foundation Trust working with disadvantaged and disabled children, and being vice chairman of James Fisher Defence, whose many roles includes supplying submarine rescue equipment and services to several countries including Australia.

Mr Chapman is not a climate change doubter despite the recent freeze, and blames the county’s recent disastrous floods on climate change aberrations.

The new home he and his wife June are moving to close to their present one in Broughton will be ‘virtually carbon neutral’, heated geothermally by pipes penetrating two metres under the ground. It will also include a micro hydroelectric plant, generating electricity from a stream that passes through their land.

Now with another eye on the climate issue, he is setting up a new company ENcount with his son Sam Chapman to advise people and companies on efficient, low carbon use of energy,

Sam Chapmn is currently doing a Ph.D as a member of a group helping to advise the Scottish Parliament on how to drive down the cost of energy and use it more efficiently with lower CO2 emissions.

Mr Chapman said: “Our objective is to get expert in accounting for the cost of energy against your carbon output ,because even if you have all these energy resources, the key is to drive that cost down.”

He loves Furness and its people and admires the county’s Britain’s Energy Coast™ programme. He said: “I think the main points are making Cumbria’s coast an example of a new approach to energy supply.

“It would encompass not just economic growth, but also provide an example of energy security to a region while meeting international restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions or even bettering them through the development of holistic carbon accounting measures throughout the projects’ spans.”

Speaking at his business and charity headquarters in The Gill, Ulverston, which is heated from underground pipes, he said: “Cumbria could be world-leaders in proving that greenhouse gas mitigation can work side by side with the business case of traditional market and economic growth

“It would be a large-scale, industrial example to other regions and countries.

“If lessons are learnt first in somewhere like Cumbria, that has a workforce learned in engineering and energy supply, the expertise could be as valuable as the projects themselves.”

Referring to the November floods, he said: “Cumbria has been hardest hit of all UK counties in recent times by an ever changing climate, would it not be fitting that the county reacted in a positive manner and accepted the challenge of reducing their dependence on fuels that are set to increase in price while they diminish, and are seen to many as the main contributor to global climate change.”

First published at 12:55, Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk