Air Powered Car

A french company called MDI (Moteur Developpement International) have developed an engine powered by compressed air and a car for it it to go in. The car called the MiniCat should sell for about £5,500, have a top speed of about 70 mph and be able to cover about 125 miles on fully charged tank. The cost of charging a tank of air should be about £1 and could be done from home or fuel stations. This is hardly a performance car but it is a very economic and practical solution for everyday use. More information can be found here. Now for the pic: -

new budget

According to the BBC, the new budget promises that until 2012 all new zero carbon homes up to £500,000 will be exempt from stamp duty.

Tetrapak attempt 2

Well, I wrote a short blog about how to recycle tetrapaks - you know, those little boxes that spill orange juice over you every morning. Sadly, it went the way of many things blogger, and disappeared. Poo. Anyway, there's an address of a specialist recycling place on the tetrapak website to post them to once they are empty. Most councils wont touch them as they are a made of several different materials all laminated together. I'd be interested to know if the energy you have to put in to recycle them is more than that required to make a new one - I suspect it is, but saving landfil is usually a worthy aim.

Could just burn the damn things I guess.

Are they taking this seriously?

The government has just allocated £500,000 to grants for domestic renewable energy projects. I can't help but feel this amount shows a less than total commitment to renewable energy and domestic micro generation. To demonstrate how woefully inadiquate this allocation heres what happened: -

• 1st March 2007 09:00 Grants phone lines open.
• 1st March 2007 10:15 Grants phone lines closed after 189 callers qualify and all the money is used

That's right 75 minutes and 189 households helped in a 1st world country with a population of over 65 million The Renewable Energy Association is calling on the government to invest a further £15 million, Read more here.