Abandon hope. We're doomed.

Tom DeWeese ( the president of the american policy centre ) said:

"To save liberty in America, Sustainable Development must be stopped."

"And I will tell you now, if you want to keep your guns, your property, your children and your God… if you love liberty… Then Sustainable Development is your enemy!"

Obviously 'Sustainable Development' could have been replaced with almost anything. Simply slot in your least favourite religious, racial or idealistic group and repeat. Still, this seems to be official American policy now. (insert favourite deity) help us all.

[ more here ]

Energy Statistics

From the Ecotricity website:

"It is worth noting that a 1994 briefing note from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology to the Welsh Affairs Select Committee identified that each unit of electricity produced from fossil fuels, such as coal, results in excess of 860g of carbon dioxide, 10g of sulphur dioxide and 3g of nitrogen oxides being produced."

Impovements in solar power

The problem with solar panels is that they cost too much and produce too little electricity per square meter. An example of this problem can be seen with major high street stores selling panels for £10,000 that will save £200/year. Most consumers don't want to spend on a micro-generation system that will pay for itself in 50 years (if it lasts that long). To be commercially viable pv solar panels need to undergo a dramatic reduction in cost, a dramatic increase in efficiency or both.

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have created solar panels that generate from a greater range of the EM spectrum. By doping a zinc-manganese-tellurium alloy with oxygen atoms they have produced a solar panel that responds to lower energy photons. This panel has an estimated efficiency 45%. Find out more here.

Old smoke detectors

We've had a smoke detector fail. I'm sure it's not 7500 years since it was installed; that being the half-life of the radioactive material they use to make them.

So, what do you do with a busted smoke alarm ? Apparently the best thing to do is throw it in the rubbish bin - that seems to be the recommended practice. The radioactive material costs about £1000 per gram, so you can imagine how little of it there is in the smoke alarm (clue: about 0.0002g). Allegedly it's even safe to swallow it - it doesn't get absorbed by the gut as it's not soluble in water or fat, so apart from a few stray gamma rays passing straight through you, there should be no harm done.

Still, I'm not entirely comfortable with chucking it into landfill - or even incineration.

eco cad package

Ecotect is a package that lets you design a building and work out the environmental impact of it. Not had chance to test it yet but it looks good. Allegedly works under WINE on Linux too though I've never had much success with that on any non-trivial application!

Pledge Bank

Re-discovered pledgebank today, and signed up to one by Steve Jalim to 'replace all of the traditional light bulbs in my home with low energy versions'.

Click on http://www.pledgebank.com/lowenergybulbs to show your support.

Steve Jalim's pledge will close on 31st December 2006 and it currently needs the support of 60 people before it goes into action.

Sweden

Sweden is aiming to be independant of oil for energy and transport by 2020 - without resorting to nuclear power. They city climate change and the cost of oil increaing as supplies run out. I feel a letter to my MP coming on... See here for a report from the Swedish government on this.

New links

I've added a bunch more links on the side bar. Go on, spend a lunch break browsing :-)

Underground homes

Interesting article on www.buildernewsmag.com/ - about building non-conventional housing. Has a chunk on building underground and also on treehouses.

Special offers

1. If you sign up to Abel and Cole and mention us, we get some free wine :-) Contact ant at loadtrax dot com if you want to get us drunk

2. If you sign up to Ecotricity and select the Global Action Plan link, they'll match your current supplier's rate, and donate £15 to Global Action Plan. We found out because earlier in the year we wrote a cheque to GAP and they never got round to cashing it.

Let's go fly a kite

Researchers in Italy have developed a new a form of wind turbine called KiteGen. The vertical axis turbine uses power kites. The kites are computer controlled by winches that are able to adjust the altitude (up to 2000m) and orientation continually to give optimum performance. Also with the assistance of radar the kites can avoid aircraft and even birds. The researchers believe a 100 metre diameter KiteGencould provide up to 500 MW at about £1 per GWh, the current average cost for electricity generation in Europe is about £30 per GWh. They also envision a KiteGen 2000 metres in diameter that could generate 5GW.

Here is an artist's impression: -


The official site (mostly in italian) is here, an interview with the disigner is here and an article about it on Wired News is here.

Solar stuff

Mini solar update, from solarbuzz.com - Corus, you remember, British Steel that sold most of itself to a Dutch consortium and then sold itself in its entirity to an Indian firm - they are going into the integrated solar roofing market with PowerFilm

BP are investing heavily in the Chinese solar market

Cardiff is the new home of G24 Innovations, who will be manufacturing very high efficiency solar panels

So despite the lack of interest from Westminster, the market for renewables in the UK is looking better.

I've discovered that having a 2kw electric heater in a 2.5m x 3m shed, with all the insulation I've put in, is serious overkill; it went from being freezing cold to unbearably hot inside two minutes. It seems that my PC chucking out about 150W, is more than enough to keep the room comfortably warm.

Tesco's carrier bag craziness

Tesco have recently begun a campaign to reduce the number of carrier bags people use. They have a launched television adverts containing famous people transporting their shopping in alternative containers that are in some way humorously related to the line of work that made them famous (Whoever thought of showing Alan Titchmarsh transporting his shopping in a wheel barrow is clearly a genius.). They are also offering extra loyalty card points to anyone bringing their own bags into the supermarket.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good thing and I applaud any effort to reduce our use carrier bags. The environmental damage caused by discarded carrier bags cannot be underestimated. While in Tenerife I heard about a turtle that had been pulled out of the ocean with 5kg of plastic bags inside it (It is surprising how many millions of carrier bags are estimated to be drifting through the worlds oceans and also how similar they appear to jellyfish if you are a hungry turtle.).

What I don't understand is why if they are so keen to reduce the use of these bags does the Tesco online groceries always arrive in carrier bags despite being in reusable crates. Why also do their shiny new self service checkouts force you to use their carrier bags. I understand that these checkouts use scales to detect when an item has been put in the bag but if the scales where tared when you press the start button you could put you own bag own the scales beforehand.

I have searched my local Tesco's as well as their website and have not found a place where I can post a suggestion to have this changed. Any ideas?

Global Cooling ??

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/08/25/globalcooling.shtml

Hmmm, a group of russian researchers have come to the conclusion that we are heading for a mini ice age, and soon - good news for skiers but possibly a problem for anyone north of, say, Madrid.

Richard Branson hurls cash at environment

Spotted this piece on the BBC today - Sir Richard Branson is apparently going to hand over all the profits from his travel businesses to go to environmental research, via a company called Virgin Fuels - in the region of three billion dollars. Looks like they're starting off with ethonol etc sourced from biological processes - makes sense, as that could easily replace diesel in his trains, for example. Some prop drivel aircraft (see here) can run on a bio-diesel blend already, so with a bit of research cash it could be used for shorthaul flights too.

Well done Richard Branson, for having the courage and the cash to make a stand on the environment. Lets hope that a few more multibillionaires have the same idea; clearly the governments aren't interested so as usual scientific progress is up to a few people with the will and the cash to do it.

Now if someone could bung an odd million or so towards equipment for the Great Ormond Street neonatal unit, I'd be really happy :-)

Greenpeace looses its taste for juice pt3

Here is NPower's explaination. They were trying to correct an error in the government calculations for reduced UK carbon emmisions :-0

---------------------------------------

Good afternoon Mr Payne,

Thanks for your email.

Earlier in the year all European countries published figures for reductions in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from power stations. However, the UK Government miscalculated its figures for the basis of these reductions. As a result npower, together with other energy businesses, decided to initiate legal action against the European Commission to get approval for this major error to be corrected.

Although Greenpeace understands our position, they are completely opposed to any increase in the level of CO2 emissions. On this fundamental point of principle we have been unable to find common ground and, as a result, the formal relationship between us will end in August.

Although Greenpeace will no longer formally endorse Juice, they will be happy to recommend it as the best non-premium green electricity product.

Trust this has answered your query.

Regards.


Steven Wright
Correspondence Department
Midlands Electric
npower
email: helpline@npower.com
tel: 0845 166 3443 

new solar panel manuf facity

A few people have figured out how to print solar panels, and with a little backing from people like the founders of Google and Swiss Re.

http://www.energybulletin.net/19262.html

They hope to get up and running next year, producing panels at about a tenth of current prices. How long then before we can actually /afford/ (as cash stapped proles) to use solar extensively for domestic power production ?

Tornado powered ?

vortexengine.ca describes a method of harnessing the energy from a man-made tornado to generate electricity - no mean feat if they can pull if off.

more ski

Found a bit more about Les Gets and their solar powered lifts. They claim to have a number of envi9ronmentally friendly policies, frmo the elimination of cars to managing water supplies more effectively. Here is their website.

Cynics might say that the ski resorts are jumping on the environmental bandwagon and duping 'rich' punters into staying somewhere the wouldn't otherwise stay. Every little helps though, and it would be nice to go boarding in a mountain that doesn't smell of diesel...

That's another pet peeve of mine - why is skiing seen as a rich man's sport in the UK, whereas in countries with mountains it's just what people do in the winter to keep themselves amused ? I blame the british ski club...

Greenpeace looses its taste for juice pt2

Here is the reply from Greenpeace

Hello Colin,

Thank you for your enquiry regarding Greenpeace's relationship
with Juice and npower.

As you know, for the past five years we have been working with
npower to promote Juice, a green electricity scheme linked to
offshore wind. Partly as a result of Juice the UK's first offshore
wind farm was built at North Hoyle off North Wales.  The green
electricity market has also been transformed and now several
non-premium tariffs are available.  So we can be pleased with
what we have achieved in campaign terms through the relationship
with npower.

Offshore wind is now on the way to becoming established as an
energy source in the UK.  Npower have plans to build a second
farm next to North Hoyle and a third, much bigger one, in the
area over the next few years.  Gaining public support for
offshore wind through Juice greatly helped to get the first wind
farm under way, however such campaigning and our involvement
should not be necessary in order to get the subsequent projects
built.

In addition, we learned recently from npower that they have
decided to join with other electricity generators to take the]
UK Government to court to try to secure an increase in their
emissions allocation under the European Emissions Trading System.
In other words, they want to be allowed to emit more carbon than
the Government wants to allow them.  At a time when the UK is
off course o meet its carbon targets, and when scientific news
on climate change is becoming ever more alarming, we do
not think that this decision by npower is justifiable.

In the light of this court case we have now decided to end our
formal partnership with npower and, therefore, our pro-active
promotion of Juice.  We have given npower notice of termination
of contract. This does not mean that Juice has suddenly become
a bad product.  We continue to believe that it is the best non
price premium green electricity scheme on the market, and will
continue to recommend it to people contacting us to enquire
about green energy.  I personally get my electricity at home
from Juice, as does our Executive Director, and we have no plans
to switch suppliers.

I hope that helps,

Lisa Weatherley
Supporter Services, Greenpeace UK
www.greenpeace.org.uk