What are we waiting for?

Greenpeace has produce a short (18 min approx) film about decentralised combined heat and power systems. It explains problems with the current centralised system that is used in the UK. It also shows some fantastic examples of decentralised multi-fuel combined heat and power systems being used elswhere in Europe. Such examples include: -

• Systems that get 95% efficiency as apposed to the british average of 35%.
• Powerplants that supply thousands of hectares of greenhouses with heat and CO2 as fertiliser.
• Powerplants that use multiple fuel types including locally produced biofuel.
  

The film can be found here.

The Greenpeace website can be found here.

More on the Tesla roadster

The BBC ran a story on the tesla roadster recently - there's speculation that it'll be available in the UK for about £50,000 in 2008. Start saving :-)

Carbon Trading

Ebico do a handy online CO2 calculator which takes your energy usage details and has a guess at how much CO2 you produce - in my case, it's about 6 tonnes per year. They then go on to suggest that you buy CO2 credits to cover it. I'm not entirely convinced by that - the theory is, because you are buying the credits from the general industrial trading scheme, you are capping the amount that industry as a whole is allowed to produce. But the caps are fairly generous, and people wouldn't be selling them if they needed to produce that amount of pollution. And if a company starts polluting more, who's going to stop them - or measure it precisely enough to prove it ?

I would have thought it would be far better to spend the money on renewables schemes, or planting trees, or sending Goats to Chili, or on a few low energy lightbulbs - otherwise you're just lining the pockets of some market trader with no net practical outcome. In particular, a quick google for 'carbon scheme' came up with a stack of articles entitled 'carbon scheme doomed' and similar.

Recycling

A report has come out recently suggesting that recycling is saving 10-15 million tonnes of CO2 per year, and that we are now recycling nearly a third of rubbish. A couple of years back, there were claims that recyling was 'burning trees to reuse trees' - ie, that it was pointless and we should just make stuff and put it in landfill. I suspect the people making those claims are the same ones moaning about new landfill sites. To be fair, I think their arguement was based on people driving 5 miles once per week with a few newspapers to recycle, which is clearly daft.

Our council are apparently going to replace all our wheelybins with compartmentalised ones - to help lazy people sort their rubbish. One of our neigbours always fills their bin to the brim - there's usually a wadge of paper or something recyclable or compostable preventing the lid from closing - and there's only one person in their houshold. We've got a baby (about the most un-environmental think you can do!) and we only produce a third of the rubbish - mainly just through sorting out paper, glass and cardboard. The new scheme claims to take plastic bottles as well - excellent news as there hasn't been anywhere local that could do that - and I'm not going to drive miles to the nearest plastic recycling plant!

Carbon neutral housing

The government has finally made some attempt to change the building standards in the UK to be more ecologically sound. This is good news as there seems to have been little improvement in housing technology in the 100 years. A new proposal from Communities and Local Government secratary Ruth Kelly will require new homes to be carbon neutral by 2016. Houses will also be given a star rating for energy efficiency and zero emmision homes will be exempt from stamp duty. It is hoped this will act as an incentive for property developers.

Housing accounts for 27% of the carbon produced in the UK so this move could be a major part of the government's attempt to reduce carbon emmisions by 60% by 2050.

The BBC story can be found here.

Electric car cont'd

Found an even nicer looking electric car - the Tesla Roadster.



How annoying it this ? According to the FAQ, they are built by Lotus in the UK (thought the backend looked familiar) and shipped over to the US. They have no intention whatsoever to sell them over here *groan*. For a performance car, they're not even that expensive - $92,000 .

Fetish

245 bhp

0-60 in 4.3 seconds

range about 200km

Looks, well, rather nice I think. It's the venturi fetish - costs about £300k or thereabouts. Oh, and it's electric.

Yup, you read right - someone has built a proper electric car that's road worthy, isn't just 'not slow' but actually 'really fast' and looks like a proper car. OK, it looks like a proper sports car, but the point is, it doesn't look like one of those stupid concept cars that are designed to look futuristic and end up looking like something from either thunderbirds or the teletubbies.

That's a real pet peeve of mine - just because a car uses an electric power source, why on earth should it look like anything other than a normal car ? No, the designers insist on making them look completely stupid.

There's a film coming out called who killed the electric car, looking into why GM crushed all their electric cars. Basically the public think that all electric cars are milkfloats, requiring 16 hours to charge, range 30 miles and top speed of 5 mph. The fact is, since the 1890s when the first electric cars were about, the technology has got far, far better than that. Even in the early 1900s, 20mph was quite normal for an electric vehicle, which was comparible with internal combustion driven cars at the time. Now, they are at least as good in most respects - just the cost of the batteries to sort out now !

And before anyone asks 'filling up a petrol car is really easy' - well, if you're out and about, that is true - however, you can't fill up with petrol at home, or at work. Swings and roundabouts I guess, but if I could plug the car in for a few hours and get 200 miles in the tank, well, that's as far as I really want to drive in a day so that would be enough.

speeding ticket

Just discovered an electric car in the US recently got aspeeding ticket. It is suspected that it's a publicity stunt, though it's a good'un. mygreenwheels.com is a good looking uk based blog about electric transport; headover and take a look.

On the same site is a list of electric cars which kind of proves my earlier point about how stupid people make them look. There are about three or four on there I wouldn't be ashamed to own; the rest look utterly ridiculous - imagine the smart car with all the style removed, crossed with that BMW motorbike with the roof and you'll get an inkling...

Solar generation getting more cost effective

The payback time on photovoltaics is getting better. Not, you might thinkk, because economies of scale are making the manufacturing process cheaper. Not because they are getting more efficient. Nope, it's because the unit cost of electricity generated by other means is going up *groan*.More here.

I spotted a letter in the guardian today - complaining about the 'hidden' CO2 emmissions of wind turbines. Yup, the anti wind league is now bleating on about the energy used to make the 'wretched things' - for example in the concrete bases. Funny that, what do coal fired power stations use for foundations then ? I don't think they publish the enbergy payback time for fossil fuel plants.

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.