Tesco improves carrier bag policy

Tesco have improved their drive to reduce plastic carrier bag use. They have finally realised that there is no point in including carrier bags in home deliveries that already come in tough reusable crates and now offer delivery without them. I am a little surprised that it took them this long to work that out but well done all the same.

In the mean time I have signed up with Abel & Cole that deliver all of their food in re-usable boxes that are collected by the delivery guy next time they arrive. (I hope you enjoyed the wine Tony).

Inflatable wind turbines!!!

A company in Canada called Magenn Power have developed a lighter than air inflatable wind turbine called MARS (Magenn Air Rotor System). I love conventional wind turbines and hope to see many more spring up across the country (especially outsde the homes of countryside alliance members). However they are not exactly portable. The Magenn system would allow a 4KW turbine to be packed into the boot of a family hatchback and be deployed anywhere with speed and ease. They are planning version capable of 1-2MW. These can be used for anything from the supply for a small town to power for emergency aid locations. They also have little or no chance of killing birds because they have no long blades and they are bouncy. Magenn's website is here.

Now for the picture: -

Solar powered sausages

Spring has arrived with a vengance and summer is clearly not far behind. With such wonderful weather many people are starting to have barbeques. While I will gladly admit that charcoal and gas powered barbeques are not that important in the grand scheme of planetary climate change it is still possible to take the green option. The technology for solar cookers is not new or complicated and has been used in countries around the world. This is useful in places where firewood is scarce and it also removes smoke from cooking fires which kills millions every year. However this is the first time I have seen a solar cooker targetted at the European barbeque market. A Swiss company have prduce a solar grill based on a simple parabolic mirror. It requires no gas, wood or charcoal only a reasonably sunny day (which we get even in the UK). It is also reasonably priced (about £120 plus postage and packing). You can find out more and order here.

Now for the picture: -

Lightbulbs

Looks like the government is on the right track on this one - they are proposing a lower rate of VAT for energy efficient products. Here's the response to the on-line petition regarding low energy lightbulbs

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.

Tetrapaks

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."