The annual Ashden Awards for sustainable energy enterprises were presented in London this month and I was lucky enough to be able to join their seminar at the Royal Geographical Society. The morning session, chaired by Jonathan Porritt, focused on UK projects and the international session in the afternoon was chaired by the Guardian editor, Madeline Bunting. During each session, the five finalists in their category screened a film summarising their project's achievements and the representative of the organisation gave a short speech about their work. In the case of the UK finallists, this was posited as an "elevator pitch" to Chris Huhne and David Cameron, to persuade them what needs to be done to make Britain a great place to invest in sustainable energy technologies.
The films themselves are one of the Ashden Awards greatest achievements. I look forward to screening them to the right audiences when the opportunities arise but you can view them yourself on the Ashden Awards website, for both the UK and international finalists.
After the films and pitches, the Chairs facilitated a couple of really useful discussion of pertinent issues - in the case of the international session, Local Clean Energy for the Poor. This brought in technologists, regulators and investors and considered some of the artificial obstacles raised by institutional backers, aiming to verify the outcomes achieved with their support. This discussion also highlighted the merits of grid vs. off-grid energy systems, with all parties agreeing that mini-grids, as seen in Peru and Ecuador, are often the best way to bring efficient, low carbon energy to poor rural communities.
As in previous years, I was greatly inspired by the overseas projects, which seem to exemplify courage and creativity in meeting the needs of - literally - billions of under-served people in the developing world. I was privileged to chat at length with Suraj Wahab Olugburo, the founder of Toyola Energy Ltd of Ghana, who explained his elegant business model that provides work and income for over 500 entrepreneurs in making and selling the Toyola stove, which allows families to cook on half the charcoal needed for traditional stoves. His simple credit scheme allows the local sales agent to give the stove to a family, with a collecting tin: each day that the customer does NOT need to pay for charcoal (because the stove halves their usage), they put their charcoal money into the tin. After a few months, they have saved enough to pay for the stove!
The UK projects were also an inspiration this year and I was delighted to learn that one of the finallists, Radian Housing, was about to open a flagship project in Windsor, where they have built 9 new houses in Tinkers Lane - one is Code 6 (essentially zero carbon) and the others are all Code 5 dwellings, which are highly efficient in the way they use energy. I was delighted to attend the opening ceremony last week, where our Mayor cut the ribbon and some of the residents opened their new homes to all the visitors. We were a distinctly non-technical audience and the main take-home message was that these houses are very attractive, liveable homes that require no special skills from their residents. Sure, some behaviours can be learned (for example, with a huge solar PV power station on the roof, it's worth running the washing machine when the sun is shining) but all the buildings' clean technologies simply run themselves itself without placing any responsibilities on the household.
It was a great pleasure to learn that these two finallists, Toyola and Radian, received the two Gold Awards at the Ashden Awards ceremony, on the evening of the day after the conference.
The other inspiring energy event that I have attended this month was, surprisingly, the RBWM Sustainability Panel at the Town Hall in Maidenhead. After a slow start, discussion moved to the Government's disclosure requirements for greenhouse gas emissions. The responsible officer outlined the framework of Scope I, Scope II and Scope III reporting but focused on the costs and complexity of data-gathering and analysis. The councillors set a different pace, however, reminding the panel that residents expect leadership from their council and that time is of the essence in moving to meaningful reporting of these GHG emissions. This decision was passed unanimously. Good on them!
The same tone was maintained when considering energy reporting, with annual overviews by invoice described as insufficient and unsatisfactory. The vice-chair, Councillor Sharp, called for electricity and gas usage by site to be reported "at least monthly". On Energy Action Plans, the Chairman called for focus on the significant few actions, to make real progress. Lastly, proposals for solar photovoltaic installations up to 50kWp on council buildings were reviewed and the vice-chair, Cllr. Sharp, now well into his stride, said, "We must do it now. Must do it now!" The Chairman concurred, saying "We want it and we want it tomorrow."
Having sat through a few of the previous administration's Sustainability Panels, which I felt were typically bogged down in politics, I found the new council's can-do mentality so empowering. In the closing words of the Chairman, Cllr. David Coppinger, it's time to move from talking to doing. Amen to that.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Sunday, 29 May 2011
A change is brewing
Last week, our Bosch kettle died. We bought it in March 2009, 26 months ago, with a 24 month warranty. I stripped it down but could not get close enough to the sealed electronics to to find the fault. It just blows the 13A fuse in the plug every time we switch it on. I called Bosch customer service, to find out what could be done. They told me to send it back to their workshop, with a cheque for £9, and they would investigate the fault and let me know what needed to be done to repair the kettle. I might just do that, to see if we can keep this otherwise high quality appliance in service rather than having to recycle it. However, I can't imagine that many people would be prepared to throw good money after bad to prolong the life of stuff that has become essentially disposable.
In the meantime, we need a kettle. Making tea and coffee with a saucepan is all very well on the odd occasion, such as a power cut, but we're all used to brewing up a hot drink in a matter of minutes. I have been trying to track down an old-fashioned kettle with a heat exchanger skirt, for use on our gas hob. My Grandma used to have a Simplex kettle like this and I found the company's website but there has been no response so far from their Contact Form.
I'm fairly clear, however, that the rest of the family won't tolerate life without an electric kettle that switches itself off when it comes to the boil. I have long been fascinated with the Eco Kettle, which combines an onboard water reservoir with a clearly-calibrated boiling chamber, designed to make it consummately easy to boil only the amount of water that you need. I decided to get one from Ecotopia, because they offered the best price and the fastest service, and I was pleasantly surprised to take delivery of a chrome Eco Kettle 2 the following day.
Having lived with the new gadget for a couple of days, I am happy with almost all aspects of its performance. It's very quiet because it uses a less powerful element than most ordinary kettles. This makes no appreciable difference to boiling times for one or two cups but must take slightly longer than a regular kettle to boil a teapotful, I suppose. It's certainly heavy because it's carrying a full tank of water even when you're just boiling one cup. However, the weight is not a problem for my family and the Eco Kettle is very well balanced and pours cleanly. It also lives up to its promise, making it truly effortless to boil just the amount you need.
The one thing that makes no sense is that the kettle is terribly slow to switch off, once the water has boiled. The power stays on for more than 10 seconds after the water can be seen and heard to be boiling vigorously. When boiling a full charge of water, the EcoKettle moves around violently and seems ready to jump off its base. It hasn't actually spilled any boiling water yet but it seems likely that this aspect of the design needs to be refined, so that the Eco Kettle doesn't waste electricity raising steam while the boil detector makes up its mind to turn the power off. More importantly, any possibility of scalding from spitting liquid or even a spilt kettle is a serious safety issue. I'll share my concern with the manufacturer and report back any response that they offer.
In the meantime, we need a kettle. Making tea and coffee with a saucepan is all very well on the odd occasion, such as a power cut, but we're all used to brewing up a hot drink in a matter of minutes. I have been trying to track down an old-fashioned kettle with a heat exchanger skirt, for use on our gas hob. My Grandma used to have a Simplex kettle like this and I found the company's website but there has been no response so far from their Contact Form.
I'm fairly clear, however, that the rest of the family won't tolerate life without an electric kettle that switches itself off when it comes to the boil. I have long been fascinated with the Eco Kettle, which combines an onboard water reservoir with a clearly-calibrated boiling chamber, designed to make it consummately easy to boil only the amount of water that you need. I decided to get one from Ecotopia, because they offered the best price and the fastest service, and I was pleasantly surprised to take delivery of a chrome Eco Kettle 2 the following day.
Having lived with the new gadget for a couple of days, I am happy with almost all aspects of its performance. It's very quiet because it uses a less powerful element than most ordinary kettles. This makes no appreciable difference to boiling times for one or two cups but must take slightly longer than a regular kettle to boil a teapotful, I suppose. It's certainly heavy because it's carrying a full tank of water even when you're just boiling one cup. However, the weight is not a problem for my family and the Eco Kettle is very well balanced and pours cleanly. It also lives up to its promise, making it truly effortless to boil just the amount you need.
The one thing that makes no sense is that the kettle is terribly slow to switch off, once the water has boiled. The power stays on for more than 10 seconds after the water can be seen and heard to be boiling vigorously. When boiling a full charge of water, the EcoKettle moves around violently and seems ready to jump off its base. It hasn't actually spilled any boiling water yet but it seems likely that this aspect of the design needs to be refined, so that the Eco Kettle doesn't waste electricity raising steam while the boil detector makes up its mind to turn the power off. More importantly, any possibility of scalding from spitting liquid or even a spilt kettle is a serious safety issue. I'll share my concern with the manufacturer and report back any response that they offer.
Monday, 9 May 2011
Simple Energy Saving at home
I was very pleased that Julian Worricker read out my email in full on Radio 4's "You & Yours" programme today. You can Listen Again on iPlayer here, until Monday 16 May - around 46 minutes in. Here's what I sent into the programme:
Of course, I couldn't provide the evidence behind this on the programme, so I will do this here. I was also struck by Julian's response: he said, "That's very positive from his point of view but we don't all have the time to do that". Accepting this viewpoint, the challenge is to make it so easy for people to use energy wisely in their homes that they find it only natural to cut waste and save money on their bills.
In 2006, our home used 30,400 kWh of energy: 21,200 units of gas and 9,200 of electricity. This cost almost £1500. Since then I have invested in great tranches of loft insulation, all shapes and sizes of energy-saving light bulbs, a condensing boiler, a solar thermal panel (the boiler has been off for weeks now), an efficient larder fridge and the 8 watt Fit-PC computer (strictly a net-top) that I am writing this blog on now. We have also pulled together as a family to change our behaviour, switching everything off at the mains when not needed, keeping the thermostat down low in the winter and generally striving to avoid wasting energy.
2010 was an unusual year, starting and ending with prolonged spells of extreme cold. As a result, our 2010 energy use was greater than expected. However, 2011 has been unseasonably warm so far and our energy consumption since January has been 20% lower than the same period last year. In the past 12 months, we have used a total of 17,200 kWh at home: 12,800 units of gas and 4,400 kWh of electricity. This graph shows our annual energy costs, for gas and electricity, over the past five years. I've also included my estimate for 2011 and we are on track to spend just £1000 on home energy this year:
The point of all this data is to make clear the savings to be had by using energy wisely. If my family's power consumption had remained at 2006 levels, we would now be paying over £1,700 a year for our gas and electricity. On the news today, Centrica warned that forward gas prices for next winter are 25% higher than they were at this time last year. This makes it apparent that everyone's energy bills will rise - unless they act to reduce their usage! The investments needed are one-off costs but the payback comes ever after - in my case, a saving of £60 a month on the cost of home energy. The higher the price, the bigger the saving. What's stopping you, Julian?
"It's worth all the effort to insulate, switch off and replace inefficient bulbs and appliances. I have managed to cut my family's home electricity use in half, and our gas consumption by a third, since 2006. The cost of insulation, light bulbs and an A+ refrigerator were quickly paid back and my energy bills are a third lower now than they were in 2006."
In 2006, our home used 30,400 kWh of energy: 21,200 units of gas and 9,200 of electricity. This cost almost £1500. Since then I have invested in great tranches of loft insulation, all shapes and sizes of energy-saving light bulbs, a condensing boiler, a solar thermal panel (the boiler has been off for weeks now), an efficient larder fridge and the 8 watt Fit-PC computer (strictly a net-top) that I am writing this blog on now. We have also pulled together as a family to change our behaviour, switching everything off at the mains when not needed, keeping the thermostat down low in the winter and generally striving to avoid wasting energy.
2010 was an unusual year, starting and ending with prolonged spells of extreme cold. As a result, our 2010 energy use was greater than expected. However, 2011 has been unseasonably warm so far and our energy consumption since January has been 20% lower than the same period last year. In the past 12 months, we have used a total of 17,200 kWh at home: 12,800 units of gas and 4,400 kWh of electricity. This graph shows our annual energy costs, for gas and electricity, over the past five years. I've also included my estimate for 2011 and we are on track to spend just £1000 on home energy this year:
The point of all this data is to make clear the savings to be had by using energy wisely. If my family's power consumption had remained at 2006 levels, we would now be paying over £1,700 a year for our gas and electricity. On the news today, Centrica warned that forward gas prices for next winter are 25% higher than they were at this time last year. This makes it apparent that everyone's energy bills will rise - unless they act to reduce their usage! The investments needed are one-off costs but the payback comes ever after - in my case, a saving of £60 a month on the cost of home energy. The higher the price, the bigger the saving. What's stopping you, Julian?
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
Let's recycle more!
We have had kerbside recycling in Windsor for quite a few years. Several years ago, I learned that our local authority, the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, won't accept mixed plastics (ie., plastic food packaging other than bottles) for recycling. At this point I took Greenpeace's advice and started to clean and collect my family's own mixed plastic packaging (yoghurt pots, margarine tubs, ready meal trays, fruit punnets, etc) in anticipation of future recycling services. My collection of mixed plastics has featured prominently in the local paper and was also used artistically last year, to make a "10%" sign in front of Windsor Castle, in support of the Global Day of Doing on 10 October 2010 (10/10/10).
Other Boroughs across the country now collect mixed plastic - the latest to announce this service is the neighbouring Woking Borough Council, who have a contract with Biffa to recycle all types of plastic (other than bags and films) within their domestic, co-mingled kerbside collection. Biffa have acquired Greenstar WES and their new mixed plastics recycling facility, opened this month in Redcar, will be able to sort and bale 20,000 Tonnes of mixed plastics each year.
Closer to home, this morning Neil Grundon (a founder member of our Sustainable Windsor group) showed me around Grundon's materials recovery facility (MRF) in Colnbrook. They are able to sort and bale steel and aluminium cans, paper and cardboard, mixed plastics. They also collect glass which is used as aggregate in roadbuilding or for recycling. Grundon recycle household waste from nearby boroughs such as Guildford, Spelthorne and Hillingdon. I took some of my mixed plastic packaging along with me today, to see how well their sorting process coped with it.
I was delighted to see my carefully laundered yoghurt pots and margarine tubs flying along the final conveyor into the mixed plastics silo, ready for baling. Black plastics are hard to sort, at present, because an optical process, near infra-red reflectance (NIR), is used for the sorting. However, these could be separated from the final waste stream in future by an additional sorting machine that is "trained" to work on black plastics.
Recoup, a charity promoting the RECycling Of Used Plastics, publishes an annual report on the collection of plastic packaging from UK Households. In their latest report, RECOUP reports that mixed plastics (ie., rigid plastic packaging other than bottles) are actively recycled by 120 local authorities in the UK, out of 401 that they contacted.
Despite all this progress in the recycling of mixed plastics nationally, the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead seems to be locked in a recycling time-warp! The Royal Borough's current waste and recycling contractor is Veolia and there is no indication on the Veolia website that they are prepared ever to provide a mixed plastics recycling service to their municipal customers. The waste and recycling contract for Windsor and Maidenhead is up for renewal this year. Clearly Biffa and Grundon are competent, commercial partners who should be allowed to tender for this valuable contract. Will the Council insist on the provision of a wider range of recycling streams from the company that successfully tenders for this valuable contract - or will the business stay with Veolia because they can offer the lowest price?
Other Boroughs across the country now collect mixed plastic - the latest to announce this service is the neighbouring Woking Borough Council, who have a contract with Biffa to recycle all types of plastic (other than bags and films) within their domestic, co-mingled kerbside collection. Biffa have acquired Greenstar WES and their new mixed plastics recycling facility, opened this month in Redcar, will be able to sort and bale 20,000 Tonnes of mixed plastics each year.
Closer to home, this morning Neil Grundon (a founder member of our Sustainable Windsor group) showed me around Grundon's materials recovery facility (MRF) in Colnbrook. They are able to sort and bale steel and aluminium cans, paper and cardboard, mixed plastics. They also collect glass which is used as aggregate in roadbuilding or for recycling. Grundon recycle household waste from nearby boroughs such as Guildford, Spelthorne and Hillingdon. I took some of my mixed plastic packaging along with me today, to see how well their sorting process coped with it.
I was delighted to see my carefully laundered yoghurt pots and margarine tubs flying along the final conveyor into the mixed plastics silo, ready for baling. Black plastics are hard to sort, at present, because an optical process, near infra-red reflectance (NIR), is used for the sorting. However, these could be separated from the final waste stream in future by an additional sorting machine that is "trained" to work on black plastics.
Recoup, a charity promoting the RECycling Of Used Plastics, publishes an annual report on the collection of plastic packaging from UK Households. In their latest report, RECOUP reports that mixed plastics (ie., rigid plastic packaging other than bottles) are actively recycled by 120 local authorities in the UK, out of 401 that they contacted.
Despite all this progress in the recycling of mixed plastics nationally, the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead seems to be locked in a recycling time-warp! The Royal Borough's current waste and recycling contractor is Veolia and there is no indication on the Veolia website that they are prepared ever to provide a mixed plastics recycling service to their municipal customers. The waste and recycling contract for Windsor and Maidenhead is up for renewal this year. Clearly Biffa and Grundon are competent, commercial partners who should be allowed to tender for this valuable contract. Will the Council insist on the provision of a wider range of recycling streams from the company that successfully tenders for this valuable contract - or will the business stay with Veolia because they can offer the lowest price?
Thursday, 3 March 2011
EcoBuild fires the imagination
I headed over to the EcoBuild exhibition in Docklands yesterday. The Travelcard from Windsor is now valid on the Docklands Light Railway, so it's quick and cheap to travel right to the door of the ExCel centre. There were well over 2,000 exhibitors, so it's impossible to see everything in a few hours but I was able to pick out a few highlights.
There is a boom in flat roof technologies! Many commercial buildings have load-bearing roofs that are unused and the Government's Feed-In Tariffs are making solar PV an attractive option for buisnesses and home-owners alike. What's new is the range of alternatives to traditional silicon panels mounted on A-frames. Lots of thin film solar technologies have now reached the market. Producing fewer watts per square metre, meaning larger panels, thin film photovoltaics are also cheaper to buy than the same generating capacity of crystalline panels. Moreover, they harvest a wider spectrum of radiant energy and so are more effective in overcast conditions - quite well suited to our climate. Being thin, cheap and, in many cases, flexible, they can simply be glued onto roofing decks, facing straight up. The most attractive design was from US company, Solyndra. Designed to simply be placed over large roof areas, each flat panel has many horizontal photovoltaic rods and is shaped like a car roofrack. The advantages are that the individual tubes are fixed at the correct angle for optimum power generation whilst the flat racks let wind and rain through, meaning that they don't need bolts or ballast to keep them in place in stormy weather. Then there were the integrated solar PV and thermal panels, generating electricity and hot water, the advantage being that the water flow keeps the solar panels at the low temperatures needed for optimum generating efficiency. Most confusing, there was even a solar thermal panel running on refrigerant gases that is claimed to generate heat in the dark of night as well as in the daylight! I think that, in reality, this is an air-source heat pump which is boosted by the sun's warmth during the day.
Beyond solar panels, the most attractive designs were of green roof technologies, bringing biodiversity back to 'urban deserts' and helping to clean up the air we breathe in our towns and cities. The most beautiful display was from Blackdown green roofs of Somerset who had planted so many spring flowers into their flowing sedum roof that it looked like an Alpine meadow and would not have been out of place at Chelsea.
Under all these working rooftops were a bewildering array of structural, insulating and cladding materials together with hyper-efficient doors and windows. For green plumbing and heating, there were oodles of heat pump systems (these use a little electricity to harvest a lot of renewable energy) and new, high-efficiency radiators that run at the lower water temperatures provided by heat pumps or even our current, gas-fired condensing boilers when operating at their most efficient. To save electricity at home, the brilliant VPhase system retails at around £200 plus fitting. This simple fit-and-forget technology is widely employed in commercial buildings. VPhase is the domestic version that has been proven in large-scale trials over the last five years and will cut the average home's electricity usage by 8 - 10%.
Surprisingly few LED lighting suppliers were exhibiting but the architectural lights on show from Deltalight were simply mind-blowing. Their secret is the tiniest LED chips, giving incredibly sharp edges to the light thrown from these low-power sources. The only downside was the price ...
If I had the money and the land, I would love to take the best of these technologies and build a sustainable home needing no fossil fuel energy for heating and lighting. That's the point of these exhibitions - to make us dream!
There is a boom in flat roof technologies! Many commercial buildings have load-bearing roofs that are unused and the Government's Feed-In Tariffs are making solar PV an attractive option for buisnesses and home-owners alike. What's new is the range of alternatives to traditional silicon panels mounted on A-frames. Lots of thin film solar technologies have now reached the market. Producing fewer watts per square metre, meaning larger panels, thin film photovoltaics are also cheaper to buy than the same generating capacity of crystalline panels. Moreover, they harvest a wider spectrum of radiant energy and so are more effective in overcast conditions - quite well suited to our climate. Being thin, cheap and, in many cases, flexible, they can simply be glued onto roofing decks, facing straight up. The most attractive design was from US company, Solyndra. Designed to simply be placed over large roof areas, each flat panel has many horizontal photovoltaic rods and is shaped like a car roofrack. The advantages are that the individual tubes are fixed at the correct angle for optimum power generation whilst the flat racks let wind and rain through, meaning that they don't need bolts or ballast to keep them in place in stormy weather. Then there were the integrated solar PV and thermal panels, generating electricity and hot water, the advantage being that the water flow keeps the solar panels at the low temperatures needed for optimum generating efficiency. Most confusing, there was even a solar thermal panel running on refrigerant gases that is claimed to generate heat in the dark of night as well as in the daylight! I think that, in reality, this is an air-source heat pump which is boosted by the sun's warmth during the day.
Beyond solar panels, the most attractive designs were of green roof technologies, bringing biodiversity back to 'urban deserts' and helping to clean up the air we breathe in our towns and cities. The most beautiful display was from Blackdown green roofs of Somerset who had planted so many spring flowers into their flowing sedum roof that it looked like an Alpine meadow and would not have been out of place at Chelsea.
Under all these working rooftops were a bewildering array of structural, insulating and cladding materials together with hyper-efficient doors and windows. For green plumbing and heating, there were oodles of heat pump systems (these use a little electricity to harvest a lot of renewable energy) and new, high-efficiency radiators that run at the lower water temperatures provided by heat pumps or even our current, gas-fired condensing boilers when operating at their most efficient. To save electricity at home, the brilliant VPhase system retails at around £200 plus fitting. This simple fit-and-forget technology is widely employed in commercial buildings. VPhase is the domestic version that has been proven in large-scale trials over the last five years and will cut the average home's electricity usage by 8 - 10%.
Surprisingly few LED lighting suppliers were exhibiting but the architectural lights on show from Deltalight were simply mind-blowing. Their secret is the tiniest LED chips, giving incredibly sharp edges to the light thrown from these low-power sources. The only downside was the price ...
If I had the money and the land, I would love to take the best of these technologies and build a sustainable home needing no fossil fuel energy for heating and lighting. That's the point of these exhibitions - to make us dream!
Saturday, 5 February 2011
Windsor news
Congratulations if you've found your way here from the article in this week's Windsor Express - it's on page 17 of the digital edition - and thanks for looking me up!
Francis Batt, the journalist who wrote this flattering story, has helped to promote our local efforts on 10:10 and mixed plastics recycling (which has earned me some local notoriety, and much ribbing from my friends). He has rather bravely featured the idea of biomethane - energy from sewage - which the National Grid say could eventually provide most of the gas for domestic customers in Britain. Last year, British Gas became the first energy company to inject biomethane into the National Grid. As a member of their Customer Panel, I proposed that this could be marketed as a green tariff: the world's first Dual Fuel deal offering 100% renewable energy to households wishing to minimise their environmental impact. To their credit, British Gas are taking the idea very seriously and have proposed to launch something along these lines during 2011.
Elsewhere in the paper, a letter from Mike (a resident of Bolton Road) lampooned Councillor Maxwell, the chairman of the Royal Borough's Sustainability Panel, for his suggestion that the council investigate the provision of charging points for electric vehicles in Windsor and require taxi drivers to replace their cars with electric ones. He describes the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change as "insanity" and asks, "has anyone done the calculations - the cost of providing electric capacity to charge up 11 million vehicles?". The answer to this question, of course, is yes - for starters, Mike could try Professor David Mackay, FRS, the author of "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air".
Mike's unreconstructed world view appears to be that batty green councillors are interfering with the perfectly well running fossil fuel economy and that they should just stick to the day job of running council services. I don't mean to put words into Mike's mouth but, unlike him, I did attend the Sustainability Panel when electric vehicles and charging points were discussed and I do know what was said. I shall be setting the record straight in my own letter to the paper and I hope this is published in the coming weeks.
Bright and early this morning, Hannah, Laura and I got together with Sue, the organiser of the Thames Valley Farmers' Markets, to discuss how Sustainable Windsor can support the local farmers who are selling their produce direct to Windsor residents. We sampled some local cheeses and then bought bread, fish and beer to take home. I loved the sign on the stall selling watercress from the Basingstoke area - "Total Food Miles = 27.4". There is much scope for us to highlight the environmental benefits of these local and sustainable products and perhaps, as we develop Sustainable Windsor during the coming year, we can help them to grow their businesses in our town.
Francis Batt, the journalist who wrote this flattering story, has helped to promote our local efforts on 10:10 and mixed plastics recycling (which has earned me some local notoriety, and much ribbing from my friends). He has rather bravely featured the idea of biomethane - energy from sewage - which the National Grid say could eventually provide most of the gas for domestic customers in Britain. Last year, British Gas became the first energy company to inject biomethane into the National Grid. As a member of their Customer Panel, I proposed that this could be marketed as a green tariff: the world's first Dual Fuel deal offering 100% renewable energy to households wishing to minimise their environmental impact. To their credit, British Gas are taking the idea very seriously and have proposed to launch something along these lines during 2011.
Elsewhere in the paper, a letter from Mike (a resident of Bolton Road) lampooned Councillor Maxwell, the chairman of the Royal Borough's Sustainability Panel, for his suggestion that the council investigate the provision of charging points for electric vehicles in Windsor and require taxi drivers to replace their cars with electric ones. He describes the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change as "insanity" and asks, "has anyone done the calculations - the cost of providing electric capacity to charge up 11 million vehicles?". The answer to this question, of course, is yes - for starters, Mike could try Professor David Mackay, FRS, the author of "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air".
Mike's unreconstructed world view appears to be that batty green councillors are interfering with the perfectly well running fossil fuel economy and that they should just stick to the day job of running council services. I don't mean to put words into Mike's mouth but, unlike him, I did attend the Sustainability Panel when electric vehicles and charging points were discussed and I do know what was said. I shall be setting the record straight in my own letter to the paper and I hope this is published in the coming weeks.
Bright and early this morning, Hannah, Laura and I got together with Sue, the organiser of the Thames Valley Farmers' Markets, to discuss how Sustainable Windsor can support the local farmers who are selling their produce direct to Windsor residents. We sampled some local cheeses and then bought bread, fish and beer to take home. I loved the sign on the stall selling watercress from the Basingstoke area - "Total Food Miles = 27.4". There is much scope for us to highlight the environmental benefits of these local and sustainable products and perhaps, as we develop Sustainable Windsor during the coming year, we can help them to grow their businesses in our town.
Monday, 31 January 2011
Worldwide CO2 emissions
A fascinating graphical report in the Guardian online shows the CO2 emissions from energy use in 2009 from every country in the world. Here is a link to the article.
The data comes from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and does not reflect total Greenhouse Gas emissions from human activities. The principal omissions are carbon (as CO2 and methane) released from tropical deforestation and other land use changes and the agricultural production of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. Taken as a whole, global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities equal approx. 50 billion Tonnes CO2-e per annum.
What it does show is the phenomenal growth in emissions from China. A decade ago, in 2000, China emitted 2.8 billion Tonnes of CO2 from energy use. In 2009, the country's emissions had risen by a further 4.9 billion Tonnes to 7.7 billion Tonnes, a quarter of the world's total carbon emissions from energy use. CO2 emissions from energy use in Asia and Oceania as a whole have grown by 6 Billion Tonnes, from 7.2 Billion to 13.3 Billion Tonnes over this period.
Over the same period, the combined emissions from energy use in both Europe and North America fell just 5% from 11.3 Billion Tonnes to 10.7 Billion Tonnes CO2.
The consequence, not seen in this graphic of current energy use, is that the world's annual emissions from energy use have risen by 6.6 Billion Tonnes CO2 since 2000 - more than a quarter of the total emissions in that year. As reported by BP and other oil companies in January, their outlook is that exponential growth of carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumption will continue unchecked for the next 40 years. If they are right then catastrophic, runaway climate change is guaranteed.
As Ban Ki-Moon said in Davos last week, the world's economic model is environmental suicide.
Mr Ban's solution, endorsed by the delegates at this session of the World Economic Forum on Friday, is to "tear down the walls between a green agenda and a growth agenda. There is no time to waste."
In response, the president of Finland, Tarja Halonen, called for a "modern trinity" of growth, social justice and environmental responsibility - the triple-bottom-line of responsible development.
Even the President and CEO of WalMart, Mike Duke, chipped in, "Business should not see a conflict between doing what is right for business and what is right for the world".
The data comes from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and does not reflect total Greenhouse Gas emissions from human activities. The principal omissions are carbon (as CO2 and methane) released from tropical deforestation and other land use changes and the agricultural production of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. Taken as a whole, global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities equal approx. 50 billion Tonnes CO2-e per annum.
What it does show is the phenomenal growth in emissions from China. A decade ago, in 2000, China emitted 2.8 billion Tonnes of CO2 from energy use. In 2009, the country's emissions had risen by a further 4.9 billion Tonnes to 7.7 billion Tonnes, a quarter of the world's total carbon emissions from energy use. CO2 emissions from energy use in Asia and Oceania as a whole have grown by 6 Billion Tonnes, from 7.2 Billion to 13.3 Billion Tonnes over this period.
Over the same period, the combined emissions from energy use in both Europe and North America fell just 5% from 11.3 Billion Tonnes to 10.7 Billion Tonnes CO2.
The consequence, not seen in this graphic of current energy use, is that the world's annual emissions from energy use have risen by 6.6 Billion Tonnes CO2 since 2000 - more than a quarter of the total emissions in that year. As reported by BP and other oil companies in January, their outlook is that exponential growth of carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumption will continue unchecked for the next 40 years. If they are right then catastrophic, runaway climate change is guaranteed.
As Ban Ki-Moon said in Davos last week, the world's economic model is environmental suicide.
Mr Ban's solution, endorsed by the delegates at this session of the World Economic Forum on Friday, is to "tear down the walls between a green agenda and a growth agenda. There is no time to waste."
In response, the president of Finland, Tarja Halonen, called for a "modern trinity" of growth, social justice and environmental responsibility - the triple-bottom-line of responsible development.
Even the President and CEO of WalMart, Mike Duke, chipped in, "Business should not see a conflict between doing what is right for business and what is right for the world".
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