Green Houses

City Hippy points to eco homes with web presences-

The Yellow House, a mid terrace 1930's council house rebuilt to cut energy bills without sacrificing comfort.

The Ecohome, which has been improved from the inside out.

Technorati tag: EcoHouse

Sweet

Reelfurniture makes very nice looking rocking chairs, tables and other furniture from reclaimed wood- specifically old cable reels. I don't know why, but I have a soft spot for the source material and always wondered what could be done with them once discarded. These products manage to be both gorgeous and reflect theoriginal shape.

I can't afford them, of course, but I can dream.



Technorati tag: Furniture, Recycling

Mulled Wines

Global warming means that wine growers will have to adapt to the changing weather. Which is not something the French want to hear. Particularly not from an Englishman.

Years of trial and error by wine growers throughout the world have resulted in ideal combinations of grapes, soil ("terroir") and climate. In France, in particular, where the terroir is revered as the key to a wine's character, wines have evolved over centuries.

Prof Prentice argues that climate change will alter the optimal mix of grape varieties to grow in any one place. For the French system, which in law lays down in detail the boundaries of each appellation - in some cases just a few acres - and the grapes that may be grown there, adapting to climate change will pose a real challenge, he says.

Technorati tag: Global Warming, Winemaking

Powering Wales

The Welsh TUC conference is calling for the Welsh assembly and the British government to start properly planning for the country's future energy needs in th elight of British oil and gas supplies running low and nuclear plants being decommissioned.

Technorati tag: Renewable Energy

EU Rules

Following the announcement of the US/Asian climate change pact, the EU is to call for further restrictions on greenhouse gases.

Technorati tag: EU, Greenhouse Gases

Green Queen

Windsor Castle is to get its own hydro-power system.

A spokeswoman for the Queen said: “We’re constantly looking at ways of saving energy. We use energy efficient light bulbs at Buckingham Palace and recycle 99 per cent of green waste.”

Members of the Royal Family have long embraced an environmentally friendly lifestyle. The Duke of Edinburgh uses a taxi cab fuelled by liquid petroleum gas to travel around London, and water in a bore hole at Buckingham Palace is used to supply air conditioning to the Queen’s gallery before topping up the water levels in the Palace lake.

The electricity from the new plant will be fed straight into Windsor Castle and not into the local grid. It will be the biggest of its kind in the South of England. Four turbines, which will be built by npower renewables, will be submerged in two of Romney Weir’s bays.

Technorati tag: Hydro Power, Micro Hydro Power, Windsor Castle, Queen

Bizarro-Kyoto?

The US, Australia, China, India and South Korea, and possibly some more Asian countries, are to sign up to their own emmissions controlling programme. Radio news reports this morning suggested that Japan is one of those others, the only Kyoto signatory that is party to this agreement. Whilst I want to believe that this is a step forward I can't help but think it's a sop to their coal and other industries.

Details of the new pact have so far remained under wraps; but there are indications that it will focus on technology transfer, probably with an emphasis on cleaner ways of burning coal.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the four biggest producers of coal in the world are China, the United States, India and Australia; so it is unlikely that these nations would come up with an agreement to reduce the production and use of coal.
.........
But will this be enough to curb climate change? Environmental groups are sceptical.

"It's part of the Bush administration's strategy to prove that the technological approach is the answer to global warming," the director of WWF International's Climate Change Programme, Jennifer Morgan, told BBC News.

"You only need to look at the way that emissions are going to see that's not the case."

Technorati tag: Kyoto, Global Warming

The Running Tap

An art piece intended to highlight excessive water use is to be turned off because it has used too much water.

The Running Tap provoked passionate reactions - a few supporters and many more enraged. One sent a birthday card with the warning inside that if the tap was not turned off, the gallery would be blown up.

The irony was that in the course of producing the work, McGowan has become messianic about water wastage: yesterday he spluttered with outrage about people washing their teeth or cleaning vegetables under a running tap. At the weekend he denounced a family member for running the washing machine daily for only a handful of clothes.

Technorati tag: Water

Recycle Now

Hippyshopper points to Recycle Now, a government site full of useful information on disposing of your rubbish in the most productive ways possible.

Technorati tag: Recycle, Recycling

Decentralising

Every building with a solar, wind or geothermal element of energy production is another step away from Big Power and towards Decentralised Energy. Greenpeace like this idea and have released a report on how and why it should be achieved.

via Worldchanging

Technorati tag: Decentralised Energy

Bio Bling

Only in LA.

Colette Brooks loves cars. Big cars. Cars with fins, spinners and spoilers; cars that come in nice colors: mustard, seaweed, light teal. The kind of cars that some people might adorn with faux fur and fuzzy dice. But she also loves, as she puts it, "this beautiful blue ball we're so privileged to live on," and her car fetish wasn't exactly squaring with her environmental creds.

So she started buying "pimped out" cars and converting them to run on biodiesel. It's an interesting concept, I'll give it that. There are a couple of stretch limos soiling th eroads of Manchester at the moment. If they were fitted out to run on recycled chip fat I'd be less inclined to torch them.

via Jalopnik

Technorati tag: Biodiesel, Los Angeles

All pro air con

Three Utah students, working on a science fair project, have created an air-conditioning unit that doesn't require Freon. The system utilises the Peltier Effect, blowing hot air over commercially available chips and producing cold air, and could not only cut down on the use of an ozone depleting chemical but also save billions of dollars in petrol use.

via Jalopnik

Technorati tag: Air conditioning, Peltier Effect

Pedal Power

Pedalites could be just what every cycling commuter wants. They store electricity generated by pedalling (naturally) in an onboard capacitor to power the built in lights when the bike is moving. They flash white to the front, orange to the side and red behind. Legally I'm sure we're supposed to have constant beam lights, but from a visibility point of view they sound great. £49.99 for a set.

via Metaefficient

Technorati tag: Cycling

Poo Power

Collecting methane from faeces and using it to provide heat isn't that revolutionary a concept. So using human waste to that end seems like a good idea, as it also cuts the potential for pollution. One prison in Rwanda does it, but can people be convinced to get past the Eeeew! factor and adopt it for more widespread schemes?

Technorati tag: Biogas, Rwanda

Blogging Round the Clock

I should have mentioned this earlier. Sustainablog is Blogging Round the Clock today to raise money for the Earthways Centre. 2 or 3 posts an hour for 24 hours, it's all explained here

Technorati tag: Sustainablog, Blogging round the clock

Walking distance

Some stupidly large number of car journeys are less than two miles which, for most of us, isn't that hard a walk. One of the gimmicks I wanted to use for How to Save the World for Free the TV series (if it ever happened) was going to be hammering a nail into a map where the subject's house was and showing them just how much stuff was within walking distance. Now you can do something similar with Google maps. The Gmaps pedometer allows you to mark out a route on the map and will calculate the distance travelled. For instance this is my walk to work every morning, which comes in at just under a mile.

(Google maps now come with satellite images of the UK, though they're a little out of date, because they still feature the old City ground. the last time I walked past it my comment was "So what used to be over there, where that huge empty space is?")

via Lifehacker

Technorati tag: Google, Walking Distance

Renewable Cycling

There's a new Cycling on the Pavement up, and it's a biggie. Clare had to write an essay on the environmental impact of hydroelectric energy for her Renewable Energy course qand I finally got round to putting it up. I helped with the research, but really it's all her own work.

Technorati tag: Renewable Energy, Hydroelectric Power

Savonius Wind Turbine

For those times when you don't need a lot of wind power, such as aerating a pond or powering a small motor, you could build a Savonius wind turbine. The shape of this little windmill looks familiar to me because Dad and the Alternative Energy group he was involved with in the eighties built a larger scale version using sawn up oil drums as the scoops. I used to sit in one of the top drums and spin round and round, but that's another story.

via Treehugger

Technorati tag: Wind Power, Savonius

CIS goes greener still

It's already been announced that the CIS tower in Manchester is getting solar panels, but there are also going to be mini wind turbines on the top to generate even more power on site. The turbines should generate about five percent of the tower's power needs and pay for themselves within three years.

Ken Lewis, CFS resources director, said: "As an insurer, CIS is already experiencing the reality of climate change impacts. Over the past decade, CIS has seen claims arising from environmental flooding increase almost 500 per cent and these now total more than £1.5m per annum.

"About 40 per cent of Europe's energy use is associated with buildings. This turbine project, with the solar CIS Tower work, demonstrates these piles of steel and concrete have tremendous potential for future energy generation."

Technorati tag: Wind Power, CIS Tower, Manchester

Windforce 12

Greenpeace and the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) today launched 'Windforce 12', a global wind energy blueprint that describes how wind power can supply 12% of the world's electricity by 2020. The report is a crucial tool in the race to cut greenhouse gas emissions, showing that by 2020, 1,250 GW of wind power can be installed saving a cumulative 10,771 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, a key contributor to climate change. Wind Force 12 demonstrates that there are no technical, economic or resource barriers to supplying 12% of the world's electricity needs with wind power alone by 2020 - against the challenging backdrop of a projected two thirds increase of electricity demand by that date.

via Wind Energy News

Technorati tag: Wind Power, Gigawatt

Swift

Another option for rooftop micro wind generation. Swift turbines are reputedly the quietest available, have won awards for innovation and can be used to heat water, top up batteries or feed juice back to suppliers when not actively powering your home.

via hippyshopper

Technorati tag: Wind Power

And we can get renewable energy from the flying pigs..........

I missed the George Bush interview with Trevor McDonald, but apparently he was set to admit that global warming has a scientific basis and humans may be to blame. Of course, he's not actually going to do anything about it, but at least he's admitting the problem exists.

Technorati tag: George Bush, Global Warming

Ech2o

It's only a one off built for the Shell Eco Marathon, but the Ech2o is impressive nonetheless. The builders, BOC, reckon the hydrogen fuel cell powered car can travel 25,000 miles using only 25 watts and hope to break the world fuel efficiency record.

Technorati tag: Fuel Cell, Hydrogen, Shell Eco Marathon

Money to burn

It might be worth investing in a solar powered car if, as one analyst predicts, oil prices are set to soar to over $100 a barrel by Christmas.

But [Texan oil analyst Matt] Simmons believes surging demand will keep prices bubbling well above $50. 'We could be at $100 by this winter. We have the biggest risk we have ever had of demand exceeding supply. We are now just about to face up to the biggest crisis we have ever had,' he said.

Technorati tag: Oil, Peak Oil

QuikSolar

The QuickSolar Blog is recording one team's construction of a solar powered car.

Technorati tag: Solar Power, Solar Car