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Archive for March, 2007

coal drives up emissions from UK power stations

Posted in biofuel, biomass, climate change, energy, renewable energy on March 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

WWF and IPA published a report on Wednesday showing that the carbon reduction due to the dash for gas in the 1990’s has been wiped out by increased use of coal. Here’s the press release.
It looks to me that the government hopes nuclear and CCS will save the day. This keeps the CBI and [...]

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new single-house CHP unit

Posted in chp, climate change, energy, engineering, micro chp on March 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

I saw on zerochampion that GTC Europe have got together with Cambridge Consultants to produce a single-house micro CHP unit. The key difference between this unit and the Mircogen or Whispergen is that it’s based on a Rankine cycle engine rather than a Stirling engine.
It’s got a similar electric-to-heat output ratio as the Whispergen and [...]

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Monbiot’s 5-year biofuels ban

Posted in biofuel, biomass, climate change, energy on March 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

In today’s Guardian. He cites many of the same sources as we did a few days ago and goes on to propose a five year ban:
“We need a moratorium on all targets and incentives for biofuels, until a second generation of fuels can be produced for less than it costs to make fuel from palm [...]

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biofuel and orang utans

Posted in biofuel, biomass, climate change, energy on March 25, 2007 | 1 Comment »

There’s an article in today’s Observer on how the expansion of palm oil plantations in Indonesia may drive orang utans to extinction by 2012. Because of increased demand for palm oil for processed food and as a biofuel, deforestation is taking place 30% faster than previously estimated.
With some friends, I went to Tanjung Puting National [...]

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biofuel not so bio

Posted in biofuel, biomass, climate change, energy, engineering, renewable energy on March 23, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Biofuel is all over the news right now. The recent agreement between US and Brazil, Al Gore’s presentation at the World Biofuels Conference, and the latest UK budget are just a few examples. At first glance biofuels promise to be a key element in a sound strategy to mitigate climate change. But under the [...]

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the myth of stone walls as insulation

Posted in climate change, energy, engineering, house, italy on March 5, 2007 | 6 Comments »

In Italy, building professionals often tell you that thick stone walls will keep you warm in winter. Our first geometra said so. And recently my friend’s architect told him it wasn’t worth adding insulation to his walls since they were porous tufa stone, which the architect claimed was a good insulator. But it’s not true.
A [...]

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