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Archive for May, 2007

work featured in Architecture Today

Posted in architecture, biofuel, biomass, climate change, energy, engineering, renewable energy on May 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

A project I led at XCO2 is being featured in the Ecotech supplement in Architecture Today this month (no link yet). It’s a visitors centre for the National Trust in the Chiltern Downs expected to provide services to around 400,000 visitors a year. And it’s loaded with green goodness: woodchip boiler for space and water [...]

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paging William Perry

Posted in energy, engineering, house, renewable energy on May 23, 2007 | 1 Comment »

There’s another fridge discussion at No Impact Man, where he’s asked for ideas on how to keep milk fresh. In one of the comments, someone pointed to a passive ice box that freezes about a cubic meter of ice in winter and keeps your food cool the rest of the year. Kick ass. Unfortunately it [...]

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a fridge too far

Posted in climate change, energy, house on May 21, 2007 | 2 Comments »

I was lamenting in a post about compact florescent bulbs how I didn’t know where else we could significantly cut electricity consumption. Then I saw this post from Greenpa. Turns out I wasn’t thinking hard enough.

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answering the 26 most common climate myths

Posted in climate change, energy on May 18, 2007 | 1 Comment »

The New Scientist published a fantastic article this week answering the 26 most commonly used arguments against climate change. Keep it close to hand.

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CHP oversold as a means of reducing carbon

Posted in chp, climate change, energy, engineering, london, micro chp, renewable energy on May 18, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Via Tom N, a great article in BSJ on whether CHP (and CHP + cooling) actually has as much potential to reduce carbon emissions as the industry (and Ken Livingstone) would have you believe.
In general, I agree with James Thonger’s conclusions. However…

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widening spark gap boosts CHP

Posted in chp, climate change, energy, micro chp, renewable energy on May 17, 2007 | 2 Comments »

According to online energy auction house BuyEnergyOnline, during April 2007 UK gas wholesale prices rose by just 1% while electricity prices increased 13%, making the widest spark gap since deregulation.

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biomass delivery

Posted in biofuel, biomass, climate change, energy, engineering, house, italy, renewable energy on May 16, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Maurizio brought round our last one-tonne bag of wood pellets a few weeks ago and I’ve been meaning to post photos since. He’s been holding the last bag for us since last autumn when we only managed to get five of the six tonnes we’d bought into the pellet store.
We’ve now got plenty of pellets. [...]

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italy vs. uk on microgen funding

Posted in climate change, energy, engineering, italy, renewable energy, utilities on May 11, 2007 | 6 Comments »

After I mocked Italy’s efforts to combat climate change, it turns out their funding for microgen (in particular photovoltaic panels) makes the UK’s policy look even more pathetic. If that were possible.

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spy plane photos shame heat-loss homes

Posted in architecture, climate change, energy, engineering, london, utilities on May 7, 2007 | 8 Comments »

A London borough used thermal imaging from the air to help identify properties with high heat loss and they’ve put the results online for anyone to see. Here’s the article in the The Times. And here’s the map showing the results.
I think it’s fantastic, provided the council follow it up with constructive advice to the [...]

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six degrees of separation

Posted in climate change, energy on May 7, 2007 | 8 Comments »

In the Dorset woods last summer, I spent a day learning to make fire with a bow drill, starting with just a knife and a log. There were eight of us on this bushcraft course, each one tasked with making his own fire from scratch. We all worked in a charged silence and then eventually [...]

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