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Archive for May, 2008

new transport fuel strategy is off the rails

Posted in climate change, energy, renewable energy, sustainability, wind turbines, tagged , , , , on May 28, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Listening to Radio 4 on my phone on the way home I heard the evening news: Gordon Brown, keen to show he’s doing all he can to ease the fuel crisis, has taken two decisive actions.
First he’s met with North Sea oil producers to urge them to pump more petroleum from their fields, which have been [...]

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when a little is worse than nothing at all

Posted in uncategorized on May 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

When it comes to carbon from energy and the built environment, misdirected government measures (however good the intention) are now likely to do more harm than good. Eye-catching initiatives, if and when they fail, provide justification to cynics and people whose interests lie in maintaining the status quo. And more importantly the measures waste time [...]

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you mean oil’s not infinite?

Posted in climate change, energy, renewable energy, sustainability, tagged , , , on May 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Weird reporting in the Observer today on the IEA’s upcoming study on the narrowing margin between oil demand and oil availability. Two snippets:
The International Energy Agency has ordered an inquiry into whether the world could run out of oil, The Observer has learnt.
Wow, hard hitting stuff from the IEA (and the Observer). I hadn’t realised [...]

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feed in tariffs coming to the UK?

Posted in climate change, energy, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, wind turbines on May 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

From out of nowhere, twice in one week, there have been indications that a feed in tariff is on the way. First, at Tuesday’s PRASEG (Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group) meeting, BERR and DEFRA both hinted that a feed in tariff would replace the renewables obligation for installations under 50kW. Then on Thursday at [...]

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using new schemes to decarbonise existing buildings

Posted in Code for Sustainable Homes, SAP, biomass, chp, climate change, energy, engineering, london, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, wind turbines, tagged , , , on May 1, 2008 | 4 Comments »

If you build to Passivhaus standard, there’s no point in putting in a wet heating system. In fact, the key to the economics of Passivhaus design is that a conventional heating system is rendered redundant: you’re supposed to use the resulting savings to help fund the efficiency measures. Instead of a boiler and radiators you might [...]

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