Reduce Your CO2

An article in the environment section of today’s Guardian has caught my eye, as it talks about what must be one of the most original low emissions heating solutions yet proposed - and what’s more there are no issues with installing solar panels or wind turbines that annoy the NIMBY neighbours…

It’s called IHT - Interseasonal Heat Transfer, and the main energy source is already there (well ok, as you will see, there is some ‘adaptation’) - roads, runways, carparks, tennis courts, anything made of asphalt. Basically, IHT takes the heat absorbed by asphalt surfaces and transfers it to liquid, which is then stored in insulated tubes until it is needed, when it can be pumped out. At a basic level, this solution can be used to heat and, using convection in the opposite direction, cool roads to help them last longer and avoid freezing or melting. When combined with a geothermal heat pump, it can however also be used to heat buildings.

The advantage of this solution is of course that there are no additional blots on the landscape to worry about. Yes, you have to dig up your road, car park or runway in order to install the system, but then how many roads are dug up every year?

Invisible Heating Systems, who are selling the solution, claim approximately 33 square metres of tarmac will heat 100 square metres of a house, and that 400 square metres can provide 108 mW of power per annum.

Of course this is almost certainly not a cheap option, but I think it holds huge potential, at least for public areas and businesses, with greater funds or public sector support, and more likely access to large areas of tarmac. It is also a genuine example of the kind of lateral thinking that engineers and scientists must use to find solutions to reduce CO2 emissions. New inventions are needed, but they will always take longer to get to market. Harking back to Blue Peter and using the tools and materials already available to use will often bring about solutions that are more efficient, and more acceptable too. This is one technology I will be following closely.

Coming in on to work on the train this morning, I read in my free morning paper - you know, the one that ends up clogging up the bottom of escalators - that tomorrow is Earth Day. Oooh goodie, I thought to myself, some action is going to be taken, some messages are going to be communicated, maybe some good will come of this.

So I went onto the web to find out more….and found, well not much at all. From what I can see, Earth Day is big in a few countries - America above all - but not very many at all. Once again, an event that, by name at least, could have global consequences, is going to pass of unnoticed by most people in most countries.

This doesn’t mean there’s no point to what’s happening. Every action by an individual, a town, a city, or a country, is a step forward. I just find it frustrating that, as we are all concerned by the problem, we seem unable to ALL get together to address it.

So how can we organise one, global event, however simple? Answers on a stamped addressed envelope please. Or on this blog, of course!

Sorry for the sad headlines, but why not follow the crowd - after all, the name just asks for it, and I’m afraid to say that my respect for the man has not increased dramatically following his performance of the other day.

This was billed as ‘the greenest budget yet’. Probably the cleverest part of the whole speech, as this wasn’t exactly difficult. What’s more, the green ‘bit’ started with some promise, as Alistair Darling confirmed that the government takes global warming very seriously, and recognised the importance of acting, and acting now…. except he then went on to pretty much postpone all the acting till a later date, immediately ruining the effect of this statement and, for me at any rate, preparing us for a series of disappointing promises.

This is what we got:

• The proposed increase in fuel duty by 2p is delayed until October in order to help the economy
• The government will ask the Climate Change committee to advise them on whether CO2 reduction targets for 2050 should be raised from 60% to 80%
• Carbon budgets will be announced alongside the budget as of next year
• Energy companies are to encourage us to reduce our electricity consumption
• If supermarkets don’t take action on reducing the use of plastic bags, a charge will be imposed on them as of 2009
• £26 million has been allocated to a Green Homes Service
• New non-domestic buildings must be CO2 neutral by 2019
• Revenue from plane duty is increased by 10%
• New tax bands will be introduced to punish those with polluting cars / encourage the purchase of less-polluting cars
• As of 2010, a special first year charge will be introduced - new cars emitting under 130 grammes of CO2 will be free of tax for that year, whilst high-polluting cars will have an increased tax - effectively a forecourt tax.

So how would I translate all of the above? Lots of promises to do things in the future - hmmm, not much urgency there, threats about plastic bags (apparently to keep Daily Mail readers happy), good intentions about zero Carbon businesses, a bit more money from the airlines (I wonder where it will be spent? Maybe it can go towards building the new runway…), no car tax for green cars in their first year as of 2010 (wow, an incentive!), and punishment for gas guzzlers.

Frankly, it’s not much, and it certainly doesn’t reflect the statement that ‘the need to take action is urgent’. I know that things take time to put in place in government, but this is a budget that commits to do not very much over the next 2 years, and to talk about doing some other things in the future. And, of course, there’s no real ‘carrot’ to encourage us to take action ourselves. In fact the famous system of grants for microgeneration seems to have vanished!

I know we’re entering a recession, that money is tight, that the government’s priority is to try to see us through it safe, but reducing our CO2 emissions gives us an opportunity to save money, something we need to do right now. What’s more it is urgent to do things now, not next year, and certainly not in 2016!

This may have been the greenest budget yet, but it won’t make a difference. The UK, leading Europe in its apathy towards reducing emissions.

We at Reduce Your CO2.com are always on the lookout for green bargains, and one of our favourites is the energy saving light bulb. It also seems to be a favourite with the big stores, as Tesco is now following in the footsteps of B&Q and The Sun (plus various supermarkets) with an offer of up to 4 low energy bulbs at 1p a piece.

I’m off there asap, and if your house isn’t yet fully equipped, I suggest you do the same! I would have hoped to see more details about this on their ‘Greener living’ web site, but no, so you’ll just have to pop along to your local store to see if it’s taking part and if there are any left. Good luck!

Tomorrow Alistair Darling announces his new Budget for the UK. This is an opportunity for him and his party to actual concretise some of the past promises they have made about ensuring that the UK leads Europe in its approach to the environment. It’s also an opportunity to counter the more than justified criticism of existing policies, or rather the lack thereof. Basically, Darling needs to put place some clear, firm and positive measures to show that Labour really is taking Global Warming and the reduction of CO2 seriously.

We do already have a few teasers - or at least all the newspapers are saying the same things. So-called ‘gas guzzlers’ are likely to be punished with a forecourt tax aiming to discourage people from buying them in the first place. Tax discs may be marked more clearly to indicate emissions levels of different cars.  There are even suggestions of more radical proposals such as making parking more expensive for vehicles with higher emissions. Continuing with vehicles, energy companies will apparently be forced to increase the amount of biofuels (sustainably source, of course) they sell on a yearly basis - maybe a good move, but as we know from ongoing discussions, not one to please many environmentalists, and certainly not the ideal long term solution.

These proposals are all very well, but they certainly don’t show the government getting tough on the environment, and neither will raising green taxes or continuing to increase duty on fuel. This we’ve seen before, and, quite frankly, the impact will be minimal. So the question is, does Mr Darling have any surprises, real surprises, hidden under his hat?

Well we can hope, but what should we hope for? Personally I have one hope, although I fear it will not be fulfilled: as well as continuing with the deterrent approach - mostly taxing emissions - it’s time to do like Germany and introduce incentives, specifically a reasonable, interesting, Fee-in tarif for anyone producing surplus electricity via renewable sources. Just in case you’re not sure what this is, it’s really simple - if you generate electricity for your home or business via a renewable source - solar, wind, geothermal - and you produce more than your building requires, you can sell it back to the grid. This generates revenue, enabling you to pay back your investment in renewable energy faster (the cost to install a solar voltaic system for a 3 bedroom house is in the region of £20,000 today).

Germany is today the leader in electricity generation from sources such as wind and solar, and installations outnumbered those in the UK by as much as 1,000 to 1 last year. Why? Because people had a reason to invest beyond just ‘being green’. Because they had a way to pay off their investment within a reasonable period.

So I’m crossing my fingers for tomorrow, but I’m not holding out much hope. I will however continue to rant about this: we all know - governments included - that we need to move fast, and instead of just using the infamous ’stick’, this government needs to provide some ‘carrots’ - real, tangible ones.

I don’t know how many of you know, but today is E-day. Well actually, E-day runs from 6pm yesterday till 6pm today.

It was the brainchild of scientist Matt Prescott, who wanted to launch a day of action against climate change to replace the BBC’s Planet Relief day, which was cancelled as it was considered too political. Sponsored by the energy companies, who are providing a live power consumption feed, and launched yesterday evening with a speech by the Bishop of London in St Paul’s Cathedral, and the screening of short movies in a bicycle powered cinema, the goal of E-day is for individuals and businesses to turn off everything run by electricity that they don’t need in order to show how easy it is to reduce our power consumption and thus reduce CO2 emissions.

First point: until I saw the piece on bbc.co.uk today there has been absolutely no marketing that I have seen anywhere to tell people that this day was happening. How do they think an event like this is ever going to work if it has no media support? It makes me think of Wayne’s World 2 – ‘Build it, and they will come’. Clearly they have not turned up in this case, as no one has been talking about this event.

Second point: they have put a special live feed on their web site - http://www.e-day.org.uk/index.thtml, which is also on the BBC web site, though thankfully hidden away, that shows a typical day’s consumption compared with today’s consumption, in order to illustrate how much power we are saving. Guess what? Pretty much all of today, power consumption has been HIGHER than on a typical day!

In their blurb on the site, the guys from E-day say ‘E-Day will finish at 6pm on Thurs 28 Feb. The total savings of money, energy and carbon associated with E-Day will then be calculated and made available in time of the evening news bulletins.’ Right now, the evening bulletins will either be saying nothing at all, or they will be pointing out how this is a complete and utter failure.

This is the perfect illustration of why tracking can be dangerous. It’s great to sell in an idea to a client with the added message of ‘we will measure everything to show you how much money we’ve made you.’, but it can come back to bite you if the project fails, with the client saying ‘well basically your tracking tells me that you owe me £x!!’. Basically the whole project will have proved…. nothing.

If I’d known about this a while ago – ie if it had been well covered in the press and other media – I might have suggested we try to do something at the company I work for. As it is, I find myself reacting like too many other people who still regard this as ‘somebody else’s problem’, thinking ‘what effect am I going to have, when obviously no one else is doing anything about the problem’.

There are now 15 minutes until the end of E-day, and after a brief dip into the ‘green’, we are again using more electricity than on a typical day as estimated by the power companies. OK, their estimates are just estimates, but its amazing how the curve of real consumption has mirrored that of estimated consumption throughout these 24 hours - all the while sticking just above. I’ve had a look on the Facebook page set up for the event, and the comments are the same there - ‘What a pity I only heard about this today!’.

Events like this can have a good effect, and can prove something. However they need to be organised properly and communicated properly. I don’t know how much money was invested in E-day, but I can guarantee that the CO2 emmissions generated by organising it have unfortunately exceeded those saved. What a waste.

Following on from my recent article on electric scooters, and specifically the Vectrix, I headed off today to The Electric Transport Shop in Camden to see what I could do about a taking a test drive. Unfortunately, I realised when I got there that I need to take the CBT again, so couldn’t yet test a Vectrix. I could, however, follow up on my promise to Sam Clarke of Baroni EV and test drive their new electric scooter, the E-max 110s.

First a few stats on the E-max (taken from their blurb):

• Max speed: 30 mph (limited so it’s classed as a scooter)
• Range at 30 mph: 50-62 miles
• Power: 2.5 (4.5 with boost)
• Battery: Silicone lead acid
• Charging time: 5 hours for full charge

The bike has a modern and racy design, and pretty much looks like a typical 50cc scooter. It’s comfortable to sit on and well balanced - certainly lighter than my old Vespa too. It comes with a special charger that you plug in under the seat - slightly less practical than the Vectrix which just has a cable that plugs in directly.

Dials are very simple - enough information, and not too much to go wrong. There’s a standard analogue speedometer in kmh and mph, although it did take me a moment to work out which was which as the kmh is more prominent - fortunately not a bad error to make, though, as at worst you will be going slower than you think! A lcd screen then shows you level of charge and mileage. Other leds indicate if lights are on or if indicators are being used - I did find that the indicator light was very small, and even in a 15 minute test left them on twice - but then I was always forgetting with my Vespa, so nothing new there!

To turn on, you simply turn the key and wait for the welcome message on the lcd screen. I did note that there was no other safety mechanism, and so you can only tell that the bike is on by twisting the throttle. And then you’re off. Slowly but steadily I have to say, but then probably at the same speed as with a 50cc petrol scooter. It should also be mentioned that the model I tested was a little under-powered according to the guy in the shop, but either way, you’re not going to be burning BMWs off the lights like you can with a Vectrix!

You can get a little more power by holding down the ‘boost’ button just by the throttle. This gives you maybe 10 seconds of higher pull - the stats suggest that it just under doubles the power, before things settle down again, although you will use the batter quicker as well. Still, I’m not talking about a racing bike here; the only reason to buy an e-max would be commuting, and most of that - in London at any rate - is at under 30 miles an hour! And I have to say that once you get up to speed it’s a real pleasure. Yes, you have to get used to the lack of sound - it’s so quiet that when my mobile rang I almost fell off the bike - and this has to change your awareness when driving. At one point I was turning right and a lady was crossing the street I was turning into. She did not even look my way as she didn’t hear me coming.

The ride is also very comfortable. I went down a street with a whole squad of sleeping policemen and found I didn’t have to slow that much, and the bike seems to corner like any typical scooter of its size. The brakes were very efficient, and I felt totally in control at all times.

The e-max costs £2,800, and will be available in the UK around April / May time, so far less to invest than the £6,900 cost of a Vectrix, but does it compare favourably? On the positive side I would say that it’s a well-built and easy to use machine, with a very comfortable ride, and, if the production model really will do 60 plus miles at 30 mph on a full charge, then it will actually have a similar or even better range than the Vectrix, which promise 68 miles at 25mph. However the 5 hour charge time compared with 2-3 hours for the Vectrix could become annoying on very busy days.

The biggest killer for me, however, is the power, or lack thereof. Going up a pretty slight hill in Camden, with the wind in my face, I got stuck around 25 mph, and it took me a while just to get there. During my short test drive I did get honked at by one white van man who felt I was just too slow and obstructive for his liking as well. When you compare this with the 0-50 in 6.8 seconds Vectrix, you are on a different playing field, and to me, at any rate, acceleration and power is important to me, so important that, as soon as I have taken my CBT again, I will be back to test one and am likely invest the additional £4,000 odd in what is for me the current leader in this market.

Don’t get me wrong - I really like the e-max, and it is a great solution for people who really are happy to potter around at 30mph and don’t mind waiting a while to get there. What’s more you can go a long way between charges, and it certainly seems a well-built solid and good-looking machine. For me, however, I want an electric scooter that does what petrol ones do, or even more, and this one still doesn’t have the power I am looking for, especially for quite a bit more than you’d pay for a Vespa. Too much more to justify the important green label.

Next week I’m going to go back and test the retro-looking EVT 168, and, as soon as I get my CBT, the Vectrix review will follow.

The director-general of the CBI, Richard Lambert, has continued the UK’s policy of finding excuses for not hitting targets as soon as they are set, by saying that the new one set by the EU - for the UK to generate 15% of our energy via renewable sources by 2020 - was not going to be achieved, as it would be too expensive to do so.

It’s true that the target is pretty tough - we’re at 1.3% today, and will involve dramatic development, for instance an estimated 12,500 additional wind farms, but to give up with 12 years to go just sums up the current negative attitude to one of the most important challenges facing our country today. The argument, or should I call it the ’spin’, is that we the public will have to pay for the necessary developments in taxes and energy bills, energy bills being a touchy subject at this moment as they have just gone up. This is to some extent true, but it’s a very blinkered argument, and doesn’t look at many things that affect both the cost and our wish - if necessary - to bear it:

• In twelve years, the cost of building alternative energy sources will go down as technology advances.
• In twelve years, other, cheaper solutions will also become available.
• Many of us are already willing to pay a bit more in order to ensure our future. Even those not convinced by the global warming argument recognise that fossil fuels are going to run out. The cost of fossil fuels will continue to mount, and at some point - maybe not as far away as all that, they will in fact become more expensive to use than renewable sources.
• If global warming is a reality, the ‘natural disasters’ we may see over the next 12 years will certainly have an effect on our willingness to move things forward quickly, and to pay for them.
• Over the next 12 years, if we work at it, overall energy consumption will reduce. If we really work at it, it will reduce quite significantly.

In the end, all of these comments make no difference. The targets that are being set will be binding, and we will have to answer to the EU if we don’t hit them. Not that we have seen any issues with this up to now - see my previous comments on hitting EU targets.

What gets to me, though, is the negativity. We have time, we have the will, and we have an opportunity. Instead of talking about missing this target, let’s talk about beating it.

Having never mentioned them at all in 10 months of blogging, I find myself mentioning B&Q 2 days in a row! The diy experts (clever enough to have bought the url diy.com) have followed up their partnership with the Mayor of London to distribute free low energy lightbulbs by announcing that they will be ordering no more patio heaters, and will stop selling them once their current stock has been sold.

I first wrote about patio heaters in June last year, and about how they have become the rage as smokers are forced outside pubs during all weathers, and need to keep warm. The problem with them is simple - they burn gas, at a huge rate, generating huge amounts of CO2 emissions - the best statistic given is that a patio heater consumes enough energy in an hour to make 400 cups of tea! This is one very unethical fashion item.

Unfortunately, however, there are still 20,000 patio heaters in B&Q stores to be sold - that’s 8 millions cups of tea per hour worth of emissions that will soon be pumped into the atmosphere by pubs and people determined to have drinks outside in midwinter! So, whilst I fully applaud B&Q’s initiative, I have a small suggestion: add 10@ to the price, and use this markup to invest in renewable energy, offsets, solar heating for B&Q stores, or any other solution that will balance out the additional emissions to be generated over the next 5 years.

Last Saturday, The Sun newspaper ran an ambitious promotion in conjunction with Southern Electricity. The deal was that for every copy of the paper purchased on that day in certain stores, you were given 2 free low energy light bulbs. The goal, according to the paper, was to give away a total of 4.5 million lightbulbs, thus encouraging many more people to switch at least some of their bulbs and so save electricity and reduce CO2 emissions.

I thought this was a great idea, and so did the public apparently. At any rate, when I managed to get to Sainsburys at around midday on Saturday, there were no bulbs left, and the story was the same across the street at Woolworths, where there was a big sign saying ‘No more Sun lightbulbs’. I am yet to see any details on the success of the operation - nothing in the paper today, but I hope they did hit their target. If not, then they owe me 2 lightbulbs!

I didn’t encounter the same problem the week before, when Londoners were able to take one conventional lightbulb to any London B&Q and exchange it for two energy-saving lightbulbs. This time there were still enough when I turned up, but then the promotion lasted for 3 days and was sponsored by Ken Livingstone, so I suppose it couldn’t be allowed to fail.

Anyway, just in case this becomes a regular occurrence, I have decided to set up ‘bulbwatch’. Basically I will keep my eyes open for any opportunities to get free bulbs, and will publish them on this site. If we’re lucky, maybe we won’t have to buy any more bulbs at all!