Burning Things Is Wasteful

Centre for Alternative Technology

Burning things wastes a lot of energy – even burning waste.

1. Plain Old Inefficiency

The systems and infrastructure for the generation and distribution of electricity in the United Kingdom is extremely poor, nigh on immorally wasteful. See the diagram above from the Zero Carbon Britain 2030 report :-

http://www.zcb2030.org/

There are so many things that could be done to improve on that enormous loss of energy, and save on Carbon Dioxide Emissions at the same time.

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Obama : Tough on Grime

Image Credit : McClatchy

Tough on grime; tough on the causes of grime.

American President Barack Obama declares that as regards environmental pollution, “we shall fight them on the beaches”.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-nation-bp-oil-spill

“Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced. And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it’s not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days. The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years.”

“But make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.”

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New Melodies

A few new melodies…

Global Campaign for Climate Action :-
http://gc-ca.org/

10:10 :-
http://www.1010global.org/uk

James Hansen :-
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/

Costa Rica ! :-
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jqJmnNVzfiUOeSlVG4f8nQMbwQYQD9FOOERO0

Pacha Mama, Cochabamba :-
http://climateradio.org/next-episode/

Windlings

Methods of electricity storage are considered essential in grids that have large proportions of wind capacity. This is because, surprisingly, winds have been known to quieten down a bit from time to time.

Some people take this fact too far. For example, there is the “Northern European Winter High Pressure” lobby, who continue to insist, in a number of forums, that low aerial flow entirely compromises wind energy expansion, just because there are several days in December or January that might be a little flat.

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Renewable Synergy

The news is that there is continuing progress towards a fully Renewable Europe. It is, after all, the only means to ensure a sustainable Economy into the future, given the twin blended threats of Climate Change Carbon Mitigation and Peak Fossil Fuels.

Dr Gregor Czisch’s meisterwerk is being translated into English for publication this Summer :-

Scenarios for a Future Electricity Supply: Cost-Optimised Variations on Supplying Europe and Its Neighbours with Electricity from Renewable Energies

You would never know from the plainspeaking title just how exciting this is : seriously cheap Energy and peacemaking collaboration all in one shot !

The management consultants PriceWaterhouseCooper (couldn’t they think of a more speakable name ?), have just published their own view on Europe and North Africa combining to provide a one hundred percent renewable Energy solution :-

http://www.pwc.co.uk/sustainability/

http://www.pwc.co.uk/eng/publications/100_percent_renewable_electricity.html

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Little Chicken

Now’s the right time to talk about gardening. Not just any old gardening, no. I mean food gardening, urban farming, home cropping, edible landscape-type gardening.

Now is the time to be thinking about enriching your soil for your next bumper harvest.

Get your resilience genes working !

http://www.londonwaste.co.uk/media/Compost%20Bag%20Leaflet_May09.pdf

OR

http://www.islington.gov.uk/Environment/RubbishAndRecycling/recycling_new/hrrc/compost_offer_HRRC.asp

Get into Transition mode !

In Transition 1.0 from Transition Towns on Vimeo.

Gordon Brown Saves The World (2)

Besides announcing lots of money for Renewable Energy :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/03/gordon-brown-wind-energy-programme

Gordon Brown is confident that he can steer the international Climate negotiations to a successful, sign-up-to-able deal :-

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE6021AT20100103

“Brown says climate change agreement possible : Sun Jan 3, 2010 : Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Sunday he believed a global agreement to combat climate change might still be possible despite the limited results of last month’s Copenhagen meeting. “I’ve got an idea about how we can actually move this forward over the next few months and I’ll be working on this,” Brown told the BBC, when asked what came next after the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen. “I think it’s not impossible that the groundwork that was done at Copenhagen could lead to what you might call a global agreement that everybody is happy to stand by,” Brown said. “I’ll be working on that in the next few months and I can see a way forward because what prevented an agreement was suspicion and fear and forms of protectionism that I think we’ve got to get over,” he said, without giving details of his plan…”

The Big Suit Travels

In the continuing saga of the travels of Ed Miliband’s favourite suit and tie, here they are again, this time in South Africa, with not a crumple or hint of poor, local dust on them. Marvellous !

Milling the Wind : Revolution by Osmosis

There has been a welter of contentious reporting about Wind Power in the English-speaking world. Honestly, you would have thought there was something wrong with investing in energy infrastructure that starts to pay back within three years, the amount of bad press the poor little aeolian turbines have been getting.

“What happens when the wind stops blowing ?”, people ask with a supercilious sneer, or a grumphy guffaw, as if they know every last thing about the way the wind works all of a sudden.
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Save Vestas

Received by e-mail

Dear Friend,

Again, could you circulate this as widely as possible, especially to people in London and on the South Coast. Apologies for cross posting.

If you possibly can, please join a rally to save the Vestas wind turbine plant, this Saturday 11 July 2009, 12 noon, St James Square, Newport, Isle of Wight (outside Millets)

PDFs OF LEAFLETS, POSTERS AND PETITION SHEETS AVAILABLE BY EMAILING INFO@CAMPAIGNCC.ORG
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Scotland Rises To The Low Carbon Challenge

For some Low Carbon sanity in the United Kingdom, you have to go North of the English border to Scotland :-

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2009/06/17112350
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