Green Gulls

If you read my blog posts you’ll probably be able to gather that I quite like cars (but dislike some of their impacts). I think about this when I watch my small son vroom his cars around our living room – is there something innate in the mind of small boys that attracts them to cars, or is it something that car loving fathers like me unwittingly encourage? The fact that small boys still make “vroom vroom” sounds with their cars speaks volumes about the ( lack of ) progress in how cars are powered. My cars vroomed, as did my father’s and so did his father’s. Lightening McQueen, the hero of Disney’s critically derided yet widely loved ‘ Cars ’ franchise, is most definitely packing a big V8, even if his latest nemesis Jackson Storm has some kind of hybrid system. I’ve previously written about electric cars, and even if my son’s first car isn’t all electric (it’s probably rolling off a production line about now) I’d wager he’ll own a few zero emission cars before he hits middle age. A ...

Did you hear about the man who ran over his neighbour with an electric car? He was convicted of assault with battery. Expect to hear more terrible jokes like this, as the UK Government yesterday pledged to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040. The UK joins the French Government, who have the same deadline to bring an end to cars powered by the venerable suck-squeeze-bang-blow . This pledge is nothing new: it just builds on a similar plan outlined in 2011 , with the language firmed up from an ‘ambition to end the sale’ to ‘will end the sale’. The big question has to be whether this policy is realistic. Luckily for us 2017 has seen quite a few opinions on this subject. In the furthest reaches of blue corner sits Stanford University economist Tony Seba , who thinks that all cars sold by 2025 will be self-driving electric Uber pods. On similar (but less extreme) lines sits the car manufacture Volvo, who say that all of their cars will be electric by 2019 (although this inc...

“EUREKA!”, I cried, jumping from the bath. No, I hadn’t re-discovered the theory of displacement , but I had come up with an innovative solution to the climate crisis. From my bathroom window I could see a huge flock of seagulls squawking, swooping and beating their wings. Tens of thousands more live in the English coastal city of Brighton that I call home, attracted by fast-food munching tourists and our less than wonderful refuse service. Experimental high altitude kites are now generating renewable electricity – surely, we could do something similar here and power the world with 100% renewable seagull energy! The shortcomings of my idea soon become clear. Aside from the obvious practical and ethical issues, the fact remains that, whilst common in Brighton, seagulls are comparatively rare in the UK. Indeed, they’re ‘ red listed ’ with their numbers in decline. The dream of a seagull powered world, or even UK, was not to be. This bird-brained idea highlights a more serious ch...

The Green Deal launched this week in a blaze of publicity, unfortunately much of it negative. The scheme has been the Conservative’s flagship home energy efficiency policy since before they even came to power, so the big question is: is it any good? The short answer is that it’s good for some, but not for others. At its heart the Green Deal is a loan scheme for energy efficiency and renewable energy measures, but rather than homeowners paying back the loan directly to the bank the repayments are made via a charge on their electricity bill. The two key innovations of the Green Deal are that the repayments should not exceed the anticipated savings on your energy bill (i.e. your bills will be lower afterwards, even with the loan repayments) and that the loan stays with the property rather than you (if you move the new owner takes over the repayments). The Green Deal is an attempt to address one of the big problems with some energy efficiency and renewable energy measures. Upg...

See that shiny new smartphone in your hand - I had one of those 10 years ago.  Granted it was big, ugly, slow, buggy and furiously expensive, but at the time it was at the cutting edge of mobile technology.  Now of course smartphones are powerful, ubiquitous and above all cheap. This is largely thanks to continued technological advancement that’s made electronics cheaper and better year after year, a process known in the industry as Moore’s Law. The reason I mention this is that the world desperately needs energy technologies that are following a similar ‘better, cheaper’ path.  The lack of any meaningful media coverage of the current Rio+20 conference is making a rather telling point -  the media and the world’s leaders are squarely focused on our economic woes. Environmental concerns are, it seems, yesterday’s news.  Against this harsh backdrop green energy will start having to pay its way in cold hard cash, rather than avoided external costs added in a ...

‘With great power comes great responsibility’. Those of you who’ve seen Sami Rami’s 2002 Spiderman film may remember these warning words delivered by the web slinger’s uncle shortly before his unfortunate demise. The Government must have been watching, as similar sentiments are now being voiced through the Localism Act and via a follow on consultation from the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) entitled ‘Proposed policy statement for Part 2 of the Localism Act 2011’. The Localism agenda brings a dramatic shift in power from central to local Government. Under the previous Government local authorities were assigned more and more mandatory responsibilities and performance indicators until they became little more than agencies for delivering central Government policies. Late in the day the Labour Government began to reverse this trend and devolve more powers to local authorities, a process accelerated under the Localism agenda of the current coalition Government. But this...

Provisional 2011 UK energy figures have been released today by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Conventional energy gives little cause for cheer with the news that the production decline in North Sea oil and gas has accelerated. On the positive side low carbon electricity generation has climbed, whilst total energy consumption had continued on its declining trend. The energy consumption figures probably give most hope for environmentalists. UK energy demand has been falling now for over 5 years, although the economic downturn has done much to drive this trend. DECC’s figures show 2011 total energy demand was down a whopping 7% from 2010, however much of this was thought to be due to the mild weather and on a temperature adjusted basis the figure was a more modest (but still significant) 2%. Low carbon generation also provided some good news. Wind’s share of generation by major power producers has grown from 2.4% to 4.0% since 2010 due to greater capacity and windie...