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The Boston branch of the family have come up with a great quote this morning from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson: “If you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you […]
The Observer reported yesterday that BP claims to have a practical solution to disposing of CO2 by pumping it under the bed of the North Sea. They claim that the Miller field could absorb 5 million tons a year of liquefied CO2 which would be pumped from the Peterhead power station into the porous rock […]
Went up to Eynsham to visit Ice Energy. I thought their name was an acronymn until I asked how they had drilled a bore hole in an industrial park to get their heat energy. They hadn’t. Instead they heated the offices from a block of ice in a tank wrapped in the heat transfer pipes […]
Franny tells me that low-energy light bulbs just start dim but then brighten up. She’s right, but I’m still not convinced that they are quite as bright even then.
Delighted to receive an email today from Key Travel, who specialise in working with charities, announcing their carbon calculator. This is just what we need to offset the irreduceable flying that we have to do. So for my upcoming flight to Nairobi and Lusaka, they report that I will be producing 4 tons of CO2. […]
I went to a Solarsavers seminar yesterday in High Wycombe to discuss energy options with a number of suppliers. I had expected to be most interested in the solar water heating options. There were some good nuggets in the presentations: “the 19th was the century of coal, the 20th of oil and the 21st will […]
We’ve just got back the ‘home energy check’ results from Thames Valley Efficiency Advice Centre. This was a good idea and free of cost, but in our case the advice they’ve sent is pretty general – insulation and more low energy lights. More surprising is that they rated our present oil-fired boiler as ‘good’. It […]
We spent a fascinating morning at Walkers in Burford. After researching dealers in wood-burning stoves around the country, they turned out to be the best in our area. In particular they offer a complete service from supplying the stove to arranging the installation and plumbing. Sandy Walker has been passionate about wood-burning stoves for more […]
Two very interesting outcomes from our Birthday shramadana. My present from Devi and Matthew was a carbon sequestering tree that they had paid to have planted. More details to follow. Looking into the issue of carbon sequestration led to an interesting page from the Union of Concerned Scientists – Ten Personal Solutions. One striking example […]
Shramadana. Wonderful birthday weekend with the family joining us in a concerted effort to sort through, recycle and share out 20 years of accumulated stuff that was clogging up our living space and wasting energy.
A great idea over dinner from Rajendre Khargi, Chair of OneWorld Netherlands. Why not add a third option to the in-car navigation systems? As well as choosing the fastest route or the most fuel efficient, why not have the option of the route that saves the most CO2? This would presumably be based on estimations […]
John and Tim arrived today with a lorry and a crane to take away the Aga. It took three hours and the removal of a door, but has left us with an excellent space for a wood-burning stove – and the money to pay for it.
When we got back to London, feeling just a little smug about our CO2 saving, we then felt even better when we saw this very striking poster from ABB. We felt like saying – ‘well a least we stopped a tiny quarter of a ton from happening this week, so if every one in the […]
For the first time we deliberately choose the train over the flight, going to Amsterdam via Brussels for OneWorld Board meetings. Door to door it meant: 7 hours instead of 5 hours, about £400 instead of about £150 but it saved around a quarter of a tonne of CO2
Today’s step was putting in low energy light bulbs. These quad bulbs are 20w, which should be a good saving in joules. They are also guaranteed to last 10,000 hours, which would be a big improvement on our current ones. But the light output is disappointing. They claim to be equivalent to 100w regular bulbs, […]