Entries by admin

Aga Farewell

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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.

Abb Campaign

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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 […]

Choosing the Train

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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

Low energy bulbs

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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, […]

Aga Saga

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With just a day to go, the bidding on the Aga has just gone up to £720. Also arrived today the details about a couple of log-burning boilers. Costs, including installation, start at £10,000, with grants available for around £2,500. We’ll now have to look at further alternatives, as well as how such boilers are […]

Getting eBay into the frame

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With solar and wind looking a bit problematic at this stage, I’ve starting looking at wood power. We’ve got plenty of it lying around and most of the experts claim that it doesn’t add to CO2 (for reasons I haven’t totally fathomed yet). So I’m looking at log boilers and wood chip boilers. And as […]

Learning More in Camden

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Went last evening with my daughter Boo to the Women’s Health Centre in Camden. 3 years ago she organised a complete rebuild along environmental lines. Now the results are very impressive. They have put a lot of effort into insulation, bringing daylight into the building, energy efficiency and water harvesting from the roof. But the […]

Cold Snap

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March – and Hedgerley is under snow. We have to get the central heating boiler repaired and it’s clear we couldn’t easily survive without it at times like this.

in a word

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Anuradha has just come up with an excellent term – energy literacy. I guess it’s also what I’ve been trying to acquire in the last few weeks.

First Real Changes

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Signed up with Good Energy. Their system is very clear, although the comparisons with the present are more complicated. Their rate is going to be 8.73p for kWh for daytime usage. The compares with our current Powergen rates of 7.96, but with the first 200 units at 10.18. However this is based on a day/night […]

Small Steps in Resurgence

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This month’s Resurgence includes a new column on these issues written by Lorna Howarth. She refers to the Global Commons Institute (http://www.gci.org.uk/) and their notion of ‘Contraction and Convergence’. They have a much tougher calculation: that with a global population of 6 billion, the planet can only sustain 2 tonnes of emissions per person. That […]

Thinking about Air Travel

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Last year Anuradha and I travelled 83,000 air miles, causing a total emission of CO2 of 24 tonnes. Another wake-up call. Only half a ton was for holiday travel, which I guess is reasonable in the light of our new targets. We could justify the 23 and a half tonnes that we travelled for OneWorld […]