Posted by Petah Marian on October 29th, 2008
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (Defra) will be the first government department to have the capacity to be carbon neutral.
Lion House in Alnwick, Northumberland has been named the most environmentally friendly office building certified by the Building Research Establishment Assessment Method (BREEAM) after receiving a score of 81.5 per cent.
The building has achieved its award-winning status by combining a number of renewable energy sources including photovoltaics, a biomass heating system, solar thermal hot water generation and wind turbines.
On-site electricity generation helps deliver a 108.6 per cent reduction of carbon emissions at the building.
Sustainable materials have been used throughout the building and all major construction elements were sourced in line with BREEAM 2006 guidelines.
Appleyards, who project managed the development of Lion House, hopes to introduce a measurement plan to continually assess how the building is performing and show that targets are being met.
Defra staff will have full operational control of their environment with screens providing users with real time information on the performance of the building’s technologies and a traffic light system will help them decide how to keep the building on track to achieve carbon neutrality.
Posted by Petah Marian on October 29th, 2008
Designers and manufacturers will have a new tool to benchmark the eco-performance of their products and comply with upcoming EU directives.
The European Commission’s Framework Directive on Energy Using Products (EUP) is due to appear in early 2009 and will set minimum eco-design standards for a range of parameters over the entire lifecycle of the product.
The legislation will cover design through to manufacturing, use and disposal. This includes energy consumption, water use, air emissions and waste embedded in the product, produced by the product and consumed during use.
EcoFly, created by WSP Environment and Energy, claims to be the first commercial tool to help designers, compliance and environmental managers benchmark the eco-performance of their products and confirm compliance with the EC directive.
David Symons, director of corporate services at WSP Environment & Energy, said:
“The EuP will have wide ranging impacts and manufacturers should be integrating the EuP into design teams today. With the standards progressively coming into force next year, design teams need to understand the proposed minimum standards for their products today.”
Ecofly has examined a range of products and has found a number of surprising results:
- A typical 29inch CRT TV will use more than 62,000 litres of water over its entire life cycle and will generate 83kg of waste.
- A desktop PC will generate over 47kg of waste and will generate 38,000 litres of water.
- A mobile phone charger will emit the equivalent of almost 6kg of CO2 over its life.
- The energy used to make a laptop is about the same as the energy used over its life with 1,571 MJ consumed during use and 2,902 MJ consumed throughout its entire life cycle.
Posted by Petah Marian on October 29th, 2008
Ethical singletons of the world rejoice, there is now an online dating destination where you can find your vegan activist life partner.
Ethicalsingles.com has been designed for people who want to help to make a better world find each other.
While Greenbang’s ‘dance card’ is currently full she did sign up just to check out what was on offer and was not disappointed. Naturally the site is geared towards the eco-warrior with menus where you can define your favourite areas of activism, whether you’re interested in astrology or alternative healing and where exactly you sit on the vegetarian – carnivore scale.
On a good note there seemed to be a lot more sensitive souls than on your regular dating site (not that I’d know anything about that).
To explore further check it out here.
Posted by Greenbang on October 29th, 2008
Intel Capital, the VC and investment arm of the chip giant, has made a couple of big clean tech investments in China this week.
First is a $20m investment in Trony Solar Holdings, a Chinese thin-film solar energy provider. Trony plans to use the investment to enhance its production capacity to 105 megawatts, to serve a broad base of customers, and strengthen its research and development capabilities.
The second deal is an undisclosed investment in NP Holdings (NPH), a technology company focused on massive electricity storage systems for renewable energy and energy efficiency.
These are Intel Capital’s first clean tech investments in China.
Cadol Cheung, managing director of Intel Capital Asia Pacific, said:
“China’s renewable energy industry is experiencing rapid development. We believe these investments will be a catalyst to drive local clean tech innovation and help China toward the transition to a more sustainable energy system as well as economic growth.”
Posted by Greenbang on October 29th, 2008
Hi folks, just a week to go before the US decides on McCain or Obama and here’s Jurdy’s take on the Presidential election race. Enjoy…
Posted by Greenbang on October 28th, 2008
The majority of ‘green’ claims made in advertising are justified, according to research by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The ASA’s survey found 94 per cent of ads with environmental claims were compliant with the advertising codes.
The research was prompted by a significant rise in ‘greenwash’ complaints about consumers being misled or confused by ethical claims in ads last year.
The ASA has also clamped down on greenwashing this year, publicly rebuking Shell and ExxonMobil over environmental and sustainability claims made in advertising material.
Of the 195 ads assessed across TV, radio and non-broadcast outlets, just 12 (six per cent) breached advertising codes.
Director general of the ASA, Christopher Graham, said:
“The compliance survey demonstrates that the ASA is making real progress in ensuring environmental claims do not mislead through exaggeration, ambiguity or omission. The ASA will continue to listen to consumers and work closely with advertisers to improve standards in green and ethical claims even further.”
The full ASA Environmental Claims Survey 2008 Survey can be found here.
Posted by Greenbang on October 28th, 2008
Environmental groups have hailed the government’s u-turn in agreeing to close a loophole that would have excluded aviation and shipping emissions from the UK’s target of cutting CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
New climate and energy minister Ed Miliband had claimed it would have been too complicated to include aviation emissions in a UK target because of the international nature of air travel and had planned to use voluntary offsetting for these industries.
But the government faced defeat on the climate change Bill after backbench Labour MPs vowed to vote against the government if aviation and shipping were excluded from the emissions reduction targets.
Now the government has backed down and agreed to include aviation and shipping emissions in the 80 per cent target ahead of a vote on the Bill by MPs in the House of Commons today (Tuesday 28 October). If, as expected, it is passed it will go then to the House of Lords for approval before being passed into law in November.
Friends of the Earth has hailed the Bill as a victory for people power in the fight against climate change. Executive director, Andy Atkins, said:
“Today is a historic day. Hundreds of thousands of people across the UK who have demanded a strong law have forced the government to listen and won a huge victory in the battle against climate change. Developing a low carbon economy here in the UK is the only way to deliver on the law, move Britain out of recession and into a greener more prosperous future.”
The devil, of course, will be in the detail and it is unclear how the aviation emissions target will be calculated, monitored and enforced. As yet there’s also no response from the aviation industry.
Posted by Petah Marian on October 27th, 2008
With mobile networks expanding into sunnier emerging markets, solar power looks set to play an important role in mobile service provision and ABI research is projecting that 335,000 mobile base stations will include solar power by 2013.
The shift towards reducing base station power consumption along with improvements in PV cells means solar energy is now a viable solution for powering many cellular base stations.
Stuart Carlaw, ABI Research vice president, said:
“Solar power will first be used in conjunction with other primary energy sources such as diesel or grid-based electricity, but will increasingly be seen as a primary source for autonomous cell sites. The market for autonomous solar powered cell sites looks set to grow from extremely modest levels today to over 40,000 renewable energy sites by the end of 2013. A further 295,000 base stations are expected to supplement on-grid power usage with solar.”
The report said solar power is at the leading edge of renewable energy’s drive into the mobile network domain, with wind power having potential in areas that receive less solar energy, although it is less predictable.
You can find out more about ABI’s report here.
Posted by Petah Marian on October 27th, 2008
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is endorsing a “flagrant perversion of the truth” around wind energy, according to journalist Christopher Booker in Sunday’s Telegraph.
In a video for the British Wind Energy Association Brown stated:
“We are now getting three gigawatts of our energy capacity from wind power, enough to power more than 1.5 million homes.”
But Booker claims Brown deliberately confused capacity with the actual amount of electricity wind produces as the government’s own figures show wind turbines generate, on average, only 27 to 28 per cent of their stated “capacity”. That would mean the 2,000 wind turbines in the UK would produce an average of 694MW and not the three gigawatt figure endorsed by Brown. The report said:
“Far from producing ‘enough to power more than 1.5 million homes’, it is enough to power barely a sixth of that number, representing only 1.3 per cent of all the electricity we use.”
The full article is here.
Posted by Petah Marian on October 27th, 2008
The University of Manchester has joined the race to make cheap and sustainable hydrogen energy. The Manchester-led ‘H-Delivery’ collaboration between 13 UK universities has been awarded an initial grant of £5m over four years from the UK Research Council’s Supergen programme.
The group will undertake research into:
- Advanced methods for the chemical and electrical generation of sustainable hydrogen.
- The conversion of hydrogen and associated by-products into alternative industrial feed stocks and fuels.
- The socio-economic appraisal of novel hydrogen production technologies.
- Policy measures to promote the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon, hydrogen economy.
Professor Christopher Whitehead from the School of Chemistry at the University of Manchester said:
“Hydrogen energy is believed to have a significant role to play in addressing the twin challenges of climate change and energy security. However, existing methods of hydrogen production are not currently cost-competitive with fossil fuels.”
As well as the 13 universities, 12 industrial partners will initially be working on the project with further participants expected to join the consortia as the work develops.
