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Back in December we brought you news on the advertising campaign by energy supplier E.ON called Reduce your Carbon Footyprint. To summarise, it’s all about getting English football fans to do their bit to reduce their carbon footprint by taking the coach and car-sharing to football matches, specifically the FA Cup. Football & energy suppliers? That’s a strange mix. So what’s in it for E.ON then? Well, E.ON sponsor the FA Cup which is next weekend. Not only is the campaign increasing their brand awareness but it is also creating the sense that E.ON really care about the environment. It’s an attempt to boost their publicly-perceived green credentials.

We were sceptical, we usually are. We’ve even been sceptical about our own champions of green energy Ecotricity, but only by questioning do we understand the answers. Upon publishing that story we received word that, despite a very public campaign to prove that E.ON is going green, they are forging ahead with plans to build a new coal-fired power station in Kingsnorth, Kent.

According to the website (”Stop Kingsnorth, no to new coal”) the new Kingsnorth coal-fired power station would belch out as much CO2 in one year as would 200 years of the the FA Cup.

Hypocrisy, madness, Greenwash?! What is the world coming to? No, don’t answer that!

For more answers on E.ON’s Kingsnorth coal-fired power station go take a look at the spoof site http://www.carbonfootyprint.org/

The rumour mill has been rumbling on about oil reaching $200 a barrel by the end of the year, I forget where the stories have come from. But when the someone from Goldman Sachs reports that $200 a barrel oil is likely then you just have to sit up and take notice.

Argun Murti, energy strategist at Goldman Sachs, said that rising worldwide demand for oil and limited supply will push the price of a barrel of oil up to $200 in the next six months to 2 years. Murti’s previous predictions that oil would reach $100 a barrel (when it was at $55 a barrel) were true, and with oil prices rising 25% in the last year and by 400% since 2001, it looks like $200 will be correct too.

The usual suspects in this current situation are China, with its voracious appetite for oil, and India, whose economy is booming. As somebody at the ethical clothing company Howies said in a catalogue a few years back… “and what if they all want a car?” That’s more than 2 billion souls in China & India…

So much for the world reducing its dependence on oil

Truth or Fiction? Too good to be true?

Whilst oil prices have reached $120 in the last week and the world worries about rising energy prices, along comes a simple technology that can create energy for free. Well, almost.

The EBM technology or Energy By Motion machine, is a 15 ton electro-magnetic generator that, once started, produces electricity under its own perpetual motion.

The current EBM 720 produces about 15Kw of energy from its location in Budapest, Hungary.

Whilst this is the biggest version, after 20 years of development, there are plans for a commercially-viable 100-ton unit to be produced.

Take a look at the following video of the EBM 720 and visit the Gamma Manager website.

One question: If this device is so darned good and produces free energy, why haven’t they seen the light of day sooner?

Thanks to Green Optimistic for the story.

The BBC’s speculatively-titled story “Chancellor looks to green budget” is pretty thread-bare, starting with the opening line:

Green taxes and measures to help people struggling to pay energy bills are likely to be among changes in the chancellor’s first Budget on Wednesday.

It goes on to speculate that the chancellor, Alistair Darling, might put a levy on larger vehicles like people carriers, putting their price up by £2000.

And that’s it!

Well, if that’s all the chancellor can do for green issues in the UK Budget on Wednesday then that’s pretty poor for helping people go green. Isn’t a people carrier a more efficient way of carrying 6 or 7 people than having to drive 2 vehicles? If there’s any truth in that rumour then it would be a right poke in the eye for people who car-share.

We understand putting taxes on the least fuel efficient vehicles, but isn’t that why some people pay more road tax than others and why inefficient vehicles cost more to run purely from the fact that their MPG is so poor?

Come on Darling, where’s the incentives to go green. Saying “you can’t do this” or “can’t do that” is simply negative. Why don’t you give us:

• Increased grants for home solar projects
• Increased grants for home insulation
• More green spaces for community allotments
• Increase tax on the most polluting vehicles
• Greater taxes on polluting businesses
• A stop on the expansion of any more UK airports
• Serious public debate over nuclear energy

etc etc

That would be a good start. He’s already effectively nationalised the Northern Rock bank, why can’t he part-nationalise some of our public transport to stop the greedy private companies from milking the public?

Let’s wait until Wednesday, aye?

Oil prices hit an all-time high this morning as US light crude was up to $102.80 a barrel in East Asian trading. Yesterday oil was $102.59 a barrel, but today’s peak figure beats the record high of $102.53 for a barrel of oil back in April 1980.

The shaky state of the US economy has weakened the dollar and the weak dollar makes oil a cheaper for investors in other currencies.

Now if oil prices aren’t a good reason to go green then I really don’t know what it will take to make people snap out of their excessive ways!

Remember it was E-Day yesterday? Well, E-Day was actually a 24 hour period from Wednesday into Thursday.

The whole point of E-Day was to reduce demand for energy by switching off unneeded devices, turning things off standby mode (mobile phone chargers, electric toothbrushes, PCs, TVs, Sky digiboxes, etc) and make an impact on energy use in this country just for one day!

And what happened? Well, E-Day seems to have been an unmitigated… DISASTER!

OK, that’s a bit strong, but did we reduce our demand and use of energy? Did we f***!

Official figures from the E-Day site show that energy demand actually went up. OK, it was a cold night in some parts of the country but it was a pretty poor result.

Despite the effort that went into this action it’s a disappointing result to a great idea.

One comment on the BBC website made us chuckle even though it was a tad on the sarcastic side; it went a little something like this…

“Maybe they should have used more energy in promoting E-Day”

Yeah, right… very funny.

The organisers of E-Day had expected a drop of something like 2-3% in energy demand whereas energy use actually went up by 0.1%. The 2-3% figure is apparently the same as if two whole coal-fired power stations had been “removed” from the national grid. That would have been quite some saving.

Let’s hope there’s a bit more interest in the next E-Day and we can all make a bit more effort, aye?

Just to remind you folks that it’s E-Day today…

From 6pm make sure you turn off those lights you’re not using, turn off the TV when it’s not being watched, don’t leave those devices on standby (PCs and printers) and let’s see if we can use a little less energy, aye?

Or are we preaching to the converted?

Basically, if this is successful there will be less demand, less consumption and less energy wasted. Think of all those PCs that are left on overnight, all those machines on standby, all those offices and buildings lit up at night, needlessly consuming electricity.

E-Day lasts for 24 hours from 6pm on Wednesday 27th February until 6pm on Thursday 28th February.

The National Trust has a novel idea for environmental work this leap year with it’s own Green Leap Day.

All of the Trust’s 4800 staff are being encouraged to take February 29th off and focus their efforts into green projects. The idea is that staff will work on going green at home with numerous simple household tasks such as:

• Changing lightbulbs to energy-efficient lightbulbs
• Draught-proofing windows & doors
• Insulating loft spaces
• Building a compost-heap in the garden
• Organising the household recycling
• Fixing up environmental transport, making sure bicycles are fixed

Staff who have already gone green are being encouraged to help out in community projects such as at their local schools.

The whole idea revolves around people actually getting up and doing work for the environment rather than merely talking about it… So we’d better get on with some work then, shouldn’t we?

Ed - This might not be ideal for every business but what a great idea - if only other big organisations had the foresight and the balls to do their bit for the environment and not just on 1 day in every four years either, but at least it’s a start!

10 months ago the Confederation of British Industry set up a Climate Change Task Force to identify and assess climate change and its affect on British Business.

Last Monday the task force published its findings and it says that it’s not just the realm of government and consumers to be doing their bit to go green but business should be actively involved too.

The team, headed up by the chief exec of BT, comprised a number of bigwigs of British Industry and their findings were not driven by simple treehugger philosophies but by the unavoidable fact that climate change will impact upon business unless something is done urgently.

In addition, the task force sees opportunities to generate more business with the onset of global warming with those companies that invest in alternative energy and more efficient heating & cooling technologies as being the ones who help to abate the effects of climate change [We also reckon there’s a few quid in it for them too, especially seeing the recent Google go green move - Ed]

If big business and the voice of business, the CBI, can come to these conclusions then it’s good news. Let’s hope the CBI can lobby the government for more assistance and direction in going green. They could kickstart funding the the new green revolution by taxing those stupid big 4×4s off the road.

Be sure to see the CBI’s Climate Change Report and video.

Yes, you read that right, we said Carbon Footyprint. There’s an online text ad doing the rounds at the moment that caught our attention…

“Make the beautiful game a greener game”

…and it clicks through to CarbonFootyprint.com

Now Carbon Footyprint is an interesting website as it’s all about getting football fans to go green and reduce the carbon footprint of the FA Cup. How do you reduce the carbon footprint of the FA Cup? Well, you get a coach to the match, you catch a lift with friends or you watch the FA Cup on the TV at home or in your local pub. So no change there then.

So why all the fuss about reducing your carbon footprint for mainly the FA Cup when there are so many more league matches? Well, the FA Cup is sponsored by the energy company E.ON and E.ON, “the power behind Powergen”, are right on the green bandwagon at the moment with their other campaign Business Energy Green. (Make sure you check out where Powergen come in the Green Energy League Tables)

To give them their dues, E.ON ARE promoting car sharing and watching football on the TV for all matches, but the promotion is heavily focused on the FA Cup (sponsored by E.ON… oh sorry, we already told you that)

It’s all a nice gesture to encourage football fans to go green and but shouldn’t it be E.ON that’s going green? Well, they’re “one of the leading green generators in the UK” and intend to invest £1bn (yes, that’s a whole £1 billion) in renewable energy over the next five years, or as much as £200m every year, with £53 million spent on energy efficiency in 2006 alone.

It’s a cute attempt to urge everyone else to go green but we sense this all to be a big public relations drive to drum up more business. After all, E.ON has shareholders to answer to and has targets to meet, already with success in their nine month sales up by 7% this year with targets of between 5% and 10% for the 12 months.

What’s more, E.ON’s net profit for the year so far is nearly £3b so their £1b pledge to invest in renewables over 5 years is a pretty paltry sum.

Carbon Footyprint? Greenwash anybody?