www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

It’s Earth Day 2012, folks. What are you doing to mark the fact?

One of the main thrusts of the day is to promote green awareness and especially to push for people to be more aware of and involved in their environment.  The “billion acts of green” is a good start, and amongst the suggestions I’ve seen a number of actions or pledges made for Earth Day 2012, some of them being… (more…)

Infographics seem to be all the rage at the moment and here’s one we’ve been sent about power consumption facts for the US.

America consumes more electricity than any other country in the world but China is fast catching up!

However, the surprise fact is that Canadians reportedly consume more electricity per capita than any other nation. I didn’t know that!

Anyway, here’s the infographic, power consumption facts for the US…

Source by Power SuperSite

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We’ve had an interesting email from the Make Wood Work campaign.

In essence, the UK Government’s Renewables Obligation (RO) policy encourages the use of bio-mass burners for electricity generation with financial subsidies. Whilst, from an environmentally-friendly point of view, biomass burning creates energy from waste materials, the forest products industry is concerned that using wood for bio-mass burners will damage their industry.

They have a good point. If the waste material from the wood industry is used for biomass burning then it is being diverted away from the recycled wood industry where collected waste wood is used to created further products. If biomass burning is encouraged then the wood will be burnt and the capacity for the energy industry to a) be heavily subsidised and b) burn vast amounts of timber is not only a worry for the forest products and wood panel industries, but also for the environment, for local economies and for the greater social good too.

By using wood and waste wood in products, there is greater environmental good with the carbon being “locked up” in the products and reused and recycled, stimulating initiatives to find further ways to innovatively use waste wood. The biomass energy industry would simply burn the timber and produce greater carbon emissions than the waste wood recycling and reprocessing industries.

Basically, the government’s well-intended renewables obligation policy is distorting an “already fragile wood supply and demand balance in the UK”. You only have to look at Channel 4 News’ report Timber prices up as power plants boost biomass use to see what the subsidised energy industry is having knock-on effects elsewhere by voraciously burning timber.

So, quite simply put:

RO means wood and waste wood go stright to burners to generate “renewable” energy. Wood, that takes 30/40 years to grow, is burnt. Waste wood is burnt. Wood and waste wood are simply destroyed.

A rethink of RO means wood goes to the wood products industry and actually makes useful products. More people are gainfully employed in business and industry and there is innovation in creating from wood and waste wood.

We’re not against biomass energy as it does have the potential for energy production from sources that would not otherwise be of any use, but to use wood and waste wood is a short-sighted and destructive path.

For more information take a look at the Make Wood Work campaign website, their video is particularly interesting.

Yesterday morning just one piece of mail came through the letterbox – Ecotricity’s Progress Report 2010.

That’s just one very good reason for choosing Ecotricity as our green energy supplier all those years ago – They’re open, they’re honest and they keep their customers informed which is something I’ve not seen from any other energy company.

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It’s that time of year again – Saturday March 26th at 8:30pm is Earth Hour.

For those of you who don’t know about Earth Hour it’s a worldwide movement where people switch of the power for one hour. You  might ask how much energy is saved by switching everything off for one hour, but it’s more than that – it’s a politic statement, a social, cultural and environmental statement…

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Ignore the name on the device (We’re thinking of going to our friends at Ecotricity for their green gas scheme) but this is our new smartpower meter. OK, we’ve had it a few weeks now, but this little device is a lifesaver. OK, moneysaver. Energysaver.

Since plugging this meter we’ve monitored our electricity consumption, which is pretty low we think anyway, and it’s made us even more aware of our energy use than ever. It’s interesting watching the meter as the kettle is boiled or the fridge kicks into life but we’re happy that we’re consuming very little (Compared to some households we know)

The other device that has helped us reduce our electricity costs has been the excellent Energenie Automatic AV Standby Shutdown gang socket which totally switches off our TV, Wii & DVD when we’re not using them.

We got this from our gas supplier but if we can find a link or place where you can grab one too we’ll let you know.

Does anybody else think it’s ironic that we have to plug in an electricity-consuming device to monitor our electricity consumption?

I hadn’t been in to my local branch of B&Q, the DIY store, for many months but, being just down the road from my office, I popped in today to get a light bulb for my fridge and was impressed with the sheer range of energy saving lightbulbs they had on offer.

Unfortunately the little lightbulb for the fridge was only an F-rated one but I did pick up an A-rated outdoor lightbulb too whilst they were at a good price (only £1.00) But anyway, check out this selection – enough green lightbulbs to warm the heart of any green…

Recent high temperatures this summer have meant an increase in use of air conditioning in the High Street according to Make It Cheaper, the business price comparison service.

The recommended operating temperature for turning on the air con is 24°C — as advised on the Carbon Trust’s website — and a third of retailers have been switching on their equipment below this figure, wasting energy to cool down shoppers. Furthermore, off all the stores monitored during the experiment, which took place on a sweltering July shopping day, only one store store kept its doors closed to prevent the cool air escaping!

Using thermal imaging equipment to record the temperatures at shop entrances in Oxford Street, London, the Make It Cheaper team braved 28.4°C temperatures to record the habits of the high street retailers. The research shows that the high street is effectively wasting millions of pounds by squandering energy. Turning on the air con to make shoppers “more comfortable” and then leaving the doors open is akin to leaving the fridge door open (and we all know the fridge works ever harder to stay cold as the cool air escapes)

Jonathan Elliott, the Managing Director of Make It Cheaper, said:

“Shopkeepers in New York get fined $400 by the City Council if they have their doors open with the air con on because it burns so much more energy to cool a shop than it does to keep it warm. This can only be a taste of things to come when the government’s CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme kicks in over here and forces retailers to re-think how they use energy in their stores. There are simple things that staff can do now, however, such as to challenge head office policy, set the thermostat higher, turn off some of the lights and tweak the automatic doors to close more frequently. It is common sense, saves money as well as energy and is everybody’s responsibility.”

The Carbon Trust says that the retail sector emits over 5 million tonnes of CO2 a year and that energy savings of 20% are possible – that’s a saving of more than £300 million!

Key findings include:

• A third of stores operated below 24°C, against advice on the  which recommends their air conditioning doesn’t operate below this temperature
• Whilst there was a difference of as much as eight degrees between outside and inside temperatures, just one store – Debenhams – kept its doors closed to prevent the cool air escaping and the warm air entering
• At 20.1 degrees Celsius and a huge 8.3 degrees cooler at the door than the outside temperature, Next was the worst offender
• Boots, River Island and Ann Harvey did not fare much better, at 21.1, 21.6 and 22.4 degrees respectively. Boots at least had automatic doors, though these were recorded as open almost all the time due to the high volume of traffic into and out of the store

According to figures from The Carbon Trust, the retail sector is responsible for over five million tonnes of CO₂ emissions per year. It is estimated that energy savings of up to 20% – equivalent to more than £300m – are possible across the sector. Make It Cheaper say that by switching energy suppliers alone can reduce costs to businesses by as much as 50% and energy efficient measures, such as being frugal with the air conditioning can reduce bills by a further 10-30%.

High Street Coldest Shops League Table:

The experiment took in to consideration a number of factors in measuring the efficiency of the air conditioning in the high street retailers’ premises and took into account factors such as outside air temperature, the shop entrance temperature and whether the doors were efficiently kept closed, left wide open or if they were automatic doors (The sort that slide open as you walk past )

So we’ve had Google Chrome, Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google Labs, Google Docs, Google Mail and now Google Wind Farms.

OK, not really, that last one we made up, but it might as well be real seeing as Google, the search giant, has invested $38.8 million in a wind farm (approximately £25.3 million). Apparently this is the first time that Google has made a “direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project”.

It also seems that Google has taken a long time to act in directly investing in clean energy since we reported, way back in 2007, on Google’s Renewable Energy Goal. Back then the philanthropic arm of the behemoth, Google.org, was talking up its RE<C project: Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal.

Now considering the carbon footprint of a Google search, which was quoted as being a wild stab between 0.2g and 7g for every search, it’s about time Big G did something to clean up its own act. Back in January 2009 there were an estimated 200 million searches daily on the Internet, so if that was all on Google we can only estimate between 40,000 and  1.4 million metric tonnes of carbon emitted daily in the process of  powering the machines that power search.

So this investment by Google, albeit late, is very welcome. The wind farm, developed by Next era Energy Resources is purported to develop  around 169.5 megawatts of power or enough to power 55,000 homes (Is that American homes or British homes? Remember that per capita electricity consumption in the US is around 1460 watts per person when compared to 667 watts per person in the UK  but is an almighty 3152 watts per person in Iceland whilst the world average consumption is 297 watts per person. Source. But that’s a whole topic for discussion on another day)

We’d be interested if anybody’s done the maths to work out just how many Google rack servers this wind farm in North Carolina will power, so if you have any idea we’d be really pleased to hear from you.