Category: Environment

Check this out. http://www.streetcar.co.uk/

Streetcar offers self-service cars for rent by the hour, day, week or month. The cars are parked in a dense network of dedicated spaces in several UK cities. Our new Volkswagen Golfs can be booked for as little as 30 minutes or as long as 6 months. They are reserved online or by phone, and can be collected and returned 24/7 using one of our high-tech smartcards and a PIN number.

Usage charges are based on how long you have the car, and how far you drive. We just send you a bill once per month. It is free to join, and there are no monthly or annual membership fees. When you join, we just take a £150 returnable deposit which we repay immediately if you no longer want to use the service.

excellent! I wonder what make they will be?
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6550361.stm
Every household in the UK will be able to request a free device that shows how much electricity is being used in the home at any one particular moment.

Ministers are set to announce the plan in the forthcoming Energy White Paper.

They hope “real-time monitors” will help cut greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of energy wasted by appliances being left on standby.

Noooooooooooo … well it was what we all suspected. I wonder if they will revert back next year?

Link taken fron: http://exchangepedia.com/blog/2007/04/dst-2007-as-predicted-we-didnt-save.html

… But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.

“We haven’t seen any measurable impact,” said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation’s largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.

That may come as no surprise to the Energy Department, which last year predicted only modest energy savings because the benefits of the later daylight hour would be offset.

For example, households may draw less electricity for lights at night, but will use more power in the early in the day as they wake to darker and chillier mornings.

Residential lighting comprises only about 10 percent of the average homeowner’s electricity use, while air conditioners, heaters and refrigerators consume much more power. Washers, dryers and plasma televisions are also bigger users of electricity than lighting.
http://news.com.com/Daylight+saving+shift+fails+to+curb+energy+use/2100-1041_3-6172785.html

… We knew this didn’t we!!!!

Noooooooooooo … well it was what we all suspected. I wonder if they will revert back next year?

Link taken fron: http://exchangepedia.com/blog/2007/04/dst-2007-as-predicted-we-didnt-save.html

… But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.

“We haven’t seen any measurable impact,” said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation’s largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.

That may come as no surprise to the Energy Department, which last year predicted only modest energy savings because the benefits of the later daylight hour would be offset.

For example, households may draw less electricity for lights at night, but will use more power in the early in the day as they wake to darker and chillier mornings.

Residential lighting comprises only about 10 percent of the average homeowner’s electricity use, while air conditioners, heaters and refrigerators consume much more power. Washers, dryers and plasma televisions are also bigger users of electricity than lighting.
http://news.com.com/Daylight+saving+shift+fails+to+curb+energy+use/2100-1041_3-6172785.html

… We knew this didn’t we!!!!

Okay so I live in the London Borough of Hillingdon.  It’s quite good we get a weekly recycling collect and I aim to have more recycling bags more than rubbish bags.

In the post yesterday came the Borough Newsletter and an article on the environment listed out what you can / cannot recycle.

Now in this age of identity theft, I shred almost everything, so I was a bit unhappy when the article says that you cannot recycle shredded paper!!!.  Yes that is right, paper, cardboard etc is okay, but they say ..

Shredded paper acts like a textile, binding itself around the sorting machinery resulting in additional downtime and maintenance which is why we do not want it in the recycling bags! 

One word .. TOUGH, I want them to recycle ALL my paper including the stuff I have shredded.  I can only put a limited amount in my compost bin, and I would hope that I am not the only one in the borough that is shredding personal stuff and wants it recycled.

Read an advert in today’s London Lite that says from June 1st 2007 every home on the market will have a Home Information Pack that rates its energy efficiency. (I wonder who will pay for it?)

Included is a rating of the home’s energy efficiency and recommendations that could help cur CO2 emmisions and fuel bills!!

Want to know more, check out http://www.homeinformationpack.gov.uk

Save the trees man … Shame my Elonex doesn’t have the Hibernate Option on the start menu. Also upgrade to an LCD monitor and save too! 

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/mar07/03-21vistapowermgmt.mspx

REDMOND, Wash., March 21, 2007 — A single incandescent 100-watt light bulb left on around the clock for a year costs more than US$80 to power. Generating that power releases about 1,350 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere — a major contributor to global warming.

According to Dean DeWhitt, director of Microsoft’s Windows Kernel team, that is about the same amount of power many PCs consume while not in use. Yet, while few people would leave a light bulb on for a year, many people keep their PCs running with screen-savers at all hours, which actually consumes more energy than an idling PC. What’s more, many large organizations constantly leave their PCs running so they are available to receive security patches and updates.

“While education may be the key for many consumers, businesses are forced to balance cost and environmental impact against their own security and operations requirements,” says DeWhitt. “New power management features in Windows Vista are designed to help them with this challenge.”

In fact, Microsoft today announced the results of an independent study from UK-based PC Pro Labs, which looks at the energy consumption of Windows Vista and the potential reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. “Power Consumption, Windows Vista versus Windows XP” compared energy usage between Windows XP and Windows Vista, clearly showing that the power management features in Windows Vista could help reduce the carbon dioxide generated in an organization, equal to 45 tonnes per year for a 200-seat business. In addition, the study found that these features could also deliver savings on energy bills of up to £46 per desktop PC per year.

The study is based on real-world usage of desktop computers in the work environment of 800 desktop PC users. The cost savings and reduction in carbon dioxide emissions are due to the “Sleep” mode in Windows Vista, which automatically activates after one hour of non-use.

Known as Standby or Hibernate in previous versions, Sleep is a state where a machine and monitor can become available instantly if needed, but are each using only two to three watts of electricity in the meantime. While other versions of Windows have had success with standby modes, according to DeWhitt, Windows Vista’s version of Sleep provides by far the best user experience to date.

Now this is a damm good idea!.  Also when I was in India, I read an article about a way to generate electricity from the motion of cars on a road!. 

Source: http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2466

How many speeding cars does it take to power a lightbulb? For Mark Oberholzer, a runner-up in the 2006 Metropolis Next Generation Design Competition, this might not be such an absurd question. His project proposed integrating ­turbines into the barriers between highway lanes that would harness the wind generated by passing cars to create energy. “Opposing streams of traffic create really incredible potential in terms of a guaranteed wind source,” Oberholzer says.

His research is aptly timed—wind is rapidly gaining attention as a sustainable power source with serious potential to feed America’s insatiable appetite for energy. General Electric, a leader in the industry, is experiencing unprecedented demand for its turbines, and although North America has been slower to adopt the technology than Europe, its wind industry is growing at an average rate of about 17 percent each year. “The United States is catching up very quickly,” GE Energy’s Robert Gleitz says. “I think if the country continues to install around the rate of three or three-and-a-half gigawatts per year, it will become one of the leading countries in wind.” In response to the corresponding need for trained professionals, the School of Engineering Techno­logy and Applied Science in Toronto’s Centennial College launched the Centennial Energy Institute last October to educate students in developing and maintaining systems for power generation using the resources of the landscape.