Green Gadgets of 2008

Even Apples may turn green

You might think the very idea of green gadgets is self defeating. After all its just more consumption, right?

Wrong

The best kind of green gadgets – energy saving, built to last, perhaps made by well paid third world artisans — can do huge good and be value for money at the same time.

The Energy Saving Trust reckons our consumer electronics – broadband boxes, set-top boxes, iPods, flat screens – will account for more than 12 per cent of our electricity bills by 2012. But by 2012, all our gadgets should be greener. Solar chargers are already on sale for less than £30 and Motorola’s just issued a patent for screens that double as solar panels, so future portable gizmos will power themselves.

The key is to act green as well as buying green: all we need do is adapt to our gadgets: don’t upgrade your phone every eighteen months; don’t get seduced by extra megapixels; do sell stuff on eBay, give it away on Freecycle, use rechargable batteries and get stuff recycled. Behave like you are in Bengalore – Indians fix everything that breaks instead of chucking it out.

Micro renewables

Wind turbines and solar panels are the pin-ups of the eco tech world. But despite the enthusiasm for the technologies, price is still a major obstacle. A wind turbine will set you back £1,500 and provide 20 per cent of your electricity needs, solar thermal around £3,000 for your hot water and an £8,000 solar photovoltaic setup could generate roughly half your electricity .

Even with grants, those are big price tags, and they’re unlikely to drop rapidly by next year. Most solar PV panels, for example, are made from silicon, which is expensive because of its scarcity and demand for making computers. One major change by 2008 should be planning permission – if Ruth Kelly’s proposals this year go ahead, putting a solar array or turbine on your roof will be as easy as getting a satellite dish installed.

Another will be the much heralded arrival of Solar concetrators, mirrors that intensify the sunlight.

By 2017, every home in the country will be equipped with a ‘real-time’ electricity meter that tells you exactly how many pounds and carbon you’re burning in electricity right that second. It’s hard to say how many of these so-called smart meters will be in homes by 2008, but you can bet there’ll be a few: there already are. May next year, all new meters will be of this ‘smart’ variety, which consist of a wireless transmitter by your fuse box and a wireless display that sits somewhere prominent like your kitchen or living room.

Judging from previous studies, you’ll save anywhere between 3 and 15 per cent on your electricity bill by virtue of having it in your face every day rather than on a piece of paper four times a year. The result? Lower carbon emissions While it’s correct that the energy industry is looking to secure a mandate from Government to provide every home in the country with a smart meter within ten years, these meters will be for both gas and electricity, and are crucially very different from the devices the Government currently wants sent out to homes from May next year.

These pieces of kit (electricity display devices) only measure your electricity consumption, and do not provide any information at all on gas. Since domestic gas consumption is responsible for around twice the amount of carbon emissions as electricity, these devices only deal with half the picture. Of equal importance is the fact that they also do not bear any relation to your energy bills.

Only smart meters are able to communicate accurate information on energy consumption between the customer and supplier, and therefore the display devices the Government currently plans to send out to customers from next May will not actually help customers to accurately monitor their behavioural changes against their electricity bills. Smart meters will also mean the end of estimated bills and meter readings, which will revolutionise the industry for both customers and suppliers.

The consultation on both these measures, smart meters and electricity display devices, is currently ongoing until the end of October. The energy industry firmly believes that the only way forward is for the Government to provide the all-important mandate for smart meters, so that everyone in Britain will be able to benefit from this next generation technology.

Gadgets that monitor your water and gas consumption are in the (ahem) pipeline too.

Biodegradable plastics

If you’ve bought a bottle of Belu’s plastic water or own one specific Sony DVD player already, biodegradable plastics are in your home right now. Usually made from a corn starch, the idea behind the plastic – which you might also have encountered on your organic veg wrapping at Sainsbury’s – is that you can compost it instead of adding to the landfill that’s forecast to be full within a decade.

Fast forward and many everyday products could be made from the stuff. In Japan, NEC has a phone with a biodegradable case already, while over here the University of Warwick have a similar concept that Green Mobile one day hopes to make a reality. The amount of biodegradable plastic in our 2012 lives, however, really depends on how well the plastic ages – Belu’s bottles eventually leak holes if you leave them long enough – and how easy it is to compost the stuff.

Energy-saving white goods

No one likes talking about boilers, washing machines and fridge-freezers. They’re boring. But they do use lots of energy – your fridge-freezer’s on 24 hours a day,

365 days a year – which is why it’s so important to buy energy efficient ones. The big energy-saving developments have happened in the past decade, with the EU energy label getting left so far behind on refrigeration that there’s now an A++ rating. So today’s C-rated fridge-freezers are effectively E-rated ones in modern terms. Efficiency improvements by 2012 are likely to be fairly minimal – the big change will be A and A++ appliances becoming cheaper.

One exciting development on the boiler front is the prospect of combined heat and power (CHP) ones going on sale in the UK. Such boilers, like the Whispergen, generate electricity while buring natural gas, which the Energy Savings Trust reckons could cut your home’s CO2 emissions by 20 per cent. Powergen’s planning to sell the boilers in 2009.