Posts by — Sally Buchan

Grass roots off-gridder

A UK green weekend in Nottingham will hear a keynote speech this evening from Mark Boyle, who has been living without money for more than a year.
His talk is part of a weekend of environmental events in Nottingham at the Art Organisation, Station Street, as part of the Space For Life: Big Green Weekend event. (more…)

Utter nonsense

2012, the Movie, is aimed at really stupid teenagers, and was made by a really stupid foreign guy.

The Europeans, as we all know, hate America, but Roland Emmerich born 1955, in Stuttgart,  has such a bias, one has to wonder if he’s French.

Emmerich blew up the White House and New York and most other American cities in “Independence Day” (1996). In 1998, he picked on the Big Apple again, having “Godzilla” stomp most of it with incompetent resistance from a number of pinheaded Yankees. (The only characters who seemed to know what they were doing were a team of French commandos — French, mind you! led by Jean Reno.) (more…)

750 Germans cant be wrong A tiny village in Germany ends its dependence on the grid this month.   Juhnde in central Germany has attracted the attention of renewable energy advocates because it makes all the electricity and heat for its residents from a combination of manure, silage and wood chips. (more…)

Wait a year before buying solar panels – that’s the advice from industry experts who think the price of solar PV will fall, grants will rise, and the cost of grid power will rise too, delivering a triple whammy in favor of solar power.

But not just yet.

Although the cost of solar panels has fallen as low as $2.48 a watt according to the latest issue of Homepower magazine, its likely to go to $1.50 next year.  A company called Skyline Solar hopes to achieve grid parity before the end of 2010 — way ahead of the rest of the industry.

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A bee-keeper living in a cave in Sussex, UK, has been ordered to leave by his local council on the grounds he does not have a fire exit.

In a case of Health-and-Safety-gone-mad, Hilaire Purbrick (pictured), 45, has been told he must leave the seven-foot cave in Whitehawk Hill  he has inhabited for the past 16 years. Mr. Purbrick’s troubles started when he first came to national attention in 2003 after he calmed a swarm of angry bees using a feathery sex toy. His selfless act led the council to focus on his unconventional lifestyle.

He and four neighbours have lived and dined off the land with no ill effects, but after having the dwelling checked by the fire brigade, Brighton and Hove City Council decided it did not have enough exits and sought an injunction banning him from entering it. (more…)

Found this in my junkmail – it looks like rubbish to me but maybe someone out there in Britland was going to pay full price.

“Sschhhh!! Just sharing a secret Love Eco discount code with you.

Go to http://www.webuser.co.uk/specials/273226.html and pick up your 15% discount code now. Quick, before it goes! (more…)

Everybody should try it A 72-year old woman has switched off ALL power in her home in protest at ‘crazy’ energy bills. Anne Myall refuses to use electricity in her home after receiving massive bills she claims were incorrect. The electricity company, NPower has promised her a full refund, but Ms Myall continues to live by candlelight and use a wood fire for her heating report several British newspapers.

In protest at the cost of her energy bills, Myall no longer spends her evenings watching television in front of an electric fire, instead the grandmother listens to a battery-powered radio wrapped up in bed.

She has dispensed with hot water and all her hot food comes from a local takeaway restaurant. For lunch the pensioner has been tucking into pre-cooked supermarket chicken and plenty of cold salads and both her laptop computer and mobile phone are useless because she is unable to recharge them.

She has spent more than a fortnight living a life more akin to the Victoria age after Npower sent her a series of large fuel bills.

Mrs Myall, a widow who has lived alone since the death of her husband eight years ago, said: ‘They have been bullying me and browbeating me for three years with silly, inaccurate bills upwards of £700 a quarter.

‘I only have a one-bedroom flat and I’m very economical. It’s just crazy, my electricity bill should be about £18 a quarter.’

She moved into the flat in Pocklington, North Yorkshire, three years ago and claims she was immediately hit by a bill.

Mrs Myall, a retired journalist, said: ‘I received a demand for £53 just days after arriving. I have tried many times to contact Npower with no success. I even got one bill for £758.

‘I’m often away in the winter and I never turn my heating on so I feel that they have just been using guesswork based around an incorrect meter reading they took when I moved in.’

The final straw came when Npower staff replaced her old meter system with a pre-payment system while she was abroad.

Unhappy that the work was undertaken without her knowledge, she felt the new meter used more energy than the old system and decided to pull the plug.

Protest: The widow has restored to living without modern comforts in her one-bed home She said: ‘It’s amazing how one can manage, I can’t believe how well I feel for doing this. The biggest loss is being able to eat fresh vegetables because I love them but I’m getting by with eating salad.

‘I love reading so I’m not really missing the TV, although I do miss my hot water bottle and I’m now looking for a gas camping stove. I’ve not been able to run my computer or recharge my mobile phone either.’

She added: ‘This is really a protest against the energy company and the Government’s lack of will to do anything about it.

‘How Npower works out how much they charge I do not know. They can please themselves and have us over a barrel.

‘If everybody switched their meter off for a week just to see what it’s like, it would send a message to these companies that they’re not untouchable.’

Npower claim Mrs Myall has an outstanding bill of £225 but have now agreed to clear the debt after hearing of her protest.

A spokesman said: ‘We will be clearing her debt as a goodwill gesture as we do not wish to see her struggle.

Yeah right.

Giving someone a carbon offset for their SUV is about as tactful as giving away a stick of deodorant. A lot of environmental gifts risking ending up as holier-than-thou recommendations for what the recipient should not do.

With that in mind, some suggestions for environmentally themed gifts:

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P3 Kill A Watt

It’s strange how we buy electricity: we use our appliances without really knowing what they’re costing us. All we get is a monthly bill, with no breakdown. Imagine getting a long-distance phone bill that doesn’t tell you where you called, or what each call cost. The Kill A Watt is a simple, inexpensive electricity monitor that helps you get a handle on your consumption. First, plug the Kill A Watt into a wall outlet. Then, plug an appliance or lamp into the device. You can immediately read off the current consumption in watts, or leave it on to let it count kilowatt-hours. Find out how much juice that new HDTV really draws! ($24.99 from online stores, including Amazon.com)

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Zipcar Gift Card

A good gift for the carless, especially college students. Zipcar and the company it is acquiring, Flexcar, spread their rental cars out in garages in major cities and university towns. Customers get credit-card like cards that open cars they’ve booked online. Rates start at $5 an hour, making Zipcars practical for quick errands that aren’t economical with standard rental vehicles. For that extra environmentally friendly feeling, Zipcar has some Toyota Prius hybrids. A gift card can be used for the membership fee ($50 a year for occasional driving), or for driving costs. Drivers have to be at least 21 and have good driving records. (Starting at $50 at Zipcar.com)

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Hydrocar

This toy car contains a fuel cell and runs on hydrogen gas, one of the contenders for the fuel of the future. It also demonstrates the conundrum of building a “hydrogen economy”: the gas is a fuel, but not an energy source. You have to make it first. The Hydrocar’s fuel cell splits water into hydrogen and oxygen to create its own fuel. To power that reaction, the kit comes with a solar panel, but you need direct sunlight to make it work. The fallback is regular alkaline batteries. Kit requires some assembly and is for experimenters age 12 and up, under adult supervision. The risk of Hindenburg-type flameups appears small. Making hydrogen is fun, but it’s not something you’ll do again and again. ($85 from Horizonfuelcell.com)

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Dahon Curve D3

Bicycling is a great way to get around, but parking and storage can be difficult, particularly in cities. Folding bikes are one solution, and they aren’t as weird as they sound. The Curve D3 folds up into a tight package, yet feels sturdy and comes with city-bike conveniences like wheel guards and a rack. It has three speeds, enough for city riding (unless that city is San Francisco). At 27 pounds, it’s not something you’ll carry around easily, but you’ll have to pay a lot more for a lighter bike. It’s a big seller at NYCeWheels.com, a New York store that specializes in folding and electric bikes. ($399.95)

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Solio Hybrid 1000

This solar charger for cell phones and MP3 players isn’t a really environmental gift, since it doesn’t save much power. Let’s just say it’s inspired by environmentally friendly technology. It’s about the size of a TV remote, and could be useful for hikers or those with an off-grid cabin, but be aware that it takes a long time to charge up the internal battery using sunlight. The manufacturer says it takes 10-12 hours of direct sunlight (with no intervening glass) to charge it up. The internal battery can then fully charge a cell phone. If you have no sunlight, you can charge the internal battery via a PC’s USB port. Any phone that can be charged via USB, plus Nokia phones, can connect to the Solio. We were able to charge a BlackBerry but not a Sony Ericsson phone. Poor winter weather precluded us from testing the solar panel. ($79.95 from http://www.solio.com )

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Thames & Kosmos Power House

This amazing kit lets you build a prototype home of one square foot and test several technologies for sustainable living, including solar heat, greenhouse gardening, air conditioning by evaporation, electric cars, and desalination of sea water. You can boil an egg with the included solar cooker. A 96-page manual details 70 experiments. Since it’s a translation from German, you know one of them is turning cabbage into sauerkraut. Oddly, the house is made of foam plastic, which isn’t biodegradable, but at least its not meant to be immediately disposed of, like plastic packaging. Good gift for budding architects and anyone ready to move up from Lego, age 12 and up. ($140 and up at online stores)

Stern: relaxed

British academic Nicholas Stern shocked the world last year with his simple statement that we have to pay now for the pollution already done to the planet, or else we will pay a lot more soon. Since then, the bill has already doubled he says. And now he is back with a six point plan.

“The plan is not ambitious in relation to the problem,” he told Prospect Magazine. “It is ambitious in relation to world politics. It has been out for only a few weeks, but has already been picked up by people in ministries around the world.

The proposed deal has six basic elements. “First, we need to cut total world carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2050, compared to 1990 levels, with rich countries committing at Copenhagen to cut by 80 per cent by 2050. (more…)