We're very pleased to announce the first public version of www.lowcarboneconomy.com.
The site is still in a public beta mode: i.e. it's still in development, but we feel it's ready for user testing. We're going to be building up the site's content and adding functionality very quickly over the next month or so, but we'd really appreciate your comments on the site.
So, please visit the site and add some beta comments. Register, add some content, and get in touch if you want - we'll be pleased to hear from you!
Thursday 13 December 2007
Monday 10 December 2007
Good News for UK Renewables
John Hutton's announcement over the weekend that the UK will invest massively in offshore wind power is great news for that industry, and for the UK renewables market in general.
http://environment.independent.co.uk/green_living/article3236132.ece
It was really the only option for hitting the UK's carbon targets for 2020 - nuclear would just take too long to come online.
It will be very interesting to watch the effect this major decision has on the rest of the UK energy market. Will investors now feel more confident backing renewable technologies?
Charles Anglin, Director of Communications for BWEA, said on Channel 4 news last night that the current national grid is not fit for such a large dependency on wind power (renewable electricity sources are not so predictable or controllable as conventional gas or nuclear power stations).
So, a large investment will be needed to enable the national grid connections and infrastructure. Will these improvements make the national grid more suitable for distributed generation from other renewables?
It will also be interesting to look at the supply/demand paradigm that this new infrastructure will support. When wind energy supply is high and demand is low will energy companies reduce the cost of electricity to help match supply and demand? In countries like Ireland which will be even more dependent on wind than the UK, there is talk of energy companies even paying users to use electricity when supply outstrips demand. What in turn will these users do with the surplus electricity?
I'd like to see it used to electrolyse hydrogen that can be used as fuel for transport and for fuelling stationary power generation when wind supply is low and demand is high.
Whatever the precise mechanics will be, I for one look forward to seeing how it develops.
http://environment.independent.co.uk/green_living/article3236132.ece
It was really the only option for hitting the UK's carbon targets for 2020 - nuclear would just take too long to come online.
It will be very interesting to watch the effect this major decision has on the rest of the UK energy market. Will investors now feel more confident backing renewable technologies?
Charles Anglin, Director of Communications for BWEA, said on Channel 4 news last night that the current national grid is not fit for such a large dependency on wind power (renewable electricity sources are not so predictable or controllable as conventional gas or nuclear power stations).
So, a large investment will be needed to enable the national grid connections and infrastructure. Will these improvements make the national grid more suitable for distributed generation from other renewables?
It will also be interesting to look at the supply/demand paradigm that this new infrastructure will support. When wind energy supply is high and demand is low will energy companies reduce the cost of electricity to help match supply and demand? In countries like Ireland which will be even more dependent on wind than the UK, there is talk of energy companies even paying users to use electricity when supply outstrips demand. What in turn will these users do with the surplus electricity?
I'd like to see it used to electrolyse hydrogen that can be used as fuel for transport and for fuelling stationary power generation when wind supply is low and demand is high.
Whatever the precise mechanics will be, I for one look forward to seeing how it develops.
Wednesday 5 December 2007
Some Motivation
I've found two great pieces of motivation today to remind me why what we're doing is so important:
www.storyofstuff.com - a great video about consumption and the way that the developed world lives
and
poodwaddle.com/clocks3.htm - an earth clock that reminds us of the scale of the problem and its constancy
Enjoy!
www.storyofstuff.com - a great video about consumption and the way that the developed world lives
and
poodwaddle.com/clocks3.htm - an earth clock that reminds us of the scale of the problem and its constancy
Enjoy!
Tuesday 4 December 2007
Low Wattage Colour Scheme
Taking inspiration from EcoIron: http://ecoiron.blogspot.com I have changed the colour scheme of the blog to try to reduce the power your computer has to use to view this page.
I think it's still very readable, but would appreciate any feedback!
I think it's still very readable, but would appreciate any feedback!
First post
Welcome to our blog! The first post - how exciting!
The website for lowcarboneconomy.com is still in beta testing, but it's working really well and starting to look great too. In the meantime, if you add your email address on this page: www.lowcarboneconomy.com we'll keep you updated via our mailing list.
Whilst we get the website ready for general release, we've been busy creating some social sites to start helping to spread the word.
So far, we have:
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowcarboneconomy/
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=7008982165
Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5768564643
Delicious: http://del.icio.us/lowcarboneconomy.com
And some public pages from our Google Reader:
Starred: http://www.google.com/reader/starred
All: http://www.google.com/reader/All
More: we have separated the feeds into categories like: Buildings, Climate Change, Companies, Environment, Ethical, Green and Eco, Low Carbon, Oil and fossil fuels, Renewables, Transport, Waste and Recycling, etc. If you would like me to post the public pages for these, just let me know and I'll put the URL's up.
A lot of these pages have RSS feeds too, so please add them to your RSS aggregator (like Google Reader etc) to keep track of what we see from day to day. Delicious is particularly useful as we post things we think are important and want to be able to find again later.
If you use del.icio.us (and you should - it's great), please add us to your network and post any links to us that you think we should look at: just add the 'for:lowcarboneconomy.com' tag.
OK - that's it for now, hopefully I'll be able to post again soon to say our site is available.
David
The website for lowcarboneconomy.com is still in beta testing, but it's working really well and starting to look great too. In the meantime, if you add your email address on this page: www.lowcarboneconomy.com we'll keep you updated via our mailing list.
Whilst we get the website ready for general release, we've been busy creating some social sites to start helping to spread the word.
So far, we have:
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowcarboneconomy/
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=7008982165
Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5768564643
Delicious: http://del.icio.us/lowcarboneconomy.com
And some public pages from our Google Reader:
Starred: http://www.google.com/reader/starred
All: http://www.google.com/reader/All
More: we have separated the feeds into categories like: Buildings, Climate Change, Companies, Environment, Ethical, Green and Eco, Low Carbon, Oil and fossil fuels, Renewables, Transport, Waste and Recycling, etc. If you would like me to post the public pages for these, just let me know and I'll put the URL's up.
A lot of these pages have RSS feeds too, so please add them to your RSS aggregator (like Google Reader etc) to keep track of what we see from day to day. Delicious is particularly useful as we post things we think are important and want to be able to find again later.
If you use del.icio.us (and you should - it's great), please add us to your network and post any links to us that you think we should look at: just add the 'for:lowcarboneconomy.com' tag.
OK - that's it for now, hopefully I'll be able to post again soon to say our site is available.
David
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