Archive for December, 2006

Off-setting

December 23, 2006 at 3:32 pm · Filed under Policy, energy, renewable energy

Now here’s a slightly tricky subject. There are an increasing number of ways to offset your CO2, but how to know which is best or even if your chosen method is effective? It’s a complicated subject and still much debated in scientific circles. To date, I’ve signed up with BP’s Target Neutral campaign, which allows you to offset vehicle emissions by helping them pay for projects (mostly renewable energy related in poorer countries). However, I think I could do better – not least in handling the issues mentioned earlier.

Areas still to work on:

  • Select the most appropriate method of offsetting.  The UK government has re-kindled the discussion regarding how to define (effective)  offsetting by issuing some guidelines that affect the 60-odd companies based in the UK.  Only 4 fulfilled all their criteria apparently!
  • My central heating is gas powered, an obvious item to offset.
  • Work travel. I’d like to work out how to pursuade my HR dept. at work to link my CO2 emissions gained during business travel to a cunning scheme from the Charities Trust that allows you to donate directly via the PAYE system to any UK registered charity.
  • Holiday travel. Well, this one is a special case of the previous – I’d just have to sort out payments myself.

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Biodiesel – with a Ford Fiesta 1.4 tdci

December 23, 2006 at 2:41 pm · Filed under Biofuels

I bought a diesel Ford Fiesta 1.4 TDCi 4 years ago with the intention of using biodiesel. Ford only allow 5% biodiesel under their warranty, so it was a slow start. Even slower due to the lack of nearby outlets to buy the stuff :-( . However, now that my car is out of warranty, I’ve signed up with a local organisation CambridgeBiodiesel who supply up to 100% biodiesel. Current price is comparable with regular pump prices, although there are/will be some additional set-up costs. Hopefully the government will continue it’s glacial progress towards reducing fuel duty for bio fuels…

I kept a record of the fuel efficiency of the vehicle during most of it’s current life using mineral diesel (using a cheap but pretty basic mobile phone app). All I do is record the odometer reading and amount/cost of fuel bought each time. The general conclusion so far is that I’m getting about 5 l/100km (or about 47mpg) combined urban/extra-urban. This doesn’t compare well to the Ford spec of around 67mpg combined! No doubt it’s my driving style… (nothing to do with the ultra-conservative simulated driving style of official testing).

One of my current problems is getting the biodiesel into the vehicle. It arrived in two 25 liter screw-top drums of 50% mix, which are quite heavy to shift around. I got a siphon, which works OK at getting the stuff into the tank – my problem is that getting to the organisations pump is tricky, hence current arrangement.

I’ll update the info here in a few months when I’ve a reasonable set of fuel economy data.

Current thoughts though are that the fuel system (either the pump or other) is struggling slightly with the increase in viscosity. It’s fairly cold at the moment (-2 to 5 C) which magnifies the effect. Symptoms being slightly longer crank to start and intermittent judder at low speed – using mineral diesel the engine when warm will happily chug along at 30mph in 5th but it’s not always so smooth with the approx 50% biodiesel.

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What level are you?

December 21, 2006 at 2:28 pm · Filed under General, Philosophy

I’ve been pondering the different stages of greenery. As a starting point, here’s a list of stages ranked in order of awareness and sense of action:

Depletist – see WorldChanging for the derivation.
On-looker – in denial and probably focuses on news/research which de-emphasises anthropomorphic climate change.
Interested by-stander – accepts we need to change but hasn’t taken any real steps to do so – someone else’s problem
Dabbler – starting to implement some lifestyle changes and talks a good game…
Hobbyist – at risk of being self-satisfied as per Ed Begley Jr in The Simpsons ” I prefer a vehicle that doesn’t hurt Mother Earth. It’s a go-kart, powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction. “. Otherwise, probably techy-practical type.
Self-sacrificer – possibly self-agrandiser, hair-shirted? Willing to make changes that at least initially damage them (reduced income, life is harder etc.).
Initiate – lives the good life of a Carbon[and-every-thing-else]-neutral proto-pagan. The only way we can all attain such exalted status is if the human population crashes…

One of my pet political topics (as discussed in skeleton form on my website, in the philosophy section) is the divide between selfish and social/altruistic behaviour. There are echoes of this in the above list and it makes me wonder if there shouldn’t be two parallel lists, geared towards different basic types of people. The aim would be to

a) work out how best to change behaviour, given the different world outlooks of selfish or altruistic people.
b) find the best (either/or most green/realistic) level for people to reach.

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Electricity supply

December 21, 2006 at 11:13 am · Filed under Energy supply

A while ago I switched to Good Energy for electricity. They state on their website that 100% of the power you use comes from renewable energy, although it can take up to a year for this to work through:

“Good Energy customers will always get a supply of electricity even if the wind stops blowing. We promise to buy the same amount of renewable electricity over 12 months as our customers need, so at some points during that 12 month period Good Energy will be purchasing too much renewable electricity, and at some points it will not have sufficient renewable electricity. However, over the 12 months the supply and demand of renewable electricity will match.”

In addition, they now offer the option of selling power back to them. However, the price you pay (about 11p/unit) is quite a bit higher than the sell price of about 4p/unit. If I ever did get a wind turbine installed, this would help to off-set some of the costs. Not only would I save just by being able to generate my own power, but because the wind doesn’t always stop when I’m not using power the excess can be sold rather than wasted.

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Home-installed wind turbine

December 21, 2006 at 10:54 am · Filed under Energy supply, HowTo, Wind

Well, I was quite keen on getting some sort of renewable energy thingy installed in/on my house. However, my pitched roof faces roughly East-West which doesn’t make it very suitable for solar devices. So I had a quick look round for potential wind turbines and initially got quite excited. Sound like a great idea.

Unfortunately, it’s just not nearly cost effective at the moment. Normally, this might not have put me off – after all, what’s the point in attempting to be a first adopter if you’re not willing to take the plunge and pay now so you and others can save later when stuff gets popular and cheaper?

However, given that I’m planning on moving house at some point in the next couple of years, spending £1500 – £2500 on installing a wind turbine didn’t sound like a clever idea :-( In addition, my house is what you’d call a classic first-time-buyers place, and it’s not clear what effect having a wind turbine installed would have on the sale-ability of the place.

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Getting going…

December 17, 2006 at 1:27 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

I’ve been working at reducing my CO2 output for a while and thought I’d share my experiences with folks. Hopefully it’s also a chance to link-up with others going through the same process.

Whilst I get my thoughts in order regarding progress so far, you (might) want to take a look at my rambling webpage at www.johnkazer.com

Quick summary of stuff done so far:
- Switch to green elec supplier – Good Energy
- Make sure house insulation and windows are OK (but not fantastic)
- Get a small diesel car (Ford Fiesta TDCi)
- Start buying 50% biodiesel from local supplier (made from waste oil and local rape)
- Off-set flights and driving
- Turn-off stuff at home/work
- Help work sign-up to ISO 14001
- Use energy saving bulbs
- Considered buying mini wind turbine for the house but rejected on cost/usefulness grounds
- Installed an Electrisave electricity monitoring gadget – it displays your current usage in CO2, cost or kWhrs

More details to come…

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Hello world!

December 17, 2006 at 1:18 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

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