January 8, 2007 at 11:10 pm
· Filed under Life style, home
Having finally decided to shift our old futon upstairs into the spare room and get a sofa, the next step wasn’t as simple as I thought it might be. First off, inheriting or finding second hand stuff is more luck than judgement – how long can you wait for the right sofa to come along/become available? Basically we got sick of waiting and looking and decided to burn some cash on a new sofa.
That brings up it’s own issues. I’d not realised that the frame is made of hard wood. Typically I would assume this means tropical hardwood but getting information about sourcing of the timber from high-street shops is very difficult. dfs in Cambridge hadn’t got a clue and weren’t very interested in looking into the issue for us. MFI had nothing we wanted but Sofa Workshop were much more pro-active. I’ve yet to fully substantiate their claims, but apparently their hard wood comes from sustainable East European beech (mainly) and they were keen to discuss the concept (made a refreshing change).
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January 4, 2007 at 8:30 pm
· Filed under Policy
The Economist had a few things to say about the Stern Report, positive and negative. Unfortunately you need a subscription to view:
against: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RQTNJQP
for: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RTDRNNT
For a more accessible discussion, look at WorldChanging.
I’m tempted to provide the full text, but The Economist might complain… So I’ll quote some portions and links to other (critical) reviews.
The economic arguments against revolve around the use of two constants, delta and eta, “The characters are Sir Nicholas’s shorthand for two concepts. Delta determines the weight he places on the welfare of future generations that are not yet here to stick up for their own interests. Eta governs his answer to a different question: how much weight should be given to the consumption of the rich relative to that of the poor?”.
The critisism focusses on the choice of values for these constants – the assumptions made will no doubt lead to endless debate and mean that the report is essentially one scenario of many (much like the IPCC climate change prediction scenarios). Depending on how you select values, the burden of costs vary and so do the benefits. Making policy based on the report should certainly take into account the assumptions leading to a particular scenario.
The more pro-angle takes the view that however you might split hairs about the actual costs, these will most likely be small in comparison to future savings – especially when you liken the spending in terms of insurance against potential catastrophic costs.
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January 4, 2007 at 7:29 pm
· Filed under Energy supply, energy
I bought an Electrisave wireless monitoring device a while ago (now costs between about £60 and £70). It works by beaming a signal from an induction device connected to my power line to an LCD display in my lounge. I can view the instantaneous (well every 6 sec or 1 min) cost, usage or CO2 output in addition to temperature and humidity (useful heating regulation info).
Although I’d already replaced most of my lights with energy efficient versions and tended to turn devices off, it’s still been a useful guide. In particular, it’s made me think about my baseline energy usage (about 300W) and the huge amount of power that the washing machine, kettle etc. use. Will most definitely be looking for energy efficient versions when replacing (the UK has a reasonable system of labelling white goods with energy efficiency ratings – would be nice to know about the miriad other gadgets too).
Perhaps a campaign to persuade gadget reviewers to test the power usage of the items they review is needed? My PC/server tends to be on all the time (for TV recording etc.) and it would be useful to have readily available info about the expected power consumption of it’s innards.
Knowing your base-line usage may also be useful when deciding if to buy a home generation device – if you know that there will be a consistent 300W requirement then the choice may be easier/better informed.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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December 17, 2006 at 1:18 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
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