Posts and comments related to Energy follow below:
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Links related to Energy
Energy
- A Guide to Green Homes A useful guide to making your home more energy efficient and greening your lifestyle, with advice on government initiatives and some useful links.
- Biofuels – Food or fuel? A common objection to biomass energy production is that it could divert agricultural production away from food crops in a hungry world — even leading to mass starvation in the poor countries. True or not?
- Combined heat and power (CHP) Energy isn’t just wasted in the places that we finally use it; most of the waste in our electricity system happens before it even reaches our homes and businesses.
- The Oil Drum Discussions about energy and our future.
- Truro Eco Energy (TREE) TREE is a group of local residents, local councilors and members of other like-minded groups who have come together with a vision of reducing the carbon footprint of Truro and surrounding parishes, reducing fuel poverty and increasing community cohesion.
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Ashley Fox MEP for South West – Online Energy Poll
Ashley Fox has a poll going on his website at the moment for whether onshore wind is the way forward in the south west:
http://www.ashleyfoxmep.com/
Worth taking a look and voting
Batteries
I was wondering why, as batteries contain such nasty chemicals, the vast majority of the general public still discard of their used batteries in the general household waste. Although many are aware that they are ‘not supposed’ to throw them away they still do because disposing of them properly is too much effort, as was recycling before councils brought recycling boxes to the publics’ door steps. I think that the battery recycling tube initiative is a fantastic start to the problem, however, for the majority of people to actually discard of their batteries properly would involve someone having to call at their door and take them away. Does anyone know why local councils do not implement battery recycling as part of their household recycling schemes? I assume that it is cost, as with most things.
Yellow peril
At the recent TT meeting concern was raised about the amount of oil seed rape being grown in the SW. Although this crop can be used for cooking oil and cattle fodder, much of it is almost certainly for bio-fuel. The new regulations requiring a 2.5% mix in petrol and diesel in the UK will fuel (pardon the pun) this converson of land from food to fuel crops and we all know the consequences of that. Thankfully the EU is reviewing it’s policy of 10% by 2020. One could argue that growing rape here is better than trashing the Amazon and, of course it is. However, it is also short-term , business- as-usual, Stern Report type of solution.
Also, it requires high inputs of nitrogen fertilizer – in itself mitigating its carbon reduction capability. Worse, though, it apparently converts about 5% of the nitrogen to nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas about 250 times more potent than CO2.
This just goes to show how we need to be wary of short-term, quick fix solutions. The problem is – we need think of the long-term solutions quickly!