Pete Smith @ May 13, 2008 # 4 Comments
London’s new Mayor, Boris Johnson, has dropped a legal challenge to Thames Water’s proposed £200 million desalination plant in Beckton, East London. The High Court challenge was initiated by his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, on the grounds that the project was inefficient and bad for the environment. Mr Livingstone said cleaner, cheaper and less wasteful alternatives [...]
Pete Smith @ April 15, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Tonight at 6 p.m. outside Downing Street, there’s a demonstration against the mandatory addition of biofuel to all fuel sold in the UK. From today, April 15th (“April Biofools Day”), the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) demands that all forecourts will be required by law to sell only fuel which is blended with 2.5% biofuel. [...]
Pete Smith @ March 10, 2008 # 4 Comments
Shares in AIM-listed biofuels outfit D1 Oils plc (LSE: DOO.L – news) are showing more sharp falls this morning after a 36% drop on Friday. The company said the influx of heavily subsidised US biodiesel is putting the entire EU green fuel industry at risk. The US government is promoting the production and use of [...]
Pete Smith @ January 16, 2008 # No Comment Yet
A year ago, General Motors launched the Chevy Volt, a battery-powered concept car that has generated a huge amount of interest with the car-buying public. Amidst growing speculation that GM are having problems with the Volt’s battery technology, to the extent that they are steering potential customers towards their hybrid models, the car giant unveiled [...]
Pete Smith @ December 10, 2007 # 4 Comments
The Observer reports that Britain is running out of renewable energy, as a surge in demand from businesses has outstripped the supply of electricity generated from ‘green’ sources. Firms’ interest in reducing their carbon footprint has far exceeded new capacity coming on-stream. This leaves companies which have pledged to become ‘carbon neutral’ with a sizeable [...]
Pete Smith @ November 28, 2007 # No Comment Yet
The environmental propaganda machine continues to rumble forward on ‘The Archers’, BBC Radio 4′s venerable soap opera and green information channel. Tuesday’s episode featured an earnest discussion of anaerobic digesters on farms, turning animal muck into methane and generating electricity for sale back to the grid. According to jet-setting career agriculturist Debbie Aldridge, calling home [...]
Pete Smith @ November 17, 2007 # No Comment Yet
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has published an ‘Issue Brief’ on biofuels. The document, the first output from WBSCD’s new workstream on clean energy technology, provides an overview of biofuel production and use with a special focus on the transport sector. It describes first and second generation biofuels and explores their potential [...]
Pete Smith @ August 3, 2007 # 3 Comments
Scottish Power has announced its intention to contract farmers to produce 250,000 tonnes of energy crops to replace coal burned at Scotland’s two coal-fired power stations, Cockenzie and Longannet. The project will use about 35,000 hectares, 12% of Scotland’s total agricultural land. Scottish Power aims to substitute 5% of its coal consumption with energy crops [...]
Pete Smith @ June 23, 2007 # 7 Comments
Ethanol is promoted as a sustainable, clean-burning and eco-friendly fuel that will reduce pollution and global warming. A study from Stanford University suggests that large-scale moves away from gasoline to ‘alternative’ fuels containing a high proportion of ethanol would lead to an increase in numbers of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations. A series of computer model [...]
Pete Smith @ May 5, 2007 # 2 Comments
Researchers at Indiana’s Purdue University have developed a portable machine that turns a variety of food waste and inorganic trash into electricity. Despite being small enough to transport in a 20-foot shipping container, the “tactical refinery”, intended initially for use by the military and disaster recovery agencies, is three technologies in one: a bioreactor that [...]
