Elemental

What caught my eye today, March 15th:

• Twitter tools – A way of integrating twitter into your main WP feed, in much the same way as del.icio.us.ness.
• Not so simple – Stephen Farrington explaining protectionism and free trade as related to food. Food miles are not all they are cracked up to be.
• Wpdesigner.com – Lots of Wordpress themes (guess what – yes, I’m looking at yet ANOTHER overhaul…)
• Carbon Feet -emissions by microgeneration and other renewables – Robert posts a thoughtful, well researched piece on solar – he’s my current antidote to Jeremy Leggatt’s posturing! Some good points – especially regarding the fallacy of calling things ‘zero’ carbon.

mel starrs News food, food miles, Jeremy Leggatt, Stephen Farrington

Mark Brinkley has written up a great critique of Bill Dunster (of BedZED infamy) and his green philosophy, following on from the article in the Sunday Times at the weekend. Highlights include:

• Bill’s a fan of thermal mass, acheived by concrete (high embodied energy)
• He’s not a fan of mech vent, opting for wind cowls (making for a leakier type of construction)
• He also opts for an ‘off-grid’ self sufficiency which Mark tracks back to the 70’s

Another thing Mark doesn’t pick up, but jumped out at me was the fact that ZEDfactory are importing cheap ‘green’ technologies from China. With food miles at the forefront of UK consciousness this seems a risky strategy.

Back in December ZEDfabric were promising that from February 2007,  they would be offering photovoltaic (PV) panels to generate electricity, and solar thermal hot water panels. Equipment will be offered at competitive market prices.

At the time, Wendy Lee explained:

“The current situation is that, as a homeowner, you can apply for a Low Carbon Building Programme grant. To get a grant, you have to apply within the first few months of each year before funding runs out, and fight your way through the bureaucracy to ensure you meet the criteria. If successful, the grant can only be used for government-accredited products,
installed by government-accredited installers. You cannot use your own contractor or install panels by yourself.
If you opt to participate in our buying consortium, our wholesale prices for panels are better than the government-accredited products with a grant.
As an example, using the Low Carbon Building Programme, 1kWp of PV panels costs around £5,500 + VAT to install. The grant enables you to claim back 50% of the pre tax cost, i.e. £2,750. As the grant doesn’t cover VAT, your bill will be around £3,700.”

Almost spooky how right they got it – LCBP has been suspended for the April round, pending a relaunch in May after funding was allocatted within minutes of becoming available by the March round.  One side effect of the LCBP PR disaster has been a collapse in sales for british companies relying on LCBP to stimulate sales.  By funding vanishing, buyers are opting to wait, or worse, not bother. By ZEDfabric importing from China and reselling cheaply, they have neatly sidestepped around this.  Unfortunately, many of the links on the site are broken and I can’t figure out if this has been a success or not.

Sustainability is a unique conundrum. Is it better to reduce carbon by manufacturing close to home, buoying up the local economy and reinvigorating the manufacturing industry or is it better to import from China, increasing their wealth, and therefore increasing the likelihood that they will be able to afford to mitigate their environmental transgressions? It all depends on your worldview with regards to globalisation, economics and wealth.
It seems contradictory to me that Bill is happy to go off-grid locally, by relying on technologies produced many thousands of miles away? Pragmatic or hypocritical?  He is of course ‘trading’ his knowledge directly by being involved in the design of sustainable cities out there.

It’s the kind of thing which gets dissected much more eloquently by Jim or Tim.  Like I keep saying, the principles of low carbon building can escalate into much more complex debates.

mel starrs Uncategorized Bill Dunster, China, Economics, electricity, embodied energy, food miles, GBP, Mark Brinkley, Sunday Times, Sustainability, United Kingdom, Wendy Lee

I’m in a really annoying situation where I have opened a load of tabs in Firefox of interesting stuff I want to blog in detail, but I have no time to do so. So they sit there and mock me. In an effort to shut them down and clear my conscience, here’s a really quick rundown.

1. Carbon offsetting. A sticky topic. Defra launched a consultation on establishing a Code of Best Practice (pdf, 56 pages) for the provision of carbon offsetting to UK customers on 18 January 2007. Friends of the Earth still aren’t impressed. World Wildlife Fund also a bit underwhelmed. Even a good article from the Times on why offsetting should be a last resort. David Miliband explains why the bar was set so high here. I have a theory that carbon offsetting, rather than being a solution in itself, is a signalling mechanism which could in future help the C&C (contraction and convergence) lobby. I’m working up my ideas on this, but if the choices available are to fly and not offset vs. fly plus offset, then offset. If the choice is travel vs. video conference, then invest in the video conferencing, rather than offsetting the travel. I’ll come back to all this at a later date…
2. Tesco eco-labelling. Guardian response here. FT here. EST here. Whilst it’s a commendable idea and in theory should make choices easier, I remain wary for 2 reasons. Firstly – is Tesco’s command on their supply chain really so stringent that they can do this? Yikes. If so, then there are a number of debates to be had (food miles is only one part of that). If not, how on earth are they going to implament this? A mammoth task. Secondly – we’ve had calorie information on labels for years. Has this prevented obesity? No. Will carbon information on labels stop global warming? Probably not, but we’ll all feel reassured knowing the numbers exist.
3. Vaguely related to the above, Miliband again is getting embroiled in food miles. The comments on his blog are worth reading.
4. Renewables Obligation is getting a reform. Really interesting topic and worth reading around.

I still have 2991 posts in Google Reader to crash through (about a week’s worth of news). If a speed read unearths any more of interest, I might add it in. I’ll also be doing a serious cull of feeds – 190 is just too unwieldy. My trends page on Google Reader shows what an impact a week’s holiday has on my reading (no, I didn’t keep up with my feeds on holiday):

mel starrs Uncategorized David Miliband, food miles, Friends of the Earth, Google, supply chain, Sustainability, Tesco, travel vs. video conference, United Kingdom, video conferencing, World Wildlife Fund