Well, governments aren’t going to do it, are they? They’ve been pfaffing around for years, spouting hot air at summit after summit and nothing ever happens. It’s only when entrepreneurs and business people spot the opportunities offered by a low carbon economy and we take up their products and services that they will even begin to take notice. Assuming we have an economy after all the other cuts and bailouts.And so it comes to pass that Businesses are urging both the UK and India into closer collaboration to kick start that low carbon economy. Marks and Spencer, wind energy giant Suzlon, and HSBC Bank are among the companies on board.
Foreign Secretary William Hague may welcome the report, but don’t hold your breath – they have not accepted all the recommendations and he has some powerful lobbies with a vested interest in the status quo bending his ear. Removing the barriers to investment in clean energy is going to take some doing.
Menawhile UCL has a lunchtime lecture tomorrow [Thursday 18th] on Energising the City.
The hunt is on for how to make sure that energy consumption in urban areas is reduced and comes from more renewable sources. A major new project at UCL will be considering the contribution that decentralised energy systems can play in terms of carbon reduction and urban sustainability more generally. This lecture discusses the issues involved from cultural acceptance of new modes of engaging with energy systems to the complex interconnections between local, regional and national energy systems.
Don’t worry if you can’t go. They get recorded and you can watch it live here or for that matter later.
And our green neighbours in Epping are having a Speakers meeting on simple ways for you to improve your home and lifestyle.
And our green neighbours in Epping are having a Speakers meeting on simple ways for you to improve your home and lifestyle.
Speakers will include:
Ros Bedlow, Associate, Carbon Descent
Ros has a background in teaching and training and over ten years’ experience of delivering energy efficiency advice. She will be talking about energy efficiencies and renewable energy.
Russell Smith, Managing Director of Parity Projects
Our homes are responsible for 27% of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions. Russell Smith is managing director of Parity Projects, the leading UK company dedicated to saving energy in existing homes. He will discuss how you can have a greener home that saves you money, enhances your lifestyle and significantly reduces your environmental impact.
Cath Sunderland, Naturewise
Permaculture is a holistic way of living on the earth; its core foundation is people working with rather than against nature. Cath Sunderland will discuss permaculture and how we can use these ideas when growing our own food.
Enterance is free, everyone is welcome.
Here is a link to a story showing a community already cutting for themselves http://bit.ly/9bLgHt will be interesting to see if the usual Torygraph climate change deniers jump all over this.
ReplyDeleteDrove back to London yesterday along the M4, past the socking great wind wotsit at Reading - which was utterly immobile, there being none of the correct weather to get the blades moving.
ReplyDeleteNaughty weather!
Can't win can we? Miners strikes, weather strikes, peak oil, Russian gas.....
ReplyDeleteGlobal warming? Climate change? Carbon footprints? Energy saving? What a merry dance we’ve been led over the past few years as politicians and panic organisations milk these sacred cows!
ReplyDeleteWalk (or Heaven forbid, drive) through any city centre at midnight and observe all the office buildings, big and small, all of them empty except for the occasional caretaker or security guard, but with every window ablaze with light on floor after multiple floor. The millions spent by government and the energy providers on advertising which implores us to save energy by unplugging our telephone chargers or to ruin our eyesight in the gloom created by energy-saving light bulbs, are exceeded only by the tens of millions being spent on energy wasted by these wanton displays of profligacy.
If successive governments really wanted to save energy, if the urgency were indeed as real as they would like us to believe, and if there were truly a case for man-made global warming and its close cousin, climate change, why have they not introduced huge penalties for all those companies and organisations guilty of these flagrant demonstrations of waste?
Or do they consider that the burden of saving the world for polar bears should rest entirely upon the shoulders of domestic energy users?
Too bloody right Alfred.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble is that the government's paymasters, in their drive for "competitiveness" scrapped the auto lighting system in their building design because it was "too expensive" and then sacked the bloke whose job it was to go round and switch the bloody things off.
Who pays for this? The end consumer, that's you.
Note: The Angel Centre in Islington was built in 1984 and has an auto lighting system. It is now empty.
Yeah - no angels these days in Islington.
ReplyDeleteNot seen this then?
ReplyDeleteNo - is it another TfL monument to extravagance, or is it "street art" from a Section 106 agreement?
ReplyDeleteProbably....
ReplyDeleteAlfred, of course we must bear every burden. We're just the 'little people' after all, and that's what we're for ... working for minimum wage, paying the taxes, having our pension funds 'diverted', bailing out the bankers ...
ReplyDelete