The Green Energy Team

Green Energy, Generating More Green Energy

Tessera Solar solar park in Arizona

In the U.S. state of Arizona, there is a solar energy park that turns sunlight into energy in an unusual way: with parabolic mirrors and hot air engines.

The classic way to convert sunlight into electricity is by using photovoltaic cells flat. This sunlight is converted to an electrical voltage.

But the Tessera Solar solar park in the U.S. works with hot air engines. This is an engine that only needs hot air to work. The concept was discovered back in 1816 by the Scottish minister Robert Sterling.

If it only takes warm air to power the engine, then this is a great way of green energy being used to produce green electricity that produces more green energy (confusing but great). One thing the state of Arizona has is an endless supply of warm air.

At Tessera Solar parabolic mirrors, they use sunlight to combine the hot air engine. Each engine can generate 25 kilowatts of energy, good for 208,333 bulbs of 12 watts to be switched.

The whole park contains sixty of these plants. Over the last couple of years we have seen new ways of producing green energy emerge.  In the not to distant future I am sure we will have what the planet needs. Clean air.

Energy Efficient or What?

A small town in the Scottish Hebrides has just won a green energy prize for managing to cut there yearly carbon emissions by one third in the space of a year. The town of Eigg only has 95 residents. They have installed a combined power supply that generates energy using solar, wind and hydro techniques.

The Island of Eigg

That has allowed them to massively reduce the use of gas and coal on the Island. Another plus for the residents of the Island is the fact they are almost entirely energy self efficient and no longer need to rely on gas electricity suppliers. They have even given their energy grid a cool name – Eiggtricity.

The competition was run by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. Eigg won £300,000 for there well built power grid while the other winners who received £300,000 where a small nit town in the Brecon Beacons in Wales who managed to reduce their CO2 emissions from four community dwellings and 155 houses by a whopping 20%. Another community that shared the funds was from Shropshire.

This volunteer group ran an energy efficiency project and managed to reduce CO2 emissions in the area by 10% among 460 houses. Bloody well done to the lot of them!

The total prize money for the competition was £1 million smackers.  The United Kingdom’s largest endowment fund also awarded a fourth round prize of £100,000 to a project that was run in Oxford. I would personally like to congratulate all 350 communities who took part in making our planet a cleaner place to life.

Planet Earth

In no particular order, here are some of our main energy stories of November 2009:

1. UK plans 10 Nuclear Power stations – there were 10 sites announced for new nuclear power stations around the UK. Does anyone understand UK energy policy?
2. Company makes fuel from Air – an amazing breakthrough from Joule Biotechnolgies
3. Will President Obama go to the Copenhagen Summit? – Copenhagen is looming over everything in the energy sector, but will the president be attending?, if he thinks it will help then maybe……..
4. Spanish wind farms outperform 11 nuclear power stations – perhaps some lessons to be learned by the UK government here?
5. Family Wind Turbines gain momentum – great little video on YouTube, is this an indication of the future?

The BBC reported this weekend that a selection of Scottish renewable energy projects could be in line for more than £100m of funding from the European Commission.

The funding is part of nearly £1.5bn that has been allocated by the European Commission to help cut carbon emissions in electricity generation.

You can read all the details on the project from the original BBC article.

This good news comes on the back of last weeks news that the Scottish Government is backing a Scottish and Southern Energy and University of Strathclyde project – the development of a Centre for Renewable Energy Excellence (CEERE) in Glasgow – where the average employees salary will be over 50k a year – serious stuff and good news for scottish renrewable  power.

There was little comfort to any interested parties from Fridays Ofgem report (Project Discovery) on future energy scenarios for the UK . The Government, Energy Suppliers and Consumers will have to face up to the cold reality that there are some tough times ahead. There has been widespread reaction from many interested parties (the FT Blog has a nice summation of these).

The report is clear in stating what will be required for the UK to ensure stable energy supplies and meet its climate change targets. There are four possible scenarios outlined in the report, and the news for us consumers is not good. Whatever happens our gas and electricity bills are going to rise in the future – the best case scenario sees our bills ‘only’ rise by 14%, next up is 23% and the worst case would see a rise of 60% by 2016 – dear oh dear!

What is clear from the report is that investment in green energy measures is absolutley essential. Ofgem has calculated that a massive £200bn will have to be invested in our energy infrastructure.

Here is a summary of the four main scenarios that were considered;

Green Stimulus: There is a slow recovery from the recession and restricted availability of finance. Governments around the world implement green stimulus packages to achieve environmental goals and boost economic activities. High carbon prices and government policies support investment in renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage. The effect on domestic consumer bills is an increase of 14% by 2020.

Slow Growth: The recession continues resulting in investment in gas and electricity infrastructure being considerably lower than before the credit crunch. Low gas and electricity prices coupled with low carbon prices reduce incentives to build nuclear and renewable power plant. This results in an increasing dependence on imported gas for new gas-fired power stations. The effect on domestic consumer bills is relatively low in early years but an increase of 22% by 2020 as conditions tighten.

Green Transition: Under this scenario there is a rapid economic recovery and a significant expansion in investment in green measures. Domestic renewables targets are met and energy efficiency measures are effective. GB gas demand falls but electricity demand increases due to greater use of electric vehicles and heat pumps. The effect on domestic consumer bills is an increase of 23% by 2020.

Dash for Energy: Global economies bounce back strongly but security of supply concerns prevail over meeting environmental targets. As a result GB renewables targets and the Government’s carbon budgets are missed. Competition between countries for energy resources results in tight gas supplies and high fuel prices. Planning and supply chain constraints prevent new nuclear plant from becoming operational before 2020. The effect on domestic consumer bills is an increase of more than 60% by 2016 before falling back.

What do you think of the report? Has Ofgem been optimistic with these scenarios, or are things actually going to get worse than their predictions?

You can download the report PDF here.

UK energy prices set to rise - but by how much?

This Wednesday (24/06) sees the Scottish Parliament vote on the vital climate change bill, which has extensive ramifications for the future of the scottish power supply. The vote hangs on a knife-edge with parties arguing over the targets included in the bill.

The main areas of the bill are outlined as followed:

• Statutory target to reduce Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050
• Establish an interim target of at least 34 per cent emissions reductions by 2020, rising to at least 42 per cent if the EU Commit to 30 per cent reductions by 2020
• Establish a framework of annual targets
• Include emissions from international aviation and international shipping

Reading the editorial opinion of two of Scotland’s major newspapers The Herald and The Scotsman, it seems that the country is ready for this bill to go through. We await the result with interest.

Which way will the climate change vote swing?

The UK government today launched it’s 2009 climate projections report, prompting Environment secretary Hilary Benn to warn that the UK must plan in advance for a warmer future with greater extremes of flood and drought.

The website UKCP09 makes for some pretty stark reading, particularly the maps section which has broken the data into probability scenarios.

The conclusions based upon ‘central estimates’ seems to be that by 2080:

• Summer mean temperature will rise by around 6 degrees throughout the UK
• Summer mean precipitation will fall by around 20% on average
• Winter mean precipitation will rise by 30%

No wonder Mr Benn is so worried!

What are your thoughts on the climate projections report?

Are we too late to stop this inevitable change in our climate? or

Can we halt the changes by becoming more green friendly?

There is a huge amount of green energy information available on the internet. So much so, that it can be difficult to seperate the wheat from the chaff sometimes. We thought therefore that it would be a useful exercise to post some of our favourite web resources for information on green energy. As you an see there are a wide spectrum of sites from governnment information portals, energy companies, news websites to green-opinion blogs.

Hopefully there is something of interest to you.

Green Blogs

• Treehugger – long established green blog, covering a vast swathe of environmental issues from energy to transportation.
• Green Thinkers – this site has an informal tone and covers a wide variety of topics.
• Greener Power – Blog with a UK slant on the green energy issues.
• Inhabitat – If you want to discover the latest green technolgies then this is the place to look.
• BraveNewClimate.com – Climate blog with some srong and well thought out opinion.
• Alternative Energy Blog – the title speaks for itself, this blog offers rigourously thought out opinion on the latest energy news.

Government Information

• UK Department of Energy and Climate Change – The government department responsible for all the policies and inititiatives that we would like to see implemented – well worth keeping any eye on for the latest government thinking.
• Scottish Government Environment – The latest environmental developments from the Scottish Government.

Energy Companies

• Atlantic Electric and Gas – Part of Scottish and Southern Energy – A good indicator of the big six companies thinking on cheap electricity.
• Ecotricity

News Websites

• BBC Science and Environment – as with almost everything, the beeb is an excellent resource for energy news.
• Guardian Environment – Newspaper page with the latest news and information on the green energy sector.

If there are any other green-related sites that should be included, please don’t hesitate to inform us!

Many direct debit energy customers are unsure if their monthly bills will cover their yearly predicted allowance, there are over 40% of customers who pay by monthly direct debit.

The amount of gas and electricity being used and the amount they were paying monthly did not match up, usually with the customer’s monthly bills being set far too high, this resulted in a series of complaints when switched on clients caught onto the suppliers reluctance to set the monthly bills at a low rate or even one that would match their yearly consumption.

In light of this the energy regulator gave the big six energy companies a clean bill of health.

Ofgem said they found no evidence that the suppliers are intentionally over charging their customers.

The public still does not why demands where being brought up but the investigation team said there is a lack of communication and should be more transparent with details in the future.

2020 Emission targets

With recent green energy surveys been carried out by the ecotricity they have predicted that the government and the big 6 energy companies will fail to meet their 2020 carbon emission targets, their main concern is the lack of investment in renewable energy that in return will create more green electricity, it is predicted that if we keep going at the current rate in supplying renewable energy the big 6 will miss it’s targets by over 50% and will leave the governments targets in tatters come the year 2020.