Act on CO2 with the Drive Smarter campaign

The department for transport have just released a web site for their "Act on CO2" campaign that promotes smarter driving.

The web site includes tips on how to save fuel when driving as well as what to look for when buying a new car. There is also a calculator that shows you how much money you could save by using the smarter driving tips.

Just for a bit of fun as well, they have included a flash game that emphasises all of the smarter driving tips they give on the main site.

Green issues to be the next political battle ground

With the EU renewable energy targets having recently been set it looks like green issues could become the next battle ground in politics.

In an article over at the BBC the two main parties are arguing over the best way to implement the up coming climate change bill, which is due to be released on Tuesday. The aim of the bill will be to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. Until the bill has been released there is no real clue as to how they are going to achieve this, however a lot of talk about raising taxes is being thrown around.

Beings Gordon Brown doesn't want to set any hard yearly targets, is this just an excuse to raise taxes and get some more money off us all? If we don't have something to aim for every year we could just end up getting to 2050 and saying oh well we didn't quite meet our targets what a shame.

If this is really going to work and not end up being an exercise in taxing people more, then we need yearly targets that the government would be forced to stick to.

Europe seems to be a big issue as well, there is a lot of talk about "Euroscepticism" making things harder to do, but why? If Europe doesn't want to join in now, then why don't we just go ahead and get things moving then worry about them later? A lot of Europe already have sustainable energy programs in place and are currently working more than likely much harder than we are to reduce their carbon emissions.

We're just going to have to wait and see what the climate change bill brings tomorrow. Hopefully it'll outline ways of allowing people to live a more sustainable live style rather than taxing them because their not.

EU agrees renewable energy targets

In the week all the EU countries got together to agree on some solid targets for the reduction of carbon emissions. This has led to the decision to attempt to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by 2020.

So what will they be doing to achieve this? Well so far the only information I've really been able to find is from the BBC news web site. The following seem to be the major changes that will take place.

• 10% minimum for the usage of bio-fuels in transport
• Increase in the use of renewable energy sources I.E Solar, wind and hydro power.
• A possible ban on incandescent light bulbs by the end of the decade.

It all sounds pretty good really. It would be nice to see them issue more grants allowing people to more easily afford producing their own energy using things like solar or wind power.

Even though the light bulb ban seems very small I believe it would make an amazing impact on the amount of energy we use. The BBC website states

The bulbs last longer but more are more expensive to buy

But now Tesco are offering power saving light bulbs at half price on their direct web site and offering their value power saving light bulbs for 89 pence in store, the price difference is insignificant. You might think that the value bulbs aren't that great, however I can say the opposite as at least 3 of my light fittings currently have Tesco value power saving light bulbs in them and they are perfectly fine. With the prices coming down so much you could save even more money.

The EU leaders also put in an additional plan that would mean a 30% reduction in carbon emissions if they could also get the likes of America and China on board. China already has an active sustainable building plan as they are realising that they will not be able to expand as a country if they are tied down to having to buy fuels etc. However with America being reluctant to sign the Kyoto agreement, it might be a struggle to get them on board with any other plans.

All in all it's a move in the right direction, lets just hope that the pace quickens a little and changes start to be made.

BBC Panorama: Go green or else

I've just finished watching the BBCs parnorma program Go green or else, and to be honest I wasn't all that impressed. Throughout the program it felt like the presenter and his wife were treating the whole problem of global warming as a bit of a joke. Fair enough they did do several things to improve their carbon footprint including getting rid of their car, but they just didn't seem to take the whole thing seriously.

The program was reasonable informative for people who might not have looked into going green before, it had several tips on the small everyday things you could do to save energy like fitting power saving light bulbs and insulating loft spaces etc.

They had a very interesting section where they used a thermal imaging camera to see how much heat their house was giving out. This got me thinking about the whole global warming thing in a different way, which I'll post an article about later.

I think the part that would have interested most people though was at the end when they realised how much money they had saved by going green. They estimated they had saved around £2000 in a year, which for some people would probably be a good enough reason in itself to start going green.

As a side note, while at Tesco tonight I noticed they are now selling their value power saving light bulbs for 89 pence. At this price you can't go wrong really. It's roughly the price of 4 normal bulbs, but the savings you could make are much larger. For more information read my article Power saving light bulbs: how much can you actually save.

Al Gores utility bills released to the public

A couple of days ago a group in Al Gores home town managed to get hold of his utility bills and published them to the public (article).

These bills show that Al Gores home consumes 20 times the average American homes energy. For someone that is supposed to be promoting green living this is pretty high. The question is, does this make Al Gore a bad environmentalist?

You could say both yes and no. Yes obviously because he is using up so much energy, but at the same time no because he is out their promoting green issues. He's made films about it, he's even organising world wide concerts about it, which is creating it's own standard for a greener concert.

All in all the guy is doing a lot of good for promoting green issues. I'm sure that now this information has been leaked he will do something about his energy usage, a bit of practicing what he's preaching.

I just think he should be given an opportunity to right his wrongs before he gets shot down by politicians and other green campaigners who now think he's a hypocrite. At the end of the day no one is perfect and at least he's trying to do something.

I think before I make a final opinion about him, I'll wait to see how he handles this situation.

Construction Industry coming round to the idea of the Eco-Home

I found an article on the guardian website (here) which points out some very interesting facts about exactly how much of our carbon emissions are due to the buildings we live in.

Lots of people seem to think that the majority of the carbon is given out by cars and flying around the world, but according to the article around 50% of all carbon emissions for this country are directly related to heating and lighting our homes, and another 10% is used up producing the raw materials to build them.

This has prompted a selection of companies from the construction industry to get together and launch the UK Green Building Council. This group aim to improve the environmental impact of building homes over the next 10 years by introducing the idea of the "three zeros", this basically means they want to build sustainable homes that have zero emissions, zero dependency of external water supplies and zero waste.

The good thing about all this is the UKGBC are going to push all this through to their members without any government intervention. This will be the construction industry improving things off their own backs without having to have legislation force them to do it.

Building new sustainable homes isn't just going to benefit the environment, the people living in them will also see a financial benefit. Wouldn't it be great if your home was so efficient you didn't have to pay any utility bills at all. With things like this happening in a few years this could become a reality.

Until that happens though we can all do our bit to help reduce carbon emissions and the amount of energy we use by doing things like monitoring how much power we use, installing power saving light bulbs and recycling