Suing their wrappers off; journalists upset Tesco

You can sue the pants off someone, but you cannot sue the wrapping off.
 
Yesterday I blogged about Tesco’s noble aspiration which was to help its customers tackle climate change. The way Tesco decided to help its customers tackle climate change was to label twenty items that it sells with a carbon footprint. There, job done! Tesco can [...]

Labelling supermarket items with carbon details

Knowledge is critical, for without knowledge we cannot make meaningful choices. Unfortunately when it comes to carbon emissions knowledge is fairly meaningless unless it is comprehensive. That is why when it comes to moderating our own carbon emissions behaviour we should accumulate our knowledge which should then help us in actions which concentrate on the [...]

Energy Savings Trust misleads the public about the benefits of solar systems

Anyone in the renewables industry has to devote a large part of their work to education. We deal in technologies and concepts that are relatively unknown to the public (and the governmental agencies) especially in the field of solar thermal technology.
 
The United Kingdom does not have any facilities for testing solar thermal collectors. These [...]

Why should anyone buy a solar system? The Value Propositions

Why should anyone buy a solar system?
For most people this is the critical question that the solar thermal industry needs to answer. We have the product, we have the technology, but why should anyone part with their hard earned cash – for a solar heating or a solar water heating system?A good solar system costs [...]

How much stock of energy should we hold?

If you run a business you know that the stock that you hold (known in the US as inventory) is critical to the success of your business. The more stock that you hold the more capital you have tied up; in some businesses stock decays with time (such as food) or becomes less valuable by [...]

Damage we suffer from fossil fuel burning both seen and unseen

 
Environmentalists today associate burning fossil fuel with carbon dioxide emissions, which in turn are associated with climate change and global warming. This is a relatively new association, although the theory of global warming has been around for over a hundred years.
 
Before the greenhouse effect took root in the popular imagination the main effect of [...]

Oil prices rise as the economy falls

The price of oil still rising but the economy of the world is slowing down. This at first sight seems like a paradox. If the world’s economy slows down you would expect less energy to be used and therefore the price of oil should fall. Today oil stands at around $120 a barrel – it [...]

Biofuels - we drive and the world starves

 
Sometimes you can only see a picture clearly if you step back from it, so you can see the whole canvas. So it is with energy. Without any doubt we are heading for an energy crisis. The oil will probably peak – that is to say reach its maximum production in ten years time. Oil [...]

Wind turbines or peat lands Scotland makes a wise choice

The Scottish Parliament has always been a supporter of renewable energy; its record is exemplary – far better than Westminster’s on renewable energy, so when it announces a decision to reject an application to build 181 wind turbines to generate electricity on the Isle of Lewis some eyebrows were raised.
 
I am sure that the application [...]

Solar panels - different types of absorbers -what they do and how they work

Solar panels for heat have been around for about a hundred years and in that time they have developed by a process of continuous improvement. The solar panels that you can buy today are, in many cases, very different from ones that were used 20 years ago. Some manufacturers have not improved the panels at [...]