I recently attended the launch of a new air source heat pump, by Swedish company Aira. Heat pumps, widely, adopted, would make a significant contribution to reducing carbon emissions from UK homes. Look around any residential area, and what are the images that come to mind to define progress in reducing carbon emissions? Expensive electric… Continue reading
Browsing Category Green Technology
The first day in our solar future
Aug, 2020 update. Nine years on and the panels have generated 17,818 kWh of electricity. The original estimates of what we would generate have proved to be uncannily accurate. One was 1970.072 kW p.a., so 17,730 for nine years. That was based on the government’s Standard Assessment Procedure for energy rating buildings. The second estimate was based on PVSol… Continue reading →
Call for £6,000 grants to encourage electric vehicle sales
June 5th, 2020 Liberal Democrat leadership candidate Layla Moran called on the Government (June 4th, 2020) to offer grants of up to £6,000 to encourage drivers to buy electric cars, as part of a green bailout of the UK’s automotive industry to counter the impact of Covid-19. Under the Oxford West and Abingdon MP’s plan,… Continue reading →
Riding the red hydrogen London bus to Tower Hill
This piece, by Gareth Huw Davies, first appeared in the Sunday Times, September 2006. There is a precedent for bus routes in London that come to represent something rather important. So just as the Clapham omnibus, and its right-thinking passenger, has entered the language as a measure of common sense, could the more prosaically named… Continue reading →
A favourite Middle England marque joins the EV revolution
The only time-passing diversion at Milton Keynes station at midnight yesterday, as I waited to pick up a very late family member, was a series of rolling electronic adverts. The display had the desired effect, because here I am imparting the case for the all-electric Vauxhall Corsa-e – “Milton Keynes to West Yorkshire on a single… Continue reading →
Silent Seven go green in Central London
Update Feb 2020. A ban on selling new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars in the UK will be brought forward from 2040 to 2035 at the latest, under government plans. It’s been a slow start for the small electric city car. I wrote the following piece in 2011, in that optimistic pre-Olympics age. In… Continue reading →