10:10 - Can you take 10% of your carbon emissions?
Homes and Businesses urged to cut their carbon emissions by 10%
A new initiative by the people behind The Age of Stupid has been launched last week with the aim of getting as many homes, schools, universities, business and everything in-between to sign up and commit to reducing their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010 (hence the 10:10). Four of the ‘big 6′ of major UK energy companies have signed up (Centria, EDF, E.ON and Scottish and Southern) already, and are pledging to introduce measures to assist homes and businesses meet this target in 2010, including energy use tracking equipment.
It’s not only large companies who are signing up though, a whole host of other organisations have already pledged their support, whilst individual members of the public can enroll themselves.
You can find out more information of the project on the 10:10 website.
Think back to what you were doing at the age of 15 ………… if you’re anything like us then you were at High School, struggling to grasp basic scientific and mathematical concepts, maybe playing some sports after school and at the weekend………
We’re willing to bet that you probably weren’t inventing in a complete Algae based green energy system.
Well, that’s what young Javier Fernández-Han from Houston, Texas has done. He won the Ashoka ‘Invent Your World Challenge’ with his algae energy system, named VERSATILE. Master Javier’s system incorporates 12 technologies in six subsystems. Each system can treat waste, produce methane and bio-fuel, and is a source of livestock and human food production. It also produces oxygen and sequesters greenhouse gases, and can also be a source of income.
Read the full details of Javiers amazing system over at Cleantechnica.
Here is a slide show featuring Javier and some of the other winners from the Ashoka challenge.
It has been reported by British researchers that the Antarctica is melting faster than previously thought and it looks like there is evidence to back it up. It looks like the first estimates of rising sea levels due to global warming were under-estimated.
It is now estimated that in the last 50 years there has been around 13,000 square kilometers of sea ice has melted.
The glaziers are now moving towards the sea at an alarming 6 times faster than before and the western side of Antarctica is showing evidence being eroded from underneath by the warm currents from the sea. It has been estimated the sea levels will rise by about 4in by the turn of this century causing havoc across the globe.
The current increase of yearly sea levels stands at around 2mm at the moment, we know that we need to try and combat global warming by whatever means possible but it is still not known and probably never will be if this is a natural process or the result or our industrialization over the last 300 years.
The biggest question of our generation is – are nuclear power stations safe? Nuclear power is most dangerous thing man has ever created; Using it to create power has been a long standing argument ever since it was created – and no wonder people where and still are scared of it, the first time most people would have heard of nuclear power was when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the destruction that caused was unprecedented and would be enough for anyone to be worried, The problem is that if it goes wrong then what, thankfully it has only ever happened once in Chernobyl but I think you would agree that once is too much, In my honest opinion I don’t have a problem with nuclear power stations as I don’t think our scientists and chiefs at our power stations would ever experiment the way that the they apparently did in the lead up to the explosion, I don’t think that would be an issue, our biggest threat to our power stations today is the threat of terrorists but I have total trust in our security forces to prevent that from happening, I think nuclear power is safe but I would much rather have greener energy powering our nation.
Glasgow has been giving permission to build a £3,000,000 wind farm that will be the largest yet to be built in Europe, the farm will host 140 huge wind turbines that will pump 322 megawatts of power into the national grid, enough megawatts to power over 200,000 homes – the equivalent of supplying the hole of Glasgow with Green Electricity, the farm will be built on moorland next to East Kilbride and will cover an area of 7.2 miles by 4.3 and wile there has been some opposition due to the impact they will have on the area the consensus has been positive and when the turbines are in operation in 2009 they will remove the strain on other power sources
Glasgow builds biggest wind farm in Europe
along with 650,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide it’s no wonder there is a lot of backing for this project to happen. There will also be a visitor center, cycle route and a walkway for tourists and locals alike.
There is another 24 wind farms under construction and another 77 with planning permission in Scotland so we should be well placed to bypass our energy targets of 5.5Gigawatts that will supply our great nation with 31% of renewable energy each year.
As i turned on my gas hob last night I had a quick thought – is this a green way to cook? Coal and gas powered electricity churns out tonne after tonne of CO2 and other environmentally unfriendly toxins into the air. If I stop using my gas hobs and moved to electricity – I already get 100% of my electricity from renewable sources would this be better for the environment.
How much Carbon Dioxide do UK hobs generate?
Over at the University of Bristol they have a table suggesting that the use of gas hobs and electric hobs is the same in the UK – with each using around 3.364 Twh (where a Terrawatt hour is equivalent to 1,000,000,000 KwH). Instantly I was thinking if we all ditch the gas – which damages the environment more than green electricity does – the country would save the CO2 on the 3.364 TwH of Gas.
After a quick look in Google – and avoiding the wikipedia like the plague. The world nuclear assosciation, it was the best source I could find, stated that CO2 emmissions from gas is about 356 grams per kWh. So thats 3.364 TwH of CO2 = 3,364,000,000 kWh X 0.356 kilograms of CO2 = 1,197,584,000 kilograms (1.2 million tonnnes) of CO2 less being emitted by the UK.
There would of course be the CO2 emitted from the greener electricity plants, I’m not naive enough to think that Green Electricity is CO2 free, but I think that should be a healthy whack off the CO2 emissions in the UK – that gotta help us meet our CO2 targets from the EU.
It has been reported by British researchers that the Antarctica is melting faster than previously thought and it looks like there is evidence to back it up. It looks like the first estimates of rising sea levels due to global warming were under-estimated.
