We tend to think of solar energy as a fairly recent invention, but the truth is solar power has been around for a very long time – at least 4.7 billion years in fact, based on the age of the sun itself, although human involvement obviously came a little later! [...]
As a new scheme opens to supply 200 Oxfordshire households with gas made from what they recently flushed from their own toilets, a number of water and gas companies around the UK are now beginning to look at sewage in a completely different light. The idea isn’t particularly new, of [...]
One thing we’re seldom short of in Britain is rain, and as a result, viewed from the air, much of our country is a wonderful glinting tracery of silvery rivers and lakes. It’s small wonder that the UK has been harnessing water power for hundreds of years – from driving [...]
We all know about the financial cost of Christmas. Even if we manage to put it out of our minds for the duration of the actual festivities themselves, the arrival of those credit card bills in January have an unpleasant way of reminding us – usually with a bit of [...]
Talk of embedded – or embodied – energy is something that anyone trying to do their bit to improve both environment and personal economics comes across sooner or later and it’s an interesting concept. The basic idea is a simple one – it’s a measure of the total energy required [...]
We all know how much food costs. There’s that unavoidable moment at the supermarket checkout, as item after item travels along the rubberised route from trolley to scanner, beeping its cheery way onto the final tally, out of our bank accounts and into our environmentally-friendly, endlessly reusable bags. The price [...]
We all know that fossil fuels have been largely cast as the villains in the environmental piece and that their carbon contribution in particular is something to avoid – but understanding why takes many of us onto rather less familiar ground. To answer that question calls for a journey into [...]
Say the words “fuel cell” to most people and they’ll probably instantly conjure up an image of a modern and revolutionary high-tech device that holds the promise of exactly the sort of clean energy we so desperately need. While their potential for virtually emission-less power is undoubtedly true, surprisingly the [...]
Gardeners and horticulturalists have been encouraging waste plant material to break down to form nutrient-rich compost for centuries – and using it in pots to grow new plants, or to improve the condition of the soil. While the idea isn’t anything new, over the last couple of decades, more and [...]
At the heart of many renewable energy systems, there lies a battery of one sort or another but when we focus on whether we’re using photovoltaic or wind power to generate our electricity, we often tend to forget this simple fact. We shouldn’t. The right battery can make the difference [...]
‘Biomass’ is a word that we have all become increasingly aware of over recent years as the need to do something to break our ongoing dependence on fossil fuels has risen up the political and popular agenda – but first things first, just what is biomass? Strictly speaking, biomass is [...]
With everyone advising you to replace your existing light bulbs with low energy ones – and supermarkets regularly offering to sell them to you at mega-cut prices – these unlikely household items have found themselves at the forefront of the energy-saving revolution. While we all know we should be using [...]
