FIRST HOUSE POWERED BY HYDROGEN FUEL CELL
18 October 2008
On October 10th a house in Lye. near Stourbridge, West Midlands was opened as the first permanent hydrogen-powered home connected to the national grid. A refrigerator-sized fuel cell unit produces 1.5kw of electricity and 3kw of heat, with excess power being fed back into the grid.
The house is being monitored by the University of Birmingham, and is part of a broader £2m programme of research looking at the full supply chain for producing, storing and using hydrogen in homes or cars.
GREEN PARTY - PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL FATALISM
18 October 2008
The Green Party is hopefully poised to send MP’s to Westminster for the first time, says Caroline Lucas, their leader, who says that the party is delivering practical solutions to the economic situation. For example in Kirklees, Yorkshire, Green councillors delivered a universal free insulation scheme that slashes the bills of 40,000 households, while creating jobs, providing training, and cutting carbon emissions.
At national level too Greens are setting an agenda for change. Lucas, together with 8 others has co-authored a proposal for a Green New Deal to tackle the ‘triple crunch’, of economic recession, accelerating climate change, and rising oil prices underpinned by an encroaching peak in oil production. The Green New Deal calls for the re-regulation of finance and taxation, cracking down on tax evasion, and de-merging the mega banks into more containable entities closer to the real economy, with retail banking separated from high finance.
Caroline Lucas, writing in the Guardian of October 9th, says this means investment in the infrastructure of tomorrow’s economy with home insulation, public transport and a revolution in renewable energies, thus securing energy supplies into the future, protecting against oil price fluctuations, and re-invigorating the manufacturing sector in the UK.at the same time.GLOBAL FUND FOR RAINFORESTS PROPOSED
18 October 2008
A report to the Government by John Eliasch says a multibillion-pound fund should be set up to pay the owners of the world’s rainforests, not to cut them down.
A global carbon market would pay the owners or the inhabitants to save and maintain the trees, which store carbon dioxide. Deforestation contributes 17% of global carbon emissions, the third biggest source.
The Eliasch Review claims countries without forests could also benefit from a global forest emissions trading system, by integrating forests within a global cap and track system. This would create opportunities to tackle a large part of current CO2 emissions, while also delivering substantial finance to forest conservation and sustainable forest management. Forest carbon finance could make a large impact on reducing poverty through increased financial flows to developing countries.
BRIGHTON AND HOVE BID TO BE THE FIRST UNESCO CITY BIOSPHERE RESERVE
08 October 2008
Unesco is now accepting bids from cities to “update the image of cities as hotbeds of pollution. …..cities are havens of natural and cultural diversity and may hold the key to sustainable development in the 21st century” said a Unesco statement. The criteria are likely to include nature reserves, buildings with green roofs and walls hung with plants to encourage wild life, clean waterways and a commitment to low-carbon housing.
