United Kingdom

Britain’s gonna build some

Britain’s building five new "eco-towns": The towns, each with a minimum of 5,000 to 10,000 houses, will be built to meet zero carbon standards and will each showcase a specific project promoting energy preservation or green technology, the Communities and Local government office said. Projects to be showcased could include use of communal heat pump […]

Renewable energy is good for them

Renewable energy is good for rural communities — at least in the UK: A study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, of community renewable energy projects in Britain has found that so far, projects are largely based in the countryside, some quite remote. From wind turbines to shared heating systems, small-scale renewable energy […]

McDonald’s trucks to use french fry grease as fuel

On July 2, McDonald's announced plans to convert its entire British fleet of 155 delivery trucks, which consume about 6 million liters (a little less than 1.6 million gallons) of diesel per year, to run on cooking oil from Britain's 1,200 McDonald's restaurants. The company pledged to make the switch within the next twelve months. In an apparently unintentionally ironic statement, VP John Howe said the fuel wouldn't smell like french fries -- though, he remarked, the Pavlovian effect that would have been "one of the best marketing campaigns we've ever had." Two steps forward, too many back.

Monbiot: We can provide all or most of our electricity from renewable sources

In his July 3 column, George Monbiot reminds us of how much worse the threat of global warming may be than the consensus IPCC position. But he also reminds us that there are reasons for optimism too. He cites three studies that point to the fact that there is every reason to believe Europe and the UK can supply between 80 percent and 100 percent of electricity needs completely sun, wind, water, wave, tide, and minor amounts of biomass and geothermal energy, V2G Vanadium flow batteries, and pumped storage.

Given that electricity can drive just about all energetic processes of our civilization -- domestic, commercial, industrial, and transport, that means that we have economically reasonable substitutes for just about all carbon use now.

Planning ahead for Beijing, London, and Sochi

Today, On the Ball brings you Olympics, Olympics, Olympics! And, if you read far enough, a reflection on undergarments. Beijing photo: vizzo via Flickr As we are now officially more than halfway through 2007, Beijing is getting all geared up for its Olympic games, to be held Aug. 8-24, 2008. On Wednesday, there were numerous […]

A glimpse of environmental policies to come from Gordon Brown

Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

Britain has a new prime minister. After leading the country for 10 years, Tony Blair has stepped down. Gordon Brown, Blair's number two for the past decade, takes up the reins.

Brown is viewed as solid and dependable, if a little dour. He is slightly to the left of Blair on most issues, though he has also pushed through a lot of business-friendly policies.

Gordon Brown is notoriously difficult to read; he gives very little of himself away. So what can we expect on the environment from a Brown premiership?

Can text messaging solve some of our cities’ climate & traffic challenges?

A story in the new Plenty magazine gives details on a cab company that's giving the late-night clubbing crowd of Liverpool great green service with the magic of text messages:

It's a solution any 14-year-old would love: The challenges of foreign oil dependency, global warming, and gridlock are not so big that you can't text-message your way out of them.

The Texxi text-dispatchers arrange carpool cab rides based on who's texting from where and their desired destinations. Besides the other benefits, it also saves its riders money, which is proving popular. The company is planning to leap the pond and expand to cities in Texas, California, and North Carolina -- but of course, you need to have a mobile phone that can text message, leaving this here Luddite out.

Gov’t doesn’t want to pay for them

Looks like the public teat is closing up shop: The government will not subsidise new nuclear power plants, so if the private sector does not provide the huge investments needed, the country will have to do without, the minister responsible for energy said on Thursday. The Labour government sees nuclear power as one of the […]

Food? Farms? No connection at all!

From the BBC:

The Linking Environment And Farming organisation found that 22% of 1,073 adults questioned did not know bacon and sausages originate from farms ... The survey also found four in 10 people did not know yoghurt is made using farm produce, nearly half were unaware the raw ingredients for beer start off in farmers' fields and 23% did not know bread's main ingredients came from the farm.

(I'm not pinging on the Brits; I'm sure the U.S. is even worse.)