Thanks to Peter and Simon for their posts last week.

Has Tesla really killed of the myth of rubbish electric cars as Simon says? And are we just trying to make another Tesla as Peter says? (more…)

This post was inspired by a couple of comment posters who got in a discussion about Good Energy. Andre - in my opinion the claims (you refer to) of Good Energy don’t stack up. The idea that by selling existing green electricity to someone you can encourage someone else to build a wind farm is tenuous at best (more…)

This was inspired by some stats that Stuart put in a comment on my blog post about Shell pulling out of offshore. Stuart, on the question of what the real problem for onshore wind is – you threw me for a day or so with your statistics from the BWEA, good source, hard to argue with. But on closer examination I think you’ve perhaps not read them quite right. (more…)

I was in Norfolk yesterday meeting the team that are building the car for us. We’ve reached the end of the feasibility phase (the donor car is in absolute pieces). We shot some more film on the day and now have enough to make a short promo to tout to the TV companies, to see if any of them want to follow the project from here - the building and testing of the car. Here’s a short clip to give an idea of where we’re coming from. See this other blog post for more info on the project.

Big news yesterday. Shell have pulled out of the London Array – the world’s largest offshore windfarm proposal. Bit of a shock to the well-spun world of offshore wind. As is the reason - that it doesn’t stack up financially. Shell, bless em, with record first quarter profits of £3.9 billion - you’d think they could afford a few windmills. Actually what they’re saying is they can’t make enough money out of it. Profit before planet of course. (more…)

But I am a bit of a petrol head. I like fast things, mostly bikes. People ask how I can be both a petrol head and an environmentalist – fair question. Well nobody’s perfect, I’m certainly not. We all live in the real world, the one in which we make compromises and promises to do better, and occasionally do do the things we know in principle, it would be better if we didn’t. Life and the need to live a better (zero carbon) one is a journey, there’s no overnight solution and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over things we can’t change right now. That said, by the way, I only did 3,000 miles in a car last year, I’m getting to grips with it. (more…)

I discussed Feed in Tariffs with David Cameron at our Reading turbine last week. The Tories have a policy proposal to introduce Feed in Tariffs – to do something about the lack of progress we’re making with Renewable Energy in the UK. But I don’t think this will help at all. (more…)

I met the man himself last week, in Reading at our Green Park wind turbine – David Cameron was in the ‘hood’ doing local political stuff and asked to have a closer look at our mill - so I showed him round. I’m glad I did.

We talked about the 1,000 homes the turbine can power every year and other bits and pieces (more…)

I often get asked to explain why the price of green electricity rises when the price of brown electricity does. I realise it’s counter intuitive. To understand it you need an understanding of how the market works. Here’s my attempt to explain: (more…)

Nope, no April fool - the Government is trying to fudge UK renewables targets – again. Splashed on the front page of the Guardian this weekend … the story had three threads:

1. The bonkers idea from Lady Whatshername, that the UK should be able
to build renewables projects in the developing world and count them towards UK targets for renewables.

First we had carbon offsetting, and now we have Target Offsetting. Renewable Energy is about more than (more…)