healthier, happier and richer

The UK Energy and Climate Secretary has announced that, from 18 August 2010, local councils will be allowed to sell renewable electricity. This is fast and impressive work.

The French government has called for tenders for 3Gw of offshore wind off France, and has given a grant to GDF Suez for a district heating network in Paris, which will use renewable heat.

This is a commentary on the UK government’s new microgeneration strategy. It is good that it recognises the need to address non-financial barriers, but lack of strong regulatory framework will not deliver microgeneration or climate protection.

An extract from the introduction to Repowering Communities.

This is a summary of a longer paper by Prashant Vaze and Ed Mayo on how a new, low-carbon energy infrastructure can be financed at reasonable cost.

Last night (Thursday, 21 July 2011), Prashant Vaze and I held a launch event for our book.

Three months after the Fukashima nuclear reactor caught fire, Germany decided to phase out nuclear power. The decision stunned Europe’s energy policy community. Nuclear presently provides a quarter of Germany’s electricity – how would it plug the gap?

How Babylon, New York used money raised from waste collection charges to overcome barriers to getting homeowners to make their properties more energy efficient.

This article summarises what Berlin has done on energy efficiency. The material will be used in the Repowering Communities book. Comments very welcome.

Community-owned renewables are quite rare in the UK, but extremely common – mainly wind farms – in Germany and Denmark. The UK is at least now moving in the right direction, albeit slowly.

UK district heating schemes is an idea whose time has come. Those in Sheffield and Aberdeen are discussed in this article.

Freiburg has a well-deserved reputation as Germany’s green capital. It uses on about half of the energy that other European cities of 200,000 people do, and has become a world leader in solar. This article looks at what the city council has done to achieve this.

This is a case study of the Gigha community-owned wind farm in Scotland, carried out by Simon Dresner. Comments are welcome.

Lessons from California on what to do – and what not to do.

Rotterdam is now Europe’s largest port. It has a concentration of heavy industry, including oil refineries and power stations. So its contribution to climate emissions is substantial.

Austrian regions (Länder) play a significant role in energy, particularly regarding building efficiency and heating, including district heating. Upper Austria is one of nine regions, covering 12,000km2, with 1.4 million inhabitants. It is highly industrialised, with significant heavy industry (manufacture of steel and machinery).

This article is about how Upper Austria manages to get a third of its total energy use, and almost half its heat, from renewables.

Tiny Vermont is the second smallest state in the US by population and the fifth smallest by area. Its economic reconstruction efforts are understated. So too are its efforts to provide its homes and businesses with sustainable heat and power.

This is a paper that the three authors of the Repowering Communities book discussed with UK government officials and other experts at a seminar on 1 November 2010. It covers examples of which local governments are doing best on energy efficiency and renewables, and makes some recommendations.

This is a summary and analysis of UK’s white paper on Electricity Market Reform and Renewables Roadmap, published this week.

40% of heat in Denmark is delivered through district heating networks and 82% of this heat comes from Combined Heat and Power plants. How has Denmark done so well?