The UK is in the grips of a power cartel that actively hinders the fight against global warming by lobbying for its own narrow commercial interests at the cost of local democracy and the future health of the planet. It's an argument that off-gridders and anti-capitalist campaigners will be familiar with. It's not really what you expect to hear from an adviser to the government. Yet that is the belief of MP Alan Simpson, who occupies a place close to the heart of political power in Britain as energy adviser to the minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband. Click here for full story

The colours most commonly associated with nuns are black and white. The women of Stanbrook Abbey can now add a dash of green to their palette following their move to the world's first environmentally friendly nunnery. Located in the North York Moors national park, the £4.7m building features solar panels to provide hot water, a woodchip boiler, rainwater harvesting for laundry and toilet flushing and a roof covered in sedum grass to insulate the building and attract local wildlife. Click here for full story

first:utility announced a partnership with Google to bring Google PowerMeter to the UK.
Google PowerMeter is a software tool that allows users to see a near-real-time display of their energy usage through their iGoogle account on their computer or mobile phone, all enabled by first:utility’s innovative smart meter technology. first:utility is the only energy supplier in the UK to provide free smart meters to its customers, rolling them out across the UK in a region-by-region approach, starting with the Midlands. To date first:utility, which launched to the residential market in September 2008, has over 30,000 customers signed up to its service. Click here for full story

Councils that help residents install renewable energy generation capacity should receive some or all of the money they then receive from Feed-in Tariffs, the Local Government Association has claimed. Responding to the Government's consultation on Feed-in Tariffs (FiTs), which closed on October 15, the Local Government Association (LGA) said that it supported the introduction of FiTs, which will give small-scale generators of energy, from micro-wind turbines and photovoltaic (PV) panels, a payment for generating energy and for exporting it to the grid, from April 2010. Click here for full story

The UK governments plan to create a low-carbon economy by 2012 may be helped if homeowners switch their energy supply to microgeneration alternatives, one website has said. According to energyhelpline.com, the Committee on Climate Change is warning that more needs to be done to encourage people to be more environmentally-friendly by taking part in initiatives such as microgeneration. However, the government already plans to retrofit seven million homes with microgeneration systems and help 1.5 million more to install one themselves. Joss Garman, climate campaigner for Greenpeace, claimed that the switch is needed to get the country on track. Click here for full story

GE Energy has been awarded the contract to supply its ecomagination-approved
Jenbacher cogeneration technology to power two innovative, natural gas and biomass-fueled energy centers being built in the Olympic Park and Stratford City development. The centers will provide reliable and efficient power, heating and cooling systems for the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, as well as new buildings and communities that will develop after 2012. Click here for full story

Fast-food chain McDonald’s has reduced its carbon emissions in waste management by 48 per cent in London since June and diverted its non-recyclable waste from landfill. The store is working towards a “zero waste” to landfill strategy and 25 London restaurants are implementing an energy from waste programme. A total of 90 per cent of its waste is non-recyclable food contaminated waste. The McDonald’s waste is collected by waste firm Veolia Environmental Services and sent to their energy-from-waste plant – South East London Combined Heat and Power, based in South London. It is then converted into energy that is channelled into the National Grid. Click here for full story

London's rubbish could be used to generate enough energy to power two million homes and provide heat for 625,000 houses, a report has said. The capital produces around 22 million tonnes of waste yearly, enough to fill Canary Wharf tower every eight days. Producing gas from the rubbish could also cut London's carbon dioxide emissions by 1.2 million tonnes, the London Assembly study said. Click here for full story

Google may be best known for helping you find things on the web, but the online search company's latest move is a bid to make futuristic low-energy eco-homes a reality. Launching for the first time in the UK today, Google Powermeter is an online tool that allows householders to monitor their home's energy use and greenhouse gas emissions via the web, and so reduce their consumption and save money. Already being trialled in the US, the free energy-monitoring service uses new smart meters, or an add-on clip for conventional meters, to send electricity consumption to a personalised iGoogle web page. Users will be able to check their energy use anywhere in the world via a computer or mobile phone. Click here for full story

“George Monbiot was wide of the mark when he criticised Blue-NG for its use of vegetable oil as a fuel to generate electricity and heat. This emphatically does not include palm oil, which we regard as unsustainable. But in combination with recycled vegetable oil (RVO) and biogas from waste, Blue-NG will use UK-sourced rapeseed oil (OSR). This is crude, unrefined vegetable oil sourced as close as possible to our generating plants. It should not be confused with biodiesel, which is a heavily processed and refined high-carbon product, mixed with 95% fossil fuel diesel” Andrew Mercer, chief executive of Blue-NG. Click here for full story

A medieval castle has abandoned its dark ages roots and entered the 21st Century age of solar energy. Chirk Castle, near Llangollen, has installed solar panels onto its historic roof, thanks to an award from the National Trust's green energy fund. The trust owns the castle but some of the building is still lived in by descendants of its 16th Century owner. Click here for full story

Peter Browne, a renewable energy consultant who advises schools in Sussex, says many school's efforts to go green are hampered by slow-moving local authorities, which own the buildings and must give planning consent for measures such as wind turbines. "They never tell us what we can do, only what we can't, and that can take months," he says. "Everything takes so long. They want to make 300 primary schools in West Sussex sustainable by 2020; it's taken us a year to do one." There are success stories, though. Click here for full story

A new £20,000 bike shed at a Highlands primary school is capable of generating "green energy". The shelter at Glenelg in Wester Ross has solar panels on the roof to help provide classrooms with renewable energy. Half the project's cost was paid for by the Scottish government. Click here for full story

ENER-G Ground Source Solutions Ltd has won official certification for its expertise in delivering renewable heat pump technology. The Approved Contractor certificate means ENER-G has been recognised for the quality of its design, supply, and installation of heat pumps, in line with the exacting technical standards set out by the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS). Click here for full story

One of the most cherished articles of faith of the green movement – that wood-fuelled power stations can help save the planet – is being increasingly challenged by campaigners and conservationists around the world. Electricity generated by burning woodchips is on the verge of a global boom. …. in Britain, the next three years will see wood-fuelled power station capacity increase sevenfold, requiring, according to the campaign group Biofuelwatch, so much timber that it would need an area 12 times the size of Liechtenstein to grow it. Click here for full story

…………….. In mid-October the Department of Energy and Climate Change closed the consultation on the "feed-in tariff" proposal it has been forced to introduce by backbench MPs. Feed-in tariffs have kickstarted renewables in many countries, especially Germany, by offering consumers a healthy price for electricity they feed into the grid. The energy department will announce its decisions in about a month but, unsurprisingly, officials are aiming low. They want the tariff to offer returns on investment of 5-8%. That's not enough. The Germans get around 10%. Click here for full story

A wind turbine twice as tall as Nelson's Column could be erected on Hackney Marshes, the home of grassroots football. The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) wants to place the 120m structure on East Marsh to generate renewable energy as part of the legacy of the 2012 games. An 80m exclusion zone will be set up around the stem of the turbine, restricting access to green space for marsh users. Town Hall chiefs are behind the proposal because the turbine will give the local authority the opportunity to buy green energy, cutting carbon emissions and saving money. Click here for full story

Funding from npower means that a swimming pool that is part of a multipurpose centre on the Stackpole Estate in Pembrokeshire has been installed with enough renewable technology to make it the largest collection of solar thermal panels across the National Trust. Funding from npower - as part of the National Trust Green Energy Fund - enabled a total of 19 flat-plate solar panels to be installed on the roof of the pool at the Stackpole Centre by local contractor West Wales Solar Heating. The Green Energy Fund project invests in small scale renewable energy generation and other carbon saving projects at Trust sites across Wales and England. Click here for full story

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) has called for more investment into renewable energy technologies such as microgeneration systems in order to meet requirements for a low-carbon global industry. In its report, Climate Solutions 2, the international organisation said that renewable energy generation, carbon capture and storage, low-carbon agriculture and sustainable forestry are vital to reduce the effects of global warming. These should be backed up with government policies encouraging businesses and homeowners to install microgeneration systems on their properties, it added. Click here for full story

An npower funded project will see two historic villages owned by the National Trust attempt to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and energy bills as part of a community led programme. The initiative, which is similar to the government's Low Carbon Community Challenge, will show how major energy efficiency improvements are achievable in homes of any age - not just modern buildings - with savings possible from the biggest mansion to the average family house.
Click here for full story

Energy and Climate Change Minister Lord Hunt of Kings Heath will today chair the first meeting of the Domestic Heating and Hot Water taskforce. 47% of the UK’s carbon emissions come from the way we generate heat so a radical change will be needed to meet the UK’s ambitious carbon reduction targets. The taskforce has been set up to allow Government and industry to work together to find the most cost effective and realistic way of meeting the climate change goals. Click here for full story

Real, gutsy solar power is as rare as hen's teeth in this country. By the real deal I mean photovoltaic (PV) systems that convert sunlight into electricity as opposed to rather prosaic solar thermal systems that heat water. Last year just 6MW of solar PV was installed in this country. Compare and contrast the situation in Germany, where more than 1,500MW was installed last year and one in 10 buildings has a solar power system. Click here for full story

UK supermarket giant Tesco has committed to becoming a zero-carbon business by 2050, without purchasing offsets. Speaking at the launch in London of a new report ‘Consumers, business and climate change’, published by Manchester University’s Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI), Tesco CEO Terry Leahy announced a series of new initiatives through which Tesco intends to go carbon-free. Click here for full story

The first step to saving energy is changing behaviour in the home, and Oxford University engineers think they have the answer. Malcolm McCulloch and Jim Donaldson of the university's engineering department have designed a "smart" electricity meter that can automatically tell which appliances are on and how much energy they are consuming. They hope that, by itemising a home's power use and making wasted energy visible, people could act to reduce their energy bills and carbon footprint. Click here for full story

Brits could soon be heating their homes with gas produced from human and animal waste, says ‘big six’ energy supplier. Centrica, the owner of British Gas, is drawing up plans to build a biogas plant in the UK, according to The Times. The plant would use organic waste, such as cow manure and sewage slurry, to produce biomethane, which would be pumped straight into the national gas network.
Click here for full story

Request for Proposals opens 13th October 2009; Deadline for notification of intention to submit a Proposal – 5pm 19th October 2009; Deadline for submitting a Proposal - 16:00 on 17th November 2009 - Reducing the emissions from new and existing buildings is one of the key challenges for industry and Government in meeting urgent climate change targets. The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) is working on a strategic overview of the buildings sector and is currently developing a programme of activities for the next three years. Click here for full story

After months of deliberation, the UK government has announced a range of illustrative figures for feed-in tariffs (FITs), which it's calling a Clean Energy Cashback scheme. FITs are fixed payments made to the owners of small generating stations for the electricity that they export to the grid. Micro-generators need high payments to justify their expensive investment in buying and installing green generation. The proposed levels of FIT vary by the type of technology. Click here for full story

The UK Government’s Clean Energy Cash Back scheme – which will operate like a feed-in tariff – is proposing rates that are not high enough, says the Renewable Energy Association (REA). The consultation on the scheme closed yesterday with concerns mounting that the tariff rates are insufficient to attract investment in small-scale renewables, particularly from the commercial sector. Click here for full story

A planned 295 megawatt biomass power plant in Teesport, England, will supply 100 percent of the power required for grocer Tesco’s local import warehouse. MGT Power will own and operate the Tees Renewable Energy Plant, set for construction beginning in the first quarter of next year. The 500 million pound ($815 million) plant will run on about 2.4 million metric tons of woodchips per year and operate 24 hours a day. The chips will be sourced from certified sustainable forestry operations in North and South America and the Baltic Seas, according to MGT. Click here for full story

Quiet Revolution’s helical machines hit by moisture leak and critical report from Southwark council. The maker of one of the most popular brands of “urban” wind turbine has said it remotely shut down all its installed units after the discovery of a fault in August. Over half of Quiet Revolution’s 100 or so QR5 turbines, which have been installed on 55 sites owned by clients including Sainsbury’s, Network Rail and self-storage firm Big Yellow, are still out of action. The company has set a deadline of Christmas to restart the units, which cost about £38,000 each. Click here for full story

Consense has been appointed by Partnerships for Renewables (PfR) to build an online consultation system that will be adopted for over 50 public sector renewable energy projects. Consense will also be providing design and print services for PfR's consultation materials, including newsletters for local residents and public exhibition displays. Click here for full story

Shame on us. We consume so much. We gobble up natural resources at an alarming rate with little concern that those resources will never be replaced. Our trash, our waste, takes up precious and expensive space. Our communities all too often have to buy land just to fill it up with our throwaways. Slowly (very slowly) we’re getting better at dealing with our junk. …... While the bulk of our trash may be thrown in a hole in the ground to be covered with dirt, slowly, project-by-project, the methane gases created by the rotting of our garbage is being captured and used as fuel to generate electricity in landfill gas operations. At least our trash is useful when it’s used to make energy. Click here for full story

Homeowners in Scotland will be able to borrow up to £10,000 interest free in order to improve energy efficiency. The Scottish government has made £2m available for measures such as better insulation, more efficient boilers or small renewable energy systems. Click here for full story

A Scottish government programme for interest-free loans to help homeowners improve energy efficiency was dismissed as insufficient last night. Finance Secretary John Swinney launched a £2million pilot scheme yesterday. Loans of between £500 and £10,000 will be available for measures such as loft and cavity-wall insulation or solar panels. Mr Swinney said improving household efficiency to meet 2020 climate change targets could cost an average of £7,000 per home. Click here for full story

Two wind turbines have been installed in Cornwall as part of a plan to power a parish hall solely by green energy. The two 4m-high (13ft) micro turbines are the final components of a £40,000 renewable energy scheme set up at St Eval parish hall, near Padstow. The building already has solar panels on its roof.
Click here for full story

Reducing energy use will save organisations a total of £1billion and more than 4MtCO2 each year by 2020. The final details of the Government’s scheme to save organisations money on fuel bills and to reduce carbon emissions have been unveiled today by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme is a new regulatory incentive to improve energy efficiency in large public and private sector organisations. Large energy users in business and the public sector will be required to take part in the scheme from 1st April 2010. Following extensive consultation with businesses and trade bodies, DECC has made some improvements to the scheme. Click here for full story

Government has announced that it will revise the treatment of onsite renewables under the CRC scheme, but the REA warns that that the commercial sector will still be put off installing renewables. If a business has a renewable installation for which it claims ROCs or a feed in tariff, it will have to buy emissions allowances to cover the energy produced, even though renewables have zero emissions! This data is then used to compile a league table ranking companies according to their environmental performance. Click here for full story

The government's consultation on proposals for a system of 'Feed-In Tariffs' will close on 15th October, with the renewables industry concerned about levels of awareness of the new scheme among the hugely diverse potential investors. The REA campaigned with Friends of the Earth for the legislation that led to the Tariff proposals and the scheme was introduced with strong cross-party support. Tariffs will offer a fixed reward for every unit of renewable power generated, with a bonus for any surplus power fed back into the grid. Internationally Tariffs have been very successful leading to rapid growth in renewable energy technologies and widespread innovation with renewables in people's local neighbourhoods. The UK scheme will begin next April and will apply to renewables technologies like wind, PV and biomass up to 5MW in size, allowing for ambitious community schemes. Click here for full story

Sir John Rose, the chief executive of Rolls-Royce, has urged Britain to rebalance its economy towards engineering and industry, as he awarded his company's £15,000 Science Prize to a Gateshead school for developing small-scale wind turbines. Click here for full story

Generating more energy from a wider variety of waste will reduce the amount of material sent to landfill sites, produce electricity and heat more locally and reduce CO2 emissions. The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) is taking the first step in identifying the next generation of high efficiency technologies to generate low carbon energy from waste. Click here for full story