Have you got green fatigue?

Recent environmental messages have made such an impact on a friend of mine that, a couple of weeks ago, he broke a four-year prohibition and walked back into Burger King. "Intensive beef production, clone town Britain, just so much blah," he said, by way of explanation. "Nobody else really seems to be doing much about it, so why should I bother?"

My friend is the embodiment of one of the great fears of the environmental lobby. Fifteen years ago, the term "compassion fatigue" indicated a general disillusionment with fund-raising concerts and famine appeals. The cause was too hopeless, governments too apathetic, and individuals too impotent. Slowly, and for similar reasons, the term "green fatigue" has started to creep into the dinner-party conversations of the composting classes.

And, if anything, with more reason. Environmental campaigners worry that individuals see their actions as largely irrelevant when set against the enormity of global climate change. While famine appeals parade a simple, striking message – send a tenner, save a child – no such easy cause and effect exists for global warming. By contrast, the solutions to climate change seem hugely complex and controversial.

"The problems we face are of a magnitude no one has seen in at least two generations," says Alex Steffen, the executive editor of WorldChanging, a website and book that promote innovative solutions for sustainable living. "The scale of the actions people are being told to take by green consumerism groups and businesses, on the other hand, are so small as to seem meaningless. I think that more and more people see this widening gulf and lose hope."

And if we're not all losing hope just yet, many of us are becoming increasingly cynical. To campaigners, that's not surprising. As Steffen suggests, businesses have turned environmentalism into a marketing strategy. A new term, "green-washing", describes companies that paint a superficial green gloss on conventional business practices. When firms such as BP and Wal-Mart parade their environmentally friendly credentials, scepticism is not only inevitable, says Steffen, it's "a necessary antidote".
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The Wattson (Eco Meter)

Technology companies really seem to be getting to grips with the idea of "green gadgets" and "carbon footprints" this year, but we could all be doing more to help. Step forward the Wattson, a lovely looking device that could help you save money as well as the planet.
Simply clip its transceiver to the cable between your electricity meter and your fuse box, and the wireless Wattson will display the amount of electricity being used in your house in real-time. It's frightening to see the read spike and then plummet as you turn light switches, televisions and kettles on and off. It will even display an estimate of your annual energy bill. With its compact dimensions and lovely, glossy white finish, the Wattson suits even the most minimalist decor, and you can enable LED warnings to give you a visual clue of sudden spikes in energy use: it glows red when energy use is high, and blue when it is low.

There is even an online community of Wattson users: hook your device up to your computer's USB port to download a record of your energy use, calculate how you could save money on your energy bill, and see how your energy consumption compares to other Wattson owners. Educational and illuminating
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UK Wave Farm Gets Government Go-Ahead

Wave Hub, a large scale wave farm being developed off the coast of Cornwall, England, has cleared its last major regulatory hurdle. Yesterday, the British Government gave planning approval for the GBP 28 million [US$55 million] project, which is scheduled to come online in 2009.


The consent announcement was made by John Hutton, Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Funding for the project has already been approved by the South West of England Regional Development Agency (RDA), which is investing in a range of demonstrator projects in the wave, tidal and biomass sectors to promote the development of renewable energy in South West England.

"This is a fantastic confidence boost for this emerging industry," said Maria McCaffery, Chief Executive of BWEA, the trade and professional body for the UK wind and marine renewables industries. "Wave Hub will be a crucial part of the learning curve for everyone with an interest in wave energy development around the world and will underpin the growing confidence in these exciting technologies."

Wave Hub will include an onshore substation connected to electrical equipment on the seabed about 16 kilometers (10 miles) offshore via a sub-sea cable. The Wave Hub project will cover an area of sea measuring four kilometers by two kilometers—and give companies developing wave energy technology the ability to plug into Wave Hub to test their devices.

Each wave device developer will be granted a lease of between five and 10 years in an area of approximately two square kilometers.

Four wave device developers have already been chosen to work with the South West RDA on the project. They are Oceanlinx, Ocean Power Technologies Limited, Fred Olsen Limited and WestWave, a consortium of E.On and Ocean Prospect Limited, using the Pelamis technology of Ocean Power Delivery Ltd.

Up to 30 wave energy devices are expected to be deployed at Wave Hub and will float on the surface of the sea. The water at the deployment site is approximately 50 meters deep.

Matthew Spencer, Chief Executive of Regen SW, the renewable energy agency for South West England, added: "This is great news. Wave Hub is the right idea, in the right place, at the right time. Now the engineers and the developers can get cracking and make Cornwall the place where wave energy comes of age."

A new independent economic impact assessment, commissioned by the RDA, has shown that Wave Hub could create 1,800 jobs and £560 million in the UK economy over 25 years. Almost 1,000 of these jobs and £332 million would be generated in South West England.

Wave Hub could generate enough electricity for 7,500 homes, directly saving 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide over 25 years. This would support South West England's target for generating 15% of the region's power from renewable sources by 2010.

Tim German, Director of the Cornwall Sustainable Energy Partnership, which has been focusing on the benefits of Wave Hub to Cornwall, said, "We have been eagerly awaiting this news which clears the way for this exciting project, casting the world's eyes on the UK's green peninsula. It will be a key feature of the industrial revolution of the 21st century, playing an important role in Cornwall's economic and low carbon future."

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has committed £4.5 million towards the cost and the RDA has already invested in excess of £2 million to get it to this stage. In April the RDA approved £21.5 million of funding for Wave Hub.

Half of this is expected to come from the European Regional Development Fund through the Convergence Programme for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.


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Would You Pay More For An Eco Home?

Developers are in for a bit of a rough ride if they are to meet government standards for sustainable homes.

The Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH), which aims for all new homes to be zero-carbon by 2016, is currently not mandatory, but the Government is reviewing the option to make it so from April 2008.

This must surely be good news for the environment: stopping the ice caps from melting is, after all, the very point of the zero carbon agenda.

But new research from Savills wonders whether developers will be able to deliver the CO2 targets, and, more to the point, whether Joe Bloggs buying a new home will be willing to foot the bill.

Build Vs Buy

First off, says Savills, developers have been subject to rising costs thanks to heavy competition for land.

Even without the CSH being made compulsory, quantity surveyors estimate that new building regulations relating to "sustainable communities" policies and other green measures could add 5.5 per cent to build costs each year.

Using the Savills long-run average of 4.6 per cent capital appreciation in house prices, it's easy to see that there will be a shortfall between property prices and building costs.

What Buyers Want
Which leads on to the next question: will buyers be prepared to pay more for a completely kitted out carbon no-go home?

Savills found that homeowners are certainly eco-savvy, but not necessarily keen on the eco-medicine being prescribed by the Government. In a nut-shell: they're all for it if it saves them money, but less enthusiastic if they have to pay more..

As the report notes: "The importance that occupiers attach to various green features seems to be largely related to saving money rather than saving the planet."

Energy saving features were rated as important by 74 per cent, low running costs by 77 per cent and good thermal insulation by 84 per cent.

But when it came down to whether buyers would pay more for these green enhancements the figures melted away like ... well, like icebergs on the fringes of Antarctica.

Energy saving features were the biggest draw, as around 25 per cent of buyers conceded they would part with more cash for these.

The Cost of Going Green

Clearly, developers are facing something of a dilemma if they are to invest in carbon-neutral housebuilding that will carry overheads that cannot be passed onto the buyer.

While lower levels of sustainable living have been estimated by English Partnerships to average between £3,000 and £6,000 per dwelling, the holy grail of carbon-free homes, level 6, could pile on a potential £26,000 to £36,000 to building costs.

The Government is waiving stamp duty on zero-carbon homes up to £500,000 starting from October to help offset building costs. But things will be far tighter at the top end where the stamp duty exemption will be capped at £15,000.

So there's a lot of horse-trading to be done between the Government, the developers and homeowners on who will shoulder the costs. The alternative is that the specs for truly zero-carbon homes are downgraded – watch this space.

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