Households should receive council tax rebates to encourage them to install solar panels and wind turbines, an independent think tank claims.
The New Local Government Network says planning laws should be relaxed to increase the take-up of green energy.
It also suggests local authorities could offer interest-free loans towards the cost of installation.
But the Campaign to Protect Rural England says precious landscapes must be safeguarded.
Currently the government offers a grant of up to 30% towards the cost of installing wind turbines or solar panels.
It has also been consulting on whether they should be permitted without planning permission where the impact on neighbours is minimal.
full article
Tuesday 28 August 2007
Sunday 26 August 2007
Hybrid Solar House
Enertia® is a new technology for building houses so that they heat and cool themselves. This is achieved from the design, the orientation, and the materials of the home, rather than a furnace, heat pump, or air-conditioner. Three basic, millions-of-year-old principles of nature, combined with state-of-the-art windows, radiant coatings, and prefab manufacture, make it possible, and practical. The principles are inertia, thermal currents, and the energy capacity of wood.
The goal is a comfortable living space - in an often hostile environment. Remarkably, our planet Earth achieves this, in the absolute-zero temperature of space, by weather patterns and thermal inertia. This "ecological balance" is possible because Earth has an atmosphere that traps and distributes the sun's energy by thermal currents. Enertia® Building Systems has applied this concept to Architecture.
Enertia® is among the first, and perhaps most life-changing, practical inventions to come from the modern science of BIOMIMICRY. It is an incredibly simple, foolproof natural concept - and it can solve one of the greatest problems of all mankind: how to comfortably house a growing population without straining the world's material resources, or dwindling energy supply. Until now, "Natural Architecture" has been about using natural materials, like wood and stone, for aesthetic reasons only. Enertia® is a performance-based "Natural Architecture," going a step further, using these materials as energy carriers, in a dynamic new design with a life of its own.
full article
Solar panels - the new double-glazing
Saving the planet, or saving on power bills - either way there is powerful motivation for harnessing solar energy to heat your home, even after this dismal summer. But it is all too easy for persuasive sales people to hijack the green energy message and leave customers, often elderly or vulnerable, with a system that can cost them a year's pension or more. It might only prove worthwhile for their grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
Purchasers could end up paying substantially over the odds - up to twice as much as a competitive quote in some cases. And they are often left confused by double-glazing-style sales methods such as "drop closes" - offering a big reduction on an inflated price but only if you sign up there and then.
full article
Purchasers could end up paying substantially over the odds - up to twice as much as a competitive quote in some cases. And they are often left confused by double-glazing-style sales methods such as "drop closes" - offering a big reduction on an inflated price but only if you sign up there and then.
full article
Saturday 25 August 2007
Ground Source Heat Pumps
Recent environmental and energy issues have begun fueling more interest in renewable energy sources, such as geothermal, which takes advantage of nature. The temperature of the earth a few feet below ground is a constant 50 to 70 degrees everywhere in North America. A geothermal system uses that constant temperature to heat and cool homes.
The system contains hundreds of feet of polyethylene coils buried about five feet beneath the ground’s surface. These coils act as a huge radiator. They contain water with an antifreeze solution that is circulated under 60 pounds of pressure.
The system absorbs and exchanges heat in the ground. The fluid circulating in the pipes absorbs the ground’s heat when the weather is cold to produce warm air for the house. When the weather is hot, the system reverses. Heat is pulled from the building and deposited in the cooler ground to create cool air for the house.
These systems do not burn fossil fuel, so they don’t emit greenhouse gases or contribute to global warming. They are quiet, easy to maintain and extremely efficient. Ritchey said the WaterFurnace system achieves 500 percent efficiency.
Geothermal systems typically deliver four times as much energy as it takes to run the system. In other words, for every one kilowatt-hour of electricity used to run the equipment, four kilowatt-hours of energy are pulled from the homeowner’s backyard. Electricity is needed mainly just to run the unit’s fan, compressor and pump.
This efficiency results in savings for consumers. According to Ritchey, the cost to heat and cool an average 2,500-square-foot home in Fort Wayne with a geothermal system would only be $780 a year. The same home with a high-efficiency natural-gas system would cost $1,497 to heat and cool, he said.
Even homes that already have a traditional furnace system can take advantage of “green” geothermal technology. WaterFurnace’s newest system, called Envision Split, can save homeowners up to 70 percent on their heating and cooling costs, Ritchey said.
It has the highest heating and cooling efficiency rating of any other split product in its class certified by the Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Institute. It is dubbed a “split” system because it works with existing fossil-fuel furnace systems. A split system uses an existing gas furnace for its air handler and forced-air distribution.
Split systems typically handle all of the cooling demand and all of the heating demand, except for extreme cold, when conventional furnaces operate most efficiently. Geothermal units on split systems are typically smaller, and the return-on-investment time is shorter.
full article
The system contains hundreds of feet of polyethylene coils buried about five feet beneath the ground’s surface. These coils act as a huge radiator. They contain water with an antifreeze solution that is circulated under 60 pounds of pressure.
The system absorbs and exchanges heat in the ground. The fluid circulating in the pipes absorbs the ground’s heat when the weather is cold to produce warm air for the house. When the weather is hot, the system reverses. Heat is pulled from the building and deposited in the cooler ground to create cool air for the house.
These systems do not burn fossil fuel, so they don’t emit greenhouse gases or contribute to global warming. They are quiet, easy to maintain and extremely efficient. Ritchey said the WaterFurnace system achieves 500 percent efficiency.
Geothermal systems typically deliver four times as much energy as it takes to run the system. In other words, for every one kilowatt-hour of electricity used to run the equipment, four kilowatt-hours of energy are pulled from the homeowner’s backyard. Electricity is needed mainly just to run the unit’s fan, compressor and pump.
This efficiency results in savings for consumers. According to Ritchey, the cost to heat and cool an average 2,500-square-foot home in Fort Wayne with a geothermal system would only be $780 a year. The same home with a high-efficiency natural-gas system would cost $1,497 to heat and cool, he said.
Even homes that already have a traditional furnace system can take advantage of “green” geothermal technology. WaterFurnace’s newest system, called Envision Split, can save homeowners up to 70 percent on their heating and cooling costs, Ritchey said.
It has the highest heating and cooling efficiency rating of any other split product in its class certified by the Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Institute. It is dubbed a “split” system because it works with existing fossil-fuel furnace systems. A split system uses an existing gas furnace for its air handler and forced-air distribution.
Split systems typically handle all of the cooling demand and all of the heating demand, except for extreme cold, when conventional furnaces operate most efficiently. Geothermal units on split systems are typically smaller, and the return-on-investment time is shorter.
full article
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