The green shoots of hi-tech success

Environmental technologies have become big business.

Having blazed its way to the top of the political agenda, the environment is now a hot topic in company boardrooms around the globe.

Firms, keen to extol the green virtues of their products over rivals' goods, are investing serious money in an effort to clean up their acts.

Research by the Energy Saving Trust showed that the average home had up to 12 devices charging or on standby at any one time.

It was the sheer number of devices left on when not being used that triggered the idea behind Bye Bye Standby, a system that allows people to switch off all their equipment by pressing just one button.

Darryl Mattocks, managing director of Domia, described his eureka moment for his device.

"I was leaving my house early one morning, and you could just see there little red lights everywhere," he recalled, "and when I arrived in the office, again there were little red dots all over the place."

The system has two main components: "smart sockets" and a remote control.

"You plug a smart socket into the wall socket and then you plug your device into the smart socket," Mr Mattocks explained.

"When you go to bed, you press a button on the remote control and everything switches off. Likewise, in the morning you press the button and everything switches back on."

But why don't people just switch off or unplug things when they have finished using them?

"At the end of the day, there is an off switch on the socket and there is no reason why you cannot press that but, in reality, the socket is often in an inconvenient place - such as behind furniture."

Because the system uses radio frequencies to allow the remote control to communicate with the smart sockets, it needs to draw a small current itself in order to work.

But Mr Mattocks said: "We have got consultants to actually go through a typical lifestyle and usage and the small amount of power the unit consumes is far outweighed by the savings you make."

He says the system would help a typical household cut its electricity bill by £38 each year and save the equivalent of 166kg of carbon dioxide emissions.

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20 ways to go green at home

You don't have to live in the latest concept house to help save the planet. Donnachadh McCarthy has transformed his leaky, draughty Victorian terrace into a zero-carbon triumph – and he's set out this simple plan so that you can do it too.

20. Power to the people

The biggest investment in the creation of my retro-eco home was installing a solar panel for electricity (a solar photovoltaic system). That was way back in 1997. As I have learnt to be more efficient in how I use electricity, it has provided an increasing proportion of my power.

A few years back, I finally succeeded in exporting more electricity to the National Grid than I imported, which was a cause for much celebration. Today, a similar 2KwH solar system will cost about £12,000, and the government grant (which was slashed in Gordon Brown's last Budget) now stands at £1,500 per system.

By the way, the domestic wind turbine experimentally installed on my roof 18 months ago has been a failure, producing just enough power for one energy saving bulb.

For advice visit www.lowcarbonbuildings.org

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Demand for 'green home' rebates

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.


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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.

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