EU agree on something at last
It took a two-day summit after several weeks of discussions to get there but the EU has finally agreed on how much funding the developing world will need in order to deal with the consequences of climate change. And it’s as much as Gordon Brown suggested originally - €100 million a year by 2020.

What they couldn’t agree on was how much of that would come from Europe, undermining Swedish Prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s statement “The EU now has a strong negotiating position and the countdown to Copenhagen now has started." (COP 15 site) How so when they have just thrown a figure in the air? If the EU had agreed to pay their share of that now then it would be leading by example.

What’s more, the agreement on how to divide up the bill even within Europe is far from settled. Parts of the Eastern bloc are strongly against the fund corresponding to pollution levels, as theirs are high, and the richer nations are anti the Eastern states’ suggestion that it should be divided on a national income level – as then the bill would fall at our feet.

This may take more than a two-day jaunt in Brussels to sort through.

Still, Gordon Brown was happy, describing it as a “breakthrough.” Why have there been so many “breakthroughs” and “historic moments” at these meetings with nothing actually being done? Hmmph.

Severn Barrage energy schemes to be scrapped?
One of the biggest casualties of the UK recession could be the Severn Barrage renewable energy project – the concept of harnessing the power of the Severn tides to generate up to 5% of the UK electricity demand, carbon free. The Times reports that the possible £23bn project is likely to be scrapped due to the current financial difficulties faced in the UK.

The Severn Estuary has the second highest tidal ranges in the world holding within it huge amounts of power. Capturing this is vital to the government’s 30% renewables targets by 2020, a target we are way off hitting. However the sheer scale of the project means that it is hugely expensive. The Times quotes government figures of generation costs being £317 per Megawatt hour, which just can’t compete with around £85 for offshore wind.

The conservatives have made clear that they will scrap the scheme if they reach power.

What would you do?

Perhaps we will find the answer following a new project coordinated by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) - an £8 million fund to unlock the potential of marine energy. The PerAWat (Performance Assessment of Wave and Tidal Array Systems) is a collaboration between utilities, universities and private investors to bring down the generation price of marine energy and make it more competitive. The project hopes to develop mechanisms for accurately assessing energy potential and performance of wave and tidal systems in different scenarios.

Their systems intend to give greater forecasting potential and reduce investment risk. Find out more here http://www.energytechnologies.co.uk/Home/news/09-10-30/£8m_Marine_Project_announced.aspx

On the plus side…
Perhaps our government is hoping it’ll make up the deficit in its renewable energy target with geo-thermal power.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has just announced a £6m fund to explore geo-thermal energy, available to help companies find appropriate sites to harness clean energy from the earth. http://www.greenwisebusiness.co.uk/news/6-million-to-search-for-deep-heat-underground-836.aspx

An interesting iPhone Application
This is even better than the beer drinking iphone app adored by our IT team – someone has invented a wind speed calculator available on the iphone, supposedly accurate to 1.5mph.
It works through the microphone – you hold the iphone in the air and the microphone picks up the noise created by wind. From this it can calculate how fast the wind is blowing.

Check it out - http://goingapps.com/default.aspx but we haven’t tried it ourselves yet, so  don’t blame us if it doesn’t work!

Don’t let this TV ad be banned by the sceptics
This Act on Co2 government ad is being shown nationwide at the moment:

Amazingly, it has attracted over 600 complaints from climate sceptics who want to see it banned. Make sure they don’t win by sticking your name here.

And while you are browsing the internet this site is well worth a look - http://carbonquilt.org  . Carbon Quilt make visual impression of what carbon emissions would look like if we would see them.

Green Energy Republic
A Good Energy blog