News from Planet Pickles

Just back from jolly hols in France where we enjoyed the excellent roads, excellent food, wonderful hospitality (quite, we were not in Paris!) and the general spaciousness. Coming back seems to have landed us on the wierd and wonderful Planet Pickles (or perhaps Planet Spelman - or maybe they're a twin system?).

Have you see the Telegraph report about a return to weekly refuse collection? HMG appears to be planning to offer subsidies to councils to return to weekly refuse collection. That's my money! What bonkers part of CLG (or was it Defra?) thought up that idea? Is there not a sufficiently highly placed civil servant with a couple of neurons to rub together who can inform his or her parliamentary master or mistress that fortnightly collections work? Rubbish disposal has reduced under such regimes; and recycling has increased.

It's not a difficult system to get one's head around. And as for the anecdotes about an increase in rats etc. - it's hard for a rat to get into a wheely bin with a closed lid - maybe the methods of refuse collection should be considered, not the frequency.

It's time Mr Cameron put his money where his greenest-government-ever mouth is and gave Pickles and Spelman a good kicking (she obviously hasn't learned from the woodlands debacle).

Wasted Food

A recent exercise by the LGA has come up with a remarkable figure of £13.7bn as the cost of buying and throwing away good food and drink last year. That cost apparently covers the cost of the food, the cost of council workers taking it to landfill (including landfill tax) etc. so there is an element of apples and pears (no pun intended) here. Whatever, it is a shocking number. LGA further suggests that each household bought £520-worth of food last year that wasn't eaten. That's a statistic that I can believe. There's a higher sum which is very difficult to calculate that include the food unnecessarily eaten - but maybe that's an argument too far!

An Ill Wind?

I've recently come across an interesting report which provides some analysis of wind intermittency, volatility and average load factor. It's been produced for a pressure group seeking to protect wild land so has to be taken with something of a pinch of salt but it does purport to show that average load factors are lower than sometimes claimed, and that geographical smoothing of volatility doesn't always occur. I don't have the time to undertake a reanalysis to check on the conclusions - has anyone out there done anything like this? If nothing else it reinforces my belief that development of good storage technology is paramount if we are to increase the proportion of wind on the grid.

How Inconsiderate Is That?

Or that?

Grrrr!

Zero Carbon Homes - Watering Down but Common Sense

The announcement that the definition of a zero carbon home now excludes emissions from the likes of cooking appliances , entertainment systems etc. has enraged many but actually, there's a deal of pragmatism tucked in here. Was it ever realistic to expect builders and developers to second guess home-owners' behaviour. I think not. Of course, this does now put the pressure back on educators, opinion formers, appliance manufacturers etc. but so be it.

King Report - A Useful Angle

The recent report from David King is a very timely call to arms to consider the totality of the UK's potential nuclear future. There is widespread agreement on the need to decarbonise the country's electricity supply and although there are many voices that would not agree with me (see the quotes from Doug Parr in a recent Grauniad, for instance), I cannot see how that is to be done without new nuclear capacity. As King points out, that entails good management of the fuel fuel production/storage/reprocessing system. Indeed - it's more than good management - it's actually re-engineering and refocussing that's required. I've not seen much from Chris Huhne and the massed ranks of DECC on this aspect but it is vital if we are not to stagger from one botched muddle to another. King's called for a holistic approach to new nuclear is one that HMG should not ignore.

Yet Another Statement of the Bleedin' Obvious!

A few more trees have disappeared to produce "Global Report on Human Settlements 2011 - Cities and Climate Change" a 250 page document from the UN telling us (apparently - I refuse to pay $58 for this) that cities are a hot bed of climate changing emissions. Well, golly gosh! We know this! We know where the emissions arise. The issue is mitigation and adaptation - as much of the former as possible and as much of the latter as necessary. There is absolutely no need for another fat report whose only value is to prop up a wonky desk leg (do people still do that?). Welcome to grumpy old man land.