February 2008

This combined heat and power plant in Denmark is up to 95 per cent efficient

To celebrate our launch of EfficienCity, we're starting a new, weekly column for all the closet energy geeks out there. Every week, we'll take an in-depth look at one of the technologies we feature in EfficienCity - tidal power, wave power, wind energy, combined heat and power, micro-hydro power, anaerobic digestion, biomass and the rest. We'll also be looking at issues like baseload and the regulatory context for decentralised energy.

So remember to check back each Wednesday and, if you have any suggestions for energy solutions to climate change you'd like to see us cover, just post a comment at the bottom of this page and we'll try to slot it in.

Jubilant climbers on top of the chimney at Kingsnorth power station in October

I've been so busy with the launch of EfficienCity (our blueprint for a climate-friendly town) that I haven't had a chance to update you on all the goings on in our coal campaign since we delivered our alternative energy speech at the government / industry shindig last Wednesday.

On Friday morning, listeners of Radio 4's Today programme heard a withering attack on the proposed new coal plant at Kingsnorth from top Nasa scientist (and the world's most eminent climate scientist) James Hansen. The plans for the UK's first new coal plant in 30 years were, he said, a "terrible idea" which “will destroy the efforts of millions of citizens to reduce their carbon emissions”.

If you're looking for some web-based wonders to inform, entertain or inspire, here's what's caught our collective eyes recently:

• The Story of Stuff has been doing the rounds since before Christmas but Annie Leonard's occasionally breathless but totally brilliant film about resources, consumption and consumerism is worth mentioning again.According to Annie, natural resources in the developing world are seen as "our stuff that got on somebody else's land".
• Another oldie-but-goodie is Breathing Earth, a global map that shows when someone is either born or dies, plus the CO2 emissions from each country. In real time. Be afraid, be very afraid.
• It looks like video, but apparently this evocative climate change film is composed entirely of still images by Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk
• So popular they had to get bigger servers, this video shows what happened when 200-plus people stopped moving in New York's Grand Central Station. It's not really green but it's really cool.

Visit EfficienCity, our climate friendly town

If a picture speaks a thousand words, a multimedia-packed, animation-filled interactive town must speak a million. Which is why we've launched EfficienCity - to explain exactly what decentralised energy is and how it works in practice (which can otherwise be a wordy business).

Yesterday the Food Standards Agency (FSA) finally announced that it's going to review its misguided policy advising us all to eat at least two portions of fish every week. The independent watchdog, which is charged with protecting the public interest on food safety and health issues, has been pushing the 'two a week' figure in recent years - conveniently overlooking the fact that our over-exploited fisheries can't possibly sustain the increases in fishing needed to meet this level of consumption.

Following the disclosure last week that power-generating company Eon has been negotiating behind the scenes to get the government's backing to build the UK's first new coal-fired power station for 30 years, Greenpeace's lawyers have written to the energy minister, John Hutton, to insist that the government hold a public inquiry.