Energy

The ROCA 3 CHP plant in Rotterdam provides electricty and heat to 400,000 homes

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Back in 1882, Thomas Edison built the United States' first electric power plant. Pearl Street Station, which supplied the good folks of Lower Manhattan with electricity for lighting and steam for manufacturing, was around 50 per cent efficient.

125 years on, the typical UK power plant is just 38 per cent efficient. But those modern power plants that have been built on the same principles as Edison's are reaching efficiency levels of up to 95 per cent.

So how did Edison do it? And where are we going so wrong?

In this week's slightly tardy Weekly Geek, we're looking at combined heat and power (CHP): the system Edison was using, and the heart of any truly clean and efficient decentralised energy system. (Those who read the first Weekly Geek on decentralised energy may notice a fair bit of crossover.)

Excellent news reaches us from the Philippines where a ban on old-fashioned incandescent bulbs has recently been announced.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced plans for phasing out inefficient bulbs by January 2010, adding the Asian archipelago to the growing list of countries, including Ireland and Japan, which are slashing their emissions by shifting to compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). So pressure is building up on our own government - and indeed the entire EU - to bring in their own mandatory efficiency standards for light bulbs.

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.

Coal UK: cancelled due to climate change

This morning, energy minister Malcolm Wicks made his way to Lord's Cricket ground in London to deliver the opening speech for the coal industry's annual shindig.

He was expecting, we assume, to evangelise on the glorious future of coal in the UK, to the rapt and thunderous applause of his chums in the industry.

He probably wasn't expecting to find two metre fences blocking four of the entrances to the industry-government love-in, complete with climate change campaigners chained to the barricades.