Simple ideas

There are so many areas where we can all save a bit of energy, and money in the long run - some require a bit of investment up front, others don't. Only heating as much water as is needed is one way (we have one of these fellows which heats only the amount you specify, and has lower heat settings too, and very good it is too.

LED's are definitely the way to go for any lighting needs - they have gotten so good now that they well and truly embarrass CFL's, and the light from them is infinitely more 'usable', be it inside or outside. I have just installed a couple of LED PIR lights - - 10 watts, and the equivalent of an old 150w bulb

Appliances - when we need to replace them, go for A++ rated wherever possible, as these modern ones are remarkably more efficient than the ones of old. And of course, home insulation - loft, cavity wall.... it all makes a difference.

There is also a hell of a lot our government and councils could do, but there seems to be no real desire to do - and many of these ideas could have more than one benefit. Take energy production for example; how much of the stuff that we currently send to landfill could be incinerated to produce heat to power turbines? Of course, there is a negative to burning stuff, however there are technologies now to deal with those negatives, and no doubt there would be even more if there was a demand. I read something in the news yesterday where a furniture project was deeply frustrated that they had to send sofas to landfill just because someone had taken off the fire retardant labelling - a sofa is a hell of a big thing to sit in landfill and rot....

And what about excrement? It contains energy, and we already process it at sewerage treatment plants all over the country, so why not process it into bio-digesters, or even dry it and make it into pellets/briquettes to be burned in special power stations where the exhaust is suitably filtered.

Street lights - some of them are now going over to LED, but more need to follow.

Flooding - we need to have more vast run-off storm drains and storage lakes/aquifers - store some high, some low, and not only have you made a huge dent in the flooding problems, but you have the potential for reversible-pump power stations, AND more water stored to see us through droughts etc.

Best of it is, almost all of the above would result in jobs being created, and many of them long term. Would Brunel sit back and twiddle his thumbs if he were alive nowadays? Would he hell as like - he would have been out there creating infrastructure and solutions!

 

The problem with changing over to LED lighting is that the cost of replacing all our existing fittings would be much too high. I would need to employ an electrician and the saving on electricity would not produce enough to recovered the cost in decades.

 

Agreed, it is not necessarily as easy depending on your light fittings, however there will no doubt come a time when you will be replacing the fittings; in the interim, you may even see a retro-fit become available.

 

In fairness, there are now adaptors available that will allow LED bulbs to fit in pretty much any socket; the ones that seem to be the biggest problem are the lights that are already low voltage halogen jobs. Getting an LED to run off the low voltage supply isn't all that difficult (the most they would need really is a smoothing capacitor in the base), however the resulting light would be a bit flickery (half wave rectified) and a lot of the power supplies in these light fittings need to be presented with a minimum load or they overheat and fry themselves to death.

 

What that link doesn't tell you is that the government subsidy has been reduced and will stop. Since 2013 the subsidy has started being taken up by the ratepayer.

Building completed in 2004. It was reported in September 2013 that: “Central government is withdrawing the subsidy for using the Energy from Waste plant and the bill is being picked up by ratepayers, increasing every year from GBP57.35 per tonne in April this year [2013] to GBP161.35 per tonne by 2018”

The Nottingham incinerator opened about the same time and burns about three times the amount. There are a few in London that have been operating for about the same time and burning much more with the ones in Bexley and Edmonton having a capacity about four times that of the IoM.

There are planning application in place for about 100 around the country.