We need your good ideas for stopping global warming. These can range from practical things that you can do in the home, to measures that we should push governments to take. The best ideas will be taken from the forum and posted on the downwithco2.co.uk manifesto.
Downwithco2.co.uk is dedicated to making it easy for people to save energy and cut their personal contribution to climate change by giving them information and putting them in touch with companies that can help reduce CO2 emissions. Downwithco2.co.uk partners with many companies who have huge experience providing insulation, home insulation, wall insulation, attic insulation, energy grants, solar panels, solar heating, solar water heating, low energy kettles, carbon offsets, low energy light bulbs, biomass boilers, efficient central heating, energy saving double glazing, biomass fuels, wood burning boilers, fuel efficient boilers, wind turbines, air-source heat pumps and a host of other fuel efficient and ecologically sound goods and services. Downwithco2.co.uk home page
Electric kettle controllers
For many purposes, eg instant coffee, really boiling water is not needed, only water that is about 90 to 99 degrees Celsius. Therefore all that bubbling and steaming which happens in a normal electric kettle for a few seconds just before it switches itself off is just wasting energy and putting extra water vapour in the air. My idea is a plug-in timer which could be quickly and easily set in ten-second increments to run a kettle for a specified period, then switch off. People would quickly learn from experience that it takes, say 90 seconds to heat half a litre of water enough to make good coffee, therefore you press the "set time" button nine times, then press "start". If your guess is too high, the kettle will still switch off in the normal way; if you guess too low, you get your drink slightly cooler than you want and adjust accordingly next time. This device could be cheap to make and given the number of times people use their kettles could save a significant amount of energy. Until better-designed kettles come along.
Some of the new heating
Some of the new heating systems are very efficient even when coupled with modern designer radiators.
Air Conditioners
Hey guys I have a good idea to save water.Great efforts are made to save water during rainy season by water harvesting.But if we can collect water released by our airconditioners drain pipe ( Hotels,Offices,Homes etc)we will be able to save billions of gallons of water per day.
This is the purest form of water as this is condensed water vapour; and can be used for a variety of purposes.
This can be collected by directing the drain pipe of all the airconditioners to a bucket or pool.
Please spread this word or provide me with a link by which i can get my idea to the leaders.
Global COOL Idea
Every body have general concept to stop global warming is to implant trees and save energy in some mean.
My idea is bit technical but there is a huge scope to work in this field. Mostly bio technologist can think in this direction.This idea will help in climate control as well as fighting global warming.
Description :
1. Global Cool Concept : Like refrigerator which is an electronics device , works as cooling device, we can have controlled hybrid plants which can produce such effect ( Cooling effect). These plants will be purly natural but some chemical added to it or concept of hybridicity used.
2. Plants implementation and benefits : Hybrid plants can be grown and categorized for different use.
E.G:
Hybird plant 1 :- This can be the type which will generate access oxygen and help in cooling.This can be implant in such areas which is most affected by warming.
Hybrid plant 2 :- This can be the type which will have deficiency of oxygen and efficient in producing such element which can reduce cooling.There should be one counter part of hybrid plant 1. This can be used in coolest areas of the world to control the climate.
Hybrid plant 3:- This can be of type which can control heavy rain.
Hybrid plant 4 :- Most of the trees releases Oxygen and water. We can have plant which can release more water than the Oxygen.This can help avoiding Drought situation.
There can be number of plants which can help in reducing global warming effectively,efficiently and naturally.
Cordless phone energy figures
My wife and I recently won an energy monitor in a local competition. We have found that our BT cordless phone we bought 2.5 years ago uses 32 Watts of energy in standby! Cordless phones are probably the only device in the home that has to be on constantly in standby. I can't think of any other device that cannot be switched off at the wall when "not in use".
32 Watts equates to a cost of 256 KWH or £64 per year (£2 per WattYear) or £160 over the 2.5 years we've had the phone (not long). We went to try to buy a new one but there are no power figures on the boxes! Some phones use 0.3 Watts, some 3.2 Watts, ours uses 32 Watts. When shelling out £45 for a cordless phone we don't know if it will cost us £64 per year to run it or 60p - or what the impact is on the planet! What we need is energy information on boxes to compare phones against each other - simple, straightforward and blindingly obvious.
Some phone models now say "Extremely Low Consumption" but others say nothing. A simple standard is required: put the standby energy consumption in Watts (not milliWatts, deciWatts, kiloWatts or anythng else as this will be confusing) on the box of every cordless phone package.
Thanks.
The solution is trees
In the UK alone, there are many fertile lands which do not grow any crops nor there are any houses on it (most of the lands surrounding highways are like these). The owners of these lands cut the grass once in a while. However if the government passes a law that if the owners of these lands grow trees on these lands instead of just grass, they will get tax reduction. And more the trees, more the tax reduction. Thus there would be a lot more trees around to absorb the CO2 emmisions. This may help to solve the problem to atleast some degree. Please let us make this happen since the developed countries are the major contributors of CO2 emmisions.
Simple action, great results
Global warming is the biggest challange facing mankind and unfortunately the developed countries are the biggest contributors. We are the biggest contributors because we use excess eletricity, excess water, excess fuel, etc. Amongest these "excesses", excess electricity is at the top spot.
We have many supermarket chains in the UK like Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, etc amounting for 100s of stores and each store having 100s of lights. And if you have observed, these supermarkets keep the lights switched on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week irrespective of the store being open or closed. This results is massive wastage of electricity by 100s of lights in 100s of stores in 10s of countries. This must stop! There is no sense in keeping the lights switched on. If the stores are worried about burglary, they can install more CCTVs or put lights that gets switched on when the sensor detects movement or keep 5% of the lights switched on. Please let us make this happen.
vacuum insulated hot water tanks
Hi all,
Im new to this forum but I thought I might share this with you. I have recently been thinking of buying a biomass boiler for my house because my combi boiler uses vast amounts of gas to heat my solid walled house. I then thought that I would then need to install a hot water tank in my house. I tried to think of the most efficient way to keep the water hot. Obviously the first thing I thought of was to insulate the tank, then I thought of a vacuum tank.
It would work on the same principle as vacuum flasks for hot tea and coffee. The tank would be similar to an ordinary hot water tank but it would also have an air tight metal skin around the tank. Inside this skin would be a vacuum i.e. no air inside the skin. This would immediately prevent heat loss due to convection ( same principle as a radiator) and as the inner wall of the skin will have a shiny chrome effect surface, this will reduce heat loss via infra-red radiation (heat). The inner tank will probably be supported on rubber insulators in an attempt to limit conduction of the heat from the tank. Finally, the already highly efficient tank can then be insulated in the normal way by a hot water jacket.
I can see this working because I service Liqiud Oxygen Systems (LOX) on aircraft and they work on the same principle to keep LOX cold at around -182 degree C.
Thankyou for reading my post.
Painting the town white
Painting the town white might seem attractive on the face of it but is it a good idea in cities in the northern hemisphere that need to heat themselves a lot in winter? Wouldn't the loss of solar radiation to heat the buildings actually mean we used more fossil fuels and so sped up Global Warming?
Painting the town white
One of the reasons that the melting of the ice caps is a bad thing is because the ice refelects sunlight (and heat) back into space, rather than absorbing it. Therefore as they melt we lose this effect and global warming speeds up even more (a feedback loop). I wonder, shouldn't we start colouring all rooves, buildings and roads white so that they reflect the sunlight back into space? This would also help solve the problems of hot cities (and reducing the need for air conditioning in the sumer).
German Passivhaus Standards
I've read in the downwithco2 manifesto that you suggest all houses should be built to German Passivhaus standard? What is this and why is this a good idea?
I found this on a site about
I found this on a site about Passivhaus:
1. very good levels of insulation with minimal thermal bridges
2. well thought out utilisation of solar and internal gains
3. excellent level of airtightness
4. good indoor air quality, provided by a whole house mechanical ventilation system with highly efficient heat recovery
By specifying these features the design heat load is limited to the load that can be transported by the minimum required ventilation air. Thus, a PassivHaus does not need a traditional heating system or active cooling to be comfortable to live in - the small heating demand can be typically met using a compact services unit which intergrates heating, hot water and ventilation in one unit (although there are a variety of alternative solutions).
PassivHaus
But................if you've got a chimney/ open fire-place (there's four in our house) it makes draft proofing bit of a problem. I'm not sure I'd want to live in a house where there;s no air flowing in or out.......