^{Video production: TWA Productions}

A day at Bruntingthorpe

Two weeks ago now we took the Nemesis to Bruntingthorpe, for it’s first real track day.

We had two purposes, to test safety followed by speed.

The safety aspect was about the stability of the car in the event that one of the motors or belts suddenly quit – having separate rear drives means we have the potential for some considerable torque steer in the wrong circumstances.

So our test pilot took the car down the track at increasing speeds, while the co pilot threw a switch – to disable one motor. The car has a system that responds to the loss of drive on one wheel, we needed to know if it was responding fast enough.

The results were good. In a straight line the impact of losing one motor, even at speeds well in excess of 100mph, was very slight (on the steering).

Later in the day we went on to try the same thing driving hard round bends, and eventually we found the limit and spun the car – but the circumstances it took to pull this off were a long way from real road conditions.

Before that though (while we still had plenty of battery) we did some speed tests…….

Results as follows –

Not bad for our first real test. We reckon the motors are spinning about 10% less fast than they could and we think there’s some torque limit applied by software – because we just can’t spin the wheels…..

We’re looking at both of these and confident there’s quite a bit more in the car yet. Top end and 0 to 100.

While we do that, the car is finally off to the paint shop, we’re packaging a fast charger to fit in the boot (for some distance work) and getting ready to launch on the road in October.

So this is the penultimate episode, our next one should take us right up to the launch.

Finally we’re almost there. It’s a good place to be.

Cheers.

PS – In what must be a sign of the times – there were more EVs and Hybrids on test the day we were at Bruntingthorpe than there were conventional ones. Roll on the day.

So, one night, I was happily drinking my beer and tending to my inbox of endless boring emails that had be answered but were of no real consequence, when Lester, my landsailing buddy texted me a link to fasterthanthewind.org. Lester knows a lot, and if he says this needs my attention, then it gets it. I am not sure if it was how many beers I had had, or simply the inane nature of the quest, but I laughed enough to email all my friends to share the absurdity of their mission. My heart is split between belittling idiots, and saluting eccentrics, and this downwind quest lay somewhere in the middle. These loonies were pursuing a pointless goal, doomed to failure, but there was some genuine merit in the myth and their enthusiasm.

I dismissed it as utterly impossible. Travelling through zero apparent wind, with no stored power? Impossible. Why would you even attempt it? (Though I’m no stranger to that question myself!) But had I been asked to bet at that moment, I would have just lost a lot of money.

A few months later I actually met the idiots in question and, to my surprise and concern we not only have a few mutual friends, but they seemed to be rather technically credible. But, everyone makes mistakes, and I let them off as decent people with a blinkered view of fundamentally flawed engineering….

A few months later they were claiming success and if it was not for another great friend, Bob Dill, advising that they were actually correct, I would have discarded their claim as an April fool. I thought about the possibility that I was wrong, and then considered that as Bob was getting on a bit and had a bit of a shake with his stopwatch finger, maybe it was he who was mistaken. There was, however, a growing momentum of technical people (who should have known better), saying that these idiots have actually proven that it is possible to travel faster than the wind going directly down wind.

Not content, I had to witness this myself. When I heard it was on for the official record at El Mirage, I jumped on a plane and went to check it out.

The video speaks for itself. These guys are not idiots, but sincere, genuine, technical people who took a myth and made it real. It works. It starts from rest, trundles to true wind speed, then powers to a multiple of about 3 times the true wind speed. Bob will confirm the final number I am sure.

To all fellow skeptics, start baking that humble pie, or eat your hat. Your choice

Here’s a video Richard shot on the day he visited.

Check out the Faster Than the Wind site for more info.

ETA: Just in case you are wondering at the strange tone in Richard’s post (and references to ‘idiots’ and such) -- this story has a lot of history, so Richard is referencing the often heated debates about whether this DDWFTTW idea is actually possible or not. As Wired magazines puts it “The concept known as DWFTTW can cause world-renowned physicists to throw their Nobel Prizes in fits of rage.”

You can check out some of those lengthy & heated discussions in the links below:

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/propulsion/ddwfttw-directly-downwind-faster-than-wind-25527.html
http://forum.mythbustersfanclub.com/index.php/topic,12948.0.html
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=128483

^{Video production: TWA Productions}

We’re getting there….

There was a time when I thought we’d make this car in 12 episodes (actually there was a time when I thought we’d make it in 6)…

But here we are, episode 12 of 6, and I think we’re still a couple of episodes away from completion.

Latest news is that the BMS and the ECUs are both now fitted and the car is back in Norfolk. All that’s left is the pre track and road shakedown testing.

We’re looking mainly at battery temperatures throughout the ’stack’ to make sure that under heavy load it stays consistent (across the stack) and within the operating range. For me battery temperature and the attendant risk of thermal run away is probably the big risk in the whole car.

But so far so very good.

We’re also going to simulate the loss of one motor at high speed (on a very long straight road) to see if the software can cut the power to the other one (we have one on each rear wheel) fast enough to avoid torque steer and the loss of control that could come with that. This is a very important test.

In more news we’ve finally found a fast charger. It’s been incredibly hard to do so.

But it’s on order now.

I’m hoping to take the car on the Brighton to London Eco rally on the 7th of July. Followed rapidly (I hope) by the track testing (which should be fun) and then the Nemesis should be ‘on the road’.

Then we’ll look at the land speed record….

Hope you enjoy the latest episode and I hope there won’t be too many more….

Cheers.

ETA: This video is also available on Youtube

OK you could have blinked and missed it – but in a Groundhog Day moment, Green Britain Day happened again – yesterday. Although ‘happened’ might be a bit of a euphemism for something that ever so didn’t (happen).

Guessing that response might be poor, we thought we’d help EDF out. So we asked b3ta (a satirical website) to launch an ‘Image Challenge’ – a challenge to produce some alternative creative concepts for EDF’s Green Britain Day.

And what a hoot that turned out to be. We got an awesome response (OK some are a little rude, OK maybe more than a little).

But on the whole – really, very funny.

Here’s a few of our favourites:

You can see the whole set here. It’s well worth checking out, especially if you need a smile…

We also issued a joint press release yesterday with Greenpeace, to try and highlight the hypocrisy of it all (GB day that is) – you can find that here.

Behind the scenes our fight with EDF over the ‘green flag’ they ‘borrowed’ rumbles on. They’ve opposed the trademark for our green flag, claiming that it is not distinctive enough to be a trademark. And at the same time they’ve applied to trademark ‘their own’ green flag – not sure how that works, must be a modern form of ‘double think’. This all comes to a head at a hearing in a few weeks time.

At stake, incredibly, is which one of us gets to use the ‘green flag’ – the (Green British) company that came up with the idea or the (French Nuclear) company that ‘adopted’ it. I’m amazed that it should even be a question or a possibility – but it is.

With astonishing cheek, even for them, EDF tried to trademark the words ‘Green Britain’ – we’ve seen that one off already. But can you imagine a French Nuclear company wanting (or getting) exclusive use of the words Green Britain…..

Of course we’re not against the idea of a Green Britain. We just think it’s a serious subject that deserves to be more than a one day a year CSR jolly from one of the world ’s biggest polluters. There’s enough cynicism in the world over green initiatives already without fuelling the fire with ridiculous stunts like this. That’s our objection. That and the flag ‘borrowing’ of course.

Anyway, we’re declaring today to be Green France Day. After all one hollow gesture surely deserves another.

Our message to EDF is this:

We Brits can def do more to be green and we’re up for it (I think most of us are).

But you should start closer to home when it comes to greening up.

It’s not like you don’t have plenty to aim at: Is it 29 million tonnes of CO2 you produce in Britain each year? Maybe you could start there…. Any chance?

And maybe you’d like to support our Green France Day…?

Come on it could be fun…

Cheers.

Only slight bummer is that it’s planning permission for a site we don’t own – not yet anyway.

The site is on the way into Stroud (where we’re based) and it’s known as Tricorn House. It’s an ugly brute of a building that’s stood empty and derelict for a decade or so. Actually in architectural terms it’s style is described as ‘Brutalist‘.

Have a wander round (Streetview may take a few seconds to load):

View Larger Map

It belongs to an offshore property developer and he’s been unwilling to sell it or do anything with it himself for a long time now.

So last summer, working with our local council, we tried to Compulsory Purchase it and we fought a public enquiry over that. And we lost. The main reason being that the inspector thought we should have planning permission – to make our scheme more certain. It was an odd decision to say the least. But, unwilling to take no for an answer, as is our way – a few weeks ago we submitted for planning and we got our scheme consented today. That’s an important step.

We’re hoping to be back in the Compulsory Purchase process with the council in a few weeks time.

But what about the building we plan to build?

That’s where it gets exciting. We’ll have to start from scratch. Flatten the site (even with the best eco will in the world it really is beyond redemption) and build from first principles. Maximising the south facing side for passive solar heating (and maybe a little PV) while maximising insulation and minimising windows on the cold sunless north side. Using the height of the building to create air flow for ‘passive air con’ aided by cooling from underground water sources – and maximum use of natural light through translucent walls. We’ll have rainwater harvesting (it’s the moat running round the site) and grey water recycling. And living walls – walls that change colour with the seasons. And more.

Check out the images here, it is an amazing looking place.

The idea is to create a building for say 250 people, that will be as near to Zero carbon in its operation as we can make it. A building that’s inspirational to look at and work in.

The site itself is walking distance from the town centre, right on the major bus routes of Stroud, next to the cycle path and the canal – we may even get to run electric water taxis to town and back. So for getting to work with minimum carbon, it’s ideal.

That’s it – we’re a step further down the road today towards the realisation of a pretty ambitious project. All going well we could own the site by the end of this year and be doing some demolition in early 2011.

We need a name for it though, not sure Tricorn House or New Tricorn House will cut it. Open to suggestions as ever.

Cheers.

Meanwhile, on the car front:

The new lightweight rear end and rear diffusers are both fitted and fully functional.

The rear end is now stiffer, lighter and much easier to get on and off. Also we’ve got the new rear lights installed and wiring complete now as you can see from the picture. The back end of this car is def its best side.

The diffuser (the bit that wraps under the car at the back, with the number plate on) has its twin flaps, either side of the number plate, one for normal and one for fast charge connections.

Our guys have been working on something dubbed ‘the Lobster Claw’ which is a cable retract mechanism. Looks rather cool and is about 90% complete. Basically it allows you to pull a three pin plug (or whatever connection we choose) from the back of the car, pull out as much or as little cable as you need, plug in and when you’re done, snatch to retract – like a Hoover (or should I say Dyson these days).

That may sound easier than it is. The tricky bit is to have a cable that isn’t coiled around a drum, because that would get too hot if you left it partially coiled and ran big a current through it. With a drum approach you’d have to pull all the cable out whether you needed it or not.

So with all this work complete the car left Norfolk yesterday headed back up North for it’s final bits of electronic kit – the VCS or ECUs depending on who you talk to. Either way it’s the bit that connects the throttle pedal, the batteries, the BMS and the motors.

It’s a couple of weeks to fit and then a couple of weeks of shakedown testing and some road testing for the BMS at the same time.

Then the car is coming back to Norfolk for its full on track and road testing, followed by the paint job and that’s it. Several weeks later than I hoped for again, but we are getting there, actually making big strides in what has def turned out to be the hardest part of the whole project – the electronics.

Meanwhile we’re planning some ‘events’.

First is likely to be a crack at the UK land speed record for an EV, for that we’ll need to do 140 mph – should be within the ability of this car. The current record is held by Don Wales, grandson of the great Donald Campbell. Don came up to see me a few months ago and offered to help us with the record attempt, which is really cool of him – then he told me if we do get the record we might not hold it very long as he’s planning another run end of this summer – so it’s on…..

Next event on the drawing board is a run from John o’ Groats to Land’s End, in less than 24 hours if we can. Co-conspirator for this one is Robert Llewellyn (I think he’ll always be Kryton to me… ). Our plan, roughly, is to charge at windfarms and other renewable generators as and where we can, but otherwise use ‘ecotricity’ supplied through the grid and blat down from John o’ Groats to LE just as fast as we can in a non stop (other than to charge) run. We’ll need a fast charger for this of course – that’s currently on our shopping list and proving to be quite tricky.

The aim of this one is to tackle the ‘range anxiety’ that currently exists with EVs. This is a classic British endurance run, no EV has tackled it yet (as far as I know) and it should open some eyes, and minds, we hope.

So that’s it – car a few more weeks away from completion and serious testing (and another video update) – and a couple of record attempts on the drawing board.

Cheers.

Our first ‘Green Gas’ customers are with us now. Me included I’m pleased to say.

While we shake things down we’re limiting the sign up rate to a few hundred a week. If you want to get in the queue to be among the first you can do that here.

The response from Ecotricity customers and non customers, to this idea, has been fantastic.

The response from British Gas has been something else. Odd to say the least.

Just before Xmas we had a series of legal threats from them, about one a week for three weeks in fact.

The first alleged that we were ‘pretending’ to be British Gas. They didn’t like our tongue in cheek “Real British Gas” logo it seems – we’ve tweaked it a bit here to make them feel better. It’s hard to take that seriously – we are so not pretending to be British Gas. Why on earth would we? It was a joke guys.

About a week later we got another legal threat, this time dear old BG claimed we were misleading people by offering Green Gas, when in fact it wasn’t (green). Something we think we’ve been pretty clear about.

As part of this they complained our web site offered ‘free gas’. Well I don’t know what gas they might have been breathing down there in BG’s legal bunker, but there’s no such thing on our web site. Anyway, they threatened to refer us to Trading Standards, that would have been funny – we ignored them, nothing happened.

Then, talk about buses, about a week later we get another legal threat from BG. This time they’re upset because we’re about to publish 2009’s WhichGreen statistics – the ones that show how much each electricity company in the UK spent, in 2009 – building new renewables.

BG didn’t like the number we had for them, which is zero (funnily enough they have a green tariff called Zero – is this what it means… ).

I won’t get into the details of that here as we’ll publish WhichGreen 2009 figures shortly.

So, it seems we’ve miffed BG by announcing our Green Gas plans, they’ve made that pretty clear to us. This string of legal threats doesn’t do them any credit IMO, but maybe that’s just how the Big Six roll.

Meanwhile on the real Green Gas front, we’re moving ahead with plans to build a pilot project. It’s actually fascinating stuff (or maybe I’m sad… ) – looking at volumes of waste required, where to get it, the technology, land requirement, planning issues and the number of homes we might be able to supply Green Gas to, from each ‘GasMill’.

More on this later.

Cheers.

To most people that may have been interesting but not such a big deal. To anybody close to this issue it’s something altogether different.

The article runs under the headline:

Energy firm EDF abandons 2012 Olympics turbine due to ‘lack of wind’

The article doesn’t quote EDF directly but it confidently says:

“French-owned EDF Energy are not bidding to run the 393ft-tall turbine on the Games site as they were concerned about a lack of wind.

The company, London’s largest electricity supplier, said it would not be able to sell enough wind energy from the 2012 Olympic site into the national grid in future years to justify the turbine’s £2 million start-up costs.

This is an Olympic sized ‘Pork Pie’.

EDF actually failed to win the tender to build a Wind Turbine to power the Olympic games (London 2012) – about one whole year ago…!

Why on earth would they claim now that they’ve decided to walk away – from a project that had walked away from them a whole year ago?

Best guess is that EDF got wind (no pun intended, honestly) that an announcement on this project is imminent, and it looked a bit embarrassing for them. London’s largest energy supplier, big games sponsor, (and as we know a very green company… ) can’t win a single turbine contract to power the Games, on their home turf… Yep I can see how that might look.

To me, this story (in the ES) is damage limitation, a cynical attempt to get ‘a version’ out first – only trouble is this ‘version’ is fake, it’s a lie.

Did EDF plant this story or did the Evening Standard forget ‘journalistic standards’ (like having a credible source…) in their rush for a story. I know where my money goes…

It’s a bit worrying though when the company that owns the UK’s nuclear industry appears to play so fast and loose with the truth. It’s not like the nuclear industry has a big reputation for honesty (on safety issues) already.

Olympic Pork Pies are one thing, but……

Cheers.

We get a slick new carbon body, save a lot of weight (where we don’t want weight – the rear) and make the charging kit an easy install. Neat solution.

We’ve also got a new diffuser coming out of the moulds. This is the bit that sits under the rear of the car. It’s being engineered with some nifty flaps to the left and right that pull down to expose the two charging options:

Normal (13A and slow) or Abnormal (100A and fast).

With some changes to the rear lights and to the internals viewed through the rear window thrown in – this part of the car is going to be pretty slick.

News from ‘up North’ is that the BMS (Battery Management System) is ready and we’re planning to ship the car up for fitting and testing next week. We’re also having a new Vehicle Control System (VCS) from the same guys – all of it CANbus connected, which, when you get into the detail of it, looks pretty essential (the old stuff wasn’t).

When we get the car back with it’s BMS and VCS we’ll have pretty well just the interior to do – plus fit the new panels and give it all a quick spray job. And that’s it.

We should be on the road.

The next update should be episode 12 of 6 – in another week or two I hope.

Cheers.

Just a quick heads-up – Dale is just about to take part in this week’s Guardian Environment ‘You ask, they answer’ Q&A session – could be interesting… If any of you fancy chipping in your 2 penneth, dive on in – the water’s lovely!

EDITED TO ADD: The Q&A session is now closed now but it’s still worth reading.

I couldn’t say much last week except we had something I thought was pretty exciting to unveil in a few days time.  Well here it is now.

Today we’re launching Green Gas.

What’s it all about?

For a number of years we’ve been meaning to offer gas to our customers, partly because so many people use it (it’s a matter of pragmatism) and partly because we thought our customers would rather pay their gas bills to Ecotricity – and see us use that revenue to bring about some environmental gain – than pay the Big Six.

We also thought that it would give us an opportunity to engage our customers in a debate about gas and our need to wean ourselves off it – since it’s running out soon enough.

We thought we’d use the revenue to plant trees or plant more windmills, for a green outcome – the one thing we definitely were not going to do though was to ‘carbon offset’.

Up until recently we’d had bigger issues to wrestle with on the electricity front – basically getting the systems in place to ensure good accurate billing on time and so on – getting it right in electricity, before seriously looking to add gas.

We’ve been running those new systems now for over a year and we’ve achieved an enormous transformation in all areas.

And so we thought it time to look into gas once more.  And we found something very exciting had become possible – the production of gas from renewable sources and its injection into the gas grid.  Nobody is doing it in the UK yet, but it has started in other parts of the world – to be clear I mean the grid injection part – making biogas is not so new of course.

It’s now possible to offer actual Green Gas – renewable gas.  Not just gas with some kind of bolt on outcome.

And it fits perfectly with our green electricity model – we can take gas bills and turn them into Gasmills.  As we do electricity bills into Windmills.

And that’s our plan, to start supplying gas to our customers and to invest the revenue from those bills into the building of Gasmills – changing our fuel mix over time (from Brown to Green) as we do with electricity.

We’ll publish an annual Fuel Mix Disclosure for our gas (known in the industry as FMD), there’s no legislation for that, it just makes sense.

This is the UK’s first Green Gas initiative (it won’t be the last though – we’re sure of that)

And truly Eco Dual Fuel has arrived.

There’s an exciting big picture to all of this.

The UK has the potential to make 50% of it’s own gas needs from this process – Anaerobic Digestion (AD).   We could aim to provide the other 50% through demand reduction, energy efficiency measures and the use of renewable heat sources like solar thermal.  And that gives us the opportunity for, and the vision of, a Britain that’s Gas Independent in the future.

The North Sea supplies run out in about 20 years, we already import 50% or so of our gas from some pretty unstable parts of the world – the answer is to make our own.

We’re going to throw our weight into this.

Some stats if you’re interested.

Making 50% of the UK’s gas from AD would take about 1200 large Gasmills and an investment of about £35 Billion.

For Ecotricity to achieve a 50% FMD in self made green gas, as we have in green electricity – would take an investment of about £50 Million.

And spookily enough that’s what we’ve spent so far, getting to (almost) 50% self built green electricity – about £50 Million.

I’m truly, massively excited about the prospects for this, it’s a real viable solution to a problem that otherwise just didn’t seem to have one.

Ecotricity is in the process of evolving into a green energy company (from a green electricity company) – with gas and electricity both going from brown to green.

It feels like we’ve been a one legged football player, up until now.  We had half the moves.  Now we have the whole.

Oh, nearly forgot to mention, we’re going to price match dear old British Gas and match their dual fuel discount.  Continuing our philosophy of ‘green for the price of brown’.

If you’re interested in having Green Gas – you can register for more information over on the Ecotricity site. There’s also a press release here and an Observer article here.

Cheers.

I had my first breakdown the other week. I went to drive away in the morning and everything was just dead. Turned out the 12v battery we use to power the control side had gone flat, and oddly enough a couple of fuses were blown. As you can see from the picture, I got the youngest member of the team on the job, with my own personal favourite ’spanner’….

And when we’d finished fooling around we called Bob and he came down and fixed it. No big drama but some useful ‘operational experience’.

Actually things have kind of ground to a halt on the Nemesis. It’s been with me since August, for what was meant to be a months worth of road testing while the Battery Management System (BMS) was finished. Three months later I’ve still got the car and we’ve not got a BMS yet. Which is disappointing to say the least. Everything else about the project has gone incredibly well, but for this – and it’s held us up for over six months now. It’s a frustration for all of us, not just me.

The car goes – it goes like hell, it’s just not ‘plug and play’ – by which I mean I can’t just plug it in to charge it. It takes a laptop and some close attention and we’re not able to charge to the full potential of the cells (for safety). So it’s “close but no cigar”.

But we are entering the end game, a BMS is in sight, almost. And we’ve planned the final pieces of work to finish the car – tweaks to the suspension and body, interior decor, paint job and so on – and we’ll do all of this at the same time as the BMS gets fitted. It’s probably 4 to 6 weeks work from the time I take the car back to the team, which I hope will be any day now.

And then the Nemesis will be fully functional, properly plug and play (and with a fast charger I hope) and capable of it’s maximum performance – which we’ve not had out of it yet (incredibly).

I expect we’ll post episode 12 of 6 in January, including (I hope) a revisit to Snetterton where we’ll be trying for a 1 minute 15 second lap – this is the goal we’ve been set by somebody interested in starting an EV racing series. Such a lap time would convince him it’s a serious proposition (range isn’t such a big deal apparently…) I’ve no doubt that if a petrol driven car can lap at such speeds we’ll have no trouble matching it. Won’t be me at the wheel though…

On another front, we know our friends at Lotus keep a keen eye on our progress and it seems like they like what they see – so much so that they’ve created their very own, limited edition, matt black version of the Exige – named ‘The Dark’ (or ‘Stealth’ in Japan). How’s that saying go – about the sincerest form of flattery?

That’s the latest on the car front. BMS breakthrough any day now… Followed by rapid completion and a resumption of testing and the fun part.

Cheers.

The ASA said:

” ..we considered that consumers were unlikely to infer from the ads that EDF was a ‘green’ company, we concluded that the ads were unlikely to mislead.”

“..we considered that consumers were unlikely to infer that EDF Energy was a British company. We therefore concluded that the ads were unlikely to mislead.”

EDF had this to say:

“EDF Energy welcomes the decision by the Advertising Standards Authority regarding our Green Britain Day and Team Green Britain advertising, in which neither challenge has been upheld by the authority… We are committed to leading the energy change to bring about a low carbon future and we have led the way among energy companies in making long-term commitments to the environment and to sustainability… EDF Energy is the UK’s largest generator of low carbon electricity.”

Dale had this to say in response:

“To most people a green union jack represents something or someone Green and British. And to most people EDF are neither, being Nuclear and French. And however many sugar coated low carbon blandishments EDF comes out with the truth is in the numbers – they are the world’s biggest nuclear waste polluter, one of it’s biggest fossil fuel polluters and their contribution to new renewable capacity and to green issues in the UK is truly pitiful.

The ASA offer no evidence to back their judgement, which is actually just an opinion dressed up – and one that ignores the hundreds of people who wrote to it to complain the ad was misleading. It makes the ASA look rather ridiculous, but then again they are an advertising industry funded body, not an independent watchdog – should we expect any better?

The funny part is that the ASA have in effect said, in their opinion – ‘nobody in their right mind would believe that EDF are green or British’

OK I paraphrase just a little, or maybe I’m inferring?…

Either way if the ASA are right it’s actually a bitter sweet day for EDF – who’ve poured tens of millions into this – dodging the ASA bullet but at what cost to their ‘green credentials’ ?

How many windmills could they have built instead…

Cheers.”

There’s lots of campaigns focussed on it right now, lots of people trying to show politicians that this is what we all want. And I hope they succeed, I think they probably already have actually. Copenhagen is all over the news and it’s clear that there’s real public pressure for a deal. That’s about the best a campaign can hope for. Now it’s up to the delegates. At least this time the US isn’t being led by an oil man/half wit.

I went to the UN conference in Kyoto, the one that put climate change on the map. A friend of mine got hold of some passes and we just turned up with no idea what to expect. Our plan was to talk anyone that would listen about the role that wind energy has to play in fighting climate change. The message went down well.

Back then hardly anyone had heard of the concept of Climate Change and even fewer people held it to be true. It was more the territory of scientists and ‘hippies’.

Actually, even back then, almost 2,000 of the world’s top scientists (the IPCC) had told the world’s political leaders ‘There is only one responsible choice – to act now.’

And Kyoto was a success. Not because the targets agreed were particularly ambitious but because targets were set at all. It was and still is an important moment in human history. The world had set its first carbon targets.

Much has changed since then. Most people today have heard of climate change and more importantly accept that we urgently need to do something about it. It’s as rarely out of the news these days as it used to be rarely in the news a decade ago.

The Kyoto accord played a vital part in this transformation, many people are hoping that a successor to Kyoto will emerge from Copenhagen. I hope so too.

But Kyoto targets have not been met. So what use are another set of targets? We actually need deeds now not words. Targets are only a small part of the story, the easy part – hitting them will take real commitment.

I’ve decided not to go to Copenhagen, partly because I don’t think I can make much of a difference and can use the time better back here. But also partly because a couple of weeks ago I met somebody here in Stroud that was trying to get there and who, I think, has an important role to play. I’ve decided to help this person get there.

I’d like to introduce her here – her name is Isabelle and she’s been chosen from thousands of applicants to be a part of the UK youth delegation at the talks – the delegation will take part and have the chance to speak. And their voice should be heard. Too often we see people with 10 or 20 years left to live opposing windmills and other initiatives that are essential to the hopes of young people today – to have any kind of decent life. Young people have more skin in this game than the people in power today and those that wield influence at planning – they’ll pick up the tab for our failure. That’s why I think their voice is important.

You’ll be able to follow Isabelle’s progress at the talks here, she’s going to try and find the time to blog for us, it should be a fascinating insight.

With no more ado, here’s Isabelle’s first guest post –

Cheers.

The road to Copenhagen

After nearly 20 years of endless conferences, discussions, and empty promises to cut emissions we have finally run out of time. This December when the world meets in Copenhagen it will be our last chance to agree an effective global deal. It has to be now because we won’t get another shot.

Isabelle Ellis-Cockcroft

My name is Isabelle Ellis-Cockcroft and I’m from Stroud. I am one of 23 young people travelling to the Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009 this December as part of the UK Youth Delegation, on behalf of the UK Youth Climate Coalition.

Being on the delegation is a big commitment. So why am I prepared to put so much of my time and energy into this? Because climate change isn’t about polar bears, it’s about everyone I know and care for; my friends, my family and our future. As a young person I cannot escape climate change. I can choose to bury my head in the sand and ignore the terrifying world I will have to face later. Or I can stand up and be counted. I can start now, while we still have time, and help to build the better future that I want to see.

In September the UK Youth Delegation met with some of the UK’s core team of UN negotiators at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). They spoke about how mass public pressure on climate change is the only thing that will give them the mandate to push for a strong enough deal at Copenhagen.

The UK has done some good talking on climate change; on paper it has one of the strongest climate change policies on the world. But the action the UK has actually taken so far amounts to rearranging deckchairs on Titanic.

There’s a great deal of passion out there but the most vocal seem to be those who oppose the change we so desperately need – the anti-wind lobby is a perfect example. People need to look at a bigger picture than the view they see from their kitchen window. I am 18 and in 2050 I will be 59. I want the chance to live my life in a world with a safe and stable climate, where there is enough food and water to go around. Is that too much to ask?

Paul here (back off my hols).

A couple of event announcements for our UK based readers. Firstly – I thought you might like to know about a public appearance of the Nemesis Wind Powered Car happening on the 12th/13th September at the Science Museum in Wroughton, Near Swindon in Wiltshire. It will be part of the family oriented Festival of Innovation. I am hoping to be there with my family on the 12th – so might see you there? It is a free event (although high carbon producing transport will be charged £5 to park).

Here’s the event page for the Festival of Innovation on Facebook.

Also – Ecotricity are hosting a kite festival to celebrate the power of the wind on the 13th September 2009.

Help us to fill the sky with kites and celebrate the power of the wind at Thistledown Environment Centre, near Nailsworth (Stroud).

• Free Admission
• 500 kites to give away (or fly your own)
• Explore 70 acres of natural environment and wildlife
• Free soft drinks courtesy of bottlegreen
• Professional kite demonstration

I also created a Facebook event page for the 500Kites event too.

Take it easy, and we hope to see you at one or both

Paul

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Here’s our latest, probably penultimate, video update of the wind car project.

I’ve had the Nemesis (yes it finally has a name) on the road for the last few weeks and it’s been a lot of fun (unless you’re a hedge in my vicinity….:).

I’ll give the car back to the engineers in a couple more weeks, once the battery management system is ready to install and we’ll enter the home straight then. There’s still quite a bit of finishing to do.

I’m hoping to have the car back (and finished) towards the end of Oct, but we’ll see.

Sorry not to have had the time yet to answer a number of questions posted here, hope to catch up soon.

Enjoy….

ETA: This video (and all the others) is also available on Youtube for your embedding pleasure etc.

The car has come a long way in the last few weeks since the first test drive. The last few days have been especially hectic (for the team, not me). It got its MOT last Friday, had a Tracker fitted yesterday and we taxed it today – you wouldn’t believe how hard it was to find insurance… Anyway it’s road legal now. And sat outside my house.

It’s not totally user friendly though. The charging system is the last big thing needing to be finished, the guys are working on that while I road test the car. So recharging is a bit of a manual process, to say the least – balancing the individual cell charges and the like.

And the car has actually only run through one full battery cycle so far, so that side of life is a bit of an unknown still. And it’s not been out in the rain yet…….! We’ve got data sensors and gauges all over the place and one of the things I need to do is to take readings after each run. It’s still a bit of an R&D prototype for sure.

The interior and exterior reflect this – both being a bit rough and ready, good job too (more on that in a minute).

But I’m really looking fwd to just hacking around in it these next few weeks.

Should be fun.

OK time to fess up. I had my first prang in it today. I was coming back home and stuck my foot on the throttle instead of the brake pedal, corrected that but too late to avoid skidding into a hedge…. Ooops.

That’s my first bit of feedback for the team – pedals too close together, especially if you have big feet. It happened to me on the airfield test actually, though nothing came of it with all that space to play with. Of course it’s the standard Lotus pedal layout, minus a clutch pedal, so I reckon we can move the brake pedal leftwards a bit with no trouble.

So there you are. The Wind car is finally here in Stroud, for a few weeks shakedown, and er… I’ve pranged it already… Doh!

Cheers.

PS episode 11 of 6 will be up in a few days.

…to celebrate that relatively modern phenomenon of companies trying to sell themselves as being rather greener and more ethical than they really are. Today would be an apt day, it is after all – Green Britain Day. Where’s the Greenwash in that? Oh where to start.

Green Britain day comes to us courtesy of EDF. That’s Electricite de France to give them their full name. EDF is a French, state owned nuclear power company. They are also the world’s biggest corporate producer of nuclear waste, and one of it’s biggest traders and burners of coal – with a tiny tiny fleet of windmills (0.7% of their generation). And to promote this campaign they’ve ‘borrowed’ (as Fred Pearce gently puts it in this week’s Guardian) someone else’s logo – the green union jack. This flag symbolises two things, Green and British. EDF are of course neither.

This really does take Greenwash to a whole new level. It could almost be the plot of a slapstick comedy or a farce. If it wasn’t for the fact that they are seriously intent on convincing us Brits that they (EDF) and nuclear energy are green and good for Britain.

Stealing someone else’s clothes is not a new tactic in the world of big dirty business. And nor is Greenwash.

A few years ago the UK witnessed Fairwash, where years of truly pioneering work on the concept of Fairtrade were swamped by a tidal wave of big budget corporate look alike schemes. Everybody and their brother now has a version of Fairtrade. It might be tempting to say where’s the harm in that, the more people doing it the better. Well yes, if they truly are doing it, I would agree. But that’s not how this usually goes down. When big brands move into the ethical arena it’s for the kudos, to look like a better company, to follow a new trend and gain sales – it isn’t for the cause, it’s for their cause, which is of course to make money and to add ‘shareholder value’.

Pale corporate imitations of green and ethical brands or products are truly harmful. They distract consumers and divert spending from the real thing and they bring the risk of early onset ‘issue fatigue’. You know how it goes – Yawn, yawn here’s another company that says it pays its suppliers a decent price because it really cares about them or says it’s really committed to fighting climate change or whatever…

Maybe we need a regulator for ethical claims. We’ve got OFGEM for electricity and OFWAT for water – I propose we should name this one ETHOFF.

Let’s come back to Green Britain day. The campaign itself has laudable aims, fighting climate change and making Britain a greener place, I mean who could argue with that. Not me, that’s what I spend my life in pursuit of. But look for any substance and you won’t find it. It’s all recycled and gimmicky.

And it’s a distraction. Green Britain is a serious goal, it requires a vision underpinned by real policies, a suite of joined up actions that we can all get behind – with meaningful outcomes. It’s a mission not a PR opportunity.

EDF put more money into the Games and this Greenwash day than they spent in the last five years building new sources of renewable energy. That’s the hard numerical reality behind the bunting and the media froth. EDF – all mouth and no green trousers.

That’s why today really should become National Greenwash day.

Vive la différence

The most amazing thing has happened.

Our Green Union Jack – the one that Ecotricity’s been using for the last three years or so, has been ‘borrowed’ by another energy company.

We’re used to the Big Six energy companies behaving badly, but this is something else.

One of them decided that they liked the idea of a green union jack and the idea of a Green Britain so much – they’ve just gone and adopted it – lock, stock and barrel.

That would be shocking enough but the culprit is none other than EDF.

And that’s all the more shocking because of what the letters EDF stand for – Électricité de France, which seems just a little at odds with the adoption of the green flag… And of course the fact that they are a Nuclear power company (not everybody’s idea of Green).

A French, state owned, Nuclear power company – using ‘our flag’ (or one very close to it) to green itself up – you couldn’t make this stuff up. And they’ve submitted a Trademark application… they want to own the Green Union Jack!

This is not just a smash and grab raid on our identity (perhaps our national identity) – it’s an attempt at possibly the biggest greenwash in corporate history.

I mean these guys are not British and they are so not Green. The two things that this flag surely suggests to people.

I first saw a poster with the green union jack on it in Bristol last week. Someone had spray painted the message “EDF Climate Criminals” on it, which I thought was apt.

I went back the next day to photograph it for this post but it had been removed – we’ve recreated it in the image above anyway. Just for fun.

Now I hear that they’ve painted their service vans. And they look rather like Ecotricity’s – check these pictures and play spot the difference.

Here’s some facts about EDF:

• 85% owned by the French State.
• The worlds third largest producer of toxic Nuclear waste – but the two producers ahead of them are actually whole countries, rather big ones too – The US and Canada. So EDF are the world’s biggest corporate nuclear polluter.
• They have some 5 million domestic customers in the UK.
• And they produce about 30 million Tonnes of CO2 per year (in the UK). No small amount.
• Recently they bought British Energy – might explain why they suddenly feel so British.
• They sit at the bottom of the green spending league (of the Big Six anyway, Good Energy pip them to the very bottom…:) ) spending the least per Capita (per customer) building new renewables. A measly £10 last year. Check that table here.
• And EDF have never met their minimum legal obligation under the RO – how green is that?
• And then there’s Coal. Fred Pearce in today’s Guardian has some useful info on that front, including the fact that – EDF Trading boasts of being “one of the largest participants in the global coal market” and it imports 30M tonnes a year in to the EU, for burning in it’s own and other peoples coal fired power stations (the ultimate CO2 producers of course).

So there you have it – the French Nuclear giant, the world’s largest corporate nuke polluter, big coal trader and burner, grabbing the green jack in what looks like an attempt to have us all believe they are Green and they are British.

Quite breathtaking really. If this isn’t the greatest attempted greenwash in corporate history I’ll be even more speechless.

Anyway, we’re mobilising to do something about it.

There’s a ‘grass roots’ campaign already kicked off on the net, you can join in on Facebook here.

Legal proceedings are almost certain to follow, unless they back down in the next few days.

Nuclear is Green apparently. French is British and what’s someone else’s can easily be EDFs – that’s the Alice in Wonderland world they appear to live in.

Vive la différence.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Is it a Nemesis?

It finally happened. Last Monday on a windswept old airfield in Norfolk, we got the wind car out of the workshop and took it for its first spin on tarmac.

Not entirely without a little drama mind you – the car barely being able to climb the transporter loading ramp at full throttle was a challenging start to the day… but we quickly enough adjusted the bugs out of that and it flew, really flew.

The acceleration is astonishing. I had a run up and down with John Miles (ex Lotus F1 man) at the wheel – OMG! If you’ve ever been on the Oblivion at Alton Towers, that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach as you go over the edge and rush groundward – that was exactly the feeling, and it was relentless.

There’s no power build up, no power curve – it’s on full (especially when John’s driving), and it stays on – until the throttle comes off (and then the brakes burn… ) It’s incredible.

We clocked over 100mph, accidentally, (I mean it wasn’t a speed trial) just running up and down a few hundred metre stretch. And we didn’t spin a wheel, we burnt nothing – not even rubber, more on that later.

The big surprise of the day was the noise – we reckon part Stuka dive bomber and part supercharger, don’t know how well it will come out on film, but this car definitely is not quiet. And I really like the noise it makes.

That takes care of one of Mr Clarkson’s favourite EV ‘worries’ (bless).

Our attempt to test it more fully at Snetterton later the same day was (madly) rained off, as you’ll see in the video. But we’ll be back there in a week or so. By which time we’ll have upgraded the standard brakes (which we cooked) and made some small suspension tweaks. I’m expecting it to be incredibly quick.

The big question will really be how long we can drive it for – that we can’t be sure of.

All the time and care our guys have put into the design and build of this car really is starting to show – I mean to perform ’straight out of the box’ like this is a real feat. I’m impressed.

It looks and sounds awesome and it goes like hell.

Looking at it and having driven it I really am thinking it suits the name Nemesis.

Very much so.

Cheers.

ETA: This video (and all the others) is also available on Youtube for your embedding pleasure etc.

The ‘Middlemen’

I wrote my first post on the subject of Food – “Can you be a meathead and a treehugger?” a while ago now.

Reading the responses (and feeling a bit of a slacker for not having posted anything back yet… ) – one element of the (lively) debate that struck me was that there were a number of ‘nutritional beliefs’ in play, beliefs that were in fact modern myths.

I thought it might be useful to examine the top ten of these myths, thinking that if we can deal with the ‘technical reasons’ for not changing diet then we might be left with purely choice driven issues – which might help the focus of debate.

I reached out to Dr Justine Butler of Viva for some help with this and between us, over the past few weeks we’ve compiled a list of the Top Ten Food Myths and busted them.  You can read this here – take a look and see what you think.  And pls feel free to pass the PDF version around.

Pulling this together gave me an interesting new perspective on food choice. It’s probably worth reading this ‘myth busting piece’ first, if you can.  But here’s my new perspective;

Animals are the middle men in our diet.  They get what they need from plants.  They get what we need from plants.  And we don’t actually need them to get it for us.

In fact it’s most inefficient for us to use animals to get our nutrition.  For example it takes roughly ten kilos of vegetable protein (fed to a cow) to make one kilo of meat!  Animals consume huge quantities of water (something that will be increasingly scarce in the world) and they belch and fart their way to being one of the biggest contributors to climate change – a bigger cause than transport at some 18% globally.  And for what?

Whether we’re talking B12, Iron, Calcium or Protein – Plants can provide all that we need and often in a form we can use more readily (and safely) – if we don’t pass it all  through the bodies of animals first.

We’re pushing ourselves up the food chain because we can, or because we could (in the days of cheap abundant oil).  It costs vastly more to feed a meat eater than a vegan or vegetarian, it adds massively to climate change, it brings serious (and awful) health problems.  And it costs a shed load of oil (and rainforest) into the bargain.  Not to mention it’s not a very nice way to treat animals.

All of this will shortly be a luxury we cannot afford anyway.  The way we eat today is not sustainable.

We need to take animals out of the equation (eventually, not overnight) and convert our farms to Organic (fertilizers are the product of massive fossil fuel use).  We need to be using wind powered farm machinery (the wind powered tractor is on the ‘drawing board’) and grow (much) more of our own food here in the UK.

Probably the biggest single step that we can take (towards food sustainability) is to stop feeding the food that we grow to animals to achieve that incredible 10 to 1 ‘diminishing return’ – we’re talking about (roughly) an order of magnitude increase in efficiency after all…!

It’s clearly more sustainable not to eat animals or their by products and clearly a big step to fighting climate change.  It also brings big health benefits and it’s a far cheaper diet.

And then there’s animal welfare, and the holocaust we visit on them and their children year in and out.  (Seriously – 860 Million chickens a year are slaughtered in the UK and over 10 Billion ‘chicken periods’ (eggs) are eaten every year)

IMO – There’s an unarguable case to shift our diets.  Simple taste preference or habit is a weak counter argument, and immoral given what we know.

Cheers.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

This months highlights are;

Meeting the Sun’s environment correspondent – yes seriously. They’ve not had one very long but they do have one and he is serious about it – and:

That amazing machine at Leeds University – the one that looks like it belongs on a Sci Fi film, in fact I’m sure I’ve seen versions of it, recreating humans from DNA samples… In our case we used to make a ‘gear lever assembly’.

As you’ll see here we’re getting close to the end game now, in fact I’m ready to predict that episode 10 of 6 will see me driving the Wind Car for the first time… !

The thing that’s been holding us up this past month or so is the Battery Management System (BMS), in case you wondered. The solution we were chasing kind of fell apart a few weeks ago and we had to hunt around for some new technology. Bit scary this late in the day…

But we’re very much back on track now having found exactly what we need from Linear Technology. These guys went above and beyond by expressing us a bunch of pre production chips and a board, that’s been a massive help. Thank you.

Returning to the question of a name, not sure if this one came up before, but in an e-mail last week I made a quick ref to the e bird (easier to type than wind car), and I kind of liked it. Any thoughts on that welcome.

Other than that current front runners are still Zero, Hurukan and Zephyr.

I’m off to Norfolk the week after next to shoot episode 10 and, hopefully, actually get to drive it – that’s a pretty exciting prospect after all this time and effort.

Hope you enjoy the vid.

Cheers.

PS – This just in – been challenged to a drag race with an RAF Tornado – can’t turn that down, racing for pink slips I hope, winner keeps all… More on this later.

I took some flack last week for my first post on this subject. I expected to of course. It’s not like I wasn’t advised against it. My view is that something wrong has been going on and the whistle needed blowing on it – for the greater good. Better we put our own house in order than have the Daily Mail do it for us.

I know that I wrote a strongly worded piece and if you’ve not been close to this issue over the years the passion/frustration may be hard to understand or easy to misunderstand. I’ll expand on that later – there’s an illuminating back story to tell.

And passions run high on both sides as we’ve seen, but a lot of what’s been posted has not been about the real issue here.

In this second post I want to pull the focus back to the facts.

Inconvenient facts.

For over five years Good Energy have been making a very simple, very plain English, public promise to retire a certain amount of ROCs. That’s a fact. (A list of public claims on retirement is here – they all say the same thing.)

The data from OFGEM shows beyond argument that Good Energy’s ROC retirement claims have never been met – they have never been the truth. This is also a fact.

We raised this with Good Energy two months ago, they offered all sorts of responses before finally coming up with what I’m going to dub – ‘ROC claim number two’. This was first made known to Business Green here.

‘ROC claim number two’ goes like this – Good Energy don’t retire the 5% of ROCs which they claim to (in ROC claim number one), they have a different policy which sees them retire an ‘equivalent amount’ – by which they mean something quite complex, though it boils down to less actual ROCs than claimed.

This policy has never been set out in any Good Energy documentation we can find, it’s never been made public before now – you have to wonder why. There’s a public policy on the one hand and a secret, substantially smaller, one on the other hand. Not very good practice at best. Looks like deliberate deceit to me – but that’s opinion, based on my reading of the facts.

According to Juliet Davenport (CEO) Good Energy have just been misunderstood.

Well, not by people whose first language is English I feel. A claim to retire 5% is a very simple thing to understand – impossible to misunderstand. If there’s a gulf between that claim and the actuality then the reason is the claim itself is false – it does not accurately portray the reality.

But what is this hitherto secret ‘ROC claim number two’ all about?

It’s not simple, but in effect it means that if they claim to retire 5% ROCs they will actually retire nearer 3%. Because in their own estimation it’s not the ROCs that count – it’s the value retired, so 3% ROCs retired at full value equals 5% at partial value. Make sense? I don’t think so.

OFGEM have confirmed that there is no such concept in the Renewables Obligation. It’s a Good Energy construct. Fact.

You have to ask why not just say ‘we retire 3% ROCs’ why try to big this up as 5% (while meaning ‘financially equivalent to 5% at buyout value only’ without saying so).

That’s not a very transparent way to operate. I think this is also a fact.

But the big question is this – Is ROC claim number two ‘real’?

Did Good Energy retire ROCs all this time on that other ‘unspoken’ basis?

We crunched the new numbers… Drum roll time again… No they did not!

This is also a fact.

Here’s the table showing the number of ROCs that would need to be retired to meet this ‘new policy’ set against the number actually retired with the % of the new ROC promise actually met – or not – in the final column.

Clearly this new policy has not been adhered to.

One untruth appears to be following another.

ROC claim number one, the public one, is clearly not the truth.
ROC claim number two, the fall back private one, is also clearly not the truth.
Is there a ROC claim number three?

Over to you Good Energy, ready to come clean yet?

Cheers.

It starts with this:
For the last five years Good Energy (a small UK based green electricity supplier) has been claiming to retire 5% more ROCs than they are legally obliged to do. Supposedly to encourage other people to build new green generators.

It’s been their one big claim to green fame. And it’s the single thing that’s brought them recommendations from FOE (Friends Of the Earth), NCC (National Consumer Council) and Ethical Consumer magazine – and it’s brought them customers of course.

Good Energy have repeated this 5% claim in all their marketing material and pushed the recommendation of FOE and NCC consistently now for five years. It’s been a very simple bold claim – ‘we retire 5% more ROCs than our legal obligation’ is a typical format. No wriggle room there. You either do or you don’t.

Nobody ever thought to check if they actually have been doing this though, until two months ago when we first asked OFGEM. I’m not sure why, except we know them pretty well and it seemed more than possible to us that they were saying one thing and doing another. More on this later if anyone’s interested.

OFGEM had some trouble with their systems and their data and it took about two months to get the final, final version of the numbers, although they were pretty close to the first version to be fair.

The most amazing thing is Good Energy, according to OFGEM (the industry regulator and keeper of ROCs no less) have never, ever, in all this time – met a single promise to retire 5% ROCs. Not once in five years.

There was more – For the last two years Good Energy have retired no ROCs at all…!

You have to go back three years to find a year that they actually retired any ROCs in – And then they managed just 40% of their 5% promise.

We were pretty stunned.

We dug deeper.    

The total value of the broken ROC promises, these last five years, is bigger than Good Energy’s total reported profits for the same period – had they been keeping their word, they would have been trading at a loss. Perhaps trading insolvently.

One of the biggest ironies here is that both FOE and NCC sought to offer consumers confidence, in a confusing market (they said), through their research they offered a strong endorsement of Good Energy as the greenest supplier and an ethical company.

But neither organisation undertook any actual checks, they just accepted what they were told. That’s a pretty awful thing for champions of the truth to do, IMO.

Maybe it was a subliminal thing, a company with Good in the title must be good right? Wrong it would seem, Good Energy have been dishonest to them both, not just once, but over a number of years – claiming to retire 5% while they knowingly did not.

There can be no doubt here – the claim was to retire 5% additional ROCs and the facts are that this has never even once been met.

And it’s three years since Good Energy retired any ROCs at all.

This is serial deceit, perhaps fraud is a fair description – deceit for monetary gain. Perpetrated on FOE, NCC, on customers and on shareholders – people who bought shares during this time based on profits that have been inflated by the broken ROC promises.

Customers have been paying a £100 a year or so premium to be with Good Energy, something NCC said was ‘fully justified by the ROC retirement’ – without ever checking of course. Consumers can sleep safe in their beds with champions like this on their side…

And check this, welcoming proposals from OFGEM for new green tariff guidelines, Juliet Davenport, CEO of GE wrote this in the Guardian in Feb this year:

“We must tackle these false claims for domestic green power tariffs. It’s time to overhaul the system that allows electricity firms to hoodwink customers trying to go green”

“… having called for clear rules, regulation and transparency over green tariffs for several years, I thought I would offer some clarity.”

“While they may not be perfect, we feel the guidelines could shine a welcome light into some murky waters.”

The most breathtaking and bare faced hypocrisy you’ve ever heard? It is for me.

We might expect such behaviour from one of the Big Six, or big oil company and we might expect FOE to be jumping all over them for it – where are you now guys?

Worse part for me is this:
Good Energy’s purpose in the last five years has been to try and force on the UK market this philosophy of ROC retirement – something that we have been arguing all this time is ineffective (it does not lead to new capacity) and too costly to be affordable. Ripping up ROC certificates is a waste of customer money, money better spent building something, that’s been our stance and for that we’ve been slated by FOE and NCC.

So yes, it’s rather a schadenfreude moment for us.

Good Energy have been putting profits before promises, deceiving the consumer groups that have been recommending them – trying to foist their, now clearly bankrupt, philosophy of ROC retirement on the rest of us, while not doing it themselves.

I am flabbergasted actually, it’s the most amazing con.

Since we first raised the issue with Good Energy they’ve offered a series of responses – first came mild offence that we should even question this, second was reassurance that the 5% retirement actually did take place, third came ‘we retire 18 months late’ – easily disproven and then dropped to be replaced by ‘we’re too busy actually, with an advert in Bath Life, to deal with this’ I kid you not.

We also flagged it to FOE and NCC – they’ve both been slow to react, simply asking Good Energy if they really have retired the 5% ROCs and, it seems, happy to accept the assurances that they have. OFGEM meanwhile maintains that they most definitely have not.

It’s time for Good Energy to just come clean. The promise was simple, the failure is as equally simple as it is total. No more lies pls guys.

Cheers.

ETA: Here’s a table with the figures for a more complete picture:

I’m not flagging this here to promote it, or brag about it – it’s just that it’s out there and I think I should say something about it. This kind of thing is easily misunderstood.

The ST have me down as worth £85 Million – this years sixth highest new entrant BTW – bit like top of the pops I thought…

We spotted it sat in a coffee shop, my partner Kate, Rui (our bubba) and I.

“You’re worth more than Robbie Williams” was Kate’s (almost) first comment – followed rather (too) swiftly by “let’s go shopping” …

There’s two things I wanted to say.

First – I’ve not suddenly got an awful lot of money, this £85 Million is what the ST team reckons Ecotricity is worth, and since I own that they say it’s what I’m worth. I guess that’s fair enough, but it is a paper thing. I suspect it is for most of the list. I did tell them BTW a few months ago (when they asked) that the value of Ecotricity was academic, because it’s not and won’t be for sale.

The second thing is I know this could just look plain wrong to some people – like the wind NYMBYs for example who for many years now have been saying this is all about the money not the environment etc etc. I can live with that, been living with their stupidity for a while now…  I do care what some people think though. Thing I wanted to say was that, although it makes me a little uncomfortable, on the whole I think it’s a good thing this Rich Listing– here’s why.

To 99% of people on the street (my guess – not a researched stat..) money is the one simple and single measure of success and that holds especially true for the media. If you’re rich, you’re successful, so you must know something worth knowing or do something worth doing and you must be worth talking about or to. It gives you a voice, even if you’re stupid, unfortunately…

It’s an endorsement IMO of green electricity, of Ecotricity, of environmental and social business concepts and so on – this whole alternative way of doing things that gets talked about here and elsewhere, will look a lot more credible to a lot of people now. How much that will matter or help I can’t guess, but I know that this puts green and ethical stuff up the radar, the stuff we’re talking about and doing, works well. Well enough anyway for the fans of money to spot it.

Anyway that’s it, I’m still me – take a pinch of salt with this Rich list thing – and please no begging e-mails, I’m actually a bit skint right now…

Cheers.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Here’s our latest video.  The big focus of this episode is design and, as you’ll see, it’s definitely taking shape.

I’m off to Norfolk next week to meet the Sun, they love the idea BTW, and nail down a few questions on detail (with the A team).

Couple more weeks after that I hope we might be having our first test drive, perhaps in episode 9 of 6 – but let’s see….

Some really cool names keep coming in.  Though I’m back to thinking maybe zero.  But as somebody said here, I reckon I’ll need to see the finished thing and drive it – then I’ll know its name.

There’s been a lot of electric car stuff in the news lately, particularly today with the Government’s announcement of a £5k bung to EV buyers and other initiatives. 

The thing that excites me most of all though is the fact that the government has come out and said we all need to be driving electric cars, they even use terms like ‘green revolution’ these days – that’s just amazing, so far from where we’ve been.

It makes me think the changes we need to make are all the more likely.  We know the technology exists or will exist and we know we need to live sustainably – now we seem to have political will behind us.

Just need to re invent capitalism to be orientated to social and environmental outcomes rather than monetary ones – and we’re there…..

Cheers.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Here’s the latest episode of our Wind Car series, clearly we’re running behind the original plan, with episode 7 of 6…

But hey ho, I don’t suppose the wheel was invented in a day – to mix metaphors a little.

We hit a big milestone in this episode with the first turning of the wheels and John Vidal from the Guardian joining us.

The car still looks a bit of a mess in some ways, a bit like road kill (no offence to the A-team) but the engineering fundamentals are in place now. Current best guess is first drive at the end of April…

Meanwhile we still lack a name. Had two new suggestions this week.

Hurakan – Mayan god of wind and storm and stuff. Quite like that.

And this very interesting one – evince

Meaning to show or demonstrate clearly, to make a point.

There’s a French version of the word apparently – evincer – meaning to conquer entirely, to prevail over, to prove exhaustively.

That has some resonance for me – what do you guys think?

Cheers.

Back in the UK now. I’ve been on holiday for a week, which is a rare event (ask my partner… ) and sod’s law determined that an even rarer event would coincide with that – the perfect conditions for a land speed record attempt.

My disappointment at not being there though was marginal compared to the huge excitement of the result – the smashing of the record.

All the credit for this goes to Richard Jenkins of course (with just a little to the gods of wind… ).

Richard’s the guy who’s been pursuing this dream for a decade. To say he’s dogged would be an enormous understatement.

I’m really chuffed for him, it’s just fabulous that he’s got there, and by some big margin. He might get to get his life back now… )

After the ice challenge of course, which should reconvene this winter.

Actually given the speed of the land version and the relatively low ice record of just 80 mph or so – I reckon it’s a dead cert he’ll smash the ice record, put your money down if you can get odds.

We’re hoping to bring the Greenbird back to England to put on display somewhere, maybe at our Ecotech centre in Swaffham. More on that later.

On a personal note, it’s been a great pleasure to be a part of this. And to see a purely wind powered craft running at such an incredible speed (and four times the actual speed of the wind) is a huge thing. Greenbird has grabbed headlines all over the world and in the process it’s made an awful lot of people think again about wind power, it must have. For me that was the reason to be involved, Greenbird makes a statement and actually breaks down the door for what’s coming next – the second generation wind powered car, the one you could drive down the shops.

I’m chuffed for all these reasons.

Cheers.

Just thought you might like to know this bit of breaking news from over on the Greenbird site

Richard and the Ecotricity Greenbird have only gone and smashed the World Land Speed Record for Wind Powered Vehicles!!!

Yay!! Big congrats from all of us Richard!

More details to come soon….