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Susan Ballard's Blog
It's rather nice to be contacted out of the blue by a high-powered (excuse pun) business person as a result of this blog. It makes me feel connected with a much bigger world.
The connection reminded me of an article on Solar Farms I wrote whilst editor of a climate change website. I may try to republish for the carbon watchers community here on DDN. I was fascinated by a development in Hermau in Bavaria which had created a vast ground-based array of photovoltaic (PV) panels on the edge of a forest to generate electricity from the sun's rays.
These farms are becoming more popular in Spain and look like a business investment opportunity if what I was sent (below) is any indication:
The International PV Trade Mission to Spain focuses on multi-megawatt project and investment opportunities
The ‘PV Business Tour Spain’ from 13 to 17 November will focus on 'Huertas Solares' or solar farms. This is the major market segment in the rapidly growing Spanish solar PV market. Many Spanish PV companies develop multi-megawatt ground-mounted PV projects. Private investors are offered a financial yield of 8% or more during 25 years. Part of the 4-day tour programme is a dedicated symposium on this topic plus a project visit. The major players in this market segment will present their experiences and plans.
The organisors are www.solarplaza.com, the global solar PV marketplace. All persons interested in experiencing and exploring Spain and its solar business and investment opportunities can register.
Sounds like fun!
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October 3rd, 2005 @ 7:17AM |
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No blogs for ages then two blogs in one day, bit like the UK bus system!
Cheap jokes aside, I am delighted to be part of pilot being tried by my local wildlife trust in Wiltshire.
They have invited Ramsbury, the village I live in, to see if it can work towards becoming an accredited climate friendly community.
Ramsbury, it seems, has proved its metal in the recycling league for Wiltshire and has also outperformed other communities in home energy audit returns!
Wow, looking at all the SUVs in the village, I would never have guessed that we were populated by so many closet greenies!
Cynical, what me? However, if I trust the more saintly side of myself, I do believe it is possible for a community like ours to put head, heart and soul into such an initiative. It might even be fun to try so I hope to become a more regular blogger with updates on how it all goes.
For now, I am waiting to hear how the Parish Council responds to the idea. |
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September 26th, 2005 @ 9:52AM |
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Inspired by two friends, I have sent off for some laundry wash balls. This is a pure act of faith since I don't understand a word of the scientific/ pseudo-scientific blurb that advertises them.
I already used plant- based Ecover laundry products which avoid dumping phosphates into our water but the laundry balls avoid using any product. I am also told that you can cut out the rinse cycle, thus saving energy at the same time.
I will use this blog to comment on progress.
Although not a domestic goddess by any stretch of the imagination, I nonetheless enjoy passing on tips to other household challenged people. So here goes,
Ecover laundry whitener is a fabulous addition to my armoury against grass stain and indeed other marks on my son's cricket whites. Soaked in a bucket of Ecover laundry whitener before going into the machine and they come out clean!
Top tip 2, though not sure whether this is environmentally friendly or not. Have just got loads of grease off the cooker/grill by using powdered bi-carbonate of soda left on overnight and then rinsed off with an E-cloth (Those micro-fibre clothes that are all the rage and cost an arm and a leg) |
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September 26th, 2005 @ 9:43AM |
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I started this blog with such good intentions. I intended to write regularly and share as much learning about how to live sustainably as I could. What happened?
Two things: a dear friend died suddenly, she killed herself, and I developed writer’s block because it became too painful to reflect. Every time I picked up a pen or tapped on a keyboard I wanted to write about her. Although I have, it is not for sharing.
Secondly, I became immersed in a piece of work on leadership for sustainability which involved long days cooped up in the study, writing, leaving me with no desire to come online again late at night to write a blog.
As for systematic meter readings, I have been reading the meters regularly but on different days so it is hard to get a sense of weekly usage, for instance. I find myself resisting this auditing and measurement approach, in the same way that I have not been weighing myself systematically either. (I’m on a self-imposed gradual weight loss programme).
So why have my good intentions faltered? I think it is all to do with my state of mind. Life events and meter readings are discouraging. Despite all my efforts to reduce energy consumption and car use, when the chips are down, i.e. I feel downcast, I will not think twice about having a bath, turning up the heat or hopping in the car to visit someone because I need cheering up.
One of the people I interviewed for the leadership work believed that at the root of the global environmental crisis is a vast amount of unsung emotional deprivation.
If I take my own experience and that of another friend who stopped recycling for a year because he was feeling so unfulfilled in his working life and aggregate this up, I begin to see why so many of us find it so difficult to attend to caring for the environment. We may find it hard enough to care for ourselves; caring for the environment somehow drops off the list. So what’s to be done?
I’ve been lucky to receive a lot of empathy and non judgemental kindness from my carbon watching friends. No-one has expected more of me than I can do just now and that has helped me to be patient with myself and wait.
Although I may have missed the window of opportunity to install loft insulation, (English Nature have advised us only to go in the loft in May because we have a protected bat species roosting there! Bit of a paradox because unless we reduce energy consumption radically they could find themselves in a collapsing ecosystem anyway). as I start to feel better in myself I have started to investigate some other ways to spend our income wisely. I have been investigating Solar water-heating panels as another option, found out about an electric scooter and am planning to get a household wind turbine installed next year.
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May 20th, 2005 @ 6:32AM |
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I have been away for a couple of days delivering media training in the North West of England and I left the lap top behind knowing I'd have no time or space to write.
Suddenly I feel nervous again about publishing online and yet I am trying to develop a more disciplined reflective practice using blogging as a methodology. (This is part of my doctoral research).
The course went well and I hope my associate and I will be invited back especially as I discovered how easy the train journey could be. On this occasion I had written off train transport as I had heavy bulky equipment to carry and my back was playing up. Besides, I was able to take a passenger so the four hundred mile round trip seemed justifiable. Yet, I still wish I had made more effort to travel by train. (I have not yet followed through on my intention to take regular periodic readings of my mileage and my energy meters so that I can get feedback on my efforts to reduce my carbon emissions.)
Perhaps if I start to keep a log of these, I will be more motivated to try and live within a carbon quota. Here in the UK carbon watchers are beginning to wonder whether rationing carbon is an equitable policy idea that could ever seriously be implemented. How would embodied carbon be measured, for instance? If you don't grow your own, food has to be transported from somewhere. From whose budget does the mileage get deducted?
I feel naive about this but wonder if in a playful way I could start experimenting with domestic tradeable quotas. Would other carbon watchers be up for this?
I've been looking at different online versions of carbon calculators and wondering if they do inspire people to take on this emissions reduction challenge or whether they just switch people off. If you want to see an example of what I mean, I am also about to experiment with making links externally and internally from this blog. Here goes:
Click Here for a straightforward carbon calculator
I am wondering how we might use tools like this in groups such as those which develop after playing the DEMOCS climate change game described in Jane Horton's blog. |
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April 7th, 2005 @ 7:59AM |
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