The WREN Blog
WREN was the subject of a tweet a while back, from a Richard Waters who said: ‘@wrenuk So much for saving energy - having a TV on 24/7 in your shop window is hardly "green" #practisewhatyoupreach.’ Do you know what? I don't agree.
There’s a few assumptions buried in that tweet and therefore a few reasons to dissent once you unpack those assumptions. If you take Mr Waters’ argument just a little bit further, you could say that if WREN were to undertake no activity whatsoever, it could save even more energy. But then, the people WREN has helped to install zero-cost home insulation over the last few months quite likely wouldn’t have heard about this government scheme and would still be wasting energy through their badly insulated roofs and walls. Not to mention all the others WREN has previously helped with insulation, home solar panels and biomass boilers. I reckon that a house properly insulated because someone saw the offer on WREN’s TV when they passed by would ‘pay’ for running that TV for many a night.
My apologies. The blog has been silent for over half a year, mainly because the renewables-related writing I’ve been doing has been as director of communications for WREN, so it’s been appearing in the News section of this website, in the Newsletters WREN sends to members and other subscribers, and in press releases which have made their way into the Cornish Guardian, North Cornwall Advertiser and occasionally, Western Morning News. The blog may have been silent, but it’s not yet dead. There’s a new piece immediately following this one.
One Guy With A Marker [And A Whiteboard] Just Made The Global Warming Debate Completely Obsolete
- that's the line I caught on a tweet yesterday. How can you not want to know more?
The tweet had a link to a nice little video with a different view on the climate change ‘debate’. It’s about ten minutes long, and you should view it now to understand better what I’m writing about. (Just don’t forget to come back!)
Interesting piece in The Guardian today (18th Jan) on the Green Deal. “The energy ‘savings’ that are just hot air” is the headline for the story, but is that really the case?
You can read the article here: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jan/18/energy-efficiency-savings-less-than-advertised-green-deal
The gist of it is that in practice the financial savings from installing energy efficiency measures such as loft and cavity wall insulation and a new boiler do not measure up to the advertisements. The new figures come from the National Energy Efficiency Data Framework (NEED) published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). NEED tracked the observed savings in thousands of homes compared with homes that did not have measures installed. It found the average decrease in home gas consumption for loft insulation was 1.7%, for cavity wall insulation 7.8% and for a new boiler it was 9.2%, a total of nearly 19%.