Wind Energy Planning

UK Struggles to Protect Fund Flood Zones

The UK Environment Agency has no easy task. With massive rises in national debt - public cash for high cost flood defence systems is proving difficult to find.

With much of the east coast of England now a flood zone - under threat from the north sea, the Environment Agency (EA) has a tough job prioritising funds for maintaining and building new flood defences.

The EA has spent the last few years trying to establish where flood defences can be abandoned causing the least impact - socially and financially.

Introducing the European Renewable Energy Roadmap

A new renewable energy roadmap template was introduced today by the European Commission.

The template for National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPS) is expected to guide European Commission member countries in drawing up their renewable energy strategies.

Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said “With the binding targets for the share of renewable energy in 2020 the EU has taken a major step towards creating certainty for investors”

Wind Farm Neighbours

Canadian wind farm neighbour Mulikow tries to describe the noise from his next door wind farm in the video below. As with all attempts to replicate ‘noise experiences’ this video struggles to represent accurately wind turbine noise due to the noise of the natural wind in the microphone and the fact that we - the listeners are located out of context. However Mulikaw gives what seems to be an un-emotive, and descriptive account of what it is like to live next to an operational wind farm. Don’t believe him though - go visit one for yourself.

David Cameron’s Renewable Energy Challenge

How green really are the blues?

Conservative party leader David Cameron portrays a green image by biking to work and installing a wind turbine on his roof - however is the Conservative party up for tackling the effects of climate change and what are their plans for taking us into a greener future?

In January the Conservatives announced their vision of a low carbon economy. David Cameron unveiled the party’s green paper which he said would help guarantee energy security and protect our environment for future generations.

Cameron said that Conservative change would be “similar in scale to the advent of the internet and the revolution in computing power that took place in the 1980’s and 1990’s“. An energy revolution could - according to Cameron create hundreds of thousands of new green collar jobs in the UK by 2020.

New Climate Change “Five Point Plan” For UK

The UK government is to take new action in response to climate change, according to an announcement yesterday.

According to Hilary Benn MP, Ministers will this summer set out the building blocks of a ‘five point plan’ designed both to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at home and abroad and “to protect and prepare for the changes that are already inevitable“.

Climate change is already happening in the UK. The ten hottest years on record globally have occurred since 1990. The South and South East of England are short of water and we have seen increased incidents of flooding.

Benn says the Government has more than doubled spending on flood protection since 1997, developed a heatwave plan in the NHS and is helping communities affected by coastal erosion. These measures are in addition to the push for renewable energy and come at the same time as the UN announced “Seal the Deal Campaign” - a campaign to gather the political momentum needed to seal the Kyoto agreement successor in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Find out more about climate change projections for the UK from Benn’s You Tube video below.