Cheap Coal ‘Threatens UK Pollution Targets’

Coal on the global market is so cheap that it threatens government attempts to tackle climate change, the chairman of the Environment Agency has warned.

Lord Smith says the UK’s share of electricity generated by coal is up to 40% – the highest since 1996.

Unless this trend is curbed, he says, the UK will miss its targets on curbing climate change and sulphur pollution.

The price of coal has been driven down by the dash for shale gas in the US.

Gas is much less polluting than coal, so carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have fallen in the US. But European power generators have gobbled up the resulting cheap coal, driving carbon emissions up in several nations.

The EU’s statistical agency Eurostat estimates that from 2011 to 2012, CO2 emissions increased by 3.9% in the UK. The rise is most likely to be due to increased coal burning.

UK emissions of sulphur, which is damaging to health, have risen when they are supposed to be falling.

Read full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22711416

Efficiency in Energy Management is key to pressures in Food Industry

Increased competitive pressures, tighter margins and rising energy costs are forcing manufacturers to alter their methods of operation. At the same time, new ways of managing energy consumption and quality through sophisticated power monitoring tools have emerged – providing the information that companies need to be able to take action to reduce energy usage. In short, effective energy management is no longer an option; it is a strategic business necessity.

By 2020 it is predicted that the earth’s population will have swollen to around 8 billion people1, meaning that food and beverage manufacturers are facing a significant challenge of producing enough food to meet the world’s growing need. To add to the pressure, the UK’s manufacturers have also been tasked with reducing their energy consumption by 20 per cent.

Mounting pressure to become more sustainable means that many manufacturers are now seeking solutions that will enable them to lower energy usage but maintain flexible production standards – all while meeting health and safety guidelines.

Within the industry, the term ‘Overall Equipment Effectiveness’ or OEE, is a recognised key measurement of efficiency and is based on three main factors: performance, availability and quality. With the increasing focus on reducing energy consumption, we believe that there is an argument to now include energy within the equation – resulting in what could be termed Overall Equipment Effectiveness plus Energy Management (OEE+E).

In today’s tough economic climate, end-users now expect control systems to go beyond functional and regulatory performance. They have now become a tool to manage the plant while reducing energy and overhead costs, cutting carbon emissions and providing quick and precise information that moulds both production and business strategies.

Over the past decade, the adoption of Ethernet-based control networks and commercial off-the-shelfhardware, components and operating systems have improved the way the systems in place communicate. This provides end-users with the flexibility, choice and predictability necessary to achieve a truly energy efficient manufacturing plant. By upgrading to a fully integrated solution – incorporating both the energy management and automation system with the operation management applications – it is possible to make vast improvements to a site’s OEE+E.

Finally, for a food manufacturer to lower running costs while reducing energy consumption, they must employ a flexible automation system that is capable of reacting to changing energy costs. The price of energy can vary significantly at different times of the day, as well as geographically. While manufacturers may be using a process automation system to manage energy consumption, if they are using too much energy at the wrong times of the day, both costs and emissions will remain high.

 About ENMAT

ENMAT (Energy Monitoring & Targeting) is a web based Energy Monitoring and Targeting system. It presents energy management data in a way that is relevant, meaningful and useful to users.

The purpose of Monitoring and Targeting is to relate your energy consumption data to the appropriate energy drivers, such as weather and production, so that you get a better understanding of how energy is being used. In particular, it will identify if there are signs of avoidable waste or other opportunities to reduce consumption.

Envantage offer a Monitoring and Targeting (M&T) service to enable organisations to save energy and cut costs. The use of this platform means that we can deliver a bespoke solutions to meet your needs.

Aimed at industrial/commercial SMEs and multi-site retailers, the Envantage ENMAT service utilises the latest software technologies  to obtain a full picture of customer energy usage across single or multiple sites.

Looking for an affordable Energy Management Solution?

http://www.en-mat.com/ ENMAT (Energy Monitoring & Targeting) is a web based Energy Monitoring and Targeting system. It presents energy management data in a way that is relevant, meaningful and useful to users.

We offer a free service for business users with Half Hourly Metering. We also support a wide range of smart devices such as Google Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsbar.ENMATEnergy415754&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5hcHBzYmFyLkVOTUFURW5lcmd5NDE1NzU0Il0 .

Aimed at industrial/commercial SMEs and multi-site retailers, the Envantage ENMAT service utilises the latest software technologies to obtain a full picture of customer energy usage across single or multiple sites.

One In Three Councils Not Complying With Legal Duties On Monitoring Their Buildings’ Energy Use

Nearly a third of councils are not complying with their legal duties on monitoring their buildings’ energy use under laws designed to encourage councils to improve their estates.

The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive from the EU requires public authorities to have up-to-date Display Energy Certificates (DEC) in all their buildings over 1,000m2.

The government has allocated local authorities £1.9m each year to fulfil these duties. But Freedom of Information requests by the Property and Energy Professionals Association (PEPA) have revealed that 30% of councils in England and Wales admitted they were not compliant with the directive. While 58% said they were compliant, a further 12% did not answer the question.

Mike Ockenden, head of secretariat at PEPA, said the lack of compliance with the directive would mean less work for firms in the energy efficiency sector.

Ockenden said the Department for Communities and Local Government, which oversees DECs, had not put the right framework in place to ensure compliance with the directive, adding it was “absurd” that compliance with the directive was monitored by trading standards officers, who are themselves employed by councils.

He said: “It seems that the communities secretary Eric Pickles does not understand why improving energy efficiency is so vital, not just to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions, but for the economy.”

Sustainability expert Neil Cutland said the findings were “depressing”. He said: “The directive is there for a good reason, European directives get a bad press generally, but this one is set to be driving so many [positive] things in the market that would not be happening without it.” He said the directive needed greater “political will” behind it to be effective.

Building’s Green for Growth campaign has called for the roll-out of DECs to the private sector to stimulate work in the construction industry and meet the UK’s carbon emission reduction targets.

 About ENMAT

ENMAT (Energy Monitoring & Targeting) is a web based Energy Monitoring and Targeting system. It presents energy management data in a way that is relevant, meaningful and useful to users.

The purpose of Monitoring and Targeting is to relate your energy consumption data to the appropriate energy drivers, such as weather and production, so that you get a better understanding of how energy is being used. In particular, it will identify if there are signs of avoidable waste or other opportunities to reduce consumption.

Envantage offer a Monitoring and Targeting (M&T) service to enable organisations to save energy and cut costs. The use of this platform means that we can deliver a bespoke solutions to meet your needs.

Aimed at industrial/commercial SMEs and multi-site retailers, the Envantage ENMAT service utilises the latest software technologies  to obtain a full picture of customer energy usage across single or multiple sites.

Carbon Trackers In Cities Aim To Monitor Urban Carbon Footprints

Every time Los Angeles exhales, odd-looking gadgets anchored in the mountains above the city trace the invisible puffs of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases that waft skyward.

Similar contraptions atop the Eiffel Tower and elsewhere around Paris keep a pulse on emissions from smokestacks and automobile tailpipes. And there is talk of outfitting Sao Paulo, Brazil, with sensors that sniff the byproducts of burning fossil fuels.

It’s part of a budding effort to track the carbon footprints of megacities, urban hubs with over 10 million people that are increasingly responsible for human-caused global warming.

For years, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse pollutants have been closely monitored around the planet by stations on the ground and in space. Last week, worldwide levels of carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million at a Hawaii station that sets the global benchmark – a concentration not seen in millions of years.

Now, some scientists are eyeing large cities – with LA and Paris as guinea pigs – and aiming to observe emissions in the atmosphere as a first step toward independently verifying whether local – and often lofty – climate goals are being met.

For the past year, a high-tech sensor poking out from a converted shipping container has stared at the Los Angeles basin from its mile-high perch on Mount Wilson, a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains that’s home to a famous observatory and communication towers.

Like a satellite gazing down on Earth, it scans more than two dozen points from the inland desert to the coast. Every few minutes, it rumbles to life as it automatically sweeps the horizon, measuring sunlight bouncing off the surface for the unique fingerprint of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

In a storage room next door, commercially available instruments that typically monitor air quality double as climate sniffers. And in nearby Pasadena, a refurbished vintage solar telescope on the roof of a laboratory on the California Institute of Technology campus captures sunlight and sends it down a shaft 60 feet below where a prism-like instrument separates out carbon dioxide molecules.

On a recent April afternoon atop Mount Wilson, a brown haze hung over the city, the accumulation of dust and smoke particles in the atmosphere.

This summer, technicians will install commercial gas analyzers at a dozen more rooftops around the greater LA region.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/12/carbon-trackers-la_n_3262833.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003&ir=Green#slide=1834570

Using Technology to cut carbon emissions and improve agriculture

Greenhouse gases from agriculture account for more than 10% of total emissions globally, roughly equivalent to the entire global transport sector. Meanwhile, it is estimated that agricultural production will need to increase by about 70% by 2050 to keep pace with global population growth.

What’s more, the real impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector are likely going to be hardest felt in many of those countries whose people rely on agriculture most for their livelihoods. In sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, for example, some estimates show a reduction in the productivity of most major food crops as a result of changes to the climate over the next 40 years.

While this may sound like a doom and gloom scenario, affordable technologies that have the potential to reduce greenhouse gases and increase productivity in agriculture are becoming more widely available. I am referring not to agricultural technologies — although those certainly play a role — but to information and communications technologies, like the mobile phone, video and radio.’Climate-smart’ methods of agriculture, such as conservation agriculture, agroforestry and others already exist. The challenge is that not all farmers know about them, there is no single prescription, and traditional practices can often die hard, particularly when you are working with small margins and taking risks could spell utter ruin for your family. So how do information and communication technologies change this? They make it easier to share locally relevant information on improved techniques and to provide time-specific information and recommendations (such as weather forecasts, and when to do what).

Full Story : The Guardian

ENMAT Energy Management System supports a wide range of devices

Devices

ENMAT Devices – ENMAT supports a wide range of devices including MAC, PC and Android Smartphones and Tablets.

We also support the following web browsers:

visit www.en-mat.com for more information 

ENMAT Energy Smart Metering

Smart meters are the next generation of gas and electricity meters and they can offer a range of intelligent functions.

For example they can tell you how much energy you are using through a display in your home. They can also communicate directly with your energy supplier meaning that no one will need to come and read your meter in future.

“Smart technology will change the way that customers interact with energy. Our customers will be able to see what their energy use means in pounds and pence and receive bills that accurately reflect their consumption. We will be able to work with our customers to develop the right products and services for them.”

Paul Massara, Chief Executive Officer Npower

Contact ENMAT today for  a full list of Smart Meters

ENMAT White Label Reseller Energy Tracking Software

Become a white label reseller of our Energy Tracking, Monitoring and Targeting Software bit.ly/10aXjfC

‘Window Socket’: Solar-Powered Plug Sticks To Window, Powers Anything

A concept has been unveiled for a solar-powered battery that can be stuck to a window, charged and then used as a standard plug.

The Window Socket offers a neat way to harness solar energy and use it as a plug socket. So far we have seen solutions that act as a solar battery backup, but none as a direct plug-in. Simple in design, the plug just attaches to any window and does its job intuitively.

Designed by Kyuho Song & Boa Oh, and published at Yanko Design, the plug is potentially an elegant solution to the problem of solar chargers that are either unfriendly or inelegant to use.

The design would place a 1000mAh battery inside the device, enough to charge a mobile phone.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be able to power a device requiring a high voltage like a kettle or vacuum cleaner, but could provide a nice solution for mobile gadgets or less power-intensive appliances.

Most Companies Get Greenhouse Gas Reports Wrong

LONDON (Reuters) – Most of the world’s largest companies do not report their greenhouse gas emissions fully or correctly and do not have the data independently verified, a study by an environmental research body showed on Wednesday.

Companies are under pressure worldwide from policymakers, and a public increasingly concerned with green issues, to report the environmental fallout of all activities related to their daily business – from plane journeys to office supplies.

Officials hope the data generated can point to potential energy savings and encourage firms to reduce their emissions, while many companies see it as a way of planning for exposure to long-term costs such as taxes on emissions.

The Environmental Investment Organisation (EIO) found that just 37 percent of the world’s 800 largest companies disclosed complete data and correctly adopted the basic principles of emissions reporting.

Only 21 percent had their data externally verified and only one firm, German chemicals producer BASF, reported emissions across its entire value chain – from sources such as business travel, transport, distribution and investments. This transparency placed it at number one in the rankings.

“This ought to be a wakeup call for companies. Since the majority of total corporate emissions often come from (value chain) sources, large quantities of emissions are not being accounted for,” said Sam Gill, chief executive of the EIO.

“Not only could this be a source of unmeasured risk for companies but it also means we are not getting the full picture in terms of corporate emissions,” he added.

Companies are increasingly measuring and disclosing their environmental performance in their annual reports. However, the lack of a universally accepted or mandatory standard means both reporting formats and content vary widely.

The EIO based its findings on the latest publicly available data, which for most companies was from 2011.

Global Carbon Emissions Set To Hit Alarming 400 Parts Per Million Milestone

For the first time in up to five million years, the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is about to reach 400 parts per million (ppm). Former NASA scientist James Hansen warned that levels over 350ppm would destabilize the earth’s climate, but now we have far exceeded that figure with a record-breaking weekly average of 398.5ppm recorded on Monday, The Guardian reports. Researchers at the Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Hawaii expect we will hit the 400ppm milestone in May, 2013.

Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been steadily rising for 200 years. At the start of the industrial revolution, carbon emissions levels were at 280ppm. The CO2 level was recorded at 316ppm in 1958, when the Mauna Loa observatory started measurements.

Some experts say if levels exceed 350ppm, climate change will disrupt daily life on our planet. Much of the increase in carbon levels is tied to the burning of fossil fuels.

Although many industrialized nations have already reduced their carbon emissions, burning of fossil fuels still adds to the increase in atmospheric concentrations.

The last time CO2 levels were so high was likely in the Pliocene epoch, between 3.2m and 5m years ago, when Earth’s climate was significantly warmer than toda

Envantage Helps Customers Achieve ISO 50001

Envantage has extensive experience in providing guidance on the effective implementation of Energy Management Systems in accordance with ISO 50001

Using energy efficiently helps organizations save money as well as helping to conserve resources and tackle climate change. ISO 50001 supports organizations in all sectors to use energy more efficiently, through the development of an energy management system (EnMS).

ISO 50001:2011 provides a framework of requirements for organizations to:

Develop a policy for more efficient use of energy
Fix targets and objectives to meet the policy
Use data to better understand and make decisions about energy use
Measure the results
Review how well the policy works, and
Continually improve energy management.

New Energy Smart Meter Rules Approved

Ofgem has approved new industry rules designed to “protect and empower” domestic and business energy consumers.

The code, which comes into effect on June 1st of this year, has been developed by representatives from across the energy industry, with input from consumer groups.

Ofgem has further strengthened the code’s rules on face-to-face marketing following consultation, including making suppliers clearly state that consumers are under no obligation to receive face-to-face marketing.

Other measures include:

• Suppliers are prevented from conducting any sales when installing smart metering systems for domestic consumers

• Suppliers must gain prior consent from domestic consumers before the day of the visit in order to conduct face-to-face marketing

• Suppliers must adhere to detailed rules when obtaining prior consent for face-to-face marketing, plus behavioural rules should they seek to market to domestic consumers having gained prior consent

• Suppliers are prevented from levying an upfront charge for the supply and installation of a standard smart metering system to domestic consumers

• Suppliers must adhere to a number of requirements catering specifically for vulnerable consumers. Suppliers must take steps to identify consumers with specific needs in advance of the visit; and take steps to cater for installations where a carer needs to be present

• A section directing suppliers to provide information, advice and a practical demonstration to help consumers use their smart metering system and raise awareness of energy efficiency

Philip Cullum, Ofgem’s partner for consumer policy said the new rules establish a “rigorous protection regime that puts consumers first”.

“With the roll-out of smart meters getting fully under way next year, it is essential that householders and businesses have confidence that meter installations are done in a fair and professional way,” he added.

The code is supported with licence conditions, and powers to levy fines if rules are breached will also be implemented.

Energy and Climate Change Minister Baroness Verma said: “Consumers are at the heart of the smart metering programme – which is designed to help people become more in control of the energy they use, and more aware of how to lower their energy bills.

“This code is central to providing a positive customer experience during installation – including protecting customers from unwanted marketing and ensuring installers explain how the meter can be used to improve energy efficiency.

“I am very grateful for the efforts that industry have made in developing the code, and welcome Ofgem’s decision to approve it.”

Designation Of The Smart Metering Installation Code Of Practice

Click on the title to open a document
Title	Designation of the Smart Metering Installation Code of Practice - PDF – 90Kb
Document overview	This open letter designates the Smart Metering Installation Code of Practice for use by all domestic and micro-business suppliers installing compliant smart meters. The code sets out rules for suppliers to adhere to when conducting installations.
Associated documents	Smart Metering Installation Code of Practice – PDF – 1070Kb
Document type	Other
Publication date	25/04/2013
Area of work	Social Action
Further information	This document’s parent webpage