School Kids get more energy!

One of my local Junior schools (in fact the one I went to) is about to become one of the greenest schools in the country. All thanks to a great new scheme from the Co-Operative. The National Green Energy for Schools Scheme will give a fund of £1m to up to 100 schools nationally. This pot is then match funded by the Governments, Low Carbon Buildings Programme.

The Photovoltaic (PV) panels are worth about £20,000 for each school and as well as providing clean, renewable and sustainable power, it is hoped that it will help educate the children. It is planned that each school will also receive leaflets and information to distribute to the children. The panels should generate about 3,240 kWh of electricity per year and reduce Carbon Dioxide production by about two tonnes, as well as help move away from the schools reliance on fossil fuels.

A monitor screen will be placed in a main area of the school so that teacher and pupils alike can see how much electricity the panels are generating and also how much carbon dioxide they have saved to date. There is also the facility to access the data online. This might be of particular interest in the summer holidays when the school is not in use but electricity is still being produced, especially if they have done a deal with their energy supplier and excess energy is sold back to the national grid!

Ocklynge Junior School is set to be one of the first schools in the country to use this scheme, so a big well done to everyone involved and lets hope this help influence the whole community.

Tags: Solarpower, photovoltaic, co-op, low carbon, renewable energy, school kids

Do the Green thing!

I was talking to a good friend of mine earlier today, just shooting the breeze and we go onto the subject of green issues and I told him about this blog!

He seemed quite impressed but also told me about a new Green Community that he’d just come across, called ‘Do The Green Thing‘. This a new green community that basically sets a monthly task for everyone to do. The idea I guess being to show how little things can make a big difference if enough people do it. It also possibly gives people some alternative ideas as to what to do!

This months task is to switch off the lights earlier and perhaps do something different, like look at the stars!

Go on give it a go, I did an actually it’s quite fun (even got the kid involved!)

Tags: green, community, fun, stars, astronomy

Is it the HMRC that are the Fraudsters?

I know that I’ve tried to make this blog have an Environmental slant, but today I just have to get this off my chest!

If you live in the UK, or indeed probably the rest of the world, you’d have had to have been hiding under a rock to have missed the great data loss.

Somehow, and no one really seems to know how, or at least are admitting to, Her Majesties Revenue & Customs have lost two disks containing 25 million peoples information. The list of data affects everyone who is claiming ‘child benefit’ or ‘working tax credit’ and was supposed to be an interdepartmental transfer. The information on these disks contains, NI numbers, Name (parents & childrens), Address, DOB, Partners details and Bank account details.

Now, the chances are, mine and my families details are on one of these disks, and this really pisses me off. Like everyone that uses the web we spend a lot of time trying to keep our information secure, especially when surfing, just to have some idiot let it out into the pubic domain.

But this just adds insult to injury, only two weeks ago I had a letter from our wonderful government telling me that I was was one of 15 million people who have opted out of SERPS with Standard Life, who have had our all our data on a disk which has been lost.

It seems to me that the chances of identity fraud are pretty high for anyone on any of these disk and that really concerns me!

Anyway, not a lot I can really do but thank you for letting me vent.

Tags: HMRC, fraud, data loss

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No ditch for the Dutch!

A little while ago I posted a link to a piece of video about the great solar car race accross Australia, I also said I would be keeping an eye on things, unfortunately time ran away with me and I’ve only just go back to it! But, here it is, traveling over 3000 miles the Dutch team finally one the race by over one hour.

Well done, and lets hope the technology eventually works its way down to us lesser mortals!

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