GREEN ENERGY

"Under the Trades Description Act you probably could not be prosecuted for selling a mauve kiloWatt since it would be as meaningless as selling a free one or one with green highlights. How can you tell what colour a kiloWatt is ? A blue flame is hotter than a yellow one and green indicates the presence of specific chemicals in a gas when it is burnt - but this has nothing to do with any kiloWatt. You don't measure kiloWatts by their colour nor by how hot they are, so how do you distinguish Green energy ?

According to Dr Lüscher (1) " the person who chooses green wants his own opinions to prevail, to feel himself justified as a representative of basic and immutable principles." So you measure the amount of green energy required by the number of enthusiasts who don't want the other stuff. The kiloWatts themselves stubbornly maintain no colour prejudice. Their wide availability in the environment coupled with a disconcerting amount of freedom is of huge concern to those in the business of selling kiloWatts, particularly those pre-packaged high temperature kilowatts that you just set fire to - i.e. gas, coal, timber and oil. Although there is a widely held perception that 'renewables' are a cure for all our ills, public concern needs to focus on the Greenwash which delays access to the free kiloWatts. Whenever 'green' products are portrayed as expensive snake oil, the control of their introduction to the energy market could be interpreted as being manipulated by the conventional energy suppliers (Photovoltaics and wind turbines come to mind).

Let us look at human energy consumption from a historical perspective. As evolution occurred and life proliferated, microbes determined that if the planet was truly uninhabitable at a particular location there would be no life forms there at all. This does not happen. Similarly, human beings have always occupied the land where it is easiest for them to survive and they have supplanted other life forms from those regions. Over the centuries, controlling the use of fire has given homo sapiens the power to defend land and to mould the environment to his evolving requirements for its occupation .To make human habitation more secure, permanent dwellings become established in the favoured locations. The investment in permanent buildings is a sign of civilisation and is in contrast to the use of temporary structures which are associated with less sustainable, usually more arduous and precarious ways of life. Prior to the industrial revolution man's search for power focussed his acquisitiveness on timber. Steam changed all that but then clean air acts moved coal and steam out of the spotlight and concentrated the minds of men on "clean" energy. Climate change has sharpened the need to focus on the heat pollution caused by burning carbon based fuels. The political agenda is now awash with lobbying so that laundering on the carbon trading market can take place. Greenwash is a legitimate activity of the oil majors, the related car and aircraft industries plus those parts of the construction industry delivering and maintaining road surfaces. A huge amount of fossil fuel is also used to maintain the temperatures inside our buildings because of the inadequacy of these spaces to alter the climate to our perceived needs. This is just bad building design. It is in the self-preservation interest of those selling pre-packaged fuels, that our buildings remain inadequate in their climate-changing capabilities. Without change in the way we build, climate changing will continue to be done by burning carbon based fuels.

An efficient building in a city is currently the easiest way for human beings to survive but, with better understanding and use of technology, our need for high temperature, prepackaged energy becomes more and more discretionary. So why do we still burn things ? Microwaves can heat and sterilize our foods but we risk salmonella on a barbecue ! We only need a little bit of water at 100 degrees C to make hot drinks and a bit more at about 60 C for washing etc. Why do we throw this water down the drain whilst it is still hotter than the inside of our buildings ? It should be illegal ! Heating and cooling of the insides of buildings should only involve temperatures a few degrees above and below the desired 21C. Close control over the thermal gradients, however, even with lesser temperature differences, can still involve many kiloWatts of energy transfer. Life on the planet has taught us the need to have liquids in conduits to bring about the transference of energy and this is where the current building fabric is woefully deficient. Control of thermal gradients is the essence of the building fabric so properly connected stores of water should be positioned to move the kiloWatts between building elements such as floors and ceilings . Underfloor heating can give comfortable air temperatures with water no hotter than 28 C. When linked to a chilled ceiling, comfort conditions for a human being (giving off about 100 watts) can be maintained over many hours without throwing any energy away. In a predictable climate, temperature rises can be anticipated and a timetable devised for moving energy between building surfaces (floors, ceilings, sunny rooms, sheltered areas, inside, outside). Thermal gradients can be optimised by delaying thermal conductivity through the mass in the building components. If the only requirement is the swapping of a hotter surface with a cooler one, the interchange in a pipe can be done by gravity or a small conventional pump, but to increase the temperature differences at will, needs a heat pump.

Once the energy is in a water conduit it's movement is fully controllable and has the overriding benefit of allowing excess energy upon exposure, to be radiated to clear night skies. This will cool the planet. On clear nights the energy does not radiate back. Such a process will need careful monitoring to avoid excessive exuberance on cloudy nights but could be integrated with carbon trading. For instance the equivalent heating caused by a jet flight could be counterbalanced by using buildings to throw 'excess kiloWatts' off the planet. I don't know what an "excess kiloWatt" is and query if it can ever have any green credentials. I do know that solar kiloWatts are free and the only burning involved has been done off-planet. Annually at least 1000 kWh per sq.m. arrive at most parts of the UK. They don't know what temperature you want but your building should give them the appropriate downhill gradient, possibly assisted by a water-to-water heat pump . The more kiloWatts stored at biological temperatures the less the need for illogical flames and burning. It is my contention that, for buildings, heating does not have to be red hot and cooling can be left to the second law of thermodynamics."

(1) Dr Max Lüscher "The Lüscher Colour Test"

Solar is zero carbon ......... tel. 0207 207 3555