Think that turning on the light switch translates to the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions during all hours of the day? Think again.

Last Friday saw the creation of realtimecarbon.org, a United Kingdom-based website that allows UK citizens to view the varying carbon intensity of their energy usage throughout the day.
The site tracks the carbon footprint of a KW of energy over time. Demand for electricity fluctuates depending on the time of day and season of the year. Peak hours are normally daytime and early evening and cold winter months when electricity is needed for heat and the days are shorter.

When consumers use energy during these peak hours, the carbon intensity of each unit of electricity used is higher because it increases the cost of wholesale energy which causes utilities to switch on the cheapest sources, usually coal-fired power plants.

For example, on average in the United Kingdom, boiling a pot of water or running the dishwasher in the middle of the afternoon emits 40% more carbon dioxide then doing the same activities in late evening or at night.

The website “uses data from the organisations who manage the ‘balancing and settlement’ of the electricity grid to determine which power stations or wind-farms are generating electricity at any given time. It then calculates the overall carbon intensity using coefficents for each type of generation.”

The self-proclaimed goals of the tool are to “reduce carbon emissions, enable more accurate carbon accounting for businesses, promote smart-grids with smart demand, and encourage debate on energy and climate change policy.”

Duncan Clark at The Guardian’s environment blog explains its significance, “It may sound geeky but it’s hugely significant… Anyone interested in energy and emissions has known about this for years – though only on a theoretical level. For the first time, Realtime Carbon actually gives us some numbers.”

The creators of the website are hoping to reduce carbon emission and spur the creation of clean energy projects by making it easier for companies to understand, estimate, and reduce to their carbon emissions. Although a real time carbon counter was installed in New York City a month ago, there is yet to be a North American counterpart to the UK tool.

The tool cannot simply be copied because it uses energy data specific to the United Kingdom. Although the United States’ energy supply is fairly homogenous—in the sense that most regions are heavily dependent on coal and natural gas—a tool for the United States would have to be split up into states or regions because energy sources do differ significantly. For instance, Washington receives a significant supply of its energy from hydroelectric power that is virtually emission-free compared to coal power. It would be problematic to group it with Idaho or Montana, states whose energy supplies are sourced from dirtier sources.

Regardless of the difficulties involved with adapting the tool for countries other than the UK, it seems clear that this website is a landmark achievement in understanding energy supply and communicating that understanding to the public. It is a tool that, if accurate and user-friendly, could revolutionize how businesses use and think about their energy.

The Plastics 2020 Challenge Takes Global Centrestage

An alliance of the worldwide plastic industry, consisting of leading trade associations, has been forged to ensure that they are able to alter the common perception that the plastic industry is environmentally-insensitive. This significant development has come about in the form of ‘The Plastics 2020 Challenge’ organized by PlasticsEurope, the British Plastics Federation and the Packaging & Films Association. The Challenge would represent the innovative and eco-friendly efforts of about 5,000 plastic companies.

As part of this campaign, the concerned entities would try to incorporate the use of lightweight plastics along with developing new ways in which plastic products can be recycled without any substantial carbon emissions. This essentially means that the brands registered under this forum would seek more cooperation from the government agencies involved in developing greener technologies, particularly those concerned with recycling. One of the objectives would be to develop affordable waste-to-energy technologies when recycling does not seem like an economically-feasible option.

Plastics 2020: The Outline

The forum has emphasized that they want to double the recycling rate for plastic packaging and other products by 2020. This will be combined with an effort to limit the volume of plastic wastes being dumped in landfills.

Challenge 2020 endorses an easy-to-understand tag line for educating people about its efforts. This is being promoted as the ‘Four Rs’:

•    Reduce — restricting plastic wastage by phasing-out plastic products that don’t present a recycling option. This means a commitment towards introducing high-performance plastic materials.
•    Reuse — gradually increase the use of thinner and low-emission plastics for packaging and constructional purposes. These plastics are as reusable as conventional plastics but have a lesser impact on the environment.
•    Recycle — seeking support from industrial conglomerates and government agencies for increasing the efficiency with which used plastics are transformed into safe, affordable products. This includes creating sustainable international markets that would endorse this new range of refurbished plastics.

•    Recover — creating a safer and more sustainable method for eliminating plastic products that cannot be safely recycled. This means researching new waste disposal techniques for end-of-life plastics.

Plastic Use & Contemporary Business Practices: Understanding the Predicament

If you consider the relevancy of the Plastics 2020 Challenge, it would seem that it couldn’t have been timed any better. Although there is a great emphasis upon adopting greener business practices across the globe, there is lot of confusion regarding its feasibility and method of adoption. For example, among the latest plastic-centered green building technologies is the Translucent Roofing System that is used for controlling the amount of natural light entering the living spaces and it is recyclable.

There is also a gradual shift towards using an innovative plastic-based, nano-porous insulation material. However, apart from a handful of such examples there is a serious dearth of adopting greener plastics into the modern business segment, particularly in creating sustainable homes.

The Problem — The general perception is that plastics have an extremely negative environmental impact and their use should be avoided. However, plastics produced from a single polymer with negligible additives can be easily recycled and have appreciably low carbon emissions. A notable example is the construction industry that presents a confusing picture wherein PVC, polybutylene, polypropylene and polyethylene are being used with varying interpretations about their environmental impact.

The notion that PVC shouldn’t be used for houses based on the green construction platform was severely challenged in 2007 by the US Green Building Council. According to this organization’s report, though much-maligned, PVC was not as environmentally-challenging in comparison to some of the ‘supposedly’ greener materials preached for being used in roofings, pipes, sheet floorings, window frames and claddings.

As a result, there is a great debate over the environmental footprints of PVC. Now, polyethylene, polybutylene and polypropylene are being increasingly substituted for PVC-based constructional products since they don’t contain harmful chemicals chlorine. Yes, these plastics are more environmentally compatible than PVC but their production is heavily dependent of fossil fuels. There are many other plastic options besides these three that haven’t been explored, or more critically, they haven’t been presented in an adoptable format.

Plastics 2020: A Step In The Right Direction

If the above-illustrated example of using plastics for creating greener and more sustainable homes is continued with, the Challenge 2020 will educate its members about various mediums to help businesses understand Sustainable Construction. This would include issues such as decoding carbon footprints of PVC windows, plastic water pipes and use of plastic foam insulation. Resource efficiency of a building is still a grey area for most businesses. For example, plastics foams are cost effective and environmentally friendly and expanded polystyrene insulation helps to conserve energy within an establishment. Similarly, the new-age version of plastics pipes has a lesser ecological impact than concrete and iron pipes and being extremely lightweight, they help to save on transport costs.

This is how the utility of the Plastics 2020 forum will come to the fore — educating businesses about various kinds of plastics that can be incorporated for affordably, adopting greener technologies.

A conglomerate headed by EcoPlus Homes, in collaboration with Sustainable Homes Scotland, SIPS Industries and Formworks UK, has confirmed that it has finalized a site that will be home to Scotland’s first set of Zero-carbon homes. EcoPlus Homes is based in Edinburgh itself and it is focused on developing environmentally-friendly housing options. Stephen Huber, the SHS Commercial Director, who had headed the first-ever Scottish Zero Carbon Housing Conference, held in Edinburgh, emphasized that these homes were the first step in making Scotland home to practical and affordable sustainable housing projects in the future. His company has been at the forefront of building and studying energy-efficient building designs that have met the quality parameters in Europe, over the last 15 years.

The testing and research related to this project had begun in the spring of 2008 and now things seem to have fallen in place to go ahead with actually building homes that will have appreciably lower carbon footprints. The site is located at Ayrshire, owned by the regional ecological tourism development department. It is beautifully located, being surrounded by a perennial lake and cold-climate vegetation. This project is being promoted as the most feasible of sustainable housing options in Europe, though the United Kingdom had taken the lead in developing the first homes in this genre of ‘greener’ accomodation.

In terms of technological innovation, the approach used for this project has already been tested in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. It is called the Passive House Concept and it exceeds the quality standards that are presently being followed in European sustainable housing designs. As far as controlling carbon emissions is concerned, the sustainable energy concept put to use for this project promises to reduce the energy needed for heating by up to 90%. The energy demand numbers have already been released and the comparative analysis is very impressive. Compared to the conventionally-built homes, these homes will have an average heating demand of only 15kWh/m2a. This is remarkably less than the usual demand of 150kWh/m2a for an Edinburgh-based household’s heating requirements. Remainder of the heating demands like the need for hot water will be provided through renewable energy installations.