New tidar power project for Scotland

Massive new tidal turbines could be operational at three undersea sites around Scotland by 2011, according to a report in The Times. ScottishPower Renewables has identified the Pentland Firth, the Sound of Islay, and the North Antrim coast off Northern Ireland as the most suitable sites for the underwater turbines. Each location will have between five and 20 1MW machines which could lead to a combined output of 60MW - enough to meet the energy needs of 40,000 homes.

Tidal turbines are described as similar to wind turbines but with much shorter blades which turn more slowly. They are anchored to the sea bed and aligned to the tidal flow. The UK has almost a 10 per cent share of the global tidal power resource, representing 13bn kilowatt-hours. More than 80 per cent of the potential is located in Scottish waters.

Tracking carbon footprints by phone

A fascinating story in today's Guardian about an application that automatically tracks your movements via your mobile phone and uses the data to calculate your carbon footprint. Carbon Diem's inventor, Andreas Zachariah, a graduate student of the Royal College of Art in London and chief executive of the appealingly-named Carbon Hero company.

Carbon Diem is the world's first automated carbon calculator. It uses GPS to measure the speed and pattern of movement, using an algorithm to identify the mode of transport being used. It can therefore calculate the amount of carbon dioxide that a journey has emitted and keep a constantly updated diary of a person's carbon emissions, without any need for input from the traveller. As a result, a user can easily track their environmental impact and, if they choose, modify their behaviour to lower-carbon alternatives.

It's a great idea, but I wonder how it tells the difference between walking and crawling along in a traffic jam? And it may be difficult to track journeys made by tube when no signal is available underground. But anything which makes monitoring environmental impact easier for the user can only be a step forward.

Largest consumers of electricity

According to the Guinness Book of Records 2009, the United States is the biggest consumer of electricity in the World. The USA used over 3.7 billion KWH in 2005, almost a quarter of the total 16.3 billion KWH consumed Worldwide that year. This equates to 12.343 KWH per person.

Surprisingly, though, the Americans aren't the biggest per capita users of electricity - that "honour" goes to Icelanders, who used an astonishing 26,101 KWH per person in 2005.

Greening the city

The 39th floor of a glass tower in docklands is perhaps not the most obvious venue for a debate on sustainability but it was quite an eye opener. For example, it was sobering to hear that the price of carbon is widely expected to reach 40 Euros within the next few years - resulting in bills of billions for large businesses. But that's not nearly so alarming as the view that the current economic meltdown has pushed sustainability off the radar for most blue chip companies.

Economic crises come and go, but irreversible changes in the planet's balance are happening now and will continue to happen irrespective of share prices and interest rates. And companies without carbon abatement programmes are simply burning money - increasingly so, as energy prices rise. This is no time to take our eye off the ball.

For the most part, though, the speakers at the Boardroom Edge-backed event presented compelling and well-formed arguments to support the greening of business, not merely for altruistic tree-hugging reasons but because it makes good commercial sense. It helps us to run leaner businesses, attract the best talent and compete more effectively. It finally seems that carbon is firmly on the corporate agenda, and this time for sound commercial reasons. Now the challenge is to dismantle the conventional business structures so we don't have to occupy huge glass monoliths in order to demonstrate the size and stability of our businesses.

Greening the channel

I work for a technology company and our channel to market is through IT distributors and then resellers. It's an ongoing dilemma for us that our whilst our product is designed to offer sustainability benefits, it might be resold by companies which don't have a carbon abatement policy. But to restrict our channel only to resellers with green credentials would not be commercially sustainable. Today, I had the opportunity to meet with resellers at the Reseller Leadership Forum run by CRN magazine.

First observation is that the interactive session on sustainability was not so well attended as the others running simultaneously with it - perhaps an indication that the channel's engagement with the issue is lagging behind that of the organisations they supply. Second observation is that if this is the case, the resellers who do engage with the issue stand to benefit hugely because they will little competition. And final thought is that if refresh cycles for hardware become longer - as many of us expect - then resellers will be forced to face up to the fact that they need create new revenue streams to replace this lost income. Services around balanced device deployment, energy management and paper-free document solutions are natural choices.

Simple carbon calculator

We made a simple carbon calculator to work out how much CO2 we saved by not bringing our cars to work on Monday - this could be useful to others so if you'd like a copy, leave me a comment or drop me a message. It's just a simple excel sheet with some average carbon values set up; you enter the number of miles against the intersection of the relevant modes of transport and it works out the CO2 saving.

In Town Without My Car Day

My company took part in In Town Without My Car Day today, organised by our local council as part of European Mobility Week. The idea is you try to avoid bringing your car to work and explore alternative means of transport. Bus fares have been reduced for the day to encourage more people to use public transport, and buses from the "park and ride" scheme are free.

I have been impressed by the number of people who have entered into the spirit of this, especially one colleague who spent more on a train ticket than she spends on petrol for the entire week normally, to make a journey which started and 6.30 am and took twice as long as driving! There are plenty of bikes parked in our lobby, too. Altogether, half the 48 people who came to our office today did so without using their car - and we saved as much CO2 as a 32inch TV would create if used for two hours per day for three years, about 75Kg.

Today's event is a great way to draw attention to the fact that it is possible to leave your car at home, but I'm not sure that anybody found their journey either quicker or cheaper by public transport. Bus fares here are pretty high and the service fairly patchy. I doubt whether many people will continue to travel in the way they did today - but at least it gets the debate going.