Climate change stories to be cheerful about

It has been a very difficult year for several reasons. But it was not all bad. To cheer us up over the holiday, here are my favourite good news stories from 2020 - including coal consumption down, renewables up, beavers for flood management, hope for the survival of coral, help in eating more plant proteins, and changes to our travel behaviour.

Being together without travelling

Christmas is a time for being together, with family or with friends. But it is not a good time to travel, with bad weather often disrupting trains and planes and the roads clogged with extra traffic even when there hasn’t been an accident bringing progress to a standstill. Fortunately, there are other ways to contact family without actually being there, and they have come a long way from my childhood when there was only a phone with a huge handset and only one of us could talk at a time. These days:

• You can put the phone to speaker mode, so groups can take part at either end.
• You can wear a head set, and talk while moving around (exercising, cooking…)
• You can use a phone with a camera (or a web cam) and have video as well as audio.
• You can use a tele-presence robot which gives you freedom to move and look around at the other end.

Energy saving gift ideas

Stuck for what to give your loved one? Are they a bit of an energy saving geek? Are they always turning the heating up because they have cold feet? Do they do a lot of cooking? Do they have plants that need watering? Do they get cross when the front door letter box flaps in the wind? Here are some ideas for presents to give people that will save energy (amongst other benefits).

Christmas shopping in Green Street, Cambridge

Time for change - but not too much at once

On holiday in Finland

The New Year is a time when many people resolve to change their lifestyle in some way - perhaps to be more fit and healthy, or to save money for a special purchase, or to reduce your carbon footprint. As a member of Transition Cambridge and Cambridge Carbon Footprint I know some people with what I consider to be quite extreme lifestyles, such as being totally vegan or living with hardly any heating (from choice not from necessity). On the other hand, I have found it relatively easy to make changes to my lifestyle - a bit at a time. For example I now take exercise most days, we eat vegetarian or vegan often, and although we are in the house all day we run it cooler during the day than in the evening. So here are some suggestions for fun and healthy ways to reduce your energy use and carbon emissions in small doses.

On Christmas Lights

A friend we visited last weekend had some solar powered outdoor Christmas lights around a tree in their front garden. They weren't working because the weather has been so bad - not enough sun. In any case the size of the solar panel feeding their battery was miniscule - maybe 20cm on a side. LED lights are the most efficient we have now but they don't make light out of nothing. I checked our solar panels - we are currently getting about 1.5 kWh/day from 9 panels so 0.17 kWh/panel. To power a 10W string of lights for 4 hours you would need 0.04 kWh so a quarter size panel. This one was probably about a fifth the size it needed to be. This got me thinking about other ways - not necessarily totally practical - to power outdoor lights. Also I thought I'd do a reality check on carbon emissions from candles versus LED lights.

Christmas Electricity Demand

In my book I have a section on how electricity demand varies through the day - I compare the demand in winter and summer and there is a big difference - about 10 GW less overall and you can see a peak around 6pm in winter when we get home which does not appear in the summer. Since we are now coming up to Christmas, I have done a similar analysis to see what our electricity demand looks like over the holiday. Last year Christmas day was a Saturday so I have compared the holiday weekend with an average December weekend and also average mid-week December demand. There is a huge difference between the Christmas demand and the normal weekend demand (1).

Christmas trees and Christmas lights

I love to see the fairy lights on our Christmas tree, and the colourful illuminations down the high street.  With dusk falling in late afternoon we need a little something to brighten up the gloom don't we? It's only once a year after all. However, energy bills are rising and climate change is a persistent and increasing threat, so it might be worth a quick check to see how much these luxuries are costing us. Also the Christmas tree quandary - is a real tree lower in carbon emissions than an artificial one, or not?