Green energy powered by bullsh!t

thorpe

Member
So why can't we have a single generating body that sells us electricity at wholesale price or cost price + regulated profit and cut out the middle man taking his cut?
Electricity is pretty essential nowadays like food and water.
food and water essential surly youve got that wrong!
 

BrianV

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Dartmoor
You couldn't make it up, this is British Airways claims to being carbon neutral basically they are paying someone to watch a forest, how the heck this is an acceptable claim as to offsetting all their pollution from planes escapes me!






Carbon Offset Projects​

Pure Leapfrog and British Airways have worked together to select carbon projects have the highest sustainability standards and strong social, as well as environmental outcomes.​

SAF is also available as an option for fliers who wish to go that extra mile. Selecting this option will allow customers to part fuel their journey with fuel made from captured and recycled carbon such as food waste.​

Cardamom, Cambodia
This project protects the last great rainforest of Asia, located in the Cardamom mountains in south-west Cambodia. Rainforest once covered south-east and south Asia but only 5% remains, and this precious biodiverse region is now particularly vulnerable due to an exponential increase in illegal land grabbing resulting from increased land prices.
More information about this project can be found here.





Cordillera Azul, Peru

Protecting this stunningly biodiverse region at the intersection of the Andes ranges and the Amazon basin, home to thousands of unique species, indigenous and immigrant communities through conservation-based land use practices and strengthened park protection regimes.
More information about this project can be found here.





Darfur Cook Stoves, Sudan

This award-winning project, the first registered carbon credit project in Sudan and the first to be developed in a conflict zone, provides low smoke cook stoves to communities, replacing wood and charcoal burning inside the home.
More information about this project can be found here.
 

mar

Member
Is it only recently that people that commented on this thread have become aware of this carbon offsetting farce or is it something you've known for a few years.
I'm wondering if other people outside of agriculture would be aware of it.
 

HatsOff

Member
Mixed Farmer
Now here's the really strange thing, virtually all these so called "green" companies are suddenly going broke & are no longer viable, has the price of wind suddenly rocketed, has the sun suddenly increased it's price?

An energy supplier has to pay the kWh price whether its come from wind or from gas.

Obviously what actually happens is they buy kWh from whatever source and then buy the equivalent renewable guarantee of origin certificates (which are a good thing because they provide an alternative revenue scheme for renewable energy investment). There isn't much offsetting in the energy market as far as I am aware.
 

HatsOff

Member
Mixed Farmer
After a lot of hard won experience I’ve come to the conclusion that domestic renewables really aren’t feasible in about 90% of homes.

The only possible exception being solar to power modern electric convection heaters. Heat pumps are a complete waste of time unless you enjoy learning amateur engineering and are happy to spend £30k + doing so.

For what it's worth, my air source heat pump is working very well with zero amateur engineering required. And with the fuel oil price creeping back up, would have been financially viable even without RHI.

(wouldn't have gone for it without the grant as the fear of it not working was too great. Now I know what the technology can do, its a no-brainer)
 

BrianV

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Dartmoor
An energy supplier has to pay the kWh price whether its come from wind or from gas.

Obviously what actually happens is they buy kWh from whatever source and then buy the equivalent renewable guarantee of origin certificates (which are a good thing because they provide an alternative revenue scheme for renewable energy investment). There isn't much offsetting in the energy market as far as I am aware.
Renewable guarantees are basically a giant con enabling polluters to claim to be green with little actual benefit to the planet’s future, you need look no further than the Drax power station to see political manipulation, you can be sure at the Cop jamboree it will be farming making the headlines not these real polluters
 

BrianV

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Dartmoor
For what it's worth, my air source heat pump is working very well with zero amateur engineering required. And with the fuel oil price creeping back up, would have been financially viable even without RHI.

(wouldn't have gone for it without the grant as the fear of it not working was too great. Now I know what the technology can do, its a no-brainer)
Might be worth noting that we are still at the tale end of the summer & not everyone has turned their heating on, the test will come when it’s minus 10 degrees outside, will really be interested to know how good it is then?
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
For what it's worth, my air source heat pump is working very well with zero amateur engineering required. And with the fuel oil price creeping back up, would have been financially viable even without RHI.

(wouldn't have gone for it without the grant as the fear of it not working was too great. Now I know what the technology can do, its a no-brainer)
I believe all these heat pumps can do the job , except I also believe the domestic heat pumps also use have an immersion heater in them for when the conditions are bad and the pump is freezing. This leads to both inefficiency in the system, using gas to make electricity is only at best 65% efficient and extremely high power bills. I am not a great fan and I am waiting to see how my new ASHP works compared to my old one.
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Might be worth noting that we are still at the tale end of the summer & not everyone has turned their heating on, the test will come when it’s minus 10 degrees outside, will really be interested to know how good it is then?
The biggest issue with heat pumps is not when it is minus ten, they can still drag heat of the air. The issue is the dank days when it is 2-5 degrees and the condensation on the fins freezes preventing air passage. They then have to go in reverse to clear the ice build up, in bad conditions they are literally working for nothing
 

egbert

Member
Livestock Farmer
Burning wood is no better than burning coal or oil.
Burning wood to dry wood to use to dry grain is also madness
don't be silly.
Burning wood for energy is, as a general principal, gazillions times better than fossil fuels, as it is - in human terms- genuinely carbon neutral
IE it is made of carbon it captured while growing, and releases it again as it's burnt.
There is even the argument that the root system is building soil carbon as well.

Obviously, that skips over how and where the tree is harvested and carted to the place where it's burnt.... and dragging thousands of tonnes of it through the Atlantic to Drax doesn't stack up quite as well.
(I'm sure it's only a coincidence that a director of Drax sits -or sat- on the CCC)

All fossil fuels are a disaster, in that they were laid down in a world that no longer exists, and over a very long period.
Offshore wind is stupidly pointlessly expensive.
On shore turbines might offend the eye of the beholder, but are an obvious way to go.

Nuclear (as in fission) is an utter carcrash. The carbon cost of building them is eyewatering - millions of tonnes of concrete. fudging millions*.
Then there is the chance one will go ping ...and it'll melt the rest of you.
The cost of generating nuclear is still unknown, because we are STILL paying for the storage of crap from the very first day we sparked one up....as will our grandchildren.
Fusion has potential, but the tech problems are monstrous.

notwithsatnding the manufacture 'costs', solar is a no brainer.
They should be a simple requirement of every one of those sh1tbox new houses....each roof has its own panels.

*fag packet maths puts the current projected cost of the new Hinkley plant, versus the predicted supply it generates, as dearer than paying elon musk to put solar and batteries in every single house Hinkley will supply. EVERY fecking house.

Small scale water turbines are likewise a no-brainer. The sticking point is scale of component/system manufacture is too small to make it mass produced.

Battery/storage/transmission remain the bigger problems.

And, of course, as with everything in life.... corrupt donations twist policy.
Rational solutions being enacted? There's no hope. none.
 

roscoe erf

Member
Livestock Farmer
Recently we were lucky enough to have countless energy firms starting up & saving the planet by signing up millions of like minded customers intent on doing their bit by supporting these companies with their green energy.

Now here's the really strange thing, virtually all these so called "green" companies are suddenly going broke & are no longer viable, has the price of wind suddenly rocketed, has the sun suddenly increased it's price?
Of course not, these lying buggers are simply all going out of business because the price of oil & gas has shot up making the polluting energy they buy dearer than they can afford, they simply pretended to be green by planting a few trees to "offset" all of their pollution, remember that when you look around your green carbon absorbing farms & are told your few cows are destroying the world.
the whole industry is full of misleading figures damn right lies and fiction from ad to electric cars and the way this governments green agenda is going it won't be Brexit that breaks UK plc
 

HatsOff

Member
Mixed Farmer
I believe all these heat pumps can do the job , except I also believe the domestic heat pumps also use have an immersion heater in them for when the conditions are bad and the pump is freezing. This leads to both inefficiency in the system, using gas to make electricity is only at best 65% efficient and extremely high power bills. I am not a great fan and I am waiting to see how my new ASHP works compared to my old one.
They have immersion heaters so they can run a weekly disinfection cycle to kill any legionnaires bacteria. Heat pumps max out at around 50C and legionnaires needs to be 60C to kill it. Now... With an unvented cylinder using mains water the risk is effectively zero at 50C, but that's just how they're configured in the UK. They won't use those for anything else unless there is a full on breakdown and the user switches it on. In the past, larger properties have any back up boilers (a hybrid system), but they're pretty much no longer needed with newer heat pumps.

In freezing conditions the heat pump will reverse cycle to clear any frost. This does reduce the efficiency (and makes a great spectacle with the cloud it produces), but overall they're still cheaper than off grid oil and gas. Even in the -10C weather it was maxing out at approx £6/day to run - less than oil was costing me before. Not cheaper than mains gas, though.

Edit - massive caveat. The problems and 'horror stories' are when a house is poorly insulated/draughty so the heat pump can't deliver enough heat to warm it up. But in a well designed system, great!
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
don't be silly.
Burning wood for energy is, as a general principal, gazillions times better than fossil fuels, as it is - in human terms- genuinely carbon neutral
IE it is made of carbon it captured while growing, and releases it again as it's burnt.
There is even the argument that the root system is building soil carbon as well.

Obviously, that skips over how and where the tree is harvested and carted to the place where it's burnt.... and dragging thousands of tonnes of it through the Atlantic to Drax doesn't stack up quite as well.
(I'm sure it's only a coincidence that a director of Drax sits -or sat- on the CCC)

All fossil fuels are a disaster, in that they were laid down in a world that no longer exists, and over a very long period.
Offshore wind is stupidly pointlessly expensive.
On shore turbines might offend the eye of the beholder, but are an obvious way to go.

Nuclear (as in fission) is an utter carcrash. The carbon cost of building them is eyewatering - millions of tonnes of concrete. fudging millions*.
Then there is the chance one will go ping ...and it'll melt the rest of you.
The cost of generating nuclear is still unknown, because we are STILL paying for the storage of crap from the very first day we sparked one up....as will our grandchildren.
Fusion has potential, but the tech problems are monstrous.

notwithsatnding the manufacture 'costs', solar is a no brainer.
They should be a simple requirement of every one of those sh1tbox new houses....each roof has its own panels.

*fag packet maths puts the current projected cost of the new Hinkley plant, versus the predicted supply it generates, as dearer than paying elon musk to put solar and batteries in every single house Hinkley will supply. EVERY fecking house.

Small scale water turbines are likewise a no-brainer. The sticking point is scale of component/system manufacture is too small to make it mass produced.

Battery/storage/transmission remain the bigger problems.

And, of course, as with everything in life.... corrupt donations twist policy.
Rational solutions being enacted? There's no hope. none.

You are incorrect about the offshore turbines, they are very cost effective and do not require subsidies to work. They are good for the environment as they are placed in shallow water which fish like and the super trawlers can no longer go them there.
The only problem the turbines have, that while they are very efficient generators, they still need 100% back up as the country has experienced in the last months.
 

mezz

Member
Location
Ireland
Gets to me why tidal energy has never been harnessed. Predictable and clean. Probably because nobody would make any money.

The tidal lagoon at Swansea bay looked interesting. The Welsh assembly granted permission and was going to contribute £200m to the £1.3bn cost, however it needed an electricity price guarantee (similar to other renewables), which the British government refused. It was proposed 350MW capacity. Possible it will still go ahead without the guarantee.

The government didn't want to guarantee it, because it was felt the cost of the technology would not decline overtime, unlike wind and solar.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.9%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 63 34.2%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.3%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,287
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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