While the Tories go about their constant attempt to smear the Labour Party by claiming it has used their policy I thought it might be prudent to drop this little one into the mix.

Yesterday David Cameron launched something that as a Cooperator myself appears to be something of a contradiction; the Conservative Cooperative Movement. The problem is that Conservative and Cooperative don’t go together. Putting aside the damage the Tories did to the Cooperative movement when they were in power, putting aside any kind of ideological difference between the collective and mutual perspective of the Cooperative movement and the selfish individualistic doctrine of the Tory Party, it just doesn’t seem right for the leader of the Conservative Party to be talking about Cooperatives.

Of course we’ve been in this territory before. Davey boy turns up to make some speech, tailored to say one thing to those people that day while happily saying something else the next day. We’ve come to expect this kind of duplicitous behaviour. We’ve also come to realise that David Cameron isn’t too hot, or probably more likely, his back room team aren’t too hot on doing prior research.

That is of course an exception in this case because Cameron’s speech which you can read in full here, has some really good examples of how cooperative principles can be enacted within the education sector and good on him too because he cites examples from overseas, specifically Spain and Sweden where there is a longer history of cooperative structures of school management.

There’s only one slight, or to put it more accurately, big problem with this policy that Cameron attributes to Iain Duncan Smith. It’s been nicked, pinched, pilfered, call it what you like because back in September Ed Balls launched the Cooperative Party Education Policy. (Please note, this is a rather large PDF file and may take a while to download).

It’s the Cooperative Party’s proposals for the greater involvement of Cooperative management structures in schools and gives exactly the same proposals that Davey boy is passing off as Tory ideas. Not only that, you know Dave praises how well they’ve done on this in Spain and Sweden? Well guess which countries are highlighted as the examples of this practice from an international perspective in the Cooperative Party document? Yep, that would be Spain and Sweden then. Anyone would think David Cameron, sorry Iain Duncan Smith after all it’s apparently he who is the mastermind behind this new Tory policy had been having a little butchers through the Coop Party’s policy document.

Sorry lads, we were here a long time before you lot when it comes to these policies and incidentally, if you want to be really radical, instead of just proposing that parents can take over the local LEA run school, how about extending it to all schools? If the parents of the local Grammar or private school feel their kids would be better served by cooperatising the school then surely you’d be in favour of enabling them to do so? It is parent choice after all that’s the determining factor here isn’t it? Nah, didn’t think so.

Just got back from the first session of the 2007 Co-operative Party Annual Conference. Got 20 minutes or so to get back and find some supplies in the process so I’ll keep things brief.

The conference opened with a discussion Chaired by Gareth Thomas MP (He always seems to chair everything at conference) with a panel of Hilary Benn, a representative of businesses called Patricia and a guy from the Coop Group and someone from Friends of The Earth (yes I have an appalling memory for names I know).

There were a few key issues brought up in the discussion of which I’ll touch on.

The need to involve businesses particularly on the Research and Development side in driving forward greener technologies. An importance not to rush towards seemingly ‘green’ policies without thinking them through in particular relation to the marking of flowers flown in from Kenya that despite them being transported by air, would actually be more efficent than growing them in greenhouses in Holland. (The guy from Friends of the Earth mentioned that one, I do recall Hilary Benn saying something about it in February). That although there is good intention to label such flowers as having been transported by air, that it has led to consumers stopping buying such flowers and that not just the issue of the environment is important but the effect that it is having on Kenyan farmers.

The guy from the Co-op Group pointed to the big ambitions that it had set itself over ten years ago when such ‘green’ issues were not prevalent in the mainstream political discourse but even then the group took the decision not to invest in fossil fuel companies and I think what’s most important to note is that although that was the thinking of the Co-op Group a decade ago, the realities of future economic development and potential for long-term sustainable companies mean that the issues it was addressing then are now the issues that all businesses need to think about.

All in all things are going quite nicely. Met up with some familiar faces, got into an interesting conversation on home-made solar water heating systems and learned there’s a Black Country and Birmingham Inventors Society, might just have a look at that. Back in a Bit.

Been a bit quiet on the blog front lately - with good reason. The ongoing development of the latest Littler Penguin is making Mrs Penguin very sick. Being the loving caring kindof guy I am, I’ve been taking up a lot of the responsibility for many of the things that Mrs Penguin usually attends to not to mention the rather considerable number of DIY jobs required before the arrival of Littler Penguin.

This unfortunately has meant that I’ve had to let a few things slide, the blog being one of them but for the next couple of days I’ve been let out. I’m off to the Annual Co-operative Party Conference in London so excluding time taken up by debates and socialising, I hope to get back up to date on a number of different issues and have a little bash at blogging a bit about conference.

The Co-operative Party doesn’t get a great deal of attention in the national media but it remains the fourth largest political party in Britain. This year is particularly important as it marks the 90th Anniversary of the founding of the Co-operative Party. I enjoy the Co-operative Party Conference, it tends to be more policy orientated and I’ll try to cover a few of the debates on the blog if I can, you never know they may have net access in the conference hall.

On a personal note it feels strange to be leaving Mrs Penguin alone for a few days. I don’t go away much but I’m actually looking forward to a slight change of scenery - if exchanging living in the second largest urban area in the country for the largest can be truly considered a change of scenery.

On a side note, she won’t be lonely, looks like we’ve got another mouse in the house. Mrs Penguin mentioned that she thought she heard something the other day but it wasn’t until yesterday when I noticed a distinctly nibbled packet of Ginger Nuts on my desk that I believed her. Anyway, last night I spotted the little bugger so definitely a mouse, thankfully not a rat but unlike the last one, this one’s cheaky. He’s going for everything and is so noisy he actually woke me up at 4.00am rustling about. Must devise a method of catching him.

Back to a report from the BBC again today. The news that Ruth Kelly has announced that there will be changes in building regulations and planning so that all houses built after 2016 will be ‘zero carbon’.
It is curious, at least for someone who’s been interested in this field for a fair few years now that 2006 very much, if nothing else, marks the year of ‘environmental issues’ beginning to get the real attention by Government and politicians that it deserves.

Probably too late in all honesty as we should have been doing all this 10 years ago but never mind, better late than never.

So on that basis I really do welcome the noises eminating from Westminster and indeed across the country from various local authorities that these issues are finally being taken seriously.

Right, that’s the nice bit over with, let’s get into the real nitty gritty of the issue. Now just for the record I’ve been doing a fair bit of research on ‘carbon neutrality’ for a while now, mainly in conjunction with and contributing towards the debate in the Co-operative Party. I also reckon that although many speak out on the issue, there’s actually a very weak understanding amongst both the general public but more worryingly, amongst those actually making the decisions about this issue.

I’ll reserve other areas of the discussion for another time and only concentrate on housing today as that seems to be the focus from my best mate Ruth Kelly.

We should start by defining carbon-neutrality, it’s a term bandied about quite a lot in the media and political circles but it’s bloody amazing how many people don’t actually get it. It is that through a process whatever it may be, the amount of carbon emitted into the environment equals the amount of carbon consumed at the start and throughout the process involved. That’s a bit abstract I know so here’s an examples.

A tree. Trees are primarily made out of carbon, they are probably the best example of a carbon neutral cycle. When the tree grows, it absorbs carbon from it’s surroundings to form its structure. Now this is a bit for all those muppets who think we can solve global warming by planting lots of trees. Tree lifecylces are carbon neutral, not a true form of carbon capture, at least in any real long term sense, I’m meaning more than a couple hundred years here just for clarification as that’s the general lifespan of a tree. When a tree dies, the carbon it absorbed throughout its life is released back into the environment. This is primarily in one of two ways. Either it rots naturally or someone comes along and burns it. This is one of those ironic situations, at least for the casual viewer, that using wood as a source of heating by burning it is actually quite an environmentally friendly thing to do. The tree absorbed the carbon through it’s lifecycle, which is then released through burning with the possible by-product of producing warmth to heat a house. I’ll come back to wood burning stoves later.

Now carbon-neutral is the buzz word at the moment, although today’s announcement is using the term carbon-zero and the article has a nifty little deinition for us.
“A zero carbon house is defined as a property with “zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from all energy use in the home”.

This is a clever phrase because it only relates to the input and output of energy for the house, not transport pollution or other associated environmental or carbon issues, you’ll see what I mean later. And for those who can do this, there won’t be any Stamp Duty to pay which is nice. Apart from one thing. It’s near on bloody impossible to achieve this situation. And here’s why.

A good look at the lovely pie chart in the BBC article is advised at this point which shows the proportion of energy used within a household. This chart has been around for a while and is as pretty good a guide as any bit of statistical data ever can be. Let’s do the little things first.

Cold appliances, fridges and freezers. There’s not a lot you can do here except buy the most efficient models, they’re pretty much an essential to modern living short of going back to the old cold slab under the stairs approach of the Victorians and that ain’t going to keep the frozen pizza frozen for very long. Sadly there’s not much available in terms of doing much about this energy being used apart from the continued increases in efficiency from the industry.

Consumer electricals, all those lovely things like TV’s, computers, hifi’s etc that make life wonderful, or not, depending on your perspective. Again, there’s a lot that can be done in terms of efficiency here and even good practice like not leaving them on standby, although see my other article on this subject to get a better understanding, it really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be as a method of saving the planet. Again industry is bringing out more efficient models and even now seems to be getting the hint that on/off switches are quite a good idea. One bit of advice for the ‘lads’ out there who pine after Plasma screens. Next time you have a look at one in a shop, feel the heat it gives off. They consume a hell of a lot of electricity and should be avoided by those who are watching their electricity bills.

Cooking. Here it gets a bit more complicated. Let’s take an electric cooker for starters. Now in most cases of electrical products, heat is an unfortunate by-product that isn’t required and represents a level of inneficiency in the product. However, in cooking, it’s actually the heat that we’re after. Cookers come with efficiency ratings like most products but pretty much they’re not as important a guide as efficiency in turning electricity into heat doesn’t vary much. This also poses a dilemma for those seeking to make a positive contribution to our planets environment that I will come back to in a bit, but electricity is a very inneficient way of producing heat compared to something like a gas cooker. However gas is a fossil fuel so that’s a big no no if we’re taking about trying to achieve a carbon-zero household.

Lighting. OK, it’s only 3% of energy use but here it is quite easy to switch to a more efficent system and as an example, the Penguin house has nine light fixtures. Seven of these run on energy efficient bulbs. The other two are nice spots that Mrs Penguin won’t let me take down, although there are new energy saving spot bulbs emerging on to the market but the prices are a bit prohibitive at the moment and the LED technology isn’t quite there yet. Yes, we can make a difference here but it’s still only a tiny proportion of all household energy use.

Wet appliances. Short of doing the washing by hand, a washing machine is another one of those essentials, again, it’s getting the most efficient model to cut down on energy that’s the order of the day here. Then there’s a dishwasher. This is another one of those problems because doing the dishes by hand doesn’t use electricity. However it does mean using more water than the modern highly efficient dishwashers, and water needs heating. So if you’re heating more water and thus using more energy to do that, does it conterbalance the electricity used by the dishwasher? I haven’t found a single study on this one, although there’s plenty on comparisions between the two when it comes to water conservation but that’s another issue although the dishwasher wins hands down on that one.

Right, now we’re on to the biggies and thus where things are really going to make a difference.

Water heating at 24% of domestic energy consumption. The vast majority of people heat their water by only a couple of different methods. Either by electric or a fossil fuel (mainly gas). Now if we’re talking ‘zero-carbon’ then the fossil fuel option is out of the window again, despite as in our house, a gas combi-boiler system being the most efficient method of heating water (it only heats water on demand and not to a storage tank). Electricity, again, a bloody inneficient way to heat water but if we’re talking ‘zero-carbon’ then it’s going to have to factor somewhere as one of the only source of heating water to a sufficient temperature for it to be usuable for things like baths, showers, washing up etc.

Back to wood burning stoves again as promised. Now these can achieve the temperatures desired, as indeed can pellet systems which have the ability to be hopper fed and automated so no getting up to a cold morning to heat up the boiler. There’s also systems that work on bio-fuels which are all carbon-neutral.

So can we do it here?

Yes we can. However, these fuels, short of having lots of land to grow the stuff yourself have to be transported and stored on site. Which requires space and transport costs, which innevitably means more traffic and a shifting of carbon emmissions from the household to transport. Not to mention that they require industrial processes that consume energy and shitloads of land to grow the stuff in the first place. At best, it’s not very efficient, at worst, all we’d be doing is shifting the carbon-emission problem from one area to another. Probably not a bad idea if you live in the countryside and can grow the stuff yourself, but in a highly urbanised country such as Britain it’s not a viable approach for the majority of households, especially not flats. (storage)

There are however a few other options available, that don’t heat the water to sufficient temperature for use but heat it enough to then be given a top up of heat by another system. These are solar and geothermic.

Solar systems aren’t that expensive taking into account the general expense expected for a household heating system. There’s also Government grants available which is nice too. These involve a simple system stuck on the roof which pumps water through the panels, usually a solar powered pump, the sun heats the water up a bit and it’s fed back down into the the storage tank and the heat is topped up by a more conventional heating method. Basically it increases the efficiency of the system, it doesn’t replace it. It is however geared up to a storage tank system where there is a constant, or timed hot water store and therefore isn’t necessarily more efficent than a combi-boiler system. They can be made to work with a combi-boiler system but the prices are prohibitive as you can quite happily add £1,400 - £3,000 on top depending on what kind of combi-boiler you’ve got.

Then there’s geothermic energy. This works by passing some sort of pipe system through the ground at a suitable depth whereby it can absorb the natural heat of the earth. It’s then pumped back up into the water heating system and all the arguments about solar systems apply to this. Apart from, it’s more efficient and can provide a greater KWatt output and it’s obviously more constant and not prone to seasonal differences that a solar system. However, it requires a significantly higher capital investment and a large area of land to work. There are systems that work by drilling a spirral coil into a borehole which takes up less land but these are really pricey.

Now on to space heating at 60% of all energy use and the most difficult one to crack. A large percentage of households have central heating, based on a hot water pumped system. So all the stuff about heating water applies here. Equally wood burning stoves are again quite good at this especially if they have back boilers but again I’ve already laid out the problems with that system. There is of course direct electrical storage heating, underfloor heating and various other systems but as we’ve learnt already, electricity is a piss poor inneficient way of producing heat.

That pretty much leaves us with only one other option for heating our living space. Passive solar. You’ve probably seem ‘eco-homes’. Often they feature a bloody big glass frontage or roof on a generally south facing side. Good idea, works well, only problem being that the sun is a bit crappy when you actually need it, ie, in the depths of winter and at night.

So is it possible to have a ‘zero-carbon’ house. Well, yes, however there are a lot of buts. ‘Zero-carbon’ means almost by default that we can’t touch fossil fuels although it doesn’t actually because if we could produce excess energy to offset the carbon used then it still counts. Only problem being that producing excess energy is extremely unlikely to the extent of being impossible. There’s plenty of options out there for heating water or living space, because basically that’s the area we’re most concerned about. Many mean a combination of systems but all require at the very least either the use of electricity or the burning of wood or bio-fuels. Wood or bio-fuels simply aren’t going to cut the mustard for the majority and we simply don’t have enough land to grow sufficient amounts of the stuff to meet our demands. Yes, we know it’s probably the most inefficient method but looks like we’re stuck with electricity. However, we need to be ‘zero-carbon’ on this so short of this all being a big fiddle and implying that we can all happily use nuclear energy which of course would require rather a big building programme to offset the non-use of fossil fuels then we’re looking at generating the stuff ourselves.

Right, micro-generation. Pretty much we’ve got two options, wind and solar unless you live next to a waterfall which I’d hazard a guess most people don’t. Domestic wind turbines, despite what Mr Cameron wishes to imply by having one himself actually produce bugger all electricity, at least in the quanitities that we’re talking about. A good example would be that to get a reasonable amount of electricity out of wind, you’d need something akin to those you see in films set in the Australian outback. Sorry, but can’t see that one getting past the local LibDem controlled planning committee.

So we are left with solar. Again, it’s a very inneficient method of generation. Although it does have advantages in that it is the only method available that requires no moving mechanical parts which pretty much eliminates maintenance and they tend to come with 20 year guarantees on performance. Indeed many of the early solar systems are still in use today and churning out the leckie.

What however do they require?

Well for one, a south facing roof at the right ellevation, this varies depending on where in the country you live.

How much space do you need?

I investigated this given that the Penguins are blessed with a south facing roof. I measured ours to twenty square metres. I contacted a reputable firm (Solar Century, the people who did the CIS Tower in Manchester) and if I were to clad the whole roof it would generate around 4KWatts at peak. A good factor to intruduce is to knock 25% off to take into account that the system isn’t hardly ever going to run at 100% of it’s output capability. Now most estimates out there put the average house at a running cost of 6KWatts or energy. So even if I clad the whole roof in solar panels I couldn’t generate enough energy and don’t forget, 6KWatts is based on the use of more efficient fossil fuel methods of heating, electricity is less efficient so actually you would require more energy overall.

What’s it going to cost?

Well, with a Government grant paying 50% of the costs, for my twenty square metres it would still set me back £6,000 which I can’t afford being poor as I am. And lets not forget we’re probably going to need nearly twice the capacity of that system to go completely ‘zero-carbon’. So for a new build, we’re looking at £24,000 a property actual cost excluding grants and assuming there’s a big enough roof space available which if round here is anything to go by, the philosophy of developers is to stick as many shoeboxes on a plot as they can get away with to maximise their profits and these places don’t tend to have forty square metre south facing roofs.

So what have we learned so far?

Well, Gordon’s not going to be worrying about losing too much money from loss of Stamp Duty revenues because the ‘zero-carbon’ house is nigh on bloody impossible to build. I know it sounds good, and indeed it’s great to see our Government seriously trying to move in a positive direction on this but in reality even some sort of a combined heating/micro-generation system that could achieve almost or even ‘zero-carbon’ status would add such an increase in costs (even when considering economies of scale) that I think it would be hard for the market, especially one such as ours which is already over-inflated to be able to accommodate it. As a first-time buyer myself who was lucky and got a cheap place, (there’s a very good reason) I know my friends of comparable age who just simply wouldn’t even be able to contemplate getting on to the ladder even if it means there’s a payback in ruduced or even zero energy bills.
Overall conclusion; good idea, glad we’re talking about it. I’m really looking forward to seeing the details.