Remember the good old days, when you went out on an adventure and took along extra batteries (if you were thinking ahead) just so you wouldn’t run out of lighting. Well, not only did those batteries cost money and added bulk, they also ended up in a landfill, creating pollution.

But today you will find that a wind up flashlight in place of a battery powered light makes great sense… and the technology just keeps getting better. In fact, getting 30 minutes or more of illumination after only 1 minute of winding is almost commonplace. You could hardly hunt down the batteries and change them in that time.

So, let’s take a quick look at 10 of our favorite eco-friendly wind up lights. If the want hits, you can find these lights at Nigel’s Eco Store and other green retailers.

1. Woodpecker Shake Light

While technically not a wind up flashlight (you shake it), the concept is so close that we wanted to include it in our collection. The Woodpecker incorporates a double generator to grab all the power it can from a repeated simple up and down gesture. An ultra bright LED provides the illumination.

The light weighs in at 183g, and shaking for 1 minute gives 20 minutes of constant light or optionally 30 minutes of flashing operation. The woodpecker is waterproof down to 2 meters, so you can use it pratically anywhere outdoors, camping, or at the beach. It will even survive a rainstorm in case you get caught out in it – and you won’t have a dead battery.

2. Puma Windup Light

The Puma wind up flashlight is small in size but tough in performance. One minute of winding will give you 20 minutes at standard brightness (1 LED) and 10 minutes at maximum brightness (3 LED). There is also a three LED flashing mode so you can use the light as a signal. With a measurement of 47 x 35 x 76 mm you will find that the Puma fits in most pockets without a problem.

3. Dolphin Caribina Light

The Dolphin wind up light sports a unique design in that it can be clipped onto almost anything thanks to its integrated Caribina clip. Not only is the Dolphin a handy light, but it it can even power your phone thanks to a built in charger outlet and included cable. One minute of cranking gives you 30 minutes of light or up to eight minutes of phone time.

The Dolphin weighs 250gm and is 15cm in overall length. The included cable is for Nokia phones, but other adapters are available. The illumination is provided by three ultra bright LEDs, assuring that you will not be out of battery, bulb, or even a dead phone when you need it.

4. Owl Wind Up Lantern

Sometimes it’s just handy to have a lantern instead of a flashlight, and that is where the Powerplus Owl comes into play. The Owl is a rugged camping lantern (just like you remember), but it winds up. Six LEDs provide the light, and one minute of charging gives 25 minutes. You can fully charge the unit and have 100 minutes of steady illumination.

The Owl is encased in a tough rubber outer shell, which makes it a perfect camping companion on those less than perfect excursions. You know, the ones we all tend to have at some point in our camping experiences.

5. Barracuda Wind Up And Solar Light

The Powerplus Barracuda combines two forms of green power to keep you illuminated – wind up and solar. The tough rubber protected light is waterproof down to five meters, making it durable enough to handle the outdoors as well as the vehicle’s trunk. 3 LEDs provide the light, and you can select one, three, or flashing LEDs as needed

How well does it charge up? One minute of winding gives an impressive 80 minutes on 1 LED, 60 minutes on 3. As for the solar side of things, an hour basking in the sun gives you light for 120 minutes on 1 LED, 90 minutes on 3. This would make the Barracuda a great device to have soaking up the rays during the day and working at night.

6. Bat Wind Up Head Lamp

When you are working and have both hands in the mix, then it is nice to have a light that is head mounted. The Powerplus Bat is exactly that, a head mounted wind up light that leaves your hands free for uses other than holding a flashlight. The Bat allows you to change the angle of shine, and a comfortable headband keeps the light firmly yet comfortably in place.

The Bat gives up to 90 minutes of light for 1 minute of crank time (40 minutes on all three LEDS), and if needed the unit can even be mounted on a bicycle thanks to the included bicycle clip.

7. Freeplay Indigo Wind Up Lantern

Similar to the OWL above, the Freeplay lantern is great for camp outs and table usage. The Freeplay boasts a great three hours of light (at the lowest setting) for a single one minute winding charge. Better yet, fully charge it for three hours of continuous light at the brightest setting. There is also a small directional light, great for reading, that will last 40 hours on a fully winded charge.

8. Penguin Wind Up and Shake Light

Don’t forget about the little campers when you go on your next adventure. The delightful Penguin wind up light is perfect for the 5 and up adventurer, and it gives a lot of fun while remaining eco friendly. In fact, the LED light works with either a quick wind up or they can just shake it for more light.

9. Blue X-Ray Wind Up Light

The Blue X-Ray wind up light is a great light to have with you in the dark. A quick 30 second wind gives you about 20 minutes of light, and you can choose between ultra-bright and normal light mode. The colorful Blue X-Ray weighs in at 370g, and measures 55 x 60 x 160 mm.

10. Shark Wind Up Light

We wanted to end our look at eco friendly wind up lights on a powerful note, and so the choice is obvious – the Shark. The Shark is a waterproof wind up light that has two light settings – 5mm LEDs for normal use, and a powerful 1W LED for those times you really need something bright. The 1W LED is rated to be visible for up to 10 km.

What time you are not blinding your enemies with the Shark, you can also use it to charge your phone – a Nokia cable is included, but other adapters are available. You won’t spend all your time winding it either, since a one minute wind up gives 60 minutes of shine in regular mode or 20 minutes on full brightness.

With any of these 10 eco friendly lights I am sure you would find them welcome tools on your next outing (or emergency). The good news is that you will never be out of battery power, and the LEDs are going to continue to shine, well after you need the light.

After the games are held in July this year, this stadium will power 80% the neighbourhood surrounding it with the massive 1.14 gigawatt hours that it will produce every year. Now that’s forward thinking.

The stadium was designed by architect Toyo Ito, seats 55,000 people and cost over $150million to build.

More images of the solar colossus below.

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[via: THOM & deputydog]

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The way it currently stands, London spends about £12bn on energy, but sends 500,000 tonnes of wood and one million tonnes of food waste to landfill.

The board believe that in the current economic climate, people will be receptive to a reuse agenda, and chairman Boris Johnson stressed the important economic case to be made for what they want to do. He believes that there will be an enormous economic advantage.

[via: edie]

Good Energy, the UK’s only 100% renewable electricity supplier, is launching Good Energy HotROCs, the UK’s first renewable heat incentive that pays domestic solar generators money for the heat energy they produce.

As part of this scheme, Good Energy has launched a trial gas product – offered only as a dual fuel tariff to customers. Good Energy Gas charges a small premium which helps to fund the reward paid to customers on the HotROCs scheme. Good Energy hope that this ground breaking scheme will help the UK reduce its dependence on gas, boost growth in micro-generation and increase support for renewable electricity.

Tim and Fiona Start are always working on reducing their carbon footprint. They grow their own vegetables, buy local produce, and are active recyclers. For them, having already installed Solar PV which generates electricity, renewable heat technology in the form of a solar thermal panel was the next positive step.

This month they signed up to the Good Energy HotROCs scheme: “This is a great innovation and unique to Good Energy. It is another way to help us reduce our bills and improve the return on investment of our solar panels. It will help boost micro-generation in the UK and reduce the country’s carbon emissions.”

Juliet Davenport, Good Energy’s Chief Executive is proud of the company’s latest innovation. “I am delighted that Good Energy is leading the way with the first Renewable Heat Incentive in the UK. HotROCs is a simple effective reward and, like our pioneering work that supports small scale electricity generators, we are confident it will succeed and be copied by other UK energy suppliers. The launch of Good Energy HotROCs is a vital step in delivering the UK a renewable heat future.”

The Low Impact Living Initiative are running courses during the month of October on composting, building solar water heaters, green woodwork, low-impact smallholdings, wood burner construction and advanced recycling. The courses are run in the South East, the North and in Wales, so there should be a venue that suits you.

Or learn more about renewable energy on courses being held across the country by Green Dragon Energy. Courses include Introduction to Renewable Energy, Wind & Solar Electricity Course, Solar Electricity Installation Course – Off-grid Applications.

[via Rising Tide]

Photo credit: tanais

Photo credit: Akuppa

There is an episode of “Spooks” – the BBC Spy Drama – in which “green terrorists” threaten to blow up the Thames Barrier and flood London unless the Government releases a report proving it is secretly trying to appear serious about climate change whilst actually continuing with business as usual. Few commentators would be surprised today if they were to learn such a report actually exists.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) and the charity Help the Aged lodged papers at the High Court in London on 9th April seeking a Judicial Review of UK energy efficiency policy because of the Government’s failure to meet its legal obligation to eradicate fuel poverty. People suffering from fuel poverty are defined as those spending more than 10% of their income on heating and lighting. According to the Government’s Fuel Poverty Advisory Group (FPAG), more than 2.3m of the most vulnerable households in England suffer from fuel poverty, which means around eight old people are dying every hour due to cold related illnesses in the winter months.

Britain has plans for ten new “Eco-Towns” and all new houses will be zero-carbon after 2016. But 80% of the houses we will inhabit in 2050 are already built, so, in order to cut carbon emissions by 60%, or preferably 80%, then emissions from these buildings will need to be cut by at least the same amount. Yet current plans expect an entirely inadequate contribution from the domestic sector.

Heat loss from the existing 25 million dwellings will need to be halved and around 600,000 micro-generation schemes, such as solar panels, need to be installed every year for the next 42 years, rather than the paltry 121,000 expected in the next three years. [1] 270 domestic solar PV systems were installed in 2007, compared with 130,000 in Germany. Environment groups have been focusing on persuading the UK Government to join the global renewable energy boom, and develop a renewable energy manufacturing base. Campaigners have persuaded a remarkable 270 MPs to sign a motion supporting German and Spanish style feed-in tariffs for small-scale renewable energy producers. [2] WWF too has been campaigning for the introduction of financial incentives to motivate home-owners to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and rewards for home-owners who generate their own electricity from micro-renewables. [3]

Fuel poverty and climate campaigners are struggling to understand how exactly the Government thinks its new found enthusiasm for nuclear power will help. The big worry is that attention, finances and resources will get diverted from what really needs to be done now to tackle climate change, as seems to have happened in Finland. We can’t afford to wait until 2025 to discover, as past experience tells us we will, the new reactor programme was a £30bn mistake.

Jonathon Porritt, former FoE Director, and now Chairman of the Government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says UK ministers are putting more effort into encouraging nuclear power than they have devoted to the entire field of renewables over the last 10 years. Ministers see nuclear power as the only manageable mega-fix available to them, the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card – a sad and extraordinarily ill-judged illusion.

Walt Patterson, an FoE nuclear campaigner in the 1970s, says the pro-nuclear argument was comprehensively demolished two decades ago, so, like many people, he was astonished and bemused when nuclear power re-entered the policy agenda again in 2005. Given the nuclear industry’s history of failure, why the Government thinks this industrial basket-case might be an appropriate place to look for a solution to the climate change problem is a bit mystifying.

New reactors are not going to start springing up very quickly. A Strategic Siting Assessment to identify possible sites will begin soon with a consultation on draft criteria, but won’t be completed until the end of 2009. The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate has been assessing new reactor designs, but it won’t be finished until 2012. Then there will a planning process which might finish in 2013, so construction might start in 2014.

There is still everything to play for. The US Department of Energy, for example, reckons that by 2015 solar photovoltaics will produce economically competitive electricity – so any new reactors ordered will be economically obsolete before they are even open. [4] Time to get active, before nuclear power kills off any remaining chance we have of effectively tackling climate change.

[1] Home Truths: A Low Carbon Strategy to Reduce UK Housing Emissions by 80% by 2050, by Brenda Boardman, FoE (EWNI) and Co-operative Bank, November 2007. http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/home_truths.pdf
[2] EDM 890. http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=35066&SESSION=891
[3] How Low Report, WWF-UK, 31st March 2008

http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/how_low_report.pdf

[4] Science for Democratic Action, January 2008. Vol15 No.2 http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/15-2.pdf

Of course I’ve heard about Webcameron, but I’ve never had the pleasure of actually watching any of it. So here you go, a politician talking sense, for a change. I’ve never considered giving the Conservatives my vote before, but I much prefer what Cameron is saying to what I’ve heard from Gordon Brown. Note to self: don’t forget politicians can’t be trusted.

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As oil prices skyrocket and the climate heats up, the debate around the 2007 Energy Bill, currently being debated in U.S. Congress behind closed doors, is getting hotter. Environmentalists, students, rock stars, and even auto industry workers in the United States are clamoring for a strong, clean 2007 Energy Bill that includes high fuel efficiency standards, more renewable electricity and no nukes. The U.S. auto industry is contentiously divided, as American students rally across the nation, and everyone launches YouTube video campaigns.

Can the U.S. Ever Reach 35 mpg by 2020?

The United States Congress is hard-pressed to choose between 2 fuel efficiency standards – the 35 mpg Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standard, which was approved by the Senate in June, and the U.S. Auto Industry counter-proposal of 32 mpg by 2022.

A large group of auto workers and dealers have broken from the industry in order to support the 35 mpg by 2020 fuel efficiency standard. As oil prices continue to rise, what is at stake in the debate over fuel efficiency is the future of the American auto industry and the livelihood of U.S. autoworkers, not to mention the wallets of American drivers in the years to come.

Adam Lee, a third generation auto dealer, makes this personal plea in his 3-minute video clip.

“My family has been selling American made cars since 1936. My livelihood and the livelihood of over 350 employees who work for us depend upon the success of the automobile industry. Today that strength is severely compromised by the lack of fuel-efficient cars and trucks customers want to buy. …

Without a 35 mile-per-gallon mandate, I’m afraid, global warming and our dependence on foreign oil will continue to get much worse in the long run. And, in the short run, I’m afraid I’ll be stuck with a lot full of cars that no one wants to buy or even worse: This country will no longer have an American auto industry.”

To emphasize the difference between the 2 fuel efficiency proposals, the Pew Campaign for Fuel Efficiency delivered Trick or Treat bags to members of Congress, illustrating the Spooky Truth about the32 mpg by 2022 Auto Lobby proposal.

Power Shift 2007 – American Youth Demand Climate Legislation

On the Monday following the National Day of Climate Action on Saturday, November 3rd, which saw rallies on American campuses across the nation, a huge group of American students recently convened in Washington D.C. for an initiative called Power Shift 2007. The youth arrived to demand bold legislation that effectively combats climate change and global warming and deliver an action-oriented, concrete proposal to move the nation forward towards a greener future. The students asked U.S. lawmakers to:

1.Create 5 million green jobs conserving 20% of our energy by 2015
2. Freeze carbon pollution levels now, reduce 30% by 2020, and 80% by 2050
3. Enact an immediate moratorium on new coal-fired power plants

The youth also highlighted which provisions under consideration in the 2007 Energy Bill had the strongest positive impact on a clean, energy future for America. In addition to the 35 mpg fuel efficiency standard, a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) requiring 15% of U.S. electricity to be sourced from renewable energy sources was high on the agenda.

Rockers Protest the Nuclear Bailout On YouTube

One of the more frightening provisions under consideration in the hotly debated Energy Bill is a proposal for unlimited loan guarantees to the nuclear power industry, which could amount to the tens of billions of dollars.

Musicians Bonnie Raitt,Jackson Browne and Graham Nash have launched a nuke-free petition drive and YouTube music video urging Congress not to approve federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power is being touted as a viable energy alternative to greenhouse gas emitting fossil fuels. Under U.S. legislation enacted in 2005, nuclear power qualifies as a “clean technology” because it does not emit carbon gases that contribute to global warming. However, nuclear power is far from clean.

Should Congress even adopt the 35 mpg Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard and 15% Renewable Energy Standard, the nuclear provision would obliterate any environmental gains made by CAFE and RES.

What you can do to support a strong, clean 2007 Energy Bill

The United States is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the world’s most oil-addicted nation. Less dependence on foreign oil and leadership in renewable energies can stand to make the U.S. a more model global citizen.

Here’s what you can do to support the United States in making a shift to a cleaner energy future:

1) Support auto industry workers by sending this letter to Congress in support of 35 mpg by 2020.

2) Support a strong, clean Energy Bill that includes both the 35 mpg CAFE standard and 15% Renewable Electricity Standard by signing this petition.

3) Say “NO” to unlimited loan guarantees to the nuclear power industry by signing this petition for a Nuke Free America.

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An ordinary couple decide to become self-sufficient.

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