Living with an Electric Car

Posted on by sustainablesilchester

I love my electric car.  I’ve had a Renault Zoe for 7 years now and it still makes my smile every time I put my foot down and pull silently away from the lights faster than almost any other car.    In the word used for Rolls Royces – it has waftability.

 

The first question I am always asked, is how far it can get on a charge. 

Mine is an early electric car, and the range is 70-80 miles depending on driving conditions and the temperature.   There are very few days when I need to travel further than 70 miles.    Almost every charge is done at home.  I have made it to Portsmouth, Bath and Cambridge  – and all those places will come easily within range when I come to replace it,  as newer models all have ranges in excess of 200 miles.  But at the moment longer journeys need a little bit of planning, although this is getting easier as the number of charging points increases.

If you are thinking about an electric car, it is worth looking at electricity tariffs designed for the electric car owner, which don’t come up on comparison websites.  I’m currently using Octopus Go, which gives me a few hours of very cheap charging overnight, so a full charge costs less than £1.

I do like the green credentials: lower CO2 emissions and no pollution, I love the silence that allows me to listen to music without the engine as background noise, but that’s not the main reason that I would recommend an electric car.  The main reason is the driveability.  It is just so nice to have a car that responds so quickly and smoothly when you put your foot down.  It’s very difficult not to be a boy racer away from the lights.

Energy Efficiency in Heritage Buildings

Posted on by sustainablesilchester
On 8 April I attended a talk by Daniel Ayre, from BDBC’s planning department, on energy efficiency in Historic Buildings.  Here’s my take on what he had to say.

Many of the houses in Silchester are in the Conservation Area, or are historic or notable buildings, and they require some different energy efficiency measures from more modern buildings.  Historic buildings work differently from modern buildings.  Modern buildings are “sealed units” whereas  historic buildings “breath”, letting moisture and air in at night and out during the day.  Any change to this can disrupt the function of the building and cause problems. For example, there may be condensation on the windows in the morning.  However, if you change the windows and stop the condensation, then you have to consider where  the moisture is going instead.  It may be somewhere less easy to deal with.   Similarly any wall insulation that stops the building breathing is likely to do more harm than good.

Although when we talk about energy efficiency, we are usually thinking about heating and electricity, Daniel observed that for buildings there are actually three sorts of energy that we should consider:

  • Embodied Energy – the energy of construction locked up in the building
  • Operational Energy – heating, lighting etc
  • Demolition Energy – the cost of disposal

A historic building has a lot of embodied energy, stored in some cases for hundreds of years and it is not necessarily energy efficient to demolish that to make small savings in operational energy.  For this reason, as well as the need to conserve the character of the area, the council will often recommend repair to existing structures rather than replacement.   Thinking again about the windows: many people think that energy efficiency requires moving to modern double-glazed windows.  This is possibly true if the existing windows are beyond repair (say, more than 55% of the frames would need replacement), but the energy in constructing a modern double glazed window in a factory far outweighs the cost of a local joiner building a replacement single-glazed unit.  And, when it fails, a double glazed window will need replacing in it’s entirety using yet more energy, a single-glazed pane of glass can be replaced.

 Energy efficiency measures that you might consider include:

  • keep the building in a good state of repair, and prevent draughts
  • repair what you have, rather than replacing with new
  • breathable insulation in the loft
  • secondary glazing
  • consider a heat pump, the steady heat can be better for a historic building than the heat-cool cycle of existing heating systems

Finally, historic buildings are often inherently more energy efficient than they appear, staying warmer in winter and cooler in summer than some modern properties.  So if you are lucky enough to have a historic property, enjoy it!

Why Sustainable Silchester?

Posted on by sustainablesilchester

The relentless stream of bad news about the climate, habitat-loss and plastic mountains is tough to take.  It’s difficult sometimes even to watch David Attenborough.  And I’m not alone – climate anxiety is becoming a widespread problem.  and most experts agree at the answer is to focus on positive action on the things that you can control.

But what could I do?  I don’t want to be an eco-warrior, I’m not that keen on the idea of chaining myself to a tree, or being arrested.

Then I heard a story.  This version was adapted by Peter Straube from The Star Thrower, by Loren Eiseley (1907 – 1977)

Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions. 

Off in the distance, the old man noticed a small boy approaching.  As the boy walked, he paused every so often and as he grew closer, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea.  The boy came closer still and the man called out, “Good morning!  May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”

The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.”

The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!”

Source:  Events for Change

And so the idea for Sustainable Silchester grew.  I can’t solve all the planets problems, but small actions can help.  And if enough people take small actions, then that will make a difference.  For example, the carbon footprint of Silchester is about 8,750 tCO2e each year.  If we could cut that by just 10%, we would save 875 tCO2e each year.  On it’s own, that is not going to save the planet, but if every town and village in England saved 875 tCO2e each year, that would be 42 million tCO2e.  And that would make a noticeable difference in helping the UK meet net zero by 2050.   

Everyone that I have spoken too has been very enthusiastic about the initiative.  And it helps.  Now when I watch David Attenborough, I still can’t solve all the world’s problems.  But I can be part of the solution.