The WREN Blog
One Guy With A Marker [And A Whiteboard] Just Made The Global Warming Debate Completely Obsolete
- that's the line I caught on a tweet yesterday. How can you not want to know more?
The tweet had a link to a nice little video with a different view on the climate change ‘debate’. It’s about ten minutes long, and you should view it now to understand better what I’m writing about. (Just don’t forget to come back!)
Interesting piece in The Guardian today (18th Jan) on the Green Deal. “The energy ‘savings’ that are just hot air” is the headline for the story, but is that really the case?
You can read the article here: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jan/18/energy-efficiency-savings-less-than-advertised-green-deal
The gist of it is that in practice the financial savings from installing energy efficiency measures such as loft and cavity wall insulation and a new boiler do not measure up to the advertisements. The new figures come from the National Energy Efficiency Data Framework (NEED) published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). NEED tracked the observed savings in thousands of homes compared with homes that did not have measures installed. It found the average decrease in home gas consumption for loft insulation was 1.7%, for cavity wall insulation 7.8% and for a new boiler it was 9.2%, a total of nearly 19%.
There were a lot of items on the agenda for the November Board meeting, but the ones that took the time were all connected thematically. You could simplistically boil it down to: "What do we want to do and how do we tell people about it."
A week beforehand, there was a volunteers' meeting attended by four or five who mainly staff the shop and five or six who are directors. The shop volunteers wanted to know more of what was gong on in WREN and better resource materials and training, so as to be more confident in helping people who came in. Following on from that meeting there was a proposal to do a proper analysis of the communications needed by WREN, to volunteers, members and other interested parties.
On Wednesday 6th November, just in time for remembrance, the Wadebridge War Memorial in Coronation Park was re-lit.
The memorial stands above the town, up a narrow Cornish lane and well past the houses, and the wind was blowing more than somewhat. As I arrived an official-looking gent in a smart overcoat and a name badge was setting out plastic chairs. “Are these for VIPs or can anyone sit here?” I asked. “They’re for anyone who needs them, who can’t stand,” he said. The wind blew over half a dozen chairs. “I’ll sit on this one till someone needs it, to stop it blowing away,” I said.