EcoTrack: project monitoring for the carbon market

Introducing EcoTrack
Project monitoring is often haphazard and time-consuming. Furthermore, results from monitoring do not always lead to improvement and learning. Now EcoTrack makes project results transparent and easy to use.
EcoTrack is a new monitoring system for sustainable energy and household energy projects. It is highly reliable, networked, and results-based. Eco, a private company based in the UK, has developed EcoTrack to systematize the monitoring process, provide timely data, and enhance reporting to funders and other project stakeholders. EcoTrack allows users to track the progress of activities, outputs, outcomes and objectives against performance indicators. It therefore improves the quality of both monitoring and management.

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Two environmental assessments show ‘huge scope for development’

The two announcements are the study on locations for future offshore energy developments, which identified scope for between 5,000 and 7,000 more offshore wind turbines, and the study on the Severn Barrage, which shortlisted 5 projects with the potential to supply up to 5% of UK’s electricity consumption.   The conclusion of the UK Offshore […]

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ASA bans renewable fuels ad

The ad which claimed that biofuels were a sustainable answer to OPECs oil, was found to have breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 3.2 (Division of informed opinion), 7.1 (Truthfulness), 49.1, 49.2 and 49.3 (Environmental claims). The ASA said that the the ad must not appear again in its current form. ASA told RFA to remove […]

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Biomethane vehicles open up green driving

UK business can now take advantage of the first mass scale second generation biofuel to be produced from waste. This is as a result of the launch in the UK of 3 brand new vehicles that have been developed by Volkswagen and Mercedes Benz to run on 100% renewable methane (biomethane)

The Volkswagen Caddy Ecofuel is ideal for companies who operate small white vans or far airport taxis who need 7 seats. The Sprinter NGT is the perfect large van, ideal for supermarkets and with thousands of applications. The Econic articulated truck is ideal for deliveries into cities and between distribution centres. All these vehicles have low environmental impact in terms of noise, NOX and particulates but it is their carbon neutrality when fuelled on biomethane that is transformational.

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Dr Maitland Mackie discusses "a second agricultural revolution" based on community funding of wind energy assets

Dr Maitland Mackie, BSc (Agriculture), MA Hons (Economics), CBE, LL.D, FRAGS Existing power companies are scouring the country for sites to build wind turbines. While this offers some profit for landowners Dr Maitland Mackie has other ideas. His recently formed company proposes that those in rural areas retain most, if not all, of the profits available – nothing less than a new agricultural revolution.

Maitland, a comparatively new member of the Claverton group, formed the idea for an energy company owned by the rural sector having seen the financial and aesthetic success of the turbines installed by his three offspring who now run the family dairy and ice cream business in Aberdeenshire (Maitland says he now basks in the reflected glory of their efforts).

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Bio-methane fuelled vehicles – John Baldwin CNG Services

Year 2008 may well be recognised as a turning point in the journey away from fossil fuels and this has major implications for the waste management industry. The increase in oil price to $140/bbl is the market signaling that, to use the words of Shell CEO van der Veer, ‘easy oil’ is running out. The large oil fields that have supplied the world with oil are starting to decline and new resources, such as oil sands in Canada, have much higher levels of CO2 emissions associated with their extraction.

At the same time, countries like Nigeria are capturing and liquefying the natural gas (to make LNG) that is a by product of oil production. Nigeria is forecasting LNG production of around 60 million tones per annum by 2012, bringing in around $60 billion of income – not a bad return for what was flared off as a waste product until 1999. High natural gas prices in the US are also bringing forward huge resources of ‘tight’ natural gas that are now economic to produce. Such gas needs more wells than normal gas and so requires the higher gas prices we have now – historically low natural gas prices in the US have acted to leave the ‘tight gas’ in the ground but it is now economic to bring it to market.

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