Off The Grid
During our visit to climate camp we got to experience exactly how you run a camp like climate camp fo a week from renewable energy alone. The energy was a mix of wind, solar and of course bikes! Those contributing to the energy mix arrived with close to full battery banks of course charged from the sun and wind. We actually asked this question as we put ourselves in a sceptics shoes! Despite a full battery bank, during the camp itself every ray of sunlight and small blast of wind could not be wasted as keeping the batteries from hitting empty was pretty important. Without this 100% renewable energy (audited by yours truely) the camp and campagn could not opperate well, probably not at all.
Before our arrival the police had confiscating important generation equipment which included a turbine stand and some batteries. This left the camp with an unplanned energy deficite which needed to be compensated for.
At the camp energy meeting, energy for the different parts of the camp were prioritised to ensure those who needed energy most could be provided with it. Then the consumption of each part of the
camp was then added up and totals for each day calculated at 5kWh during the week and 34kWh on the weekend to take account of the extra energy required on the action day and subsequently to report about it live from the camp in the following day) For your interest 5kWh is:
- The equivilent of boiling your kettle over and over for an hour and a half, or
- The energy consumed by a single towerlight in 5 hours. This is a very conservative estimate while i investigate the actual towerlights used by the police. I have a photo on my phone which i am tying
to extract.
Either way, the police had at least 4 of these erected around the site. How many kWh does it take to keep an eye on a field of hippies? Assuming 8 hours of darkness a night and 4 towerlights over seven days this is 224kWh of fossil fuel created energy. The camp used a total of 94kW of renewable energy.
“Energy Revolution”
“A new global energy revolution which would completely transform the way we produce and use energy”. Yes, Yes, Mr. Tanakan we’re on it!
The Executive Director from the International Energy Agency (IEA) wasn’t talking about bike power on the 6th of June, but how we use a wide range of other revolutionary technologies to meet the most ambitious IPCC scenario aimed at keeping temperature increases below 2.4°C.
To achieve only a 2.4°C increase, a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions from todays levels will be required by 2050. The lowest cost route, known as the (Energy technology Perspective) ETP BLUE route, explores the technologies and the investment required to achieve this goal. It focuses on four main areas; energy reduction, CO2 capture and storage, renewables and nuclear energy.
MR thanks Mr. Tanakan for highlighting to a large number of powerful people just how much trouble we’re in and for giving them some recommendations for scraping through on the cheap.
MR are looking forward to hearing about the ETP GREEN route which hopefully will be following shortly, be ultra revolutionary, and will at least make passing comment to bike power!
Earth Day
Bit delayed but here. Little bit of background info on what Magnificent Revolution was doing during the Earth Hour few days ago. Appliances off, candles on and here it comes…..pedal power. We set up one bicycle to pedal power a laptop and a small PA. Rocking out human powered tunes. Wicked it was..bit sweaty. Earth Hour is an interesting concept but we believe that the earth deserves more then just AN HOUR. It deserves lot more attention! I hope you agree. Check out the image of our sexy capacitor taken by human powered computer camera during the dark earth hour.
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