Dubious adverts

[Space cat]

A well known company has been claiming the impossible in its adverts recently. You'll know who they are next time you here their slogan --

"Free for just thirty five pounds a month"

Today I saw one of their vans in our street. It said "carbon neutral" in big letters on the side. Does this claim refer to the van? In which case I have to ask whet fuel it runs on. Or does it refer to the company? That's a good one. Tell me Rupert; how much fuel does it take to get a satellite into orbit? OK, maybe the rockets used hydrazine and nitric acid. It takes a lot of energy to make those chemicals. Where did that come from?

It's so easy to bandy phrases like "carbon neutral" or "environmentally friendly" about. How about some hard evidence to back them up!

 

[tim west]

Sky doesn't own, launch or maintain any satellites, they are run by independant companies such as Astra, Sky like many other companies lease the use of the satellite transponders (at great expense).
There are many green initiatives in use within the company, from paper recycling through to automatic saver switching of lighting to use of new LED lighting technology to replace existing tungsten lighting in order to cut consumption.

Please collaborate your facts before making accusations.

Is your company "going green"?

ps Rupert doesnt run the company his son James does

 

[empip]

Similar to the ubiquitous charity, I wonder just how much of the 'carbon offset' provider's revenue make it through to the final 'on the ground' offsetting project ?

Is it true that Tone (remember him?) is having seeding pods fitted to his globe trotting aircraft? Self carbon neutralising - A new scheme from the Brussel sprout Johnny P ...

 

[tim west]

trouble is pip the offset is put there as it's virtually impossible with current technology to be completely carbon neutral on your own and still be a working business so you have to trade off or offset to cancel out the things that cannot be achieved at present tech levels. when wind power, solar power, wave power becomes viable that may change, so in the meantime companies try to reduce their carbon footprint by making adoes for as much as they can physically do.

by reducing wastage in one area it can negate the wastage in areas where reduction is not possible

if technology makes electric vehicles a viability by allowing them to charge by sunlight and so travel the great distances needed then i'm sure all companies would be regulated to take up the option. dont know what would happen in winter though with less sunlight.
then the onus would be on power companies distributing wave power generated electricity or the like?

 

[Space cat]

Sky doesn't own, launch or maintain any satellites, they are run by independant companies such as Astra, Sky like many other companies lease the use of the satellite transponders (at great expense).

OK, you got me there.

Nevertheless, I still say that claiming to be "carbon neutral" is highly dubious. I know I'm not carbon neutral because I buy electricity, gas and petrol but it doesn't end there. I once tried to explain to the kids why breathing out did not increase CO2 levels. I told them that they were only putting back what plants had taken out then realized that it wasn't that simple.

Food is not carbon neutral. The farmer most likely used a tractor to harvest the plants and that's only the beginning. Food has to be transported by road, or even by air, and some of it is refrigerated to boot. The fact is, a significant fraction of everything we spend goes on fossil fuels somewhere. There is no easy way out of this. Leasing satellites from somebody else does nothing to reduce your own carbon 'footprint'. (I hate that expression but it'll have to do.) Some day we will all be carbon neutral because there will be no fossil fuels left to burn. Until then we are stuck.

Carbon offsetting isn't the answer either. It looks fine on paper. You send a batch of low energy bulbs off to some African village and this somehow entitles you to burn extra petrol? It's a cheat! I can foresee carbon credits being traded on an open market and the result will be that everybody everywhere will 'use' their maximum carbon allowance. African farmers who don't even own a car will get paid by us so that we can keep on driving round the corner to buy a bottle of gin.

Is your company "going green"?

Not a chance. I work for the NHS! There are lots of nice little stickers on light switches that say "Please switch me off". I suppose that's better than nothing but there's a lot of power hungry equipment around here that's regularly left on every night for a couple of hours after the last patient has gone home.

Meanwhile, at the risk of branching off into a different subject, I'll add something else. Even if we humans succeed in becoming carbon neutral, the planet isn't. How much carbon is there in Dover's famous white cliffs? "But that's dead carbon; it doesn't count!" I hear you say. Wrong! That's sedimentary rock. It formed on the sea bed from the remains of countless sea creatures and it won't stay there forever.

Somewhere in a subduction zone not a million miles from Dover, carbonates are mixing and melting with the ubiquitous SiO2. Result: silicates plus CO2. (That's one displacement reaction we didn't try in the school chemistry lab.) Suddenly a crack opens and the planet gives a mighty belch! Those plates are on the move and we can't even begin to stop them. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to reduce our CO2 emissions. Just don't too be surprized if it doesn't work.

 

[tim west]

You have to do the best you can, the title "Carbon Neutral" has to be an ongoing flexible term that fits in with current times, its an incentive that companies can achieve by todays standards, as time goes on and fossil fuel is more scarce then further savings will have to be made on top of the current emmission controls such as rationing of fuel perhaps? but that will be economics not pollution control although the very nature of it depleting should help vastly towards a cleaner safer environment, besides by then we will hopefully have gone back to a quieter more environmentally friendly way of life......unless anarchy sees off the human race first

 

[Steve]

remoed

 

[breezer]

think about it that cant be true (the electricity supplier part.)

i start my own company tomorrow selling lecy, i sell it a 3p / unit cheaper than "your regular brand"

i canvas the area and get some people to sign up with me, others stay where they are or go to another supplier

how does this lecy get to your place?

answer, down the same cables you have always had (fine)

how does my electricity get to only those i supply?

it doesnt

its all made by the same company, sent down the same cables, its just that you pay me instead of some one else, and i pay the generating co.

go figure

 

[Steve]

Breezer, this is the way it works (and im sure you would have figured this out??? perhaps you have another point):

Generator - these people run the power stations and alternative generation points. They may also be the supplier. All this electric goes into the grid in differing quantities and blends together nicely. Technically the electricity goes along the wires straight into peoples homes. But the customers have to pay for it.

Supplier - Powergen, Scottish power, British Gas etc. They buy quantities of electric from generators and sell it to the customers at a profit.

Customer - Me, you, shops, factories.

The customer wants to do his bit for the environment. He signs up to Powergen's Green tarrif. This tarrif makes certain promises. This is the key. For every kilowatt hour that the customer uses on their green tarrif, the supplier will buy the same amount of electricity or more, from green generators.

The customer ends up using the same breed of electricity as everyone else as it comes down the same wires, but the money they pay to their supplier only goes to the green generators, and for the amount of electric they have used the same amount has been generated by said green generators.

 

[tim west]

they should send the green stuff down the power lines at a different frequency that only the green paying customers can convert back to 50hz through special decoders.

Ok just joking

 

[Space cat]

The supplier guarrantees to purchase as much electricity from carbon neutral / renewable sources, as it sells to the co-op.

There's nothing wrong with that in itself but if I was the customer I'd be asking the supplier this: "How do I know that you weren't going to buy that electricity from carbon neutral sources anyway?" If they're honest about it their answer might be "You don't know. Maybe we would and maybe we wouldn't; but now we'll have to." That's half an answer I suppose.

If you think about it this is the beginnings of carbon trading. I buy energy from you and you agree to buy some renewable energy from somebody else - but not necessarily the stuff you'll sell me. So far so good but what happens if your renewable energy supplier can't deliver? Will they buy some non-renewable energy from somebody else on condition that they buy the missing renewable stuff? Somebody somewhere will have to generate the quota of renewable electricity that I've paid for but who will it be. Maybe it'll be an African farmer burning vegetable oil because it's worth more as electricity than it is as food!

The Co-op is also experimenting with biodiesel and natural gas to power its lorries.

Biodiesel is fine but natural gas? Doesn't that come out of the ground? Or do they mean biogas which comes out of a cow's --- well you get the idea!

The Co-op, however, make no claims to be carbon neutral

Good for them!

they should send the green stuff down the power lines at a different frequency that only the green paying customers can convert back to 50hz through special decoders.

There's an easier way. You send the green stuff down the line 90° out of phase and you put a timing signal in too. You have two meters, one for each phase angle, and you choose how much of each you want to use by adjusting your power factor. Brilliant or what!

 

[tim west]

that would be too easy to exploit though it would have to be digitised and encrypted so only the paying customer can use it

 

[securespark]

Nothing to do with me.

 

[Space cat]

that would be too easy to exploit though it would have to be digitised and encrypted so only the paying customer can use it

Encrypted electricity? Microsoft and Sky are probably working on that one right now in preparation for the day they (both ???) take over the world.

It wouldn't be impossible to fool the system - it never is - but it could be made difficult. The security is in the timing marks which tell each half of the meter how to measure the current. You might try to defeat this by putting spikes on the supply but, with careful design, this would cause BOTH halves of the meter to clock up the same current!