26.06.09 Reducing consumption with underfloor heating
At the risk of sounding like a bore, or maybe even your parents, the price of gas has become an absolute joke. Actually, that’s a lie. We always think energy costs are ridiculous, and they just go on getting more and more expensive. Gas prices fall, our bills stay the same, gas prices rise, our bills go up. It’s the same with petrol and it will never change.
Investing For The Future
We know from endless Government paraphernalia that there are several things we can do to improve the efficiency of our homes: new boiler, cavity insulation, double glazing, reducing temperature settings of appliances, all that kind of stuff. However, if you really want to make an investment in your home to minimize your fossil fuels' cost, you really need underfloor heating.
If you are not familiar with Underfloor, it’s tempting to think of it as an elaborate luxury item, conjuring thoughts of expensive fired-earth stone and footballers' homes in Alderley Edge. Rather, I would encourage you to think of it as a large, horizontal radiator.
How It Works
In basic terms, an underfloor system takes hot water from your boiler and passes it around loops of pipe buried in the cement make-up of your floors. The floors in your house then heat up and radiate heat upwards into each room.
Your own central heating at home may have a single thermostat (the thing on the wall that controls the temperature) or perhaps even no thermostat, so you tend to think of your central heating being either 'on' or 'off'. Typically with Underfloor heating you will have a thermostat in each room, so you will be able to control the heat in each area precisely. This is great news for your heating bills as the rooms you do not use often can be "powered down".
Also, because the floors of your house effectively become your "radiators", the surface areas being heated are massive, relative to conventional wall-mounted radiators. This means that you can pass hot water to the system at a much lower temperature. The water in your central heating constantly circulates at around 75-degrees, whereas underfloor only requires 40-degrees water to work. This means you will be using less gas all of the time.
How Much Does It Cost?
Underfloor is considerably more expensive to fit than radiators, but it can be more realistically priced than you would think. If you work on a cost of around £25 per square metre for the materials, and about £10 per square metre for a reasonably skilled plumber to fit the system, you will not be far off. It is suitable for both new-builds and refurbishments.
The initial cost can be off-putting, especially in today's gloomy economy, but you can weigh up the cost of fitting it against the increased value of your house. On top of this, you will be likely to save around 25% a year on your gas bills, and also give yourself a nice, warm glow from the knowledge that you have made the world a leaner, greener place.
15.06.09 Shell shake-up could lead to huge job cuts
Up to 24,000 staff could be affected after Royal Dutch Shell announced some huge changes to its structure. The move has been instigated by Peter Voser, the new chief executive of the company, and as yet the number of cuts has not been specified. However, it is thought that they could well run into thousands.
Cost cutting is at the forefront of the changes, but so too is the need to simplify the structure and increase the speed of implementation. The new boss will take over on 1 July, and the three big changes to the company will include:
- the merging of the three upstream businesses into two: Upstream Americas and Upstream International
- the creation of a Projects & Technology division
- the absorption of various parts of the company into specific units
It all comes as a result of the loss of Linda Cook, a board director who had worked at Shell for 29 years and who recently decided to quit quite suddenly. The merger of the upstream businesses will also involve the company getting rid of the position that she used to hold.
The three upstream businesses currently employ 22,000 staff between them, so it is clear why there are worries that job cuts will be inevitable. On top of that, Shell’s corporate affairs division, which employs 2,000 staff, is also set to be streamlined.
The likely casualties from the merger could also include up to a third of senior managers. The decision to restructure is also set to hit the UK hard because the company has an upstream operation in Aberdeen and a corporate affairs function in London, and this will all add yet more redundancies for the UK.
02.06.09 Which? criticises British Gas price drop
The recent decision by British Gas to cut its electricity bills by 10% may have been good news for many customers, but as far as Which? is concerned, it was “too little, too late”.
The criticism comes as the consumer group said that the company benefited from the particularly cold winter and heavy snowfall in many parts of the UK, allowing it to stay on track to make its operating target of £1.94 billion in profit, whilst customers were left in the cold over their hefty bills.
Although the cut will mean the average customer of the company will see their bills going down by £132 this year if they get gas and electricity from the company, Which? said that British Gas should have made the cuts earlier to help those who were paying too much on their bills.
Which? has now advised customers to look for ways in which they can further reduce their fuel costs. One of the simplest of these is to switch to direct debt payments, but another is to compare energy deals on the internet.
However, British Gas has defended its decision by saying that it has made the biggest cuts of any major energy supplier, and that it is now the cheapest supplier of electricity in the country.
But despite putting gas prices down earlier than the rest of the companies, the electricity price cut was made a lot later. For that reason it won’t benefit those paying for the large winter fuel bills that they have built up over the past few months.
22.05.09 Gas demands set to fall in 2009
We can blame the recession for pretty much everything these days and that’s exactly what the gas industry in the UK is doing when it comes to demands this year. Last year saw the beginning of a rather worrying slump in demands for gas, according to the National Grid. Over the winter months of 08/09 the demand fell by around 4%, even though it was a particularly chilly winter. People struggled to pay their bills but they seemed to put on another jumper rather than turn the heating up. Money was recovered from exports into Europe, but there are worries that the gas industry is in peril as forecasts - again by the National Grid - show this summer could see a 6% drop in demands.
This figure relates to non-daily metered gas. This is the energy that we use in our homes and in small businesses. The demand for gas in large industries has also dropped by around 6% in the last year. The biggest question of all is whether or not the reason for the slump is a knock-on effect of the recession or whether it’s simply people’s attitudes towards gas, as a source of energy, changing.
The interesting statistic to come from this examination by the National Grid was that electricity supplies have risen and are set to increase this summer. This could mean demands vastly outweigh that of gas. Repairs to the nuclear power stations this year might have something to do with this, but it might also be telling us that gas is on the way out.
15.05.09 Gas pipes might house carbon emissions
The deadly greenhouse gases being emitted from power stations in the UK might not actually be reduced but instead just dusted under the carpet. Rather than being released into the atmosphere - and then increase the threat of global warming - the latest plan is to pump all of the poisonous carbon dioxide gases underground and store them in the hundreds of miles of pipe lines already being used by gas and electricity companies. The Thames Estuary and the Teesside industrial hub could be used to send carbon dioxide gas through pipes under the sea before finally becoming stored in vast empty wells in the North Sea.
National Grid Plc is pushing for the procedure and has already invested many millions of pounds in pilot schemes that utilise the 7000 kilometres of underground storage pipes owned throughout the UK both on and offshore. The process is known as Carbon Capture Storage, or CCS for short, and it’s thought that over the next ten years this method could remove over 240 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, which works out at nearly 10% of the total global CO2 emissions.
All this comes at a huge price though and, as keen and determined as the National Grid are to be given financial support for carbon capture from the government, there are a lot more cost-effective ways in which we can cut down on carbon emissions. This has the benefits of being an immediate cure to the illness though but it's the equivalent of taking high painkillers to hide the pain rather than finding a long-term cure.
