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As I mentioned a few weeks back, it’s been a very lean year for olives. This week, Tessa and I managed to harvest all of our crop in a single day – a job that took four people four days last year. And the results are predictably depressing: barely 10% of last year’s take – maybe 2 month’s worth of olive oil. It’s like this all over Le Marche, probably because of the drought over the summer, and the price of oil is shooting up.
But lean year or not, it was worth a trip to the olive press in Massa Fermana today to take some videos of how they do it. Where last year the press was in operation 24-hours a day (Lino had to settle for a 3am slot and he’s a respected man down there) this year they told us we could come anytime this afternoon. Last year the boys at the press looked hag-ridden and irritable, a parade of vans steadily disgorged a stream of crates into the warehouse, and people hurried in all directions. This year was slightly different:
But at least the lull allowed me to get good shots of the process. And the boys at the machinery didn’t seem to mind the intrusion – they seemed almost grateful for a break in the tedium. Last year I reckon I’d have been run down by a wheelbarrow. I had the chance to ask them a few questions, some of which they answered. When I asked about what makes oil virgin or extra virgin they looked at me blankly. Just press your olives like the rest of the punters and take your oil home, they seemed to say.
Excellent article also published in the Guardian. Biofuels just get worse and worse.
Written last week but not posted as our internet connection has been down…
The ongoing pasta crisis in Italy is in the news again this week as price hikes prompted Italy’s four biggest consumer organisations to call a nationwide pasta strike yesterday (original post on this blog here). Like good citizens we did our bit and added our 2p to the national ire, but it’s unlikely the strike will have any real effect. Wheat farmers are replanting to take advantage of the exploding demand in biofuels – a situation only likely to get worse in the medium term.
And as if the pasta crisis weren’t enough to shake Italian culture to its foundations, this year is going to be particularly bad for olives, at least in this region. Locals are uneasy as the olive trees are mysteriously bearing very few fruits. None of the farmers I’ve spoken to has been able to point to a definite cause (though this year’s drought seems a likely culprit), preferring instead to fall back on the peasant’s super weapon: mystical stoicism – ah, there are good years and bad years. Life is sacrifices. But they’re now regretting selling off last year’s surplus and worrying about how to stretch their current supply. It’s going to be a lean year – so stock up now.
In the news today the price of durum wheat, essential for good pasta, is being driven up by climate change and market competition from biofuels. Yes, this year Italians (along with the rest of us) can expect to pay 20% more for our pasta. I’d say more but I’m off to panic buy.
There was an article in the Guardian last Saturday (thanks to Tessa for spotting it) by Alex James, the bassist from Blur, about having an architect come to his home to give green advice. It’s a scheme run by the RIBA where architects provide green advice in exchange for a donation to charity. At first glance this sounds positive. Certainly it’s a great channel to spread information on energy efficiency.
But things get a little weird when the article states that thick rubble walls keep the house warm in winter – which they don’t. Then architect George Stowell suggests that Alex installs a biomass CHP unit to generate his own electricity on site from wood chips. But there aren’t any commercially available biomass CHP units on a single house scale (or even twenty times that big). He may have meant biomass heating, but it’s a hell of a mistake to make, recommending something that doesn’t exist.
It might be better to send a services engineer. CIBSE should consider something similar to the RIBA programme.
A project I led at XCO2 is being featured in the Ecotech supplement in Architecture Today this month (no link yet). It’s a visitors centre for the National Trust in the Chiltern Downs expected to provide services to around 400,000 visitors a year. And it’s loaded with green goodness: woodchip boiler for space and water heating, rainwater harvesting for toilet flushing, and an earth coupled ventilation system that brings air into the building through a 90m long concrete pipe buried below ground. Read the rest of this entry »
Maurizio brought round our last one-tonne bag of wood pellets a few weeks ago and I’ve been meaning to post photos since. He’s been holding the last bag for us since last autumn when we only managed to get five of the six tonnes we’d bought into the pellet store.
We’ve now got plenty of pellets. A few too many, actually, because when you buy pellets you should a) buy in the summer when prices
are lower and b) buy as much as you can so you spread the cost of transport across as many tonnes as possible. We’ve now got enough pellets to get us through to the start of the heating season, which is a problem. If we buy in the next few months we won’t be able to fit more than 3 or 4 tonnes in the store because of our leftovers. If we buy in winter, we’ll buy at a premium and have to wait in line with everyone else. As a solution I’m hoping to find storage space somewhere (like Carletti’s barn or Marco’s cantina) so we can buy maybe 10 tonnes over the summer and transfer them to the pellet store as we need them.
At least around 3000 kilometres. Here’s why:
The BRE gives a carbon intensity of 0.025kgCO2/kWh for biomass. This includes an allowance for planting, harvesting, processing, and delivery to point of use. See the 2001 emissions report and the 2003 update.
But we need to vary the emissions figure based on distance travelled. The European Environment Agency gives a figure of just over 0.12 kgCO2 per tonne per kilometre for road transport, quoted here. Even more pessimistic, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution says 0.18 – 0.27 kgCO2 per tonne per kilometre (see table 4.4). Read the rest of this entry »
WWF and IPA published a report on Wednesday showing that the carbon reduction due to the dash for gas in the 1990′s has been wiped out by increased use of coal. Here’s the press release.
It looks to me that the government hopes nuclear and CCS will save the day. This keeps the CBI and power industries happy and is the BIG, politically safe option. Renewables will continue to receive lip service and as for demand side reduction (the cheapest of all emissions reduction measures), it will be gently encouraged but never demanded. As Tony has told us before: you can’t expect people to change their lifestyles just to fight climate change.
By the way, does this mean we can stop using the unrealistic figure of 0.422 kgCO2/kWh for grid electricity? This was based on the carbon intensity falling, not rising! Someone call the BRE.
Anyway, the main points of the report can be summarised as: Read the rest of this entry »
In today’s Guardian. He cites many of the same sources as we did a few days ago and goes on to propose a five year ban:
“We need a moratorium on all targets and incentives for biofuels, until a second generation of fuels can be produced for less than it costs to make fuel from palm oil or sugar cane.”
This is one of those issues that requires people to think so we may be in trouble.
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