In case you missed it, 2024 has been named the hottest year on record and the first to breach the 1.5 degrees C of heating limit. The press release from NASA explains the contributions from other factors beyond climate change, such as El Nino.
Ashden has one of its videos in the Smiley Charity Film Awards and we need your votes. It’s a great mini documentary about indigenous land rights in Tanzania and it’s up against some much bigger charities, so we’d appreciate your support!
A poll for CPRE has found that 82% of people support solar installations on new buildings, something which could become a requirement if a proposed Sunshine Bill goes through. That’s an unusually popular measure and we should do it.
It’s fifty years since the Netherlands installed their first red route cycle path, and Karen Romme tells the story of how it came about and why it’s red. Thank you to David for passing that one on.
I’ve had a long running project to get our house to zero carbon by 2025, and this week we’ve been planning and pricing up a heat pump to complete the process. Heatpunk has been a valuable tool, an online platform where you can model your house and calculate its heating needs room by room.
This week’s articles
How Paris makes climate-ready school grounds
I get to visit a lot of schools with my job as a Climate Action Advisor, and so I get to see a lot of school playgrounds as well. It’s a mixed bag. I’ve seen schools with exceptional play facilities and brilliant ideas, such as a mini-golf course, BMX track, a bouncy hopper arena, or…
What a gravity battery looks like
People have been tapping the force of gravity for centuries to get work done. The area where I live had a number of water mills in the medieval era, all running off the power of falling water. Hydropower uses the same logic, generating electricity from water running downhill. There’s an important role for gravity power…
The Earthbound Report 