Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
A few weeks ago, photojournalist Ed Thompson came to Totnes to take photos of the town and about different aspects of Transition underway here. His pictures are a quirky and colourful take on the place and on some of the people involved, and you can see a selection of the pictures he took here…
The other week I did a chat with Karen Rybold Chin for ‘The Nation’ as the final part of a thirteen-part series called “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate”. Here it is….
Following it, Walter Haugen at Local Harvest wrote a post questioning my “1 litre of oil equals 35 days of human work” figure. My source for that was from the end of a report done by FEASTA a few years ago which concluded that “a 40 litre fill-up at a petrol station is the equivalent of about four years of human manual work”. Walter’s calculations, which argue that my figure “overstates the energy value of a liter of petrol by almost a factor of four” are here. Be great to hear your thoughts on this. Not being a mathematician or an engineer myself I’d value your thoughts/analysis….
We are now in editing mode for ‘The Transition Companion’ (out in September). The draft is way too long, so some bits are being cut. The following piece has been cut way down, so I wanted to post it in full here, as I rather liked it (!). First there is the piece from the book, and then the interview I did with Justin Bere, in full, a riot of delights for passivhaus/local building materials fans out there….
The 'Larch House' in Ebbw Vale, Wales.
The ‘holy grail’ in terms of the construction of new sustainable buildings is homes that reach the highest level of energy efficiency, whilst also using as high a proportion of locally sourced materials as possible, what we might call ‘The Local Passivhaus’. Two buildings, recently completed in Ebbw Vale, known as ‘The Lime House’ and ‘The Larch House’ have moved this concept forward significantly.
Here’s a great short film from Worthing about their new community garden initiative:
Here’s a short piece about exciting developments in Lewes….
Despite George Osborne’s best efforts, the UK will soon be facing huge hikes in the cost of energy supply as falling global production, political unrest in the Arab world, increased demand from India and China and new nervousness about nuclear cause oil prices to soar. Part of the solution to this problem has been obvious for a long time: localise energy supply. In Lewes, East Sussex, the energy services company Ovesco 1 is teaming up with Harveys, the local brewery, to install the country’s first community-owned solar power station on the roof of Harveys’ warehouse. Ovesco, a non-profit IPS, 2 hopes to raise 100% of the £307,000 installation cost from local investment.
