They are similar to barrages in that they exploit the range in height of tides by storing water and then releasing it through a bank of turbines (which is where the power is generated). However, whereas barrages block a whole estuary, and therefore disrupt wetland areas and block fish migration routes, lagoons are free standing or can be attached ...

[quote user="LibLob"]Tinkering with newbuild is just not sufficient - and even that has been mismanaged, so that designers, housebuilders and contractors are trying to work with incomplete technical guidance and contradictory software tools. [/quote] With the house building market in trouble - the time has surely never been better ...

To clarify - the five schemes shortlisted are not all barrages - two of them are for 'lagoon' schemes, which would be far less damaging environmentally. And there are five other schemes from the original long list, including tidal reefs, which will go forward to public consultation. Having said that, with Ed Miliband talking about making ...

So Barack Obama is going to spend over £600bn on an 'economic stimulus' for the US economy, which will include a 'green revolution'. He's already announced these plans:Double the amount of electricity generated from renewable sources within three years. More than 3,000 miles of new electricity transmission lines to improve the ...

Boris's town hall 'debate' on the third runway was last night. The Harrow Observer described it as a 'frank and often angry exchange of views'.  The 'pro' camp was represented by Labour peer Clive Soley (who?). He talked about the fact that there were 72,000 jobs at Heathrow and a further 100,000 jobs dependent on ...

[quote user="ParsonsGreen"] 60,000?! Just how big is this runway going to be? I'm sure T5 didn't even require a workforce on this scale. This is surely just another way of spinning the statistics to make the government look like their doing something about the growing numbers of unemployed. [/quote] Exactly.

It's only 'going to happen' if the government says so. The government could equally say - we're going to spend that £9bn on high speed rail. That would allow cuts in domestic flights and be a far greener option (yes, sorry, I'm sticking up for the environment even though everyone else seems to have forgotten about it ...

There is value in having the EPCs - I'm sure you'd like to know if it turned out a house you were thinking of buying would cost £500 a year more to heat than your existing house.