Green News

The first batch of 4 bikes was collected by Michael, a community worker in Gipton and taken to their new home: a family in Cross Green on Monday this week. They are extremely grateful. Please do let me know if you have any bikes in any condition that you would like to donate, we can always use old battered unfixable bikes for parts.

The residents of Boston Spa have come up with a rather clever wheeze which will make a saving of 1 million tonnes of CO2 emitted each year at the touch of a switch.

These canny Yorkshire people have found a way of doing this without spending any money. We think that you may be interested. All you need to do is to tell the Directors of the Electricity Distribution Network Operators to turn the volts down by 5%. The people in the Treasury Department (and the taxpayers) will be really pleased, because it won’t cost a penny. People in the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy may argue that this is too simplistic (they like to make things complicated and they are a bit embarrassed that they hadn’t noticed the high volts for 27 years). But the truth is that ever since we harmonized our declared voltage with Europe to 230 the monopoly electricity industry has maintained the volts at the old level of 240. They kept it a secret but here in Boston Spa we have been looking at the voltages recorded by these new Smart Meters. The volts are, indeed, very high. Lowering the volts by 5% reduces customer bills, lowers CO2 emissions, and releases network capacity for the new electric vehicles which are appearing everywhere. It’s a win for customers, a win for the planet, a win for the network operators - and a feather in your cap. Always happy to help.