Hot water for the Welsh house is provided by solar power through panels in the roof.

It’s the shape of things to come--free hot water for life in a solar-powered home. In a grim, grey, wet Welsh winter that seems unlikely, but soon home builder Anwayl Construction hopes to be offering it as a regular “green“ option to its customers.
It is being installed in two houses at the builder’s new development at Boundary Way, Saltney, where Anwyl is putting up 127 properties. More could follow, Icwales.icnetwork.co.uk reported.
The Rhyl-based company has already built one three-storey townhouse with the revolutionary new heating system and details of the eco-friendly choice are available at a showhouse which is open on the site.
Anwyl’s commercial director Bryn Roberts said, “It is the first time we have built a house with solar-powered heating but it’s something that is going to be a requirement within a few years.
“Wales is actually leading the way by intending to bring in regulations making it a requirement on new homes by 2011, while in England it won’t be in force until 2015. We wanted to press on to explore how we would do it and so that we can offer it as an option to our customers.“
Hot water for the house is provided by solar power through panels in the roof. But unlike those used for many years in Mediterranean countries, with their guaranteed summer sunshine, where the water is heated directly, this uses a different technique.
The Worcester Bosch panels set in the roof use an absorber plate which is heated by the sun’s rays.
This heat is collected in a gel-like freeze-resistant transfer liquid which is in turn used in a heat exchanger to heat water.
Mr Roberts added, “The solar panels harness the power in both direct and diffused sunlight in order to convert the energy to heat, for the production of hot water.
“A typical solar system should provide around 50 to 70 percent of the hot water requirements of a home and in the summer you should be able to switch off your boiler altogether.
“That means a very worthwhile saving on hot water heating costs and a much greener option than using an exclusively gas, oil or electric system.“
Greenskies solar panels have been designed as a complement to existing heating systems which use a store of hot water in a cylinder.
Instead of a conventional cylinder, the new cylinder has two heat exchanger coils: one from the boiler in the property and a second from the solar panels.
The panels were fitted before the roof tiles went on.
Contract manager Iain Murray added, “There is an additional cost to install it but there are cost benefits in the long run and it’s certainly the way things are going.
“We didn’t have any problems with plumbing it in or with setting it in the roof and they look like skylights so they’re certainly not unsightly.
“We had help and advice from the manufacturers of the system, Worcester Bosch, and it’s gone so well we’re now considering it on our other sites.
“The house we have fitted with the system has already sold and the buyer said that this was certainly a factor in persuading him to go for this property.“

Hardly a day goes by without a company proclaiming their intent to slash energy consumption, reduce waste or take some other bold action to green their operations or products. The wave of announcements is dizzying. Is this just lip-service, or is the adoption of green business practices really growing?
GreenBiz.com embarked on a journey to solve this mystery using data on a slew of indicators comprising the GreenBiz Index, part of the inaugural “State of Green Business 2008“ report just released.
The conclusion: Environmental performance overall in the US is gradually advancing, but often not at the pace needed to offset economic growth or avoid the worst effects of climate change, Renewableenergyaccess.com reported.
“The state of green business is improving, slowly but surely, as companies both large and small learn the value of integrating environmental thinking into their operations in ways that align with core business strategy and bottom-line goals,“ said Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com.
“Green business has shifted from a movement to a market. But there is much, much more to do.“
Makower and his fellow editors at GreenBiz.com compiled a set of indicators measuring various aspects of green business, ranging from paper use and toxic emissions to building energy use and employee commuting. The group then assigned each indicator a symbol to represent progress: a “sinking,“ symbol means a measure is losing ground; a “swimming“ icon indicates progress is being made; and a “treading“ symbol shows an indicator holding its own.
In half of the measures--10 of the 20 indicators--the verdict was “treading,“ as progress was lacking or be slow, or at least too slow to address the magnitude of environmental challenges. They include pesticide use on US farms, which hasn’t changed much since 1999. The number of teleworkers is slowly gaining but there hasn’t been much progress in getting employees to abandon their solo commutes to work. While publicly traded companies are more likely to publish corporate responsibility reports, the number of companies reporting totaled only 253 in 2007--that’s less than a 50 percent increase over five years.
There are bright spots, including eight indicators deemed “swimming.“ Clean technology investments in the US, for instance, soared to more than $48 billion in 2006, largely driven by a 132 percent increase in venture capital dollars going toward renewable energy, waste reduction, resource management and other activities that fall within the loosely defined area of clean tech. Related patents shined, too, with US clean-tech patents accounting for nearly half of those issued worldwide.
The explosion of commercial green building projects also is heartening, with a 500 percent increase in the amount of LEED-certified office space between 2005 and 2007. The total amount of paper used in the US has hit a plateau, while at the same time, the economy continues humming. Energy use, measured per dollar of gross national product, is declining, although the rate of improvement has slowed.
Packaging use of aluminum, paper, plastics and steel is making small but steady improvement in efficiency. And renewble energy generation, though increasing, may not grow fast enough to overcome the need to build more fossil fuel-fired power plants.
Two of the indicators were deemed “sinking.“ One was carbon intensity, measured as carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product. Between 2005 and 2006, carbon intensity fell 4.2 percent, which, at first blush, appears encouraging. But it doesn’t change the fact that the U.S. leads in both overall greenhouse gas emissions and per-capita emissions, or the need to significantly reduce absolute emissions.
And even though the amount of e-waste being recycled keeps growing, the absolute tonnage of electronics waste entering landfills or being sent overseas is staggering. But with no reporting mandates, federal e-waste laws or single clearinghouse for e-waste recovery data, it is difficult to determine exactly how much unwanted electronics is being recycled in a responsible way.
The lack of data transcended the e-waste recycling indicator. After determining the indicator list, the editors looked for reliable data that was both meaningful and repeatable, since they intend to track progress annually.
Some data were relatively easy to find while others proved more elusive. Was it really true that the most recent data showing the amount of water used in the US is nearly eight years old? The short answer is yes, which is troubling considering drought concerns in various parts of the country, particularly in the Southeast.
“If you believe in the adage, ’what gets measured gets managed,’ then it’s clear why many of the major impacts of business aren’t being well managed, at least on the macro scale,“ Makower said.
Greenbiz is seemingly underwhelmed by a 4.2 percent reduction in emissions per unit of GDP.Ê It’s actually pretty good.
As perÊUSA Today (1/31/08), and PC utterances notwithstanding, few Americans are actually doing something to reduce their carbon footprint.Ê Even Al Gore was late moving beyond lecturing everyone else - and he wrote the book.

In poorly governed countries, oil wealth actually impedes economic development because all politics is a struggle to loot the resource rather than to make long-term investments to improve human welfare.

Fresh evidence shows that the US economy is slowing and may have slipped into recession. The news has not only dimmed expectations for world economic growth, but it has also hammered oil prices, which lost $15 from the $100 high just a month earlier.
A year ago, more bullish thoughts lifted oil prices from the $50 level in January 2007. The question on policymakers’ lips is whether a worldwide slowdown will bring an end to the boom in demand for oil and drive prices significantly lower. Although oil prices will eventually drop as new sources come online and biofuels and other alternatives take hold, crude price are likely to remain high and volatile for a while, Newsweek.com reported.
One reason is that today’s oil market is precariously balanced between supply and demand. That’s why small wiggles in expectations about how much oil the world economy will need, and how much supply is on hand, cause huge changes in price. Such gyrations explain why companies that are big oil users--such as airlines--owe their fortunes, increasingly, to how they manage their financial exposure to energy prices. Southwest Airlines, for example, is not just efficient in moving customers, but it is particularly notable for a string of good bets to hedge jet-fuel costs.
Oil is also not a normal commodity. A big part of today’s high pricesÑand why they are still nearly double the level of a year ago, despite dark economic newsÑis that oil beats to backward economics. When the price of soybeans or steel rises reliably, farmers and steel millers boost output, and prices abate. When the price of oil rises, many suppliers do the opposite. This bizarre response comes not from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which is always in the news, but from the pernicious ways that oil wealth ripples through the societies that have most of the oil.
The most visible and worrisome effect of oil riches is the “resource curse.“ In poorly governed countries, oil wealth (and any other booty that is easily seized) actually impedes economic development because all politics is a struggle to loot the resource rather than to make long-term invests to improve human welfare.
Governments that get easy money from natural resources don’t need to rely so much on human productivity, which makes them less accountable to their populations. These factors explain why Venezuela, for example, is in perennial economic trouble despite having some of the world’s greatest oil resources on its books.
The current run-up in oil prices has allowed Hugo Chavez to bankroll a reckless foreign policy and has taken direct control over the country’s oil fields. Having undercut Venezuela’s oil company and scared away many of the most competent foreign investors, Venezuela’s oil output is actually declining even though today’s high oil prices would, in theory, make Venezuela’s newest heavy-oil fields much more economically viable.
A similar story is unfolding in many other oil patches. Over the last few years, between 300,000 and 700,000 barrels per day of production in Nigeria has been offline due to local conflicts in the oil-rich Niger Delta, triggered in part by the fact that higher oil prices created stronger conflicts over how to allocate oil riches within Nigeria. Russia has had a harder time attracting investment in its oil fields because oil wealth has given the country a swagger that makes it less in need of outsider assistance.
Higher prices can also cause countries to hold back on oil production. When resources in the ground have greater value and state coffers are already bulging with earnings--this year, oil-exporting countries will earn about $800 billion--countries can afford to stretch their wealth further into the future. Several countries in the Persian Gulf have adopted policies consistent with this new view of depletion; gas-rich Qatar has gone the furthest, putting a moratorium on new gas projects for fear that it is exhausting the country’s resources too rapidly.
Seeing this, you might think that countries in the West might make up the difference by allowing their own resources to be tapped more heavily. But this hasn’t happened. In some cases, environmental rules and other restrictions stand in the way. The United States, for example, has put nearly all of its oil--and gas-rich coastline off limits for drilling despite huge advances in environmentally safe drilling practices.
Governments worldwide have done the same--from Russia to Venezuela to the North Sea and Alberta--by raising the tax rate on oil production, which makes drillers think twice about investing handsomely in new supply projects.
They know that when profits are too high, governments will find ways to strip away the excess.
If America’s economic troubles spread gloom across the globe, then demand will dampen further. And the trip down from today’s dizzying oil prices could be faster than most people think. Once investors in oil commodities are no longer confident that oil will always be more valuable tomorrow than it is today, they will switch their money to some other investment.