Legal threat forces startup out of heat-loss measurement market

A small British startup has withdrawn from the market for measuring heat loss from new homes after legal threats from a subsidiary of one of the world’s biggest insulation manufacturers. In November, Saint-Gobain Isover, a subsidiary of Saint-Gobain, threatened to serve Redbarn Group with an injunction, and to sue for damages and costs, unless the startup agreed to withdraw Veritherm, its heat-loss measuring system. (more…)...
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I’m a happy heat pumper

This article was first published in the Telegraph, 14 January 2024. Heat pumps have copped some bad press recently and it’s time to redress the balance. I installed one in early 2022 and I love it. It is quiet, economical to run and keeps the house toasty. In my experience, there is nothing not to like. (more…)...
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The Oracle of Oil, book review

This article was first published in New Scientist, 1 June 2016. THIS is a curious time to publish a biography of M. King Hubbert. The story of how this brilliant but irascible Shell geologist accurately forecast in 1956 that US oil production would peak and go into terminal decline by 1970 is by now well worn. (more…)...
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Reasons to be fearful

This article was first published in New Scientist, 27 July 2013. DOOM-MONGERS of the climate variety might want to look away now – we apparently have more time to save the planet. A recent study published in Nature Geoscience suggests it will warm more slowly than feared, perhaps buying an extra decade for action. (more…)...
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Liquid air: the birth of the nitrogen economy

This article was first published in gasworld in September 2012. Everybody’s heard of the hydrogen economy, with its promise of limitless low carbon energy. But after decades of R&D, the dream seems scarcely any closer. Apparently still confounded by major technical challenges, the hydrogen economy remains an elusive mirage – always ‘just 10 years away’. (more…)...
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Peakonomics: no country for old men

This article was first published in New Scientist, 16 August 2012. In 2007 James Schlesinger claimed the intellectual arguments around peak oil had all been won. With global oil production flat-lining and prices surging towards their all-time high of $147 per barrel, the former US Energy Secretary declared “we are all peakists now”. (more…)...
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