Carbon Neutrality Revisited

As has been pointed out to me, I neglected to mention a different version of what carbon neutrality can also mean in my earlier post on the subject.

A 'carbon neutral university' could also mean one that generates all its own electricity - so all the energy that is consumed by students and staff doesn't come through the grid from dirty fossil-fuel burning plants, but on-site clean renewable electricity generation. So this would entail photovoltaic solar cells (see 3 November 2006 entry in the archives), ground heat-pumps, biomass boilers (woodchip-burning), mini wind turbines, even anaerobic digestion from food waste in the way that Marks and Spencers have announced in their £200m Plan A eco-plan. In essence, this is what Gordon Brown meant when he announced 'zero-carbon homes by 2016' in his pre-Budget report last November. Maybe I'll come back to Aber in ten years time and I'll be pleasantly surprised...

Th label carbon-neutral could mean different things - offsets or renewable energy, which involve vastly different things - so don't take anything for granted.