EcoRadio

Author: admin

  • Top Five Mistakes When considering Solar Power For Your Home

     

    Mistake # 2: Not using an experienced solar professional to install your system.

    The best solar installers undergo extensive training and are able to rely on years of solar installation experience. These professionals know the incentives and rebates in your area and will ensure that your home solar power system meets the requirements.  They also will optimize your system’s position in relation to the sun, which will guarantee peak performance resulting in the lowest possible electrical bill for you.  What’s more, professional solar installers are unlikely to make the installation mistakes that are common in ‘do-it-yourself’ jobs.  Whether it is a leak in your roof or an electrical connection that doesn’t meet county code, there are many ways that a solar installation can go wrong.  Finally, professional solar installers can help you through the mountain of paperwork and permits necessary to install your system and get it online.  To top it all off, professional solar installers can also help you secure financing for your system.  For more information on qualified professionals, you can check out this report on California solar companies written by the research analysts at Clean Energy Experts.

    Also, click here if you are ready to learn more about solar power and need estimates from solar companies.

    Mistake # 3: Forgetting to look at financing and leasing options.

    The average home solar power system costs between $10,000 and $30,000 after rebates and incentives.  For most of us, this represents a major investment, comparable in cost to a new car. Financing a home solar power system can reduce your initial out-of-pocket expenses and make the entire process easier. Most solar installers will work with you to find the purchase option that makes the most sense and help you get the financing you need.  Leasing is another attractive option if you don’t want to pay for the solar equipment or installation up-front.  Instead, you simply pay for the electricity that the solar system generates each month. Both financing and leasing are great ways to reduce your out-of-pocket expenses and still experience the benefits of going solar.  To learn more, visit our financing information page.

    Mistake # 4: Not making your home energy-efficient first.

    A good first step toward solar is to check your home’s energy efficiency. You can do a simple home energy audit on your own or hire a contractor to help you. Most homeowners discover that they can lower their electric bill simply by making their home more efficient.  In fact, the average home energy audit finds potential electricity savings of up to 30%.  Common energy efficiency problems include leaky air ducts, inefficient appliances and incandescent light bulbs. Solving these problems increases the likelihood that your home solar system will be able to completely eliminate your electric bill and that you may even get a check from the local electric utility every month.

    Mistake # 5: Miscalculating your solar savings.

    Figuring out exactly how much you can save with your solar panels is a complex process.  It involves a careful evaluation of the installation site, the available sunlight and amount of shading on your home, and the characteristics of the solar panels. Most solar websites (including ours) have simple calculators that provide estimates of how much you can save, but these are only approximations.  Having a professional solar installer visit your home to provide a consultation is the best way to get a more precise estimate.  With these estimates of costs and savings, you can be sure that solar power is an investment that makes sense for you.

    Now that you know “what not to do”, you are better prepared in your solar undertakings!  Be sure to check our solar consultation page if you would like to receive a consultation from some of our local solar professionals.

  • BP stations across London put out of action by Greenpeace Volunteers

     

    But there’s more. This is also about realizing what we can achieve if we set our minds to it.

    We can end the oil age. We already have the tools we need to leave it behind and move towards a clean energy future. All that’s missing is the determination to make it happen fast.

    Over the coming months we’ll be calling together to “go beyond oil”. There will be many actions to get involved in, from lobbying politicians to transforming our local communities.

    Today we’re asking you to take a first step, and help push for the strongest possible European law on fuel quality.

    BP and other oil lobbyists are hard at work trying to water down the Fuel Quality Directive which hopes to set limits on how much of the dirtiest, most polluting fuels can be imported here and put in our tanks.

    So while teams of volunteers are out on the streets of London stopping BP selling its fuel, we can all help curb the company’s ability to cause further damage to the environment – whether in the Gulf of Mexico or the Tar Sands of Canada.

    Write to transport secretary, Theresa Villiers, to make the UK support a European law which restricts imports of the most damaging fuels. Together we are louder than the BP lobbyists.

    Tags:
    fuel quality directive, fuel, energy, climate change, BP
    5 comments  |  login or register to post comments  |  Permalink

  • No one assassinated Rudd, he simply topped himself

     

    I suggested he should join a political party, run for office and, if successful, seek the premiership or prime ministership. It appears he took my advice.

    Related Coverage

    When we met years later, he made it clear he did not appreciate my comments.

    We had another altercation when he misunderstood an article I wrote for The Age about the Middle East.

    Despite repeated attempts to clear up the misunderstanding, my letters and requests to his office were ignored.

    He found it impossible to admit to a mistake.

    Both prior to the 2007 election and for almost two years afterwards it was clear the public had fallen in love with K. Rudd. His popularity ratings at 70-plus matched those of Bob Hawke.

    However, nasty stories began to emerge about his treatment of staff and public servants. The first was his appalling behaviour towards a stewardess on his VIP plane when he was served the wrong meal, and later when a hair-dryer was not provided for the prime ministerial locks.

    The press gallery gradually got a different picture of the all-smiling Mr Nice Guy appearing nightly on television.

    At a Parliament House dinner late last year with three prominent Labor MPs, I was stunned by the fear and loathing directed at their leader. Having served with eight prime ministers and seven leaders of the opposition, I was familiar with unflattering remarks about leaders but nothing to match the vitriol heaped on Rudd.

    It was not ideological but personal. In time there was hardly anyone he hadn’t insulted.

    Nor was Rudd helped by the three 28-year-old neophytes who were clueless about running a prime ministerial office and acted as a praetorian guard to ensure that nobody, including senior cabinet ministers, got to see the man himself.

    One senior backbencher recounted how he had been screamed at by one of the three amigos for issuing a press release the prime minister didn’t like.

    I asked why he hadn’t told him where to go. He replied, “I was too stunned.”

    The rudeness of Rudd and his cohorts to almost everyone in caucus was legendary. One told of walking through the house and regularly being totally ignored by the PM. “It was as if I didn’t exist.” And he had supported Rudd against Kim Beazley.

    Another story that has become part of Labor folklore is the experience of a senior minister, born in England, who, scheduled to speak at an international conference in Europe on a Sunday, decided to leave on the Friday and, at his own expense, spend a couple of days with his family.

    With his luggage checked in, he was waiting in the VIP lounge when he received a phone call — not from the PM, mind you, but from one of the three idiot flunkies — telling him that he was to abandon the trip and return to Canberra.

    The piece de resistance, however, was the celebrated “printing allowance” episode. John Faulkner, then the special minister of state, had decided to cut the overly generous printing allowance in half.

    A delegation of eight senior Labor MPs and senators went to see the PM, to be greeted with a screaming rant that included every imaginable expletive from the man himself. It was not only rude but incredibly stupid.

    He chose to insult the most influential members of the Labor factions and the trade union movement. Some will consider these events of minor importance but, despite opinions to the contrary, politicians are human beings and resent being treated as excreta.

    How had it come to this? How had this Jekyll and Hyde character not previously revealed himself? Simple. After almost 12 years in opposition and five changes of leadership, Labor was desperate to return to the Treasury benches.

    Rudd had charmed the electorate and the caucus with the cheesy Luna Park grin and it was clear he would defeat John Howard. Prior to the 2007 election, Rudd, aware of the euphoria building up, decided to break with Labor tradition and announce that he would select his own ministry. No one had the balls to deny him. After taking over caucus he then started to pick his own candidates. The ALP became the RLP.

    With any other leader it may have worked but not with an egomaniacal control freak who not only believed he was a genius but considered his colleagues to be his intellectual inferiors.

    Why was he not stopped? Because caucus was prepared to overlook his appalling rudeness, his egomania, his vindictiveness and his dictatorial control of caucus and cabinet in the expectation he would give them a second term. That all changed when the polls indicated that support for Rudd had dissipated. He was now a loser. Enter Gillard. Which brings us to those who are wailing that Rudd was “brutally assassinated?” Rubbish! Rudd committed political suicide. Had he treated his colleagues even halfway decently, he would have survived.

    All political leaders have their friends and their enemies. In the end Rudd had only enemies.

    Barry Cohen was a minister in the Hawke government.

    32 comments on this story

  • Gillard falters on tax rate question

     

    “To fund his paid parental leave scheme he will increase tax on big businesses like Coles and Woolworths. If they pay more tax it’ll feed into what you buy in the supermarket,” she said.

    But during questions over the mining tax Ms Gillard was asked more than half a dozen times when the tax cut would take effect before she answered: “It’ll go to 29 cents in the dollar in 2012.”

    The tax rate will begin to fall to 29 cents in 2012 for smaller companies and 2013 for others.

    “The important thing is that we will take it down to 29 cents in the Government’s budget period – so it’s there in the Government’s estimates,” she added.

    Ms Gillard’s membership of the Socialist Forum in her university days – an attack which was used by the Coalition during the last election campaign – also raised its head during the interview.

    When Jones tried to link her involvement with the forum to a recent preference deal with the Greens, Ms Gillard gave the idea short shrift.

    “What a load of old cobblers,” she said.

    “For you to suggest or in any way imply that somehow those things in the past are related to things that are happening today is just ridiculous.”

    Tags: government-and-politics, elections, federal-government, tax, gillard-julia, federal-elections, australia

  • The election campaign has become a tight contest, with the coalition back in front on primary votes.

     

    Labor’s 10-point lead on a two-party-preferred basis at the start of the election campaign has been reduced to a knife-edge 52 per cent to 48 per cent over the weekend, while the Coalition’s primary vote jumped four points to 42 per cent, compared with Labor’s 40 per cent, down from 42 per cent.

    The two-party-preferred vote, based on preference flows at the 2007 election, is now the same as it was the weekend before Labor dumped Kevin Rudd as prime minister and put Ms Gillard into the job – only three weeks before she called the election.

    Related Coverage

    Primary support for the Greens is unchanged on 12 per cent, while support for other candidates and minor parties dropped from 8 per cent to 6 per cent.

    Satisfaction with the new Prime Minister has also dropped dramatically, from 48 per cent to 41 per cent; dissatisfaction with the job she is doing leapt from 29 per cent to 37 per cent last weekend.

    Last Monday, Newspoll showed Labor ahead 55 per cent to 45 per cent on a two-party-preferred vote and four points ahead on a primary vote, 42 per cent to 38 per cent – initially vindicating the removal of Mr Rudd as leader to improve Labor’s polling.

    According to a breakdown of Newspoll figures, much of the Labor boost came from female voters, with Labor’s primary vote of 42 per cent coming from male voter support of 39 per cent and female voter support of 44 per cent.

    Last weekend, the Labor primary vote of 40 per cent came from an unchanged male vote and a female vote of 40 per cent, down four points in the first week of the election campaign.

    Approval of the way the Opposition Leader is doing his job has improved markedly in the first week of the campaign, with satisfaction up four points to 40 per cent and dissatisfaction down from 51 per cent to 46 per cent.

    Mr Abbott has also halved Ms Gillard’s 30-percentage-point lead as preferred prime minister at the start of the campaign after her support fell seven points to 50 per cent and his rose seven points to 34 per cent. At the last Newspoll survey when Mr Rudd was prime minister, he led Mr Abbott 46 per cent to 37 per cent.

    But voters at the end of the first week of the election campaign believe overwhelmingly that Labor will win the election 65 per cent to 17 per cent for the Coalition. Even 47 per cent of Coalition supporters believe Labor will win, with only 34 per cent expecting a Liberal victory.

    In terms of voter commitment, only 54 per cent said they would definitely vote the way suggested, with 43 per cent suggesting they may change their mind. The 54 per cent level of commitment to one party is about the same as it was at the beginning of the past two elections – 55 per cent in 2004 and 60 per cent in 2007.

    Labor is behind on primary vote for the first time in the three Newspoll surveys since Ms Gillard became Prime Minister.

    The two-party-preferred vote is the same as it was the weekend before Mr Rudd was removed, Mr Abbott is the closest to Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister since she took over. The Liberal leader’s satisfaction levels have improved while the Labor leader’s have fallen. The Newspoll is the first major survey taken since Ms Gillard announced a proposal for a 150-member citizens assembly to develop “consensus” on climate change policy while remaining committed to a carbon trading system by 2013.

    Other national polls, taken before the climate change policy announcement on Friday morning, showed little change from Labor’s dominant 10-point lead on second preferences, but public reaction and online polling suggests the climate change decision has been unpopular.

    13 comments on this story

  • Meetings fail to stop mining ads

    Meetings fail to stop mining ads

    ABC July 26, 2010, 7:32 pm

     

    WA Treasury officials say the new resources tax needs to be redesigned or scrapped

    ABC News © Enlarge photo

     

    An advertising campaign against the Federal Government’s resources tax will go ahead despite today’s meeting between concerned smaller miners and a senior minister.

    The Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) remains strongly opposed to the mineral resources rent tax.

    The Minister for Energy and Resources, Martin Ferguson, held a meeting with some miners in Perth today, but it was not enough to allay concerns.

    An attack on the tax will now be resurrected through national television advertisements which will screen from Wednesday.

    A similar campaign which also involved BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata was abandoned after Julia Gillard took over as Prime Minister and vowed to return to the negotiating table.

    The latest advertisement shows a shop assistant and mother of young children questioning whether Ms Gillard has thought the tax through.

    But AMEC CEO Simon Bennison denies the campaign is politically motivated.

    “It’s just an absolute nonsense,” he said.

    “We’ve certainly seen the flow of capital out of Australia. We’ve certainly seen the failure of a lot of IPOs getting off the ground and getting access to finance.

    “That’s not a political motivation – that is bad tax policy impacting right across the industries.”

    But Mr Ferguson says the campaign is absolutely about politics and that is evident in AMEC’s decision to launch the political advertising before today’s meeting.

    “It is also clear that some of the participants are very well connected with the Liberal Party,” he said.

    The Queensland Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Retail Federation will run similar campaigns.