The Price Of Electricity And Waffle Houses

When writing a blog, you want to capture the readers’ interest in the first few lines or they will just stop reading, so knowing this to be true, what better way to start than to talk about how little we use our tumble dryer at home these days. When my daughter was born back in 1998, the tumble dryer would be going all the time and after everyone had showered, we just chucked the wet towels in the tumble. How carefree those days were! In recent years we have lived through the highest electricity prices in our lifetime and the tumble dryer now sits mostly silent.

For me, the measure of success with all the promise for green cheap electricity from the government’s Great British Energy, is my tumble dryer index that I have just made up. I got the idea after hearing about Waffle House Index that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) use to map the most affected areas affected by natural disasters. 

Former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate has said he thought the Waffle House Index while leading Florida’s emergency management efforts in 2004. He had been searching for something to eat while surveying the devastation left by Hurricane Charley and was only able to find a Waffle House serving a limited menu. 

His team noticed other open Waffle Houses in communities without power or running water. The restaurants eventually became a key feature on a color-coded map that his team provided to help the public and local officials identify where storm damage was most severe.   

I wonder what would stay open in Chelmsford if we had a sudden loss of water and electricity, would we have a McDonalds or Costa index, let’s hope we never have to find out.

Cutting Carbon At Home

I am a strong advocate of the wonders of the modern UK electricity grid and with all the electric cars and advances in AI, we are going to need more electricity than ever and if we are going to meet our Net Zero goals it needs to be green and clean. And if I am going to use my tumble dryer again, it needs to be cheap. On the subject of tumble dryers, did you know, using dryer balls can offer a 50% energy saving? This tip and many more can be found in the city council’s new Energy Saving campaign ‘Cutting Carbon at Home’, with the tagline “Cut Energy, Cut Costs and you Cut Carbon”. There is also a promotion to win one of four £50 home improvement vouchers for completing our energy saving checklist 

Greening energy & cutting carbon in your home – Love Your Chelmsford

Carbon Capture

I started to read about big plans to capture carbon and store it underground and as a big fan of big technology projects, it sounded very interesting and was this the silver bullet to solve all our problems. Then I started reading from many respected voices that “Carbon capture & storage (CCS) is an expensive and unproven technology” and I thought that does not sound right. We always need more unproven technology – that is how we advance. Would me challenging this statement bring me to the attention of the Green Police?  

I started to think about how as a child I was so fascinated by ERNIE the Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment. This computer would sometimes pick my Premium Bonds number and send me money that I could spend on expensive unproven technology. This is how I came to buy the Sinclair Mini TV that would fit in your pocket. I was only 16 years old in 1983, but I was as excited as Sir Clive Sinclair himself, that we now lived in a time when you could have a TV Screen in our pockets. It did not quite work out as well as was hoped but that desire to push what was possible is why today everyone has a screen on their mobile phone and you can watch TV. I loved being one of early adopters.

Carbon capture is going ahead, and it is very much a large-scale project, and piping and moving CO2 around and locking it underground in the North Sea fits the definition of “expensive and unproven technology”. What I found interesting was when reading what the critics of this had to say, many of the arguments made a lot of sense. This is only going to play a small part in getting to net zero and there is a risk that it will be used as a reason for business as usual. So, for me, I will follow with great interest the developments and these critical voices need to be heard and be part of the conversation. When we are all part of a shared objective reality this leaves space for different views and if we can learn how to talk to each other about the how we can bring as many people as possible into this space and challenge them to be science and evidence led when forming their opinions. 

I do love the big technology projects but that does not stop me from seeing the wonder in simple things, too. A local example of natural carbon storage can be seen through the city council’s tree planting programme. Chelmsford City Council has a target for planting one new tree for every resident and with the recent tree give away seeing over 1,000 people collect a free tree to plant at home, we are locally already making a difference. Together we are doing our very own carbon capture scheme that’s what I call people power.

Naming New Technologies

I hope you can find time to read the links at the bottom about all the new technologies that are coming faster than ever and how these fit with solving the climate crisis and living healthy lives connected with nature. It looks like the UK is getting a new national computer centre to propel us even faster than ever into the future, “The National Quantum Computing Centre will be home to new quantum computers, designed to push the boundaries of what is possible with the technology.” 

Now that sounds exciting why have they not given these super powerful computes cool names like we had for ERNIE, I asked Chat GPT to come up with a Terminator inspired name with a British sense of humour and it came up with this including an explanation – “ARNOLD — Advanced Research Node for Logic & Data (a subtle nod to Arnie himself—programmed with a British sense of humour)” I am looking forward to see what Arnold can do to give us a better life in the UK and also be able to run powerful climate modelling experiments, and do all this without wanting to go full terminator on us.

Innovation In Chelmsford 

Chelmsford has always been full of smart people doing amazing things, such as Teledyne e2V in Waterhouse Lane who are a major player in space imaging technology. Their sensors have been used on space telescopes like Hubble and The Climate study satellite “TRUTHS” (Traceable Radiometry underpinning Terrestrial-and Helio-Studies) to better understand Global Warming. This satellite uses hyperspectral sensors and front-end electronics built and designed here in Chelmsford by Teledyne e2V, to accurately measure energy coming into Earth from the Sun and the amount light reflected off Earth’s surface. 

We are Chelmsford and we live in a shared objective reality and when forming our opinions we are science and evidence led.

I Wish You A Merry Christmas

I hope you have a great Christmas and how is this for a Christmas cracker joke: 

“I believe Santa’s sleigh is powered by magical reindeer which would appear to be the closest the cleverest of people have come so far to the UK’s ambitions of ‘jet zero.’” 

Please remember to recycle your Christmas Tree and help raise money for Farleigh Hospice, My Nan was a great supporter of local hospices, and I was never sure why she called it the “Hospic” but when she died, she left orders that we had to see her household items used to raise money for the “Hospic” and of course we followed her orders, and I hope you will do the same. 

Farleigh Hospice’s Christmas Tree Recycling Initiative. https://www.farleighhospice.org/events/trees-2025

Nothing quite says Christmas like Cliff Richard, and I don’t think he was thinking about carbon capture and cheap green electricity when he wrote “Power to all our friends,” but for how my mind works, it made me think about the Power of Nature, People Power and Great British Energy.  I hope you give it a listen. 

Cllr Terry Sherlock  

https://youtu.be/syihbFUaKIw    

Click above to listen to Cliff Richard sing, “Power to all our friends”