Sustainable Translator – Sustainable Translator ▶ WayToJapan

February 14, 2025March 1, 2025Home decarbonisation project

How to minimise the cost of running a heat pump

I’ve come across this post on LinkedIn and thought I’d put a link here and file it under “useful information for people thinking about getting a heat pump”.

February 3, 2025March 1, 2025Home decarbonisation project

Load shifting with smart tariff – Part 2

I wrote a few months ago about making the most of my solar panel and battery system through a smart tariff designed for households with such a system called Octopus Flux. It’s time to update as I’m no longer on that tariff. Why? Because I’ve gone cosy – Cosy Octopus, that is.

November 3, 2024March 1, 2025Home decarbonisation project

Free electricity!

This summer, Octopus Energy started giving electricity for free. Free electricity sessions happen when the forecast is good for renewable energy production but demand is low. What extra kWh you manage to add on top of what you normally use during that hour is free.

October 4, 2024March 1, 2025Home decarbonisation project

Load shifting with smart tariff

I’m currently on the Octopus Flux tariff, which is designed specifically for households with solar panels and battery to maximise their electricity export income and reduce import from the grid.

October 3, 2024March 1, 2025Home decarbonisation project

Heat pump – initial impression

It’s been a few weeks since the heat pump was commissioned. This has been an up-and-down sort of September, and following a few days of summer returning, we’ve had a cold snap. In previous years we always tried to hold off turning the heating on as long as we could, waiting at least until the clock went back at the end of October, but this time we kept the heat pump switched on the whole time as we were told by the installation engineer to do, and played around with the controller to adjust settings instead. Here are some initial thoughts.

October 2, 2024March 1, 2025Home decarbonisation project

Bye bye gas meter!

In my last post, I wrote that installing a heat pump was the penultimate phase of our home decarbonisation project. So what was the final phase? Getting the gas meter taken away.

September 18, 2024March 1, 2025Home decarbonisation project

Heat pumped!

The penultimate phase of our home decarbonisation project is complete, and our home (which is also my office) is heated by an air source heat pump. Since it’s a fairly hot topic in the debate about the UK’s net zero ambition, I thought I’d keep a record of how we got here.

August 20, 2024March 1, 2025Home decarbonisation project, Scotland

Unlocking Home Efficiency: The Value of Multiple Technologies

On 14 August, just a few days before the heat pump installation works started, I hopped on a train to Edinburgh to attend a free talk titled Unlocking Home Efficiency: The Value of Multiple Technologies, part of the week-long Green Home Festival

August 2, 2024March 1, 2025Sustainability topics, Sustainablog

Two films on rewilding

The 2023 State of Nature Report states that ‘the UK is now one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth’ and facing a ‘biodiversity crisis’. It is not surprising then that interest in ecosystem restoration and the concept of rewilding is growing.

June 4, 2024May 8, 2025Book reviews

Book review: The Ministry for the Future

The Ministry for the Future by acclaimed science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson came out in 2020 when the world was still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. The book has since won multiple awards and won a whole new readership for Robinson, including world leaders and climate activists who normally don’t have time for sci-fi as the world careens towards an all too real catastrophe. According to the cover blurb, it was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2020.