Climate change forces us to rethink the very 20th century ways in which we've been thinking about energy

Traditional energy producers point out that feeding intermittent energy back into the grid would require significant upgrades and potentially a costly redesign but there may be another way to store renewable energy generated locally, sitting in the garage.

Electric cars already come with a large battery built in and it is feasible that this could receive renewable energy generated in the home at low peak times, either using it as fuel to drive the car or storing it and sending it back to the house at high peak. HSBC's Head of Climate Change Centre of Excellence, Nick Robins, says there is evidence that the transportation industry is taking this idea seriously, "increasingly the roll-out of electric vehicles is being driven, not by transport demands, but by energy storage demands."

The technology to make this work on a large scale is still at an early stage but Google have taken an interest, writing an algorithm to balance the charging requirements of a large number of electric cars connecting to the grid at once. Although this doesn't address the problem of sending energy back into the grid, many in the industry see it as an important first step.

"Climate change forces us to rethink the very 20th century ways in which we've been thinking about energy", explains Robins, "the model which is emerging is that you have a lot more decentralised generation of both electricity and heat."

There is one model that HSBC are quite keen to stick to, climate change may be a social and moral issue but one attraction for HSBC is more traditional, "the market for climate change goods and services is now $530 billion a year", says Robins, "that's bigger than the aerospace sector."

Kia shines in new era and new succes in its electric cars

WHEN it comes to setting targets Korean car producer Kia likes to think big.

A fringe player just a few years ago, the marque now performs on the major stage and aims to be in the world's top three manufacturers for actual quality within three years.

A lofty ambition perhaps, but Kia has a habit of delivering and only last week was named UK Automotive Company for 2010 by the Institute of Transport Management.

The reason - the Koreans' push towards a healthier industry plus its development of cost-efficient vehicles and environmentally sound manufacturing processes.

A key model in this brave new world is the oddly-named cee'd, launched two years ago and still the only car on sale in Europe with a seven-year, 100,000-mile warranty as standard.

European designed and built it has proved a runaway success in that time and rather than facing a mid-life crisis it's about to take on a new lease of life.

Now there's a new cee'd that has been refreshed inside, outside and underneath.

Upgrades in the cabin mean better quality materials - though the two-tone seats look a bit 1970s naff rather than retro chic - extra kit and better comfort, from a starting price of £11,595 for the 1.4-litre three door pro-cee'd.

And to introduce the company's eventual move towards hybrids, electric cars and fuel-cell vehicles, the cee'd will be the first Kia available with emissions busting EcoDynamics.

This comes in the shape of an Intelligent Stop & Go system which turns off the engine when the car is stationary.

It's hardly a ground-breaking set-up but it works well and isn't in the least bit spooky when the engine cuts out at traffic lights for instance.

I picked a 30-minute route through Liverpool city centre in midweek and gauged the engine to be turned off for just under seven minutes, so there's a definite saving to be had.

Initially ISG will only be available in pro-cee'd, the five-door cee'd hatchback and cee'd SW estate models using the standard 1.6-litre 89bhp CRDi diesel powerplant.

It gives Kia a model that makes clear sense to business users, its CO2 emissions of just 110g/km meaning that companies can claim 100 per cent company car tax write-down in the first year of operation.

Of overall appeal is the figure of 67.3 miles per gallon fuel economy and the 13 per cent rate of benefit-in-kind tax, considerably lower than many rivals.

To simplify the model line-up the new range is badged cee'd 1, 2 and 3, with 1.4 and 1.6 petrol engines and two 1.6-litre diesels producing 89 and 113bhp.

While the original cee'd remains an enjoyable and agile car to drive, the revamped models - which also incorporate a new Kia family face first seen on the Soul urban runabout - feel better still thanks to a revised suspension and a new stability management system.

I took three versions on a mixed test route over 80 miles and all gave the feel of a more expensive car. The dash is well designed, the steering wheel trendy, interior space excellent bar a perched centre rear position and the manual gearshift (now six-speed on all diesels) is slick.

Most appealing is the 113bhp diesel cee'd 2 SW estate at £14,995 - the engine's quiet, the torque comes in early and the styling and boot space is first class.

But then even the most basic models are thoroughly kitted out with the likes of air con with cooled glovebox, RDS radio-CD player that's compatible with MP3 players, rake and reach steering adjustment and a height-adjustable driver's seat, trip computer, front electric windows, deadlocks, six airbags, headlamp levellers, and steering wheel-mounted audio controls and tinted glass included.

More than 17,000 UK buyers now have a cee'd planted on their driveway - with the latest version that figure is set to really sprout

is it green car meaning?

Every Junior Seminar in the Department of Environmental Science has as its main focus a project whose completion is important to some stakeholder outside the college. Sometimes the party waiting for the report being prepared by students enrolled in the seminar is mildly interested in the outcome, prepared to take into consideration the research and ideas of Allegheny's juniors. Other times--and this is one of those unusual occasions--the outside participant is anxiously awaiting the class' findings.

Your task, at least on the face of it, is rather simple. If your research and reports are professionally sound and of high enough quality you are likely to see the fruits of your labor around the time you graduate from Allegheny College.

Allegheny College wants Carr Hall to be green, but I'm not sure they are fully aware of what benefits a green building could bring the campus beyond the feel-good nature of what it can do for the ES department. That's what your job is. WHY build green? What does it mean for the ES Department? The Physics Department? The student body? Administration? Fund Raisers? Prospective students? Funders? Graduates? Visitors? Future buildings, maintenance and operations?

CBI chief's sustainable vision blows away hot air

Richard Lambert meets manufacturers in the north-east to gain an insight into how the region can reinvent itself

In a hangar once used for shipbuilding on the coast at Blyth in the north-east, a large wind turbine blade, looking like the rib of a giant whale, lies flat on a trestle. Another sticking out of a machine at the back of the hangar is being shaken up and down repeatedly. By the end of three weeks, it will have undergone two and a half million cycles in each direction to make sure it doesn't break.

Richard Lambert, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry, in hard hat and sheltering from the rain under a large umbrella, is taking in the scene. "Forgive me for sounding romantic," he says. "But we do have the capacity for a manufacturing renaissance over the next few years, and if we don't grasp it, future generations will curse us one way or another."

The research and testing facility for the wind and marine industries, called Narec, was one visit on a whistle-stop tour of firms in the low carbon industry undertaken by Lambert last week. His aim was to get a better sense of the attempts to reinvent a region scarred by thousands of job losses in its former smokestack industries. The visit also took in Smith Electric Vehicles, which has been manufacturing since the 1920s, and Banks, a coal miner now trying to re-shape itself as an onshore wind firm.

The trip was partly a fact-finding mission. When Nissan in Sunderland secured a £200m investment in July to build batteries for electric-powered cars, it was hailed by Gordon Brown and Business Secretary Peter Mandelson as a key moment. To mark the investment by the company's Japanese parent, they grandly declared the north-east a low carbon economic zone. But was there any substance behind the rhetoric?

Lambert makes trips like these "most weeks". It is on them, he says, that he gets a real idea of business concerns. "It was very marked last year that, through until March or April, the further away from London you got, and from banking and real estate, the more prosperous people felt. I suspect it is now the other way around".

Narec is backed by the regional development agency One North East, although it now makes around half its budget from commercial contracts, stress-testing blades and marine equipment in three docks, and the impact of lightning on blades in a high-voltage facility. The centre also took over a specialist solar-research division from BP. It currently works with US wind farm company, Clipper, and others from Japan and Europe, and aims to be self sufficient by 2011, hopefully attracting manufacturing and jobs to the region.

"No one else is doing this," Narec chairman Alan Rutherford told Lambert. "The development of new technology is a very expensive process and there are not many organisations that can fund the sort of assets we have off balance sheet. We are correcting market failure.

"We are talking to some heavy hitters around the world about moving to Blyth to develop operations in the North Sea, to develop prototypes and then hopefully full-scale manufacturing on the Tyne. But it is highly competitive. We lost out on onshore wind – the Danes, the Germans and the Dutch got all the business. As far as we are concerned, we are a neck ahead in offshore and want to stay that way."

At a round table where the CBI chief faced leading figures in the wind industry, both the potential and the challenges were laid out. David Still, managing director of Clipper, estimated that around £70bn would be invested in offshore wind between now and 2020. He said that his company was looking to make blades on the Tyne if the infrastructure and support were in place, benefiting the supply chain as well. "The key issue is how much we capture in the UK," he said. "If we make 100 turbines here, someone is going to have to build the foundations, and the steel plate that goes into that is about 10% of [nearby] Corus's annual output."

But significant investment is needed to upgrade the National Grid and the ports in particular, to ensure they can cope with the massive equipment and turbines. "Look at Sunderland," said Martin Lawlor from the Port of Blyth. "[It was] once one of the biggest shipbuilders in the world, where all you can see now on the river is flats." Land also needs to be made available for the manufacturing and storage of the huge turbines.

Planning remains a key concern, and this emerged at Banks, which has a target of 250 megawatts of wind power by 2012. "The government has abdicated delivery of energy supply and generation to the private sector and is not helping it," said Mark Dowdall, at Banks. "The country needs to look at speeding up the whole process if it is to hit its renewables target. It is often up to local authorities to consider big contentious projects and elected members get a lot of earache from constituents."

The urgency for investment has not passed Lambert by. "I was in a meeting with a government minister a couple of weeks ago discussing the impending energy gap and he said, 'well the recession is a big help'," Lambert said, banging his head on the table in mock exasperation. The CBI's official stance is to support the need for a mix of energy, including nuclear and clean coal. "We support the government's targets for greenhouse gas mitigation for 2020, but we are anxious about the renewable targets, because frankly we think they are incredible."

Smith Electric Vehicles began life building trolley buses, trams and milk floats, and now re-engineers commercial vehicles for the likes of Sainsbury's and TNT, and collaborates with Ford. But chairman Roy Stanley said Mandelson's designation for the area appears to have been empty words. "There is nothing tangible," he told the CBI chief. "I don't want to come across as jaundiced. But if you are to very graciously declare this a low carbon economic zone, what does it mean? Define it, tell us what it is, don't just give us a label."

The pain is evident at Smith. Its parent company, the Tanfield Group, which also makes access platforms for the construction industry, has slashed staff numbers and executives have taken a 20% pay cut, as orders for electric vehicles faltered and the market for access platforms collapsed. The production facility is eerily empty. There is capacity for 1,500 vehicles a year, but it is currently producing 10% of that. The company is having to keep many of its suppliers afloat with upfront payments, though Stanley said the market has started to improve.

"So, if I am on an aeroplane with Lord Mandelson, just as he is dropping off to sleep, what is the punchline?" asked Lambert. One idea, Stanley said, would be to kick start orders by giving buyers of commercial electric vehicles a capital allowance, as with ordinary cars.

"There is a certain feeling that people want to cluster round and share the pain and find out how everyone else is doing," said Lambert as he headed off to the regional CBI black tie dinner in Gateshead. "It does feel much lighter now than February or March, but then it was really dark. What people worry about is that there are a lot of temporary stimuluses going through – the car scrappage, the end of stock liquidation, huge monetary stimulus, fiscal stimulus – but what will happen when that starts to run out? Where will the engine of demand come from? I think the recovery is going to be pretty protracted."

The next day at Nissan, though, the mood is upbeat. In January the company was forced to let 1,200 people go, taking the factory down from three to two shifts. But the shifts are again running with overtime and 350 temporary workers have been taken back on since March, partly thanks to the cash-for-clunkers scheme.

But the investment in electric batteries, is the real cause for optimism. Trevor Mann, senior vice-president for manufacturing, purchasing and supply chain for Nissan Europe, looks out of the boardroom window at the site for the battery plant. "This is the biggest single investment that this plant has had since 1992," he says. He says he is "optimistic" that electric car production will be heading to Sunderland.

Mann says Sunderland secured the contract as a result of a long period of lowering costs and improving efficiency, as the plant sought to avoid the fate of others that closed in Britain in the 1990s, such as Peugeot in Coventry. "Nothing is owed to us, everything is earned. And everybody recognises that."