Warm

and sunny today. and now we are all set for winter too.

Today 5400 kg of wood pellets for the central heating, equivalent to 2700 liters of oil (600 UK Gallons) costing -incl. VAT & Transport - 1,500 Euros (1,280 GBP) or 56 cents/liter (2.13 GBP/gal). At the equivalent price here, the cheapest oil delivery would have been 2,270 Euros.

The days of wood pellets costing 50% of oil are gone, they are currently at an all time high. Wood prices generally are at record levels as we haven't had a decent storm for a decade or two like the October 1987 one (anyone remember that - Nogbad (Coventry)?) or the 1990 storms which hit Germany quite hard. Not that I am wishing any of us a repeat.

Added to this, big players in the energy market have moved in and are forcing the price up. Purely a coincidence that they also happen to supply oil or generate electricity and one high price justifies another one.

Once a bit of a quirky/green/eco thing, the idea of using sawdust waste which was othewise largely useless has been turned in to a multi million profit making business. Just as Bio-Gas was conceived to use waste - cow manure - to produce electricity and heat, now the countryside has been radically (to it's detriment) altered to allow large farmers to make use of the subvention money to build huge units and thereby seriously damaging the environment. Not everything Green is good but, in my view, better than Fukushima et al.

Can't understand why the UK is still so atomic power hungry but perhaps I will get to hear the reasons first hand, next week. Even here, 27 years after Chernobyl, many including MrB, won't eat wild mushrooms and if he gets lucky with a wild boar, it has to be tested first for radiation before it can be consumed.

PS Should have really Bliped Angie who is very busy with the garden tractor while I have lunch & Blip. So here a Flickr.