The New Optimists » paul tilsley http://newoptimists.com Wed, 22 May 2013 08:05:17 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Birmingham on brink of a new era in generating electricity http://newoptimists.com/2011/10/02/birmingham-on-brink-of-a-new-era-in-generating-electricity/ http://newoptimists.com/2011/10/02/birmingham-on-brink-of-a-new-era-in-generating-electricity/#comments Sun, 02 Oct 2011 10:00:37 +0000 Simon Harper http://newoptimists.com/?p=4425 Birmingham City Council has plans to generate its own electricity. Harking back to the days of Joseph Chamberlain, the idea is supported by deputy council leader Paul Tilsley, who says that the use of solar panels could make this a reality.

There are already more concrete plans to generate power going on next to the Sack of Potatoes pub in Gosta Green. And I mean ‘concrete’ both metaphorically and literally.

Few people appear to have heard of this exciting development. Yet with £16.5M  of EU money, our very own Professor Andreas Hornung is pioneering a revolutionary carbon-negative  process under the auspices of the European Bioenergy Research Institute (EBRI).

He’ll soon be in charge of an industrial-scale demonstrator power plant actually being built at Aston University, bang next door to the student drinking hole, the Sack of Potatoes. As reported earlier, the idea is to create a “thermal ring” of these power plants around the city.


Exciting times indeed.

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