It’s been a glorious Easter weekend in the Land of Blog: the trees are now flush with blog-blossom, yellow blogodills decorate the fields, and new born blog-bunnies are at play in every vale. However, Easter wouldn’t be complete with the annual Isonomia Egg Hunt, and we can tell you that this year it was a cracker.
The blogosphere contains a whole world of Easter egg traditions – from the Spanish tradition of hardboiled egg battles to the egg tapping competitions of the North of England – but all share in the symbolism of new life, an idea the Isonomia team embrace as we look forward to the new authors, thoughts and puns life will bring in the months ahead. However, if you were too busy painting eggs and observing your Lenten vows to read Isonomia in March, what have you missed?
The most eagerly consumed blog last month was gifted by Dominic Hogg, who asked just how green the Green Investment Bank’s investment portfolio has been so far. Dominic found that over 90% of the GIB’s total investment has been in EfW up to this point, and that the ‘greenness’ of this spending has been overestimated due to the bank’s failure to account for changes in the energy mix which EfW will be displacing as the grid becomes less reliant on coal and gas.
Chiarina Darrah isn’t one to suck eggs, and she pulled no punches in March’s second most read article. Chiarina has been carefully cross checking the measures contained in Defra’s current Marine Strategy Framework Directive consultation, and took the time to reveal how they are about as satisfying as an egg white omelette, with the UK proposing no significant new actions or increase in spending.
Next in the brood was new hatchling Sarah Baulch, an oceans campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency who’s been researching the harm caused by plastic bags in the marine environment. Sarah examined the why the measures on plastic bags coming into force in England later this year fall short of those adopted elsewhere in the UK, making the policy something of a curate’s egg.
Our final aquatic article was a mini-egg of a blog from Thomas Appleby, which informed us of an important legal ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union which now means that water companies are to be counted as ‘public authorities’, complete with the duty to divulge information on riverine pollution.
Regular renewable energy commentator Chloe Bines certainly didn’t give up producing insightful articles for lent, as she delivered an analysis of the likely market response to the close of DECC’s Renewables Obligation for solar PV developments of greater than 5 MW. Also on the energy front we had new author David Christopherson, who took a look at DECC’s Capacity Market auction, which might be seen as a provision against putting all one’s eggs in the renewables basket. The mechanism pays generators for ensuring availability of supply when the grid most needs it, and David sought to examine whether these payments will be effective and represent good value for consumers.
With such a fine clutch of articles in the basket it may seem that running an environmental blog is over easy, but we couldn’t do it without our readers. We’re grateful to all those who tweet about our articles, and for the fascinating comments we receive, both on the site and on LinkedIn. We try to provide an informed but accessible viewpoint on a wide range of environment issues. Offering a platform for a variety of opinions and generating debate is what we’re all about, so if you think that anything you’ve read here takes the cake or is as nutty as a fruit cake please do tell us, whether by leaving a comment or with an article of your own.
Many of those who’ve written articles for the site started out just as visitors, and we’re always glad to hear from you if you want to pitch an idea. Whether you’re from Chickerell or Rabbit Beach, Choctaw or Bundaberg, with your help we will create a space where thoughts on topics from across the environment sector can be expressed and explored, enabling communication and cross fertilisation of ideas.
What might be waiting to hatch in April? You can expect father of the waste hierarchy Ad Lansink to make an appearance, this time with some thoughts on the challenges transitioning to a circular economy; Laurence Elliot should be back with a look at DECC’s onshore wind forecast; and Peter Jones might drop in to tell us about his ongoing one man war against sloppy and misleading waste journalism in the national press.
Isonomia is more than just a blog these days – we’re hooked up to all sorts of other outlets. You can now follow us by subscribing to our Paper.Li site, where you can see Isonomia’s articles, and other interesting material, gathered together in a newspaper format. We also post our articles via our Facebook page, and tweet about each new piece. Of course at the top right of each page you can still subscribe to have each article e-mailed to you. It couldn’t be easier to follow all we have to offer.
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