- Industry: Broadcasting & receiving
- Number of terms: 5074
- Number of blossaries: 1
- Company Profile:
The largest broadcasting organisation in the world.
Not, in this instance, a club for car enthusiasts, but an organisation providing car rental to members at very short notice and usually for short periods, such as an hour or two.
Industry:Natural environment
Solar panels, usually roof-mounted, use the energy of the sun to generate electricity for home use, with the potential to sell surplus back to the grid. Light shining on a panel of photovoltaic cells creates an electric field across layers of semiconductive material, causing electricity to flow.
Industry:Natural environment
Car pooling - or lift sharing - is a way of reducing CO2 emissions from private transport, especially commuter travel, by sharing journeys. It can be arranged informally among friends and colleagues or, increasingly, through dedicated websites. Its aim is to have fewer cars on the road with more people in each.
Industry:Natural environment
A solar water heater uses the energy of the sun directly to heat a fluid that is fed into your hot water tank, meaning your boiler has less work to do (and requires less energy) to get your hot water to the required temperature.
Industry:Natural environment
Carbon is the fourth most common chemical element in the universe, and carbon compounds - in other words, carbon chemically combined with other elements - are the basis of all known life forms on earth. Pure carbon appears in many apparently diverse forms, from diamond to graphite to charcoal, but it is much more commonly found in substances such as coal, oil, natural gas, wood and peat that we use for fuel. When we burn these substances to provide energy - either directly in our homes as heat, or in power stations to produce electricity - the combustion process produces 'oxides' of carbon, including the gas CO2.
Industry:Natural environment
Standby, or 'sleep mode', is a mode in which electronic appliances are turned off but still drawing current and ready to activate on command. Although legislation has limited the energy new appliances can use in standby mode, they still use more energy than if they are switched off at the wall.
Industry:Natural environment
Carbon capture, carbon sequestration, or CCS (carbon capture and storage) are all terms to describe relatively new technologies designed to let major producers of CO2 emissions, such as fossil fuel-burning power stations, prevent the CO2 they create being released into the atmosphere. Instead it is stored by being injected into underground or undersea geological formations. Some CCS technology is already in operation on a limited scale in other countries but its use is not yet widespread.
Industry:Natural environment
The second lowest level of the atmosphere, extending from about 10km to about 50km altitude. The ozone layer, the part of the earth's atmosphere with the greatest concentration of ozone, forms part of the stratosphere. Because it sits above the troposphere, where most air turbulence occurs, the lower stratosphere is where most commercial airlines set their cruising altitude.
Industry:Natural environment
One carbon credit allows a business operating within an emissions trading scheme to emit one tonne of CO2. A firm that manages to reduce its carbon emissions to the extent that it does not require all its credits can sell the surplus to other firms who need to exceed their own cap. See emissions trading for more details.
Industry:Natural environment
Sustainability - whether applied to energy, technology, industry, agriculture or just consumption of resources in general - refers to the concept of using things at a rate that, while meeting our own needs, does not compromise future generations' ability to meet theirs. In environmental terms, a process or industry is unsustainable when it requires natural resources to be used up faster than they can be replenished.
Industry:Natural environment
