Ashden Awards visit to a woodland

During August, some of the Ashden Awards team and their families visited a woodland down in East Sussex. The woodland is owned and managed by Mike Pepler (Technical Manager at the Awards) and his wife Tracy.

Despite early threats of rain, it turned out to be a sunny day, and there was plenty of time for sitting around, eating and chatting.
Before lunch though, some people got involved in the woodland work, splitting big logs with a maul:
and smaller logs with a froe to make kindling:
After lunch it was time for a guided tour of the woods with Mike, first stop was some "Chicken of the Woods", otherwise known as Sulphur Polypore:
It's edible, but Mike hadn't tried it yet...

The walk continued through the woods, stopping to peer at strange beetles and other items of interest.
There were a few challenges on the way though...
In a neighbouring wood was Mike's friend Tim, using a large firewood processor to cross-cut and split logs ready to sell for use in woodburners for home heating:
For more info on the woodland and how it is managed to promote biodiversity while producing timber and fuel, check out Mike's blog.

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Renewable energy country attractiveness indices

Ernst and Young have just published their Renewable energy country attractiveness indices, which make interesting reading. Key points made include:

• There is a temporary glut of renewable energy supply chain capacity, as the financial crisis has hit demand, but in the longer term scarcity of supply is expected.
• New renewable energy manufacturing capacity is being built in China, India, USA and the Middle East, but jobs are being lost in Europe.
• Although lenders who finance renewable energy projects still have problems, they view the sector as one of the better opportunities for investment in the current climate.
• The top ten countries for investing in renewable energy are: USA, Germany, China, India, Spain, Italy, UK, France, Canada and Portugal.

You can download a PDF of the full report here.

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More YouTube videos about IDEI and SELCO

Many of our Ashden Award winners also get involved with other organisations to help publicise and expand their work. Here's a couple of videos from Youtube.

IDEI, who won an Ashden Award in 2006, and an Ashden Outstanding Achievement Award in 2009, have also been working with the Skoll Foundation. Here's a video about their work:


SELCO, who won an Ashden Award in 2005, and an Ashden Outstanding Achievement Award in 2007, have been working with media organisations, such as Deutsche Welle, Germany's English-language international broadcaster, who made this film:


In case you'd never seen their original Ashden Awards films, here are the two for IDEI:



and the two for SELCO:

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