- Industry: Broadcasting & receiving
- Number of terms: 5074
- Number of blossaries: 1
- Company Profile:
The largest broadcasting organisation in the world.
A wall comprising two layers of brick or block separated by a cavity (gap). This air space acts as an insulator, but does so more effectively if filled with an insulating material, such as plastic foam or natural materials like wool or recycled newspaper.
Industry:Natural environment
A general term usually applied to major domestic electric appliances, such as fridges and washing machines.
Industry:Natural environment
Technology that enables coal to be burned without emitting CO2. Some systems currently being developed remove the CO2 before combustion, others remove it afterwards. Clean coal technology is unlikely to be widely available for at least a decade.
Industry:Natural environment
All turbines use kinetic (movement) energy to cause a bladed rotor to turn and so generate electricity. A wind turbine is a machine that captures the force of the wind. Often seen in remote, exposed coastal regions or offshore where wind speeds are greatest and most consistent, smaller versions can be installed on houses, but research suggests they may be useless, or even counter-productive, in urban settings.
Industry:Natural environment
Climate change is the variation in the average global or regional climate as measured by yardsticks such as average temperature and rainfall. This variation is caused by both natural processes and human activity. Weather is what happens over days or even hours, whereas climate is the average weather measured over a longer period. Increasingly when people refer to climate change, however, they specifically mean the phenomenon of global warming.
Industry:Natural environment
The time frame given to parties to the Kyoto Protocol to meet their emission reduction commitments. The first Kyoto commitment period runs from 2008-2012, during which industrialised countries are required collectively to reduce emissions to a level 5% below 1990 levels. Some countries would like the Copenhagen conference to prolong the effective life of the Kyoto Protocol by agreeing explicitly on a second commitment period.
Industry:Natural environment
A chemical combination of two or more elements, such as carbon and oxygen in carbon dioxide (CO2).
Industry:Natural environment
A condensing boiler captures and uses energy contained in the water vapour given off when gas or oil is burned. In a non-condensing boiler this vapour leaves via a heat-resistant gas tube, or 'flue', and its energy is wasted. A condensing boiler cools the combustion gases sufficiently that the water vapour condenses back into liquid and its heat is recaptured. Approximately 10% of the energy value of the fuel is contained in this water vapour, so a condensing boiler converts far more of the fuel's energy into heat.
Industry:Natural environment
Broadly speaking, any ex-Soviet bloc state. At the time the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997, these countries were on the path from a Communist planned economy to a market economy. Many of them would now be categorised as market economies. Countries in transition to a market economy are grouped with industrialised countries in Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol, so they have emission reduction commitments to meet in the 2008-2012 period. In some cases their industrial base collapsed to such a degree in the early 1990s that they will have no difficulty meeting these commitments.
Industry:Natural environment
Dangerous climate change is a term introduced by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change - the treaty that led to the Kyoto protocol. In general terms, it refers to climate change of sufficient severity that it will have a major effect on societies, economies and the wider environment. The definition of what that level is varies, but Defra, for example, defines it as a rise in average global surface temperatures of 1-3 ºC (taking pre-industrial revolution average surface temperatures as the base).
Industry:Natural environment
