Back in the UK now. I’ve been on holiday for a week, which is a rare event (ask my partner… ) and sod’s law determined that an even rarer event would coincide with that – the perfect conditions for a land speed record attempt.

My disappointment at not being there though was marginal compared to the huge excitement of the result – the smashing of the record.

All the credit for this goes to Richard Jenkins of course (with just a little to the gods of wind… ).

Richard’s the guy who’s been pursuing this dream for a decade. To say he’s dogged would be an enormous understatement.

I’m really chuffed for him, it’s just fabulous that he’s got there, and by some big margin. He might get to get his life back now… )

After the ice challenge of course, which should reconvene this winter.

Actually given the speed of the land version and the relatively low ice record of just 80 mph or so – I reckon it’s a dead cert he’ll smash the ice record, put your money down if you can get odds.

We’re hoping to bring the Greenbird back to England to put on display somewhere, maybe at our Ecotech centre in Swaffham. More on that later.

On a personal note, it’s been a great pleasure to be a part of this. And to see a purely wind powered craft running at such an incredible speed (and four times the actual speed of the wind) is a huge thing. Greenbird has grabbed headlines all over the world and in the process it’s made an awful lot of people think again about wind power, it must have. For me that was the reason to be involved, Greenbird makes a statement and actually breaks down the door for what’s coming next – the second generation wind powered car, the one you could drive down the shops.

I’m chuffed for all these reasons.

Cheers.

Just thought you might like to know this bit of breaking news from over on the Greenbird site

Richard and the Ecotricity Greenbird have only gone and smashed the World Land Speed Record for Wind Powered Vehicles!!!

Yay!! Big congrats from all of us Richard!

More details to come soon….

We thought the Greenbird had flown silently past the deafening roar of Top Gear towers, but we were wrong. Check out this link to watch the good ol’ Top Gear boys practically combusting internally at the prospect of cars powered by the wind. They got the wrong end of the stick of course – the fun end of the stick though – shame it ended up in the out-take bin…

We’re pretty disappointed not to have even been able to get the Greenbird out of the starting blocks. And it’s an irony not lost on us while that while Greenbird is intended to show how the world might be getting around when fossil fuels run out – the changes that fossil fuels are causing to our climate right now appears to be the very thing that has stopped us.

In the next twenty years, I firmly believe that wind power will be our main energy source and wind-powered cars will no longer be the stuff of dreams. We’re dedicated to making this a reality, and at the end of this year hope to have our second generation wind powered car on the road here in the UK, an everyday kind of wind powered car. We need to change the world, nothing less will do and for that (amongst other things) we need a transport solution for world post oil. Wind power has the potential to provide this.

I’m off to Oz in a few days to join the Greenbird team and attempt to take the world land speed record – powered only by the wind.

Greenbird,  the awesome looking craft in the picture above, we named as a nod to Donald Campbell and his historic Bluebird.  We reckon the world is at a watershed, the age of fossil fuels is passing and we’re moving (back) to the age of renewable energy  – Greenbird  symbolises this perhaps better then anything else.

Donald broke his records in the golden age of fossil fuels, the age of big engines and abundant, energy dense fuels.  We’re going to break ours with no engine, no fuel and no pollution – using just the wind.

We’re trying to raise a serious question too.  How are we all going to be getting around in a world without oil?

I reckon it’ll be with wind powered cars.  Check out this illustration sent to us by Dave Mills, I think it’s really cool.  Not exactly what we have in mind but really cool.

Greenbird is our F1 car,  a highly technical, pretty impractical,  single purpose thoroughbred machine, we know you couldn’t go to the shops in.  But we have a second generation wind car on the way – that you could use day to day.  More on that later.

We need to do about 120 mph to scoop the record, and if the wind blows we’re very confident we’ll get there.

Right now the Salt lake we’re using for the attempt is flooded, and there’s no wind – both unusual this time of year.  So it’s all against us.

But we have another 10 days of weather window and have our fingers crossed.

You can find out more, and follow our progress at greenbird.co.uk, we’ll keep the zerocarbonista site updated too.

Finally, thanks massively to Fred Chambers for sending us the image below, of a land yacht from 100 years ago, on the same lake we’re using.  I think it’s just awesome.

Wind power is so ‘back to the future’.