This year’s land speed record attempt with the Greenbird is officially a washout. I held off travelling at the start of the short weather window because the lake was actually wet not dry and I’ve been waiting, bag packed, ever since for the call - but it didn’t come, or not the one I hoped for. Richard mailed me yesterday with the news - there’s been even more rain and still no wind. There’s no chance the lake can dry in time now, so we have to pack up and try again next year. There is a possible venue in the US we’re looking into for March though…

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’ll be blogging about the wind-powered car at www.zerocarbonista.com so join me there.

Hard on the heels of a record Olympics for the Brits…….:)

Hi, Dale here. 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.

We named Greenbird 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 here.

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.

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’.