Scottish donors are at their lowest level in decades and the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) is looking for ways to change this. In 2008, SNBTS predicted that if blood supplies continued to be re-stocked in the same quantities there could be a crisis within two years.

The actual donation process is, on average, shorter than 15 minutes and the donor feels almost no discomfort – just a quick needle prick before a pint of blood is effortlessly collected as they lie back.

It is thought on average each donation saves two lives – with just three teaspoons of blood being enough to save the life of premature a baby.

Sadly, it’s not just Scotland that has been having problems attracting donors. Americans have been having similar problems recently although the blood centre in Austin, Texas, has recently seen a surge in donors as a result of a new advertising campaign. Rather than the serious matter of life and death approach taken by most adverts they have gone down a light-hearted route which has seen an upturn in donors. The campaign uses the tagline “Redeem yourself. Donate blood, save two lives and make up for just about anything” alongside misdeeds such as forgetting an anniversary or using the neighbour’s Wi-Fi.

For those wanting to donate, opening hours extend later during the middle of next week and ScotBlood has a handy tool on their website to help you find your nearest centre.

The best ideas are always the ones that seem so obvious they make you wonder why you didn’t come up with them yourself.

Metropolis Magazine’s 2009 Next Generation winners – a competition to design solutions to rising energy costs – have come up with a beautiful idea, called Wind-It.

French creators Nicola Delon, Julien Choppin and Raphael Menard submitted designs to include wind turbines inside the numerous broken pylons that dot their countryside. Because the towers are already linked up to the grid they could easily send their electricity to where it’s needed with one refurbished tower providing enough energy to power between one room and 20 houses depending on location. For winning the design competition, the team have been awarded $10,000 to share.

As well as broken electrical towers, these turbines can be implemented in new towers to give a boost to the travelling electricity. The designers estimate that if one third of France’s towers produced their own power that would give the equivalent of two nuclear reactors.

France has stated its ambitions to quintuple its wind power output by 2020 so this design has been timely.

The stumbling block, as always, is money. Pylons aren’t designed to accommodate wind turbines and this design is more expensive than their propeller counterparts. However, with many people objecting to wind turbines because of their effect on landscapes, this may end up becoming a compromise to those who object to large scale wind farms.

Australia has set aside a budget of A$4.65billion to spend on a clean energy initiative and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that A$1.4billion of that is to be spent on what will be the world’s largest solar power station. This 1000-megawatt plant will be three times larger than the current biggest, which is in California.

Applications for tender will be open later in the year with the successful bids being known in the early part of 2010. The project will eventually lead to a network of solar power stations that takes in Australia’s sunniest spots as well as the current national grid.

Australia currently gets around 85% of its energy from coal, so this new move is being seen as a positive step towards a greener future.

Mr Rudd said: “Why are we doing this? We are doing it in order to support a clean energy future for Australia, we’re doing it to boost economic activity now and we’re doing it also to provide jobs and much needed opportunities for business as well.”

Australia is also set to become a full member of the International Renewable Energy Agency. IRENA currently has more than 80 countries signed up and the organisation is set to hold its first meeting in June.

This news comes in the same week that Pennsylvania governors announced that anyone in the state installing solar technologies will be rewarded with 45% off the price.

A quarter of London households are to be powered by a wind farm, known as the London Array, in the Thames Estuary by the year 2012.

The wind farm – being built by a consortium of E.ON, Dong Energy and Masdar – is to be the biggest offshore farm of its kind. Work on the £2billion project will start this year before beginning to produce electricity in 2012.

There had been doubts over the project – which was first muted in 2006 – especially when one of the major financiers, oil company Shell, pulled out in 2008. Masdar stepped into the vacant spot but even with their funding the project would not have been able to go ahead without changes to the Budget announced last month, with a boost to the Renewables Obligation Certificate (ROC) incentive scheme.

The ROC came into effect in 2002 to encourage the generation of electricity in the UK from renewable sources. The most recent goals set ask for 15.4% of the UK’s energy to come from green sources by the year 2015. The London Array alone would account for just below 7% of this target.

Ed Miliband, energy secretary, said: “The London Array sends an important signal about the UK renewables market and the confidence of major suppliers, and vindicates the decision in the Budget about the ROCs.”

It’s always nice to see companies take a step away from technology for ecological reasons – especially a business that makes its living in a high-tech field.

That’s why the story from the weekend that Google is to follow in Yahoo’s footsteps and introduce goats to their staff roll is welcome news.

Around 200 goats visit Google’s Mountain View headquarters and spend around a week there eating the grass and weeds, while fertilising the area as well. This service, provided by California Grazing, will replace the petrol-guzzling mowers that previously did the job.

In California it is a legal requirement for landowners to keep brush under control in order to limit the number of wild fires and the damage they can cause.

During World War I the White House made use of a similar tactic – with a herd of sheep allowed to graze the lawn – but sheep don’t have the same ability as goats to climb and reach the out of the way spots, nor do they have the same appetite for a lot of the weeds that goats are happy to munch on.