The realities of what Britain needs to do to reduce its reliance on oil have never been clearer, nor more controversial. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, signalled this week that the country will need a new generation of nuclear power stations that will go beyond replacing the current network. At the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), our policy is that nuclear power must be included in a balanced portfolio to bridge the energy gap that we are facing.

Lindsay Gill, 26, is a marine resource analyst for Marine Current Turbines in Bristol, where she’s been working for two years since completing her Masters in mechanical engineering at Cardiff University.

I’d done placements before graduating in wind-based renewable energy, but I really wanted to work in the marine field because it’s new and developing. I’ve got two roles here. The first is to analyse the tidal current and power data coming from the SeaGen turbine we have in the sea in Strangford Lock. And the other is to scout for and assess new sites, which have to have a sea depth of between 26 and 40 metres, and strong tidal currents as well. I look carefully at tidal flow and with that I’m using fluid mechanics which is an engineering discipline.

As landfill sites become Increasingly overloaded and refuse disposal an escalating problem, engineers have perfected a technology that not only breaks down waste to just a fifth of its previous volume, it generates energy at the same time.

The innovative process – called pyrolysis – is being hailed as the future of waste management. So much so that the Royal Navy is investing millions on integrating it into its latest generation of ships.

Aspiring motorsport engineers will put green technologies to the test this summer when the Formula Student event gets underway on the famous Silverstone Racing Circuit from 10-13 July. This will be the first time that eco-race cars, such as hydrogen and hybrid powered cars, will take part in an event considered essential training by industry experts for a career in F1 or motorsport.

Fancy a summer break in Paris that won’t cost the earth? Simple, let the train take the strain. According to those well known travel agents at the, er, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, a quick hop over The Channel by air will cost just £85 but pump out244kgofCO2 per passenger, while taking the car will cost £171.40 and generate 58 kg of CO2 per passenger miles. Eurostar, however, is no budget trip at £154 but your carbon footprint is significantly reduced at just 22kg perCO2 per passenger.

“One return air journey from London to Paris generates the sameCO2 as 11 return journeys by rail,” says Cliff Perry, vice president of the railway division at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). “It’s an obscene carbon inefficiency.”

Switch it off

Make sure you switch off electrical appliances properly when not in use. A staggering 90 per cent of the energy consumed by devices like TVs and computers is used when they’re on standby.

Turn off the lights when you leave a room

Around 10 to 15 per cent of household energy is consumed by lighting.

When the railway pioneer George Stephenson founded the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) in the mid 19th century, Britain’s industrial landscape echoed to the cacophonous sound of machines, invented, maintained and modified by mechanical engineers, without whose learning and practical skills, the western world would, quite literally, not have become mechanised.

Nuclear fusion has the potential to transform the way that we generate energy forever. Fusion describes the process of forcing atoms together to release energy, as opposed to nuclear fission, the process used in current nuclear reactors, which forces atoms apart.

Nuclear fusion happens naturally at the sun’s core, at temperatures of around 10 million degrees Celsius. However, on earth the lower pressure means much higher temperatures are needed to produce fusion – more than100 million degrees Celsius. No material on earth could withstand this heat. Instead, scientists have devised a solution involving a super-heated gas, or plasma, held and squeezed inside an intense magnetic field.

Head into any relatively Large town in the UK and you’ll see a skyline peppered with cranes, as developers work to meet the housing needs of our expanding population.

From the outside, many of these buildings look like their counterparts from 10 or 20 years ago, but thanks to a combination of regulatory demands and social expectations, virtually every home built today is kitted out with the kind of energy saving technology that, until recently, was the preserve of the eco eccentric.

A new programme to open up the UK's seas to more wind farms was launched today as part of a bid to increase massively the supply of offshore renewable power.

That Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan should receive a Valentine's Day card is not surprising. Both in their thirties, they are brainy, clean-cut, all-American business types. That the card should be made of cut-up packaging is unusual. But that it should express love for their range of household cleaning products is plain off the wall. And yet this is not unusual: Method, Lowry and Ryan's eco-friendly brand of floor polishes, disinfectants, leather cloths and other friendly cleaners, which is now being rolled out across Britain seems to attract fanatical followers.

I had some friends in town, visiting from Texas last week, and decided that there could be no better way to show them my city than by taking them on the Critical Mass cycle ride. For those of you who aren't familiar, the London "Mass" (as it's often known) meets on the last Friday of every month, setting off from under Waterloo Bridge at around 7pm. It's simply a gathering of cyclists (around 700 last week, I reckon), who reclaim the streets of the capital and block off the traffic for a few hours, allowing the cyclist to enjoy their great city without the hindrance of any motorised vehicles.

In early October, weather permitting, a number of residents from the village of Grosmont in south Wales are planning a party with a magnificent hog-roast as the centrepiece. The village, home to around 200 households, is cushioned on all sides by Monmouthshire's Black Mountains and, with local life revolving around a small pub, The Angel, and the church, little excuse is required for a knees-up. Still, this particular celebration will be a very special one, marking the completion of the first cycle in Grosmont's plan to become a sustainable "eco-village". The hog-roast itself will be far more than tasty party food: it will be the end of the road for one of 13 piglets from two litters born this spring, which the villagers will rear themselves over the summer months; before slaughtering and butchering the animals and sharing out the meat.