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The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) has welcomed the release of a revised New Zealand Standard on wind farm noise.

"As New Zealand's wind resource gets developed, an updated Standard will provide more certainty for local authority planning and resource consent decision making on wind farms," Energy Supply senior advisor Robert Harper said.

"The revised Standard is more robust than the previous Standard, which was written in 1998 prior to significant wind farm development in New Zealand.

Insulation should be laid correctly, to ensure best performance, and to avoid safety risks. EECA has a strict audit and checking process in place to make sure service providers follow the correct procedure. The results from the first round of audits before Christmas showed that a small number of houses had potential safety issues, and more had quality issues with the way insulation was installed.

We have been working hard with the industry to fix these issues.

A Marlborough wine producer has successfully converted a tractor to run on a completely free, renewable biofuel - its own vine prunings.

The New Zealand Wine Company, which produces the Grove Mill label, decided in early 2008 that the rising cost of diesel warranted a look at other options.  It commissioned a prototype tractor to run through 'gasification' - a process where biomass is partly combusted to create a gas which can be used for fuel.

If you're racking up the kilometres these holidays, don't pay more for it than you need to for fuel - challenge yourself to cut 10% off your fuel bill.

Ecodriver founder Mark Whittaker recently proved the point by driving from Cape Reinga to the Bluff on less than two tanks of fuel, and averaging 3.5 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres.

"Doing it in really fuel efficient new Mini certainly helped," says Whittaker, "but it was good driving technique that saved us 10% of the car's stated fuel use and got us there under the two-tank mark."