Power to the polar bears

A greenshank stands on the edge of the mud, preening its feathers, the threads of rain bouncing into the lagoon. It's shortly after 5 am and I've sought shelter in the Benarth Hide, listening to a sound that has become unfamiliar: heavy raindrops on the sloping roof. The shelducks, gulls and waders are making the most of this welcome shower, after weeks of dust that evoke the spirit of '76.

While they may love to feel the rain in the summertime, I'm a bit less enthusiastic as I feel the cold drops fall from my hair and dribble down my neck. I've become too used to walking the trails without a coat, and now I've been caught out. I should have read the signs, though; as I drove to the reserve this morning, dozens of swifts were sweeping low over the road, grabbing flies mid-air. They knew.

I arrived at the reserve early this morning not to survey the birds, but to open up for contractors to install a new piece of kit that will help us save polar bears. OK, it's going to take more than one lime-green box of tricks to do that, but it's another step in our work to reduce the impact of our little corner of Wales on the rest of the world. It's called a Voltage Optimisation Unit and, in a nutshell, it evens out the flow of electricity we use.

The National Grid's a bit wasteful, you see. The power arriving at your house, office, factory can be anything between 207 and 253 volts. But all your appliances - from the PC you're using to the kettle you've just boiled - are designed for 220 volts. Put simply, sometimes you have too many volts for your appliances, other times you're running slightly low. Your kettle can cope with this, but you pay for the extra you use - in pounds sterling and in carbon.

And that's where the voltage optimiser comes in. By making the flow more even, it will reduce the wasteage and save money that RSPB members have given us to spend on wildlife. It's an investment that should payback in a couple of years, but the benefits to the preening greenshank and its summer tundra home could be over a much longer time.

It's not the only thing we do to save power, of course. Our monitoring tells us that last month we used less electricity, and so emitted less carbon into the atmosphere, than any month since we started tracking it. That's thanks to a lot of effort and commitment by volunteers and staff.

All this gives me hope. Hope that I'll have more moments in time like this, sitting in Benarth Hide, watching the rain pour, enjoying the orange black-tailed godwits probe in the mud for food as they stop here on their way back from Iceland.