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It’s electrifying! How Earth could be entirely powered by sustainable energy

Posted on June 29, 2021June 28, 2021 by dishanth

Can you imagine a world powered by 100% renewable electricity and fuels?

It may seem fantasy, but a collaborative team of scientists has just shown this dream is theoretically possible – if we can garner global buy-in.

The newly published research, led by Professor James Ward from the University of South Australia and co-authored by a team including Luca Coscieme from Trinity, explains how a renewable future is achievable.

The study, published in the international journal, Energies, explores what changes are needed in our energy mix and technologies, as well as in our consumption patterns, if we are to achieve 100% renewability in a way that supports everyone, and the myriad of life on our planet.

The fully renewable energy-powered future envisioned by the team would require a significant “electrification” of our energy mix and raises important questions about the potential conflict between land demands for renewable fuel production.

Explaining the work in some detail, Luca Coscieme, Research Fellow in Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences, said:

“Firstly, the high fuel needs of today’s high-income countries would have to be reduced as it would require an unsustainably vast amount of land to be covered with biomass plantations if we were to produce enough fuel to satisfy the same levels.

“Additionally, our research shows that we would need to radically ‘electrify’ the energy supply of such countries – including Ireland – with the assumption that these changes could supply 75% of society’s final energy demands. We would also need to adopt technology in which electricity is used to convert atmospheric gases into synthetic fuels.

“We very much hope that the approach designed in this research will inform our vision of sustainable futures and also guide national planning by contextualizing energy needs within the broader consumption patterns we see in other countries with energy and forest product consumption profiles that—if adopted worldwide—could theoretically be met by high-tech renewably derived fuels. Countries such as Argentina, Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, and Spain are great examples in this regard.

“Even so, the success of this green ideal will be highly dependent on major future technological developments, in the efficiency of electrification, and in producing and refining new synthetic fuels. Such a scenario is still likely to require the use of a substantial – albeit hopefully sustainable – fraction of the world’s forest areas.”

Reference: ” Renewable Energy Equivalent Footprint (REEF): A Method for Envisioning a Sustainable Energy Future” by James Ward, Steve Mohr, Robert Costanza, Paul Sutton and Luca Coscieme, 24 November 2020, Energies.
DOI: 10.3390/en13236160

Source Sci Tech Daily

Rare orchids to flood resilience: How can green roofs help to tackle the climate and nature crisis?

Posted on June 28, 2021June 28, 2021 by dishanth

Eleven stories high in the heart of the City of London, there is a hidden haven for wildlife. Around 159 species of plants are flourishing on the rooftop of Nomura, a Japanese bank. By day, orchids, daisies and wild herbs provide food to 17 species of bees. At night, the bright yellow flowers of mullein plants bloom in the moonlight, tempting London’s moths.

It is here that an orchid thought to be extinct in the UK was recently discovered growing among the roof’s solar panels. The small-flowered tongue orchid – so named because its flowers resemble protruding tongues – has only been found growing wild in the UK once before, in 1989.

It’s still a mystery how the orchids made it onto the roof, though ecologist Mark Patterson, who manages the bank’s 10-year-old rooftop garden, suspects that the flowers’ seeds hitched a ride on winds blowing over from the Sahara.

“Orchid seeds are as small as specks of dust,” he tells The Independent. “So my theory is they blew over before establishing themselves.” On the Friday morning when The Independent visited Nomura’s green roof, he was collecting leaves from the flowers to send to experts at Kew Gardens. “They’re going to analyse the DNA from the samples. That might be able to tell us what region the seeds originated from,” he explains.

A colony of small-flowered tongue orchids (centre and right) were discovered on a London rooftop after not being seen in the UK since 1989. SOURCE: Daisy Dunne

Nomura’s green roof is one of 700 spread across central London, with the capital boasting more such idylls than other parts of the country. According to the Greater London Authority, a “green roof” is a “a roof or deck where vegetation or habitat for wildlife is deliberately established”.

As well as providing a safe space for rare wildlife, building green roofs in cities can offer a host of other benefits, ranging from improving local air quality to helping build resilience against worsening extreme weather events, says Dr Michael Hardman, a senior lecturer in urban geography at the University of Salford.

“There’s clear evidence out there that green roofs can mitigate against things like the urban heat island effect and flood events,” he tells The Independent. “In terms of climate change, they are definitely an important tool.”

The “urban heat island effect” is a term for how cities are typically hotter than rural areas. Major UK cities, such as London, Manchester and Birmingham, can at times be up to 5C hotter than their surrounding rural areas, research shows. The effect is caused by a combination of densely packed buildings and roads, which trap in heat, as well as air pollution, industrial activity and high amounts of energy use by homeowners.

Research shows that the urban heat island effect is likely to intensify in UK cities as the planet continues to warm.

Green roofs can help to tackle urban heat by providing a local cooling service. This is largely because plants naturally absorb water through their roots and later release it into the air as moisture, which has a cooling effect on the surrounding area.

At Nomura’s rooftop garden, this cooling effect is largely enough to allow the bank to cut back on the use of air conditioning in the summer, Mr Patterson says. “If all the buildings in this area had green roofs, it would probably reduce the temperature on a hot day by a degree or two,” he adds.

Tortoiseshell butterflies are one of many insects found on Nomura’s green roof. SOURCE: Mark Patterson

The bank’s green roof also plays a role in reducing flood risk in the city. “Every inch of soil you have on a green roof absorbs five per cent more water, so that’s five per cent less water that’s running off into drains,” he says.

A study conducted in Newcastle in 2016 found that a “city-wide deployment of green roofs” could reduce travel disruption from flooding by around a quarter. The authors of the research say that green roofs, along with more traditional defences such as flood walls, must be part of plans to cope with more extreme downpours.

The need to prepare for worsening heatwaves and floods in the UK is greater than ever. Earlier this month, the UK’s independent climate advisory group, the Climate Change Committee, warned that the country is now less prepared for the climate crisis than it was five years ago as a result of government inaction in the face of rising risks.

Increasing the number of green spaces in cities will be key to helping the country’s urban populations cope with increasing heat and worse floods, according to their assessment.

Despite recognising the benefits of green roofs, the UK is currently behind other countries when it comes to building them, says Dr Hardman.

“We need to look to countries, like Denmark, which have both the financial incentives and the planning incentives,” he says. “In Denmark, if a building’s slope angle is under a certain amount, it’s actually mandatory to put a green roof on. We need to be more innovative with our policies.”

He added that, at present, not enough is being done to ensure that the social benefits of green roofs can be accessed by disadvantaged groups.

“All the green roofs in Manchester that I know of are very inaccessible, they are closed to the public and you need a health and safety person to take you up there,” he says. “To me that’s a huge barrier to green roofs. The social benefits just aren’t there at the moment, as they are for other types of green infrastructure like parks”.

Source Independent

Shanghai leads way in China’s carbon transition

Posted on June 28, 2021 by dishanth

Somewhere on the eastern side of Shanghai’s Chongming Island, 300,000 solar panels lie over rows and rows of aquaculture ponds. The island’s first solar–aquaculture project started providing power to the grid late last year.

Soon after, in January, Shanghai announced it would work to achieve peak carbon during the 14th Five Year Plan period (2021–25). The district of Chongming went a step further, saying it would explore the possibility of achieving carbon neutrality. Now, more and more solar power facilities are popping up here.

Chongming, a network of rice fields, wetlands and rivers, is regarded as Shanghai’s green energy powerhouse. By the end of 2020, it had 500 megawatts of renewable energy capacity installed, exporting what isn’t used locally to the rest of Shanghai or neighbouring Jiangsu province.

But Shanghai, a megacity of 24 million people, has little space left on which to develop renewable energy, hampering the prospects for more ambitious decarbonisation of its energy sources.

As one of China’s most developed cities, Shanghai faces the same challenges the rest of the country does in achieving peak carbon and carbon neutrality: rejigging the energy mix and cutting industrial emissions.

But it must also tackle emissions from transportation and buildings, issues faced in the “consumer cities” of more developed nations. As such, it is leading the way for China’s future low-carbon transition.

Taking the lead on peak carbon

Last September, China committed to peak carbon by 2030, and carbon neutrality by 2060. To this end, the central government is encouraging local governments to hit peak carbon early where possible, with local action plans for reaching peak carbon due at the end of the year.

According to rough figures put forward in the media based on local 14th Five Year Plan documents published early this year, almost 100 cities or regions have said they will reach peak carbon early. These include Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and Suzhou.

Since 2010, China has launched 87 low-carbon city pilot projects. These have explored routes to low-carbon development by saving energy in industry and limiting emissions from buildings, transportation and agriculture.

There have been no official announcements, but research by the Energy Foundation China indicates 23 provinces (including centrally administered municipalities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin) have reached, or are close to reaching, peak carbon. They account for 80 percent of national emissions. Emissions are still growing in seven provinces, including Fujian and Jiangxi in the east, and Guizhou and Xinjiang in the west.

Zou Ji, president of Energy Foundation China, said at a recent seminar that those localities already at peak carbon could be divided into two types.

The first is experiencing a population decline and weak economic growth. More common is the second, where the economy is more developed, the industrial and energy structures are more advanced, and natural resources, such as sunshine and wind, are more favorable to low-carbon development.

Regions that are approaching peak carbon mostly rely on traditional drivers of growth or energy-hungry heavy industry, but do have the means to improve the industrial and energy mix in order to reach peak carbon.

Meanwhile, emissions are still growing in places with unfavorable natural resource endowments, such as abundant coal, and undeveloped economies.

The Energy Foundation China’s analysis found Shanghai’s emissions from energy activities have already peaked. That matches up with findings from Peking University’s Institute of Energy. But modelling by other academics has found that if Shanghai’s existing policies are enforced, the city’s carbon emissions will plateau between 2018 and 2024, and only then start to fall.

If energy structure and intensity targets are tightened up, that fall could be brought forward to 2022.

Adjusting the energy structure

Shanghai aims to have renewables account for 8 percent of its energy mix by 2025, compared to 1.6 percent in 2019. One expert who took part in the drafting of Shanghai’s peak carbon action plan said the city is short of land and even if all available space for solar power is used – including all rooftops – it would still be only a tiny fraction of what is needed.

Coal still accounted for 31 percent of Shanghai’s energy consumption in 2020, and the energy mix needs more work if the city is to hit peak carbon. The city has published a range of documents over the last few years indicating it will end its reliance on coal, with a cap on coal consumption. Meanwhile, the city is also working to replace local coal power generation with renewable generation located elsewhere in China, and to increase the use of natural gas.

Looking at the emissions curve, we can see that Shanghai has already started to decouple its carbon footprint from economic growth.

Zhu Dajian, director, Institute of Sustainable Development and Management Research, Tongji University

Shanghai already imports about half of its electricity, drawing on renewables in western China, such as hydropower, which help cut the city’s carbon emissions. The above-mentioned expert expects that achieving peak carbon and carbon neutrality will mean Shanghai relying more heavily on green power imports.

When drafting their peak-carbon action plans, provinces are required to factor in emissions incurred during the generation of imported power. This is to encourage power-consuming provinces in the east, such as Shanghai, to consider their energy structure as a whole, rather than simply export their pollution.

Shanghai: lightening up

“Looking at the emissions curve, we can see that Shanghai has already started to decouple its carbon footprint from economic growth,” Zhu Dajian, director of the Institute of Sustainable Development and Management Research at Tongji University, told China Dialogue. Shanghai has long been China’s top city in terms of GDP.

In 2018, its per-head GDP broke US$20,000, and service sector GDP has accounted for around 70 percent of the total for the last five years. These circumstances are similar to those seen when developed nations reach peak carbon.

Currently, Shanghai emits 200 million tonnes of carbon a year. Emissions from industry, transportation and buildings account for around 45 percent, 30 percent, and 25 percent of the total respectively, according to research by the World Resources Institute.

This, however, is not the pattern seen in major cities in developed nations. Zhu Dajian says cities overseas are mainly residential, with emissions coming from buildings and transportation – these are emissions arising from consumption. But Shanghai, like most of China’s cities, is still home to production.

Shanghai used to be a centre of heavy industry, until the 1990s when a push to shift to lighter and more modern industries started. The banks of the Huangpu River, which runs from north to south through the city, are lined with old industrial buildings, now refitted as fashionable art galleries and shops. The city’s 14th Five Year Plan says it will continue to turn its urban rust belt into an attraction.

Even so, cutting industrial emissions will be a tough nut to crack. Dai Xingyi, professor at Fudan University’s Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, said the city does not want to do away with all its industry: high-end manufacturing will be retained.

Over a decade ago, Beijing forced steelmaker Shougang to relocate. Shanghai, though, allowed Baogang, now Baowu Steel and China’s largest steel manufacturer, to keep operating in the city. Dirtier production lines were, however, shut down.

A number of academics told China Dialogue that Shanghai’s industrial emissions peaked as early as the 12th Five Year Plan period (2011-2015), and industrial carbon intensity in the city is lower than in many others. But that makes further decarbonisation more challenging. Shanghai will have to rely on further industrial changes and technological improvements.

Transportation and buildings: New challenges

Peak carbon will not be easy for the city. In developed nations, industrial emissions peaked, and then emissions from transport and buildings had to be tackled. In New York, emissions from buildings account for 70 per cent of total emissions. According to Zhu Dajian, emissions from transport and buildings can be expected to contribute a larger proportion of Shanghai’s overall emissions as incomes rise in the city.

Shanghai is building five city “sub-centres” on its outskirts. In April, the municipal government ruled that buildings in those sub-centres must use green building standards, and that ultra-low energy buildings are to be encouraged.

According to Dai Xingyi, the “greenness” of these new centres will also depend on their success in attracting people and commercial activities. Having the new buildings sit empty would be wasteful.

Research has shown that improving energy efficiency in existing buildings can bring big emissions savings. This is particularly the case for commercial buildings, where energy use is often tens of times that of government or residential buildings.

In 2009, Shanghai started monitoring energy use in some large public buildings. Today, over 2,000 buildings are covered by that monitoring scheme. On screens at monitoring centres, and online, building owners and the government can see real-time usage by key building infrastructure such as air-conditioning and lighting.

At a seminar held in April, one official involved in the city’s efforts to save energy and cut emissions said that data is “more useful than just lecturing.” The Shanghai district of Changning ranks buildings on their energy efficiency, encouraging building managers to learn from each other. Experience has shown that even without retrofitting, these methods can produce annual reductions in energy use.

Shanghai is known in China for its efficient public transport system. It has over 1,000 kilometres of subway lines either in operation or in the works, with links to the neighbouring provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang planned. The city government has repeatedly said the only solution to congestion issues is to prioritise the development of public transport.

In 2016, the city put forward a “15-minute city” plan, with the aim of having 99 percent of communities able to access the bulk of their shopping, leisure and transportation transfer points within a 15-minute walk by 2035.

There should be a cap. If we can’t cap vehicle numbers, how can we talk about a peak for vehicle emissions?

Zhu Hong, deputy head, Shanghai Urban and Rural Construction and Traffic Development Academy

Urban planning decisions can result in locked-in carbon emissions. Zhu Dajian explained that Beijing once planned to centralise urban functions while keeping residential zones on the outskirts. That resulted in longer commute times and appalling congestion.

A similar approach was taken with the early stages of the Lujiazui commercial zone in Shanghai’s Pudong district. However, the city realized that low-carbon development requires a functionally mixed urban layout, which renders more carbon reductions than technological advancements.

But Shanghai still has over four million cars on the road, the fifth-largest number of any Chinese city. Limitations on car purchases were introduced in 1994 but the city remains plagued by congestion and vehicle pollution. Those limits were relaxed last year, in response to the impact of the coronavirus, with an extra 40,000 purchases allowed.

The city government also spent big on subsidising consumers to upgrade their old vehicles to newer and more efficient internal combustion models.

Shanghai’s 14th Five Year Plan and a separate five-year plan for electric vehicles provide guidance for increasing electrification of private transport. However, no timetable is given for the phasing out of internal combustion vehicles. According to those plans, in five years 50 percent of all private vehicle purchases will be of all-electric vehicles, while all buses, government vehicles and city-centre goods vehicles will be electric.

Zhu Hong, deputy head of the Shanghai Urban and Rural Construction and Traffic Development Academy, said during a speech that more new electric vehicle purchases will slow emissions growth, but the speed with which the existing fleet is replaced will be key for reaching peak carbon.

His research has found that 74 percent of the city’s transportation emissions come from road vehicles, with the rest from river and rail transport, while over 60 percent of road vehicle emissions come from cars. He thinks the government needs to go further on purchase restrictions. Currently, there is a quota for annual car purchases but no cap on total car numbers. “There should be a cap. If we can’t cap vehicle numbers, how can we talk about a peak for vehicle emissions?”

Shanghai does not have much time to act. A number of experts told China Dialogue that one aspect of the “low-carbon development path with Chinese characteristics” that academics are proposing would mean more economic growth with lower emissions. Shanghai’s annual per-head carbon emissions are over ten tonnes, still higher than major cities in developed nations. Zhu Dajian said that Shanghai’s route to a low-carbon transition will show the way for the rest of China.

This article was originally published on China Dialogue under a Creative Commons licence.

Source Eco Business

White-hot blocks as renewable energy storage?

Posted on June 28, 2021 by dishanth

In five years, operating a coal or natural gas power plant is going to be more expensive than building wind and solar farms. In fact, according to a new study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, building a new solar farm is already cheaper than operating coal and natural gas plants in many regions of the world.

Yet a full shift to intermittent energy sources desperately calls for low-cost, reliable energy storage that can be built anywhere. Some nascent startups believe the answer lies in the process that lights up toaster coils by electrically heating them to scorching temperatures.

Antora Energy in Sunnyvale, Calif., wants to use carbon blocks for such thermal storage, while Electrified Thermal Solutions in Boston is seeking funds to build a similar system using conductive ceramic blocks. Their vision is similar: use excess renewable electricity to heat up the blocks to over 1,500°C, and then turn it back to electricity for the grid when needed.

To beat the cost of the natural gas plants that today back up wind and solar, storing energy would have to cost around $10 per kilowatt-hour. Both startups say their Joule heating systems will meet that price. Lithium-ion batteries, meanwhile, are now at approximately $140/kWH, according to a recent study by MIT economists, and could drop to as low as $20/kWH, although only in 2030 or thereafter.

Blocks made from graphite or ceramics (akin to the concrete blocks pictured here) may be a promising medium for thermal storage of renewable energy generated by intermittent solar and wind energy sources. SOURCE: ALAMY

Justin Briggs, Antora’s co-founder and Chief Science Officer, says he and his co-founders Andrew Ponec and David Bierman, who launched the company in 2018, considered several energy-storage technologies to meet that goal. This included today’s dominant method, pumped hydro, in which water pumped to a higher elevation spins turbines as it falls, and the similar new gravity storage method, which involves lifting 35-ton bricks and letting them drop.

In the end, heating carbon blocks won for its impressive energy density, simplicity, low cost, and scalability. The energy density is on par with lithium-ion batteries at a few hundred kWh/m³, hundreds of times higher than pumped hydro or gravity, which also “need two reservoirs separated by a mountain, or a skyscraper-sized stack of bricks,” Briggs says.

Antora uses the same graphite blocks that serve as electrodes in steel furnaces and aluminum smelters. “[These] are already produced in 100 million ton quantities so we can tap into that supply chain,” he says. Briggs imagines blocks roughly the size of dorm fridges packed in modular units and wrapped in common insulating materials like rockwool.

“After you heat this thing up with electricity, the real trick is how you retrieve the heat,” he says. One option is to use the heat to drive a gas turbine. But Antora chose thermophotovoltaics, solar cell-like devices that convert infrared radiation and light from the glowing-hot carbon blocks into electricity. The price of these semiconductor devices drops dramatically when made at large scale, so they work out cheaper per Watt than turbines. Plus, unlike turbines that work best when built big, thermophotovoltaic perform well regardless of power output.

Antora Energy’s graphite blocks store renewably-generated energy at temperatures exceeding 1000º C, eventually converting that back to electricity via their proprietary thermophotovoltaic heat engine. Source: ANTORA ENERGY

Thermophotovoltaics have been around for decades, but Antora has developed a new system. Richard Swanson, one of the company’s advisors, was an early pioneer of the technology in the late 1970s. The efficiency with which the devices convert heat into electricity was stuck in the 20s until the Antora team demonstrated a world-record 30% efficiency in 2019. They did that by switching from silicon to higher-performance III–V semiconductors, and by using tricks like harnessing lower-energy infrared light that otherwise passes through the semiconductor and is lost. Antora’s system recuperates that heat by placing a reflector behind the semiconductor to bounce the infrared rays back to the graphite block.

The technology has caught on. Antora has received early-stage funding from ARPA-E and is an alum of the Activate entrepreneurial fellowship program and Shell/NREL GameChanger accelerator program. More recently, they have gotten funding from venture capitalists and the California Energy Commission [PDF] to scale up their technology, and will build a pilot system at an undisclosed customer site in 2022.

Electrified Thermal Solutions, which is part of Activate’s 2021 cohort and was founded in 2020, is much younger. The company’s cofounders Joey Kabel and Daniel Stack chose ceramic blocks as their thermal storage medium. Specifically, honeycomb-shaped ceramic blocks used today to capture waste heat in steel plants. Since ceramics don’t conduct electricity, they dope the bricks to make them conductive so that they can be electrically heated to 2,000°C.

Stack says they plan to target a wide market for that stored heat. They could use it to drive a gas turbine for electricity, or to run any other high-temperature process such as producing cement and steel.

The duo is still working out some technical challenges such as keeping the ceramic from oxidizing and vaporizing over time. Eventually the system should have a lifetime of 20-plus years, another big advantage over batteries. They are now building a benchtop prototype, Kabel says, but the final full-scale system should look like a large grain silo that should store about 1 MWh/m³, besting Antora’s energy density.

It will be a few years before either company is ready to build a full-scale installation.

If they can prove themselves, though, these companies could pave a way for a cost-effective storage technology for the 21^st century electrical grid. “We want to decarbonize the industrial and electric sector by replacing the combustion process with a renewable heating system,” Stack says.

Source Spectrum IEEE

Unilever introduces paper-based bottles for laundry detergent

Posted on June 25, 2021 by dishanth

Unilever has introduced new technology to create a paper-based detergent bottle. A prototype is being used for the OMO laundry brand (also known as Persil, Skip & Breeze) and will be introduced in Brazil in 2022.

The new bottles are made of sustainably sourced pulp and can be recycled in the paper waste stream. The inside of the bottle is sprayed with a proprietary coating that repels water, enabling the paper-based packaging to hold liquids.

Unilever wants to roll the paper-based bottles out across its European markets and is piloting the same technology for haircare bottles.

The bottles have been developed through the Pulpex consortium. Last year, drinks manufacturers Diageo and PepsiCo joined Unilever in the formation of Pulpex, with venture management firm Pilot Lite. The Pulpex consortium was set up to produce a variety of plastic-free, single-mould bottles that will be used across the major FMCG companies.

Diageo has already unveiled a plastic-free, paper-based spirits bottle, which will debut on the company’s Johnnie Walker range of Scotch Whisky this year.

Unilever’s chief research and development officer, Richard Slater, said: “To tackle plastic waste, we need to completely rethink how we design and package products. This requires a drastic change that can only be achieved through industry-wide collaboration.

“Pulpex paper-based bottle technology is an exciting step in the right direction, and we are delighted to be working together to trial this innovation for our products. Innovating with alternative materials is a key part of our sustainable packaging strategy and will play an important role in our commitment to halve our use of virgin plastic materials by 2025.”

edie recently spoke with Slater to discuss how a focus on ‘better, less and no plastic’ is enabling the consumer goods giant to reduce its plastics footprint globally while improving the recyclability of packaging.

In 2019, Unilever, which owns iconic brands such as Dove, Cif and Magnum, set a target to halve its use of virgin plastic by 2025 by reducing plastic packaging by more than 100,000 tonnes, increasing the amount of recycled plastics it uses and collecting and processing more plastic packaging than it sells.

Unilever is the latest corporate to trial paper-based bottle prototypes.

The Coca-Cola Company – one of the biggest plastic producers in the food and beverage space – has confirmed plans to trial 2,000 paper-based bottles this year, to test the material’s viability as an alternative to single-use plastics.

The Coca-Cola Company has been working with other big-name companies, including Absolut, L’Oreal and Carlsberg, to develop the bottles. The designs are being shared through a collaborative company set up to facilitate this joint project, called The Paper Bottle Company (Paboco).

Fellow Paboco member Absolut confirmed plans for its first real-world trials of paper-based bottles. The alcoholic beverage giant has sold 2,000 of the bottles across its Swedish and UK markets since autumn 2020.

By Matt Mace

Source Edie

Usage of wastewater and sustainable agriculture can ensure water security in India

Posted on June 24, 2021 by dishanth

Wastewater usage, water-efficient agriculture, knowledge of soil moisture and convergence in agriculture could be possible methods to deal with the twin scourges of climate change and the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19), according to experts at a recent conference on water.

The conference provided an opportunity to policymakers, academicians, researchers and students to gain expertise from technical experts on matters of water resource engineering and management for water source sustainability by including a combination of theory, conceptual and applied science.

The e-conference on water source sustainability was jointly organised by the Indian Water Resources Society and the department of water resources development and management June 18-20, 2021. The main agenda was the demand and supply of water.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has shown that water bodies in India are shrinking in size. “Encroachment is leading to the shrinking of water bodies, which is evident from as many as 87 lakes in Bengaluru that have been encroached upon and have consequently shrunk. How to ensure water supply, its sustainable usage and treatment is the need of the hour,” Chandra Shekhar Jha, scientist and chief general manager, National Remote Sensing Centre, Isro, said.

The conference focussed on various facets of water like management of supply and demand, sustaining water sources in the era of climate change, technological upgradation of traditional methods for water conservation, technological developments for ensuring the sustainability of water sources, treatment technologies and water quality management, people’s active participation in water management and water governance.

Deepankar Saha, former member, Central Ground Water Board explained:

“People’s dependency on groundwater has led to the unplanned and reckless exploitation of ground water sources. There is a need to implement technologies that conserve water and practice sustainable agriculture. Sustainable models should be made on water budgeting, its allocation and management of competitive demand of water in all sectors.”

The conference focused on the analytical and computational aspects of water as well. It was suggested that protocols should be made on the usage and supply of water. India should also have a buffer stock that can be used during emergencies in the future. In a diverse country like India, different models should be made for different regions.

From drip irrigation to sprinkler irrigation, convergence is needed in agriculture. Energy and agriculture should be emphasised in any policy or model of water supply and management.

Neelam Patel, senior advisor on agriculture, NITI Aayog

“Substitution of water should be taken into account along with technology, pricing and reuse options. Wastewater should be treated as a resource and not as waste. Once treated and purified, this treated water can be substituted for fresh water. Cohesive decision-making is needed at the central and state level to manage water resources,” Jagdish Prasad Gupta, chief commissioner of state tax, Gujarat explained.

How can we ensure linear water security? Vijay P Singh, a professor at the department of bio and agriculture engineering, A&M University, Texas explained:

“Emphasis should be given to conservation of water and development of alternate sources of water. One can reuse waste water post treatment. An integrated approach is needed to ensure water security by adopting sustainable technologies in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and chemical engineering.”

India is the country with the highest usage of water in agriculture — 13 per cent — followed by China, US and Russia. Singh also emphasised on making agriculture more water-efficient in India.

How can we ensure water security at a time of climate change? A study undertaken by Stacy L Hucthinson from Kansas State University, US, spoke about the geospatial science of water. It noted:

Countries should shift their focus from global and climate change models to regional models. Climate change has impacted rainfall patterns, thereby leading to variations in soil moisture content. Understanding of soil moisture in varied regions will help in understanding water runoff. The precipitation is usually high in summers and one should focus on acts of downscaling.

“Climate change is not just the issue of greenhouse gas emissions anymore,” says Ed McBean, Canada research chair in water supply security, University of Guelph, Canada. He further explained that water bodies reflect huge amount of reflected radiations which leads to an increase in global temperature, thereby leading to the melting of glaciers and increase in sea levels.

Is the agriculture sector in India leading to water scarcity? Neelam Patel, senior advisor on agriculture, at NITI Aayog shared her views: “From drip irrigation to sprinkler irrigation, convergence is needed in agriculture. Energy and agriculture should be emphasised in any policy or model of water supply and management.”

Source Eco Business

Land Rover investigates hydrogen fuel cell use with Defender prototype

Posted on June 22, 2021 by dishanth

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is developing a prototype hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that is expected to be testing later this year.

The development vehicle, based on the new Land Rover Defender, will be used as a test bed to establish how a hydrogen powertrain can be optimised to deliver the necessary performance and capability required by Land Rover customers.

Ralph Clague, head of Hydrogen and Fuel Cells for Jaguar Land Rover, said: “We know hydrogen has a role to play in the future powertrain mix across the whole transport industry, and alongside battery electric vehicles, it offers another zero tailpipe emission solution for the specific capabilities and requirements of Jaguar Land Rover’s world-class line-up of vehicles.”

The engineering project, known as Project Zeus, is part funded by the government-backed Advanced Propulsion Centre. It forms part of JLR’s aim to achieve zero tailpipe emissions by 2036, and net zero carbon emissions across its supply chain, products and operations by 2039, in line with the Reimagine strategy announced last month.

“The work done alongside our partners in Project Zeus will help us on our journey to become a net zero carbon business by 2039, as we prepare for the next generation of zero tailpipe emissions vehicles,” Clague added.

JLR believes hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which generate electricity from hydrogen to power an electric motor, are complimentary to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) on the journey to net zero vehicle emissions.

They provide high energy density and rapid refueling, with minimal loss of range in low temperatures, making the technology ideal for larger, longer-range vehicles, or those operated in hot or cold environments.

Since 2018, the global number of fuel cell vehicles on the road has nearly doubled, while hydrogen refueling stations have increased by more than 20%. By 2030, forecasts predict hydrogen-powered vehicle deployment could top 10 million with 10,000 refueling stations worldwide.

The prototype Defender will begin testing towards the end of 2021 in the UK to verify key attributes such as off-road capability and fuel consumption.

Source: Fleet News

Can old traditions and tech help Singapore reach zero waste?

Posted on June 21, 2021June 22, 2021 by dishanth

You can hear Madam Ng trundling down the road long before you see her.

In the quiet of the early morning, the low rumble of her heavily laden trolley reverberates through the streets of the historic Tiong Bahru area of Singapore.

Madam Ng is a karang guni trader, one of the rag and bone collectors who have traditionally picked up the things people throw away.

This includes everything from old newspapers, drinks cans, second-hand clothes to unwanted electronic devices. They usually sell them on to other karang guni traders or recycling firms.

Karang guni itself comes from the Malay term for the large hessian sacks that they traditionally used to carry their goods.

Madam Ng has been working as a karang guni for over three decades Source BBC

Nowadays, these have been replaced by trolleys like Madam Ng’s, often four-wheeled flat-bed carts, or two-wheeled sack trolleys as well as trucks and vans.

Madam Ng became a karang guni more than three decades ago, as she wanted to make extra money to help pay for one of her daughters to study abroad.

“I was in my 40s and still a nurse. I used to go around collecting newspapers, magazines and books after work – but now I’ve been doing it daily since I retired,” she says as she takes a rare break from her round.

Now, aged 78, her daily work routine would be daunting for many half her age. “Every day I wake up at 4am and am out of the house by 4.30am. I push my cart around the neighbourhood, collecting discarded newspapers and cans. I am out for about four to five hours, then I go home and I’m done for the day.”

Karang guni men and women collect the materials thrown away in Singapore. Source GETTY IMAGES

‘Zero waste’

While rag and bone collectors may seem like an echo from the past in many countries, they are still part of Singapore’s present and most likely its future.

Singapore is known as one of the cleanest cities in the world, and its army of collectors are the city-state’s original recyclers. Even in this $380bn (£270bn) economy, the government sees them playing a crucial part in its sustainability programme.

A karang guni woman weaves through heavy traffic with her trolley. Source GETTY IMAGES

The Singapore Green Plan 2030 covers a whole range of sustainable goals, including cutting the amount of waste sent to landfill by 30% within the next decade.

The recycling business was hit hard by the pandemic as the volume of material Singapore recycled dropped, as the global economy was shut down to slow the spread of Covid.

The sudden halt saw the country’s overall recycling rate, for homes and businesses combined, fall to 52% in 2020 compared to 59% the previous year.

Workers sort through waste by hand at one of Singapore’s recycling hubs. Source GETTY IMAGES

The National Environment Agency (NEA), which is charge of Singapore’s recycling efforts, thinks that this was just a blip and is now focussed on plans to become a zero-waste economy.

Christopher Tan, director of NEA’s sustainability division says he sees karang guni men and women playing an important role as part of the city-state’s recycling network as it aims to hit that ambitious zero-waste target.

“They can complement the current collection methods. There’s still the challenge of getting the recycling from the door of your home. They have networks. They have knowledge of what can and what cannot be recycled,” he says.

Singapore relies on the private sector to manage the island’s rubbish collection, waste disposal and recycling services – and it is these firms that are working with the karang guni industry.

Next generation

One such firm is SembWaste. It has created an app – ezi – that helps to connect the karang guni collectors with the company during their working day, as well as members of the public who want recycling collected from outside their homes.

Technology is being used to create waste collection networks. Source SEMBWASTE

“We have forged partnerships with a network of karang gunis… with more than 100 of them as part of the ezi network,” says Goh Siok Ling, SembWaste’s commercial director.

At 32, Aiden Ang is part of the new generation of karang guni traders. After graduating with a diploma in telecommunications engineering he chose to follow in his father’s footsteps to join the clothing recycling business rather than pursue a more mainstream career.

Despite the downturn in recycling due to Covid, Mr Ang is confident the industry has a promising future: “I personally believe this trade is here to stay in the long term.

“Everyone is getting into the habit of recycling because of education. I am confident the number of recyclers will increase over the years to come.”

Mr Ang sees the use of apps as a big step forward, “with young blood in the company we can run the business in a better way, especially with technology”. He says this is what helped convince him to enter the trade – and to improve it.

“It is super convenient for the residents interested in participating in the recycling drive. For us as the operator, it helps us to organise the operational flow and handle the transactions very efficiently.”

Singapore’s Boat Quay district is full of restaurants, bars and cafes which all need waste collection and recycling. Source GETTY IMAGES

Mr Ang also points to opportunities he sees for young people, as the trade is currently dominated by older karang guni collectors, like Madam Ng, many of whom are nearing retirement.

‘I want to keep on’

Although Madam Ng may not be part of the new generation of tech-savvy karang guni traders, she is not planning to give up her trolley just yet.

“I sell my collection [on] to another karang guni who comes round on his lorry. He’s very busy, as a lot of seniors do what I do, and he collects from them too,” she says.

A criticism sometimes levelled at the karang guni business is that it relies on elderly people who are paid poorly for the amount of physical work they put in.

But for Madam Ng the job isn’t really about money these days. Since being widowed, she has lived comfortably with one of her daughters and her family.

“It is physically tough. My daughters tell me to stop. But I’d rather do it than sit around at home.”

“Sitting too much is bad for you – it’s very bad for the mind. When I’m out with my cart, it helps to clear my mind.”

Source BBC

Electric flying taxis could transform air travel by 2024

Posted on June 21, 2021 by dishanth

Flying taxis to help you skip a morning traffic jam? Sounds like a thing of the future, but the future might be closer than you think.

With new backing from American Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Microsoft, UK electric aircraft manufacturer Vertical Aerospace is innovating to make environmentally-friendly, accessible urban air travel a reality.

The startup created a zero-emissions vertical takeoff aircraft called the VA-X4 that can travel over 200 miles per hour and be “near-silent” in flight, the company said, CNN reported. A prototype of the electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) with a range of over 100 miles is currently in production and has its first test flight planned for later this year.

“The X4 is going to be 100 times quieter than a helicopter, it’s going to be zero-carbon, it’s going to be a fraction of the cost. Most important of all, it’s going to be 100 times safer, so this is going to open up urban air mobility to whole new range of passengers,” founder and CEO Stephen Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

The company’s mission to make air travel personal, on-demand and carbon-free eVTOLs like the X4 has the potential to transform both short, on-demand travel within cities that is currently accomplished via taxis and longer, medium-haul regional travel, Fitzpatrick told Yahoo! Finance. He estimated that a trip from downtown Los Angeles to LAX or from JFK International Airport to Manhattan would last only 12 minutes and cost roughly $40. Partners are already discussing commercial flight potentials out of large airports such as London Heathrow and Gatwick.

Rolls-Royce, the leading supplier of all-electric and hybrid-electric power and propulsion systems for aviation, will provide the electric engines. Honeywell, a leader in avionics and flight control systems, developed customized, state-of-the-art technology in the new flight vehicles.

The VA-X4 prototype is electric and aerodynamic, which allows it to use far less energy than an airplane or a helicopter. Vertical Aerospace

According to CNN, Fitzpatrick also founded Ovo Group, which owns the UK’s second-biggest energy retailer. The energy transition from fossil fuels to zero-carbon energy supplies is the “biggest challenge facing humanity today,” the energy-tech entrepeneur said in a statement. At scale, the synergy of his two companies may actually help reduce the negative environmental impact of flying, which currently rates as one of the most detrimental activities for air quality and the climate.

“On an individual level, there is no other human activity that emits as much over such a short period of time as aviation, because it is so energy-intensive,” said Stefan Gössling, co-editor of the book Climate Change and Aviation: Issues, Challenges and Solutions.

BBC estimated that aviation is responsible for around 2.4 percent of global carbon emissions and around 5 percent of global warming, due to nitrous oxides, water vapor, particulates and other airplane emissions that also have a warming effect. Other estimates place this figure between five and nine percent.

The relatively “small” aviation industry and an even smaller portion of the world that flies has been accused of having a disproportionately large, negative impact on the climate crisis. Climate justice advocates note that the flying populations are not the ones who will suffer the most from the climate crisis. These are some of the issues that Vertical Aerospace hopes to tackle.

“I love travelling. I love flying to new places. It cannot be that the way we’re going to solve climate change is by asking everybody to do less, to travel less, to turn back time and forgo some of the advantages that technology has brought us,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think that when people start to understand just how much better these vehicles are than what we have today, it’s going to completely change how people think about flying through the skies.”

“If we focus on finding the solutions, this will drive us towards the electrification of flight,” he added. “This is the most exciting time in aviation for almost a century. Electrification will transform flying in the 21st century in the same way the jet engine did 70 years ago,” he told CNN.

Each aircraft is worth as much as $4 billion, and Vertical Aerospace already has pre-orders for up to 1,000 VA-X4s, CNN reported. 250 of those will go to American Airlines, with an option for an additional 100. Virgin Atlantic has a pre-order option for up to 150, and Dublin-based aircraft leasing company Avolon has pre-orders and options for 500 of the new-age taxis.

“Our order with Vertical will… accelerate the inevitable commercial roll-out of zero emissions aircraft,” CEO of Avolon Dómhnal Slattery said in the press release. “Before the end of this decade, we expect zero emission urban air mobility, enabled by eVTOLs, to play an increasingly important role in the global commercial aviation market.”

The United Kingdom is already a global leader in aerospace innovation, Fitzpatrick noted. Unrelated blimp prototypes in the UK are similarly aiming to make air travel more environmentally-friendly and accessible.

“We’re doing more than just developing an aircraft, we’re actually creating an industry together,” Mike Madsen, president and CEO of Honeywell Aerospace said in the statement.

According to Yahoo! Finance, Vertical Aerospace has secured several key partnerships and plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange after a merger with Broadstone Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), later this year. The latter was attracted to Vertical’s highly commercial approach and clear route to market, the joint press release noted.

Hugh Osmond, chairman of Broadstone, said, “Transportation is one of the next big sectors of the global economy to be disrupted at scale. Vertical has a clear commercial plan to challenge short-haul air travel, and to create new markets where neither cars nor public transport can cope with demand.”

According to CNN, Vertical believes the X4 will secure the same level of certification from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency as large commercial airliners, allowing production at scale. Commercial operations are slated to begin in 2024.

“This is probably the first commercial aircraft that most people will fly on that will have a zero carbon footprint, Fitzpatrick said. “We’re going to look back at a time when we didn’t have these vehicles flying over our skies. I think in five or six years’ time, we’ll be looking back thinking, ‘I can’t believe we didn’t have this.'”

By Tiffany Duong

Source Eco Watch

Scientists convert used plastic bottles into vanilla flavouring

Posted on June 17, 2021June 17, 2021 by dishanth

Plastic bottles have been converted into vanilla flavouring using genetically engineered bacteria, the first time a valuable chemical has been brewed from waste plastic.

Upcycling plastic bottles into more lucrative materials could make the recycling process far more attractive and effective. Currently plastics lose about 95% of their value as a material after a single use. Encouraging better collection and use of such waste is key to tackling the global plastic pollution problem.

Researchers have already developed mutant enzymes to break down the polyethylene terephthalate polymer used for drinks bottles into its basic units, terephthalic acid (TA). Scientists have now used bugs to convert TA into vanillin.

Vanillin is used widely in the food and cosmetics industries and is an important bulk chemical used to make pharmaceuticals, cleaning products and herbicides. Global demand is growing and in 2018 was 37,000 tonnes, far exceeding the supply from natural vanilla beans. About 85% of vanillin is currently synthesised from chemicals derived from fossil fuels.

Joanna Sadler, of the University of Edinburgh, who conducted the new work, said: “This is the first example of using a biological system to upcycle plastic waste into a valuable industrial chemical and it has very exciting implications for the circular economy.”

Stephen Wallace, also of the University of Edinburgh, said: “Our work challenges the perception of plastic being a problematic waste and instead demonstrates its use as a new carbon resource from which high value products can be made.”

About 1m plastic bottles are sold every minute around the world and just 14% are recycled. Currently even those bottles that are recycled can only be turned into opaque fibres for clothing or carpets.

The research, published in the journal Green Chemistry, used engineered E coli bacteria to transform TA into vanillin. The scientists warmed a microbial broth to 37C for a day, the same conditions as for brewing beer, Wallace said. This converted 79% of the TA into vanillin.

Next the scientists will further tweak the bacteria to increase the conversion rate further, he said: “We think we can do that pretty quickly. We have an amazing roboticised DNA assembly facility here.” They will also work on scaling up the process to convert larger amounts of plastic. Other valuable molecules could also be brewed from TA, such as some used in perfumes.

Ellis Crawford, of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said: “This is a really interesting use of microbial science to improve sustainability. Using microbes to turn waste plastics, which are harmful to the environment, into an important commodity is a beautiful demonstration of green chemistry.”

Recent research showed bottles are the second most common type of plastic pollution in the oceans, after plastic bags. In 2018, scientists accidentally created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic bottles, and subsequent work produced a super-enzyme that eats plastic bottles even faster.

By Damian Carrington, Environmental Editor

Source The Guardian