Category: Emission reduction

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Humans throw away roughly 1 billion tonnes of waste food per year – yet 1 in 9 go hungry

Humans eat between 1-2kg of food per day, so each person consumes roughly 1.2 tonnes a year. That means that one billion tonnes of food could feed half of China or India or alternatively the next 3 biggest countries – the USA Indonesia and Pakistan.

Another way of thinking about it, is that if humanity ceased wasting food tomorrow, there would be enough to feed the whole planet completely.

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Could the EU bring forward the end of new combustion engine cars to 2025?

The European comission is considering a rule which would essentially ban ne internal combustion engine cars from 2025, only 4 years away. The industry as obviously attacked this, in part by pointing out the rules demanding that all cars be practically clear of emissions by 2025 will rule out clean fuels such as liquid hydrogen.

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The EU is bringing in laws that require products to last for a decade

At the current time, we have a highly inefficient system. There is no requirement as to how long technology is required to last. In the past, that has perhaps been less noticeable, as the advance in the capabilities has been so fast, that an upgrade generally became desired long before the product wore out.

However, there has been an alarming trend which has seen manufacturers removing manuals to allow products to be serviced, and or sealing parts of the product, so that batteries cannot be replaced or in some other way making DIY fixing hard or impossible.

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Could many hills in the UK become the batteries of tomorrow?

A new system can transform thousands of hills in the UK into large batteries. A team of engineers have developed a system which would allow Hydropower to store and release power within gently sloping hills and without the huge dams currently needed.

The idea of these small hydropower systems, is that we could build many of these tiny dams for far less than just a few large ones. More importantly, it would come with far less negative issues to those that come with historic large dams (for instance the proposed dam which threatens the future of 8th great ape species the Tapulani Orangutan).

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While great progress has been made in greening much of the worlds industries, aviation is one of the few that has made little progress

How can we cut the carbon cost of aviation? There are several possibilities. It is unfortunately unlikely that battery power is ever going to be able to replace fossil fuels on long haul fights (I hope to be proved wrong). Easyjet is aiming to be flying a single isle battery powered plane on 80% of its routes by 2040, and is hoping to be flying routes under 500km on battery planes by 2027 (they are well on the way to this target).

Continue reading “While great progress has been made in greening much of the worlds industries, aviation is one of the few that has made little progress”
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China has stated that they will aim to hit peak emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060

These statements have been made before, however the Chinese president has reaffirmed them over video-link to the UN general assembly. Currently responsible for around 28% of world emissions this is highly encouraging.

In the past China has agreed to its peak emissions point, but not to its carbon neutral point.

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HSBC is voting on stopping funding coal? about time, but not action for 19 years

Over the last few years it has become increasingly clear that conservationists approach to fossil fuel companies were not working.

The problem is that there is a great deal of money to be made from fossil fuels. Companies like tesla hint at a world where this ceases to be the case, and the speed that the electric car market is growing, is incredibly fast. Indeed many people have commented on the fact that the growth curve of electric cars is clearly following the curve of many other disruptions from computers to mobile phones.

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Should we be going teetotal to save the planet?

Most forms of alcohol are created from incredibly thirsty crops.

One 500ml bottle of beer will have needed almost 150 litres of water (300 times its own volume) to create. Wine is even more thirsty, with a glass taking 110 litres – meaning that the bottle that you might drink with friends will have needed more than half a metric ton of water.

Why does this not seem to be of concern. We are constantly warned about the carbon footprint and other environmental impacts of our food and our clothes, how has the drink industry avoided the same.

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Synthetic palm oil brewed like beer? Bill Gates investing in the possibility

Palm oil is a wonder material. Being used in a vast range of different products, it is almost impossible to avoid it in the west. Why should we try? because it has been the cause of much of the rainforest destruction on Sumatra, Borneo and lately even in the last great rainforests of west Africa.

Could we have all the palm oil we want, while at the same time replanting the rainforests which were lost?
Continue reading “Synthetic palm oil brewed like beer? Bill Gates investing in the possibility”
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