Going Green Podcast, Video blog and Daily News

From  tomorrow (1st of April) There will be No vat on energy saving materials such as solar panel installation, heat pumps it the UK. So in this episode we answer is this the right time to invest in renewable energy for your home! But beware the small print - this new scheme only covers new systems, not so much addons to current ones! There are new types of solar panels coming to the market,  that are both solar thermal and photovoltaic. These keep the panels cooler in summer and increase the efficiency.  With the price of Gas going up solar thermal can really effectively cut the hot water bills in the spring, summer and autumn.

Solar and wind and other clean sources generated 38% of the world's electricity in 2021 with some countries like Vietnam making spectacular gains in the renewable production. Other countries that have seen a huge amount of growth include the Netherlands and Australia. Over the past year Gas prices have increased which has meant that now Gas is more expensive than Coal. Therefore, in some countries there has been a large uptake in the amount of coal being used, and the current war in Ukraine won’t help this situation. Although there is a shift towards coal many of the major economies including the US, UK, Germany, and Canada are aiming to shift their generation to 100% carbon free electricity within the next 15 years.

  Peñuelas Lake, which is around 70 miles west of the capital Santiago, which supplied drinking water for nearly two million people in Chile has dried up over the course of six years due to a 12-year drought. With the Lake gone, water has to be tankered into the city to provide drinking water. This is not enough to provide water for the local agriculture, which has virtually disappeared leaving thousands of livestock dead. This area of Chile is no stranger to droughts but this last one has lasted several years with no significant rain to re-stock the large lake that has supplied the city and surrounding region with water.

  Warming across the country has, however, not been even with some regions experiencing more rapid change than others. Heatwave thresholds in 8 counties in a band from Surrey to east Yorkshire are now changing.   Dr Mark McCarthy  is the head of the Met Office National Climate Information Centre, which manages the UK’s climate records. He said: “Climate statistics over time reveal an undeniable warming trend for the UK. Temperature rise has been greatest across parts of central and eastern England where they have increased by more than 1.0°C in some locations, while further north areas of Scotland and Northern Ireland have seen temperatures rise by closer to 0.7°C.” The original  heatwave thresholds  were based on a reference climate period for 1981-2010. The heatwave definition was intended to be flexible and to be reviewed and revised in order to follow our changing climate and represent heatwaves relative to the “current” climate. Therefore the thresholds...

  This is a new plastic material that absorbs mercury has been developed that can coat surfaces such as the insides of pipes. The reaction between sulfur and dicyclopentadiene was optimised to form a shelf stable and soluble low molecular weight oligomer. After a simple curing process at 140 °C the material was rendered insoluble and resistant to acids and solvents. Taking advantage of the soluble oligomer, silica gel was coated with the soluble oligomer and validated in mercury removal applications. The coating technique was also applied to metal, concrete, and polyvinyl chloride to illustrate broad protection from corrosion and solvents. The coating was also repairable, with surface scratches removed through the application of heat. In this way, the coating is active in metal binding, protective against acids and solvents, and repairable when damaged.

  ​ In this Jubilee Year the Queen started Queens Green Canopy which is to Plant a tree for the Jubilee during the months Oct '21 - Mar 22' and then Oct '22 - Mar '23 Tree planting seasons The Jubilee started 2nd February but major Celebrations take place from 2nd June with Street parties and other celebrations Ive seen a few jubilees Silver Jubilee 1977 at Uni studying for exams Golden Jubilee 2002 Diamond Jubilee 2012 Platinum Jubilee 2022 6th Feb whereas Paul has only seen from the millennium. Recycling is ok but what else can you do?  Buy Green energy - fuel prices are going up.  Choose what you buy and how it is packaged.  Holidays Home or abroad?  Cars is electric the only way to go? Could you do a car share? Lifestyle can you change this? Fitter healthier Gym - or walking. Take a bag with you when you go walking collect rubbish  Produced by Philip M Russell Ltd  

  Electric vehicles rely on batteries as the storage medium for their energy, and batteries have a far lower energy density than those offered by the fossil burning cars, which resulted in very low ranges of early electric vehicles. There has been a gradual improvement in battery technologies and this has increased the driving ranges of electric cars to approach acceptable levels. However, despite the vast improvements in battery technology, today consumers of electric vehicles face another difficulty – slow battery charging speed. Currently, electric cars take about 10 hours to fully recharge at home and even using the fastest superchargers at the charging stations the batteries require up to 20-40 minutes to fully recharge the vehicles. Scientists from the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems have worked out that using quantum charging would lead to a 200 times speedup over classical batteries, which means that at home charging time would be cut from 10 hours to abou...

  The increasing need to cool the air in our built environment is both a  cause  and an  effect  of climate change. Air conditioning accounts for a large portion of global greenhouse gas emissions today, which is estimated at 3.9%; however, the role that humidity plays in these emissions is often overlooked. The emissions associated with reducing air humidity (i.e., removing water vapour from air) are larger than emissions associated with reducing air temperature (i.e., cooling air). The research team have shown how dramatically humidity-related emissions will increase with rising cooling demand around the world. They have calculated the minimum separation energy for removing water vapour from air and find that this is at least an order of magnitude less than the processes used today. New technologies that split this cooling and humidity control problem into two processes show potential to improve efficiency by 40% or more. One way to do this is the use of liqui...

 The French-based hybrid solar module manufacturer, Dualsun, has launched a new photovoltaic-thermal panel which is based on  shingle solar cells . The panels consist of a patented heat exchanger that allows water to circulate in the panel and optimises heat transfer with the photovoltaic cells. Photovoltaic panels become less efficient at higher temperatures and combining solar thermal and photovoltaic cells together is a novel and efficient way of solving the problem. A standard photovoltaic panel only generates 20% of electricity during operation; the remaining 80% is heat.  In addition to being wasted, this heat is also detrimental to the solar panel’s efficiency, which drops when the panel rises in temperature. The new panel is cooled by an innovative and patented heat exchanger and thus generates more electricity than a standard photovoltaic panel. Cooling the photovoltaic cells improves electricity output by 5 to 15% depending on usage. The D...

Both the North Pole and the South Pole showing alarmingly high temperatures for this time of year the Antarctic in some areas is 40 degrees Celsius above its normal temperature. At this time of the year it should be cooling rapidly but presently it is still much warmer than it should be. At the same time the Arctic regions are also much warmer than they should be and are already starting to melt with temperatures as high as plus 7 degrees Celsius. These high temperatures at the poles are a warning of the disruption of the earth climate systems and is indicative of what well may be happening this summer. The danger here is twofold: the heat waves at the poles are a very strong signal of the amount of damage that humanity is causing on the climate as the polar seas melt particularly in the Arctic the dark sea will absorb more heat than the reflective ice and will warm the planet much further. The warming of the Antarctic is exposing land that has not seen the sky in a Millennium and this...

  Researchers detail how the brown carbon released by burning biomass in the northern hemisphere is accelerating warming in the Arctic and warn that this could lead to even more wildfires in the future. Blazing wildfires are accompanied by vast plumes of brown smoke, made up of particles of brown carbon suspended in the air. This smoke poses health hazards, and can even block out the summer sun, and researchers suspected that it might also be contributing to global warming. In 2017, the Chinese icebreaker vessel Xue Long headed for the Arctic Ocean to examine which aerosols were floating around in the pristine Arctic air and identify their sources. The scientists on the vessel were particularly curious about how brown carbon released by wildfires was affecting the climate and how its warming effects compared to those of denser black carbon from high-temperature fossil fuel burning, the second most powerful warming agent after carbon dioxide. Their results showed that...

 ​ Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared a National emergency to ensure all the emergency powers are available and that any red tape can be removed in the delivering of services and support on the ground. Heavy rains have created the current emergency in New South Wales and Queensland states, where some of the flooded communities were battling fires two years ago. Some areas have endured the highest floods ever recorded.  More than 20,000 homes and businesses have been flooded in southeast Queensland and 13 people have been reported to have died.

  Philip and Paul discuss the IPCC 2022 Report on Climate Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Climate change has happened What does the report say? The warnings make for grim reading. 3.5 billion people are highly vulnerable to climate impacts and half the world’s population suffers severe water shortages at some point each year. One in three people are exposed to deadly heat stress, and this is projected to increase to 50% to 75% by the end of the century. Half a million more people are at risk of serious flooding every year, and a billion living on coasts will be exposed by 2050. Rising temperatures and rainfall are increasing the spread of diseases in people, such as dengue fever, and in crops, livestock and wildlife. Even if the world keeps heating below 1.6C by 2100 – and we are already at 1.1C – then 8% of today’s farmland will become climatically unsuitable, just after the global population has peaked above 9 billion. Severe stunting could affect 1 million children in ...

  Boris Johnson  went to the Middle East, to see the Saudis and UAE, to ask it they would consider increasing their output, but so far the answer appears to be no. The Middle Eastern countries work with Russia to control the flow of Oil and Gas to maximise the profits. But money has a way of talking and the Saudis and UAE want still more money. Iran and its oil might be another possibility with the thawing of relationships. Will getting more oil from Saudi Arabia make the greenhouse gas pollution greater? The honest answer is if it is just changing the supplier then Russia gives less and the Saudi’s more then there should be no overall change in the world, but this will affect the Saudi’s more and they are attempting to control the emissions. Russia certainly won’t be happy about this and on current actions might do something stupid. Russia’s threats to cut off Gas too Europe won’t happen because this is Putin’s major source of income and finding other suitable buyers lik...

  A massive release of greenhouse gases, likely triggered by volcanic activity, caused a period of extreme global warming known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) about 56 million years ago. A new study now confirms that the PETM was preceded by a smaller episode of warming and ocean acidification caused by a shorter burst of carbon emissions. The new findings,  published March 16 in  Science Advances , indicate that the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere during this precursor event was about the same as the current cumulative carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. As a result, the short-lived precursor event represents what might happen if current emissions can be shut down quickly, while the much more extreme global warming of the PETM shows the consequences of continuing to release carbon into the atmosphere at the current rate. “It was a short-lived burp of carbon equivalent to what we’ve already released f...

  Russia supplies around 8% of the UK's oil and just over 4% of our gas. In in desperate attempt to stop this Boris Johnson has been talking to Saudi Arabia and UAE in efforts to remove any dependence on Russian Fossil fuels. This does fly in the face of some of the COP 26 agreements, but then the world did not expect Russia to attack Ukraine and throw much of the world into turmoil. The UK is looking to change the dependence also by including new investments and commitments to renewable energy. Last month, Solar, hydro and wind power combined made up nearly 45% of the UK's energy mix and this is set to get better as we head into the summer. We need to stop the Russian gas and oil as soon as possible as we are paying for Putin to continue this unprovoked murder of the population of Ukraine. This move is likely to make climate campaigners, the green wing of the Conservative party, the Labour benches and others very uncomfortable with this decision because it constitutes an aban...

  The European Commission is working on their REPowerEU plan, an ambitious roadmap to reduce Russian fossil fuel dependency by two-thirds in this year to attempt to stop the price shocks that are threatening European families and businesses. In the next few years the plan seeks to eliminate dependence on Russian fossil fuels entirely well before 2030. The REPowerEU plan’s target is to install 10 million heat pumps over the next five years is a really modest but achievable, looking at the increase over recent sales trends. In 2020, approximately 1.8 million EU households purchased a heat pump and are set to install many more in 2022.

Panasonic have a new product for the Japanese market the Eco Cute, which is an energy-saving heat pump water heater that boils water using atmospheric heat energy. This product features a good energy-saving performance with approximately one third of the amount of energy used compared with that of when only using electrical energy. The Japanese market uses a different type of hot water system than Europe by having a tank of near boiling water. This new system saves energy with always checking and keeping adequate bathwater temperature, and by boiling water at night by using the heat of the remaining warm bath water the system also enables users to select and set a mode from hot, standard, luke warm temperature settings for how many minutes, without adding water, i.e. saving water at the same time. These products have a solar charge function which utilizes surplus electricity generated and stored from their photovoltaic source.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, are using 3D printing to create grids of high-rise ‘nano-housing’ where photosynthetic bacteria can grow quickly. The researchers were then able to extract the bacteria’s waste electrons, left over from photosynthesis, which could be used to power small electronics. This has been tried previously but the Cambridge researchers have found that providing the bacteria with the correct type of environment  can increase the amount of energy that can be extracted by over an order of magnitude. The approach is competitive against traditional methods of renewable bioenergy generation and has already reached solar conversion efficiencies that can outcompete many current methods of biofuel generation. Photosynthetic bacteria, or cyanobacteria, are the most abundant life form on Earth.  In order to grow, cyanobacteria need lots of sunlight – like the surface of a lake in the summertime. To extract the energy the Cambridge team 3D-pri...

  A research team at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have developed a process technology and catalyst for removing hydrogen sulphide from the process of ethylene production from methane in biogas.  This biogas contains a significant amount   ofhydrogen sulfide, which interferes with the catalytic reaction in ethylene production. The new technology improves the ethylene production by oxidizing and removing hydrogen sulfide during the production process. This creates a biogas that burns cleaner with less pollution. Lien Thi Do et al.; "Hybrid catalysts containing Ba, Ti, Mn, Na, and W for the low-temperature oxidative coupling of methane"; Applied Catalysis B: Environmental; Volume 298, 5 December 2021, 120553

  It’s widely known that when methane is transported in pipes and it leaks the new study has found that cookers leak methane even when they’re not being used. But it is a worry because methane is 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Methane makes up about 90% of natural gas which is used in our homes for heating and cooking purposes. This recent study shows that even when heaters and cookers are turned off methane leaks. Considering the amount of time a cooker is used we can see that more than 75% of this leakage occurs when the cooker is turned off. Ventilation can help the kitchen but it doesn’t help the climate impacts of this Greenhouse gas and the results of burning methane. The only way to do this is to cook on electric from a renewable source. 

  Researchers at the University of Bremen are currently working on the next generation of safe energy storage systems using water based zinc ion batteries. Because this technology is water-based, the risks of explosion or fire reduced. The zinc-ion batteries are composed primarily of metallic zinc and other mostly inexpensive and non-toxic materials. This not only reduces the final price of green energy, but at the same time reduces the risk of environmental pollution. The research group is focusing on developing new zinc-based anodes, to improve the stability and lifetime of zinc-ion batteries and the development of low-cost environmentally friendly cathode materials and the optimization of water-based electrolytes. Their goal is to accelerate the commercialization of this promising, environmentally friendly battery technology.

  Hydrogels with their amazing ability to swell and take up water are used in nappies and other products to capture moisture . A team of researchers from the University of Texas in Austin have found a way of extracting large amounts of freshwater from air using a specially developed hydrogel which also contains a special microscopic salt. until now extracting freshwater from the atmosphere has not been feasible since the system has been way too slow and inefficient. This system can be improved by the use of hydroscopic salts, but these usually are not compatible with the hydrogel itself and the grades the performance. The researchers have overcome these issues by developing a salt friendly hydrogel and now the gill grains can absorb and retain water when combined with this hygroscopic salt. The team can extract almost 6 L of pure water per kilogram of the material in 24 hours . Once the water is in the hydrogel the hydrogel can be placed in a condenser and the water can be separa...

The idea of regenerative agriculture has been around for many many years but it is now starting to become more popular. It’s appearing a lot in academic research since the 2010s and many farmers are starting to use this system to try to improve and enhance the soil health to optimise all their resource management to improve the water quality and availability and as a byproduct to alleviate climate change. Regenerative agriculture relies on minimal soil disturbance and a large amount of composting this improves the fertility of the soil with the sequestrating of more carbon which rebuild the quality of the topsoil and restores the local biodiversity. If all farms in the UK started doing this then the amount of carbon sequestration would make a very significant difference to our carbon dioxide emissions. And by using the composting techniques the soil nutrients stay very high and this can improve the yield of crops that are grown . Going back to the old system of crop rotation and rotati...

Atlassian Founder Mike Cannon-Brookes and Canadian asset manager Brookfield put a bid in to buy Australia’s most polluting power company at the Market price, with the purpose of shutting it down. Not surprisingly, this bid was rejected. Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, reacted in horror that anyone would want to buy and close down a coal power station. AGL is Australia’s biggest coal generator and biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. The company is undergoing a demerger process creating Accel Energy to operate its fossil fuel assets and retaining the company’s renewable energy assets. AGL recently announced the planned closure of two coal-fired power plants but this is not good enough for the environment since Loy Yang plant burns the highly polluting brown coal. The AGL Energy  Loy Yang Power Station in the Latrobe Valley, Australia. Photographer: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg

  When COP26 Happened in October, a survey to place asking questions about their attitudes climate change, this question has been asked for the last few years and we can see how it is changing over time. Attitudes have been changing due to more education about climate change. In this podcast about how attitudes have changed about climate change, we explore how the use of simple messaging can change people attitudes and re-education of the population is having a large impact on climate change.

  It’s a simple fact that when you make beer the yeast produces carbon dioxide as well as turning the sugar to alcohol. The carbon dioxide normally goes to waste, but the Clearwater Brewery is now capturing that carbon dioxide that’s released in the brain process compressing it purifying it to package more beer . This carbon dioxide is then converted to carbonate which is used to add fizz to the beer. By recycling the amount of gas that the company buys from outside vendors has decreased so there is a significant cost saving as well as helping the environment. There is a significant cost to this carbon dioxide retrieval and recycling system but the company feels this will be worthwhile in the long term. This type of system could be applied to other industries and could help lessen global warming.

  Scientists based in the University of São Paulo, Brazil and the University of Coimbra’s School of Science and Technology in Portugal , have developed an environmentally sustainable process to produce biodegradable plastic using pigment extracted from yeast by using green solvents.   These solvents can extract two carotenoids, astaxanthin and beta-carotene, from the yeast, Phaffia rhodozyma to produce a biodegradable plastic film based on bioactive starch without any need for additional purification. This biodegradable plastic could be used in the future in smart packaging with antioxidant and anti-microbial properties.  This plastic has similar applications to those of conventional plastics derived from fossil fuels. These sustainable bioplastics could become become commercially available in a few years with sufficient funding.

Researchers at the Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT) at the University of Bath, have developed a mild and rapid chemical recycling process for polycarbonates, a robust class of plastics commonly used in construction and engineering. Using a zinc-based catalyst and methanol, the researchers were able to completely break down commercial poly(bisphenol A carbonate) (BPA-PC) beads within 20 minutes at room temperature. The waste can then be converted into its chemical constituents, bisphenol A (BPA) and dimethyl carbonate (DMC), which means these chemicals can be recycled indefinitely. The BPA recovery prevents leakage of a potentially damaging environmental pollutant into the ecosystem. This method creates new opportunities for polycarbonate recycling under mild conditions, helping to promote a circular economy approach and keep carbon in the loop indefinitely. This type of recycling would pay for itself in the products produced.

  Researchers at Northwestern University,Illinois have reprogrammed the carbon-fixing bacterium  Clostridium autoethanogenum , which naturally ferments carbon oxide gases for energy, resulting in ethanol as an end product.  From ethanol various other chemicals can easily be made like acetone or propan-2-ol. Acetone and propan-2-ol have a combined market value of over £7.4 billion. They are widely used as industrial solvents and to make plastics, including acrylic glass and polypropylene. The   C. autoethanogenum ’s genome was examined for enzymes that would enable the production of acetone or isopropanol from acetyl-CoA, a common intermediate in metabolism. The genes that encode these enzymes were then introduced and tested in different strains of the bacterium to optimise production of acetone and isopropanol. This has then been tested on an industrial scale in a 120 litre loop reactor connected to a carbon dioxide waste stream from a steel plant. This process can...

The I ntergovernmental P anel on C limate C hange ( IPCC ) have published their bleakest assessment yet for the impacts of climate change risks on human health , society , agriculture , ecosystems and wildlife. In the second instalment of the sixth assessment report ( AR6 ) they have looked at the risks arising from climate change looking at specific threats and what can be seen are some of the most worrying factors yet. Many of the future climate related risks and now seem to be more severe than previously thought and that we may have passed the point of no return on several factors already. The observed climate impacts in the last year have shown that many of the conditions are occurring sooner rather than previously thought there are large regional variations and Africa is being particularly impacted.

  The European Chemicals Agency (Echa) has proposed an EU-wide ban on all perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in firefighting foams, to prevent groundwater and soil contamination. The agency’s proposal would ban the sale, use and export of all PFAS in firefighting foams. The agency has calculated the costs of the proposal to be about £5.8 billion and this will include the cost of modifying equipment for using PFAS-free foams.