Green Futures

A car that drives itself?

Peter Madden — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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Peter Madden unveils the future of motoring.

Peter Madden unveils the future of motoring.

In the not-too-distant future, we'll sit back and relax as our cars drive themselves, automatically selecting the quickest route to avoid congestion and cut pollution.

Not that these cars will – strictly speaking – be ours. Who would want the hassle and high-cost of ownership, when we can choose the style of vehicle we need for our particular journey (a single-person micro-car for a meeting in town or a four-wheel drive for a trip to the countryside) and pick it up at a convenient spot with a wave of our smart phone? Drop them off, and their electric motors recharge automatically – and wirelessly – as they await their next commander...

The rise of the solar airship

Roger East — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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It’s the comeback of the dirigible as Canadian company designs a functional, agile and fossil-free range of solar hybrid airships.

New concepts keep coming out to boost faith in the future of airships. The latest sees Canadian company Solar Ship touting a proposed new range with electric motors, and a wing surface covered with solar photovoltaic arrays to charge their batteries.

Vertical forests rise in Milan

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:34:08 +0000

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Green walls in Italy’s industrial heartland will absorb CO2, reduce noise, and save energy.

In Milan, a forest will soon be planted in the sky. Building works for a pair of skyscrapers that will become home to the world’s first vertical forest is underway. The brainchild of architect Stefano Boeri, the €65 million ‘Bosco Verticale’ is already under construction. When complete, the skyscrapers will contain luxury apartments, each one equipped with a copious balcony specially designed to hold around 900 small trees and other plants. If planted on the ground the total vegetation would cover an area of 10,000 square metres.

As well as providing green outdoors space for residents, and providing the city with some much needed green views, the project should have a range of other benefits, including:

Waste gas from steel mills to power jets

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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Virgin Atlantic is pioneering a new biofuel with half the carbon footprint of fossil fuels.

Within three years, Virgin Atlantic could be powering some of its aircraft with a new type of low-carbon biofuel derived from waste gases from steel mills.

The airline has announced a tie-up with the industrial bio-commodities technology provider LanzaTech to produce the new fuel in India, a country which is one of the world’s largest steel producers.

The new ethanol-based resource is claimed to have half the carbon footprint of traditional fossil fuel. A demonstration flight should take place within 18 months, with Virgin’s flights from Delhi and Shanghai to London Heathrow using the biofuel by 2014.

Can retrofit enhance urban ecosystems?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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Taking account of natural surroundings when planning a retrofit can reduce heating costs, create a more pleasant environment and even boost profits.

We all love a room with a view, but when it comes to planning for the future of a building we tend to forget about the world beyond its walls. We home in on the structure itself – its foundations and floors, cavities and cracks – isolating it from its natural surroundings. But the performance of a building depends very much on conditions outside. The smartest designs are an active part of local ecosystems: they harness heat from the sun, facilitate the flow of fresh air, or take advantage of trees and hillsides for shelter. And they give back, too: habitats for wildlife, drainage for stormwater, greenery to keep a dense city block cool.

Dragonflies flit over perennials, sprouting on a former desert of black tar

Artificial trees the answer for carbon capture?

Roger East — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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Carbon capture innovation could soak up a thousand times more CO2 than real trees of a comparable size, claims scientist.

Within six or seven years, could we be seeing ‘artificial trees’ in use to combat climate change directly, soaking up carbon dioxide from the ambient air? That’s the hope held out by Klaus Lackner, whose brainchild invention was the star of the recent Air Capture Week at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (ImechE) in London.

Award-winning compostable ‘plastic’ bag launched

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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A new, affordable design replaces plastic with biodegradable fibres from waste paper and food.

Plastic bags get such a bad rap that you begin to wonder if they’re just the sustainability scapegoat, or if they actually deserve it. But with between 500 billion and a trillion consumed worldwide every year (around 100 per person), it’s fair to say that they do. Local initiatives to ban them (from Modbury in Devon, to San Francisco) are all very well, but behaviour is a slow-moving bus…

So the commercial development of an affordable, compostable replacement is good news. Start-up Cyclewood Solutions has licensed a technology developed by the University of Minnesota for a bag made from lignin. This is one of the most abundant polymers on the planet, naturally occurring in wood and plant stems. Millions of tonnes of it are discarded each year as a waste by-product of the food and paper industries.

Terraced house built inside a lab

Anna Simpson — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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Scientists put the trad British home through its paces in Salford University's Energy Hub.

In Manchester, architects have built a house in a lab to give researchers a unique testing centre for energy-saving technologies.

The replica of a traditional two-up, two-down pre-1920s terrace, dubbed the Energy House, has been constructed in a three-storey sealed testing chamber at Salford University. It was completed earlier this year, as part of the University’s Energy Hub research centre. It features original brickwork and tiles, and is fully furnished and functioning, with water, gas and electricity supplies. Moreover, the testing chamber reproduces weather conditions, such as rain, wind and sunshine. It gives researchers a unique way to assess out how energy consumption varies depending on a wide range of conditions.

It's 2032: print some energy and drink the sea

Martin Wright — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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If the internet took you by surprise, imagine what nanotechnology, 3D printing and genome sequencing might do...

Extrapolation can get you down.

How often do you hear sentences beginning with the dreaded phrase, “On present trends…” followed by some gloomy prediction of diminishing reserves of this, soaring prices of that…?

So at times like these, it’s worth remembering that present trends rarely stay that way: surprises always lurk around the corner – and they’re not always nasty ones. Cast your minds back a generation. Who would have predicted in 1985, say, the extraordinary transformations brought about by the internet and mobile phones? And who but the most resolute of Luddites would deny the enormous benefits – in terms of connectivity, and access to information, markets, even power – we’ve drawn from them?

So cast your mind forward two or three decades. What might we be looking back on in 2032, which is now just a glint in the eye, but which will have had a similar impact?

Construction company puts biodiversity on its agenda

Anna Simpson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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Lafarge transforms old quarry sites to give a new home to indigenous flora and fauna.

Wildfowl and birds have a new haven on the site of a former sand and gravel quarry in North Yorkshire, thanks to a wetland restoration project by Lafarge.

The wealth of biodiversity at Marfield Wetlands was commended in the inaugural Natural England Biodiversity Awards, part of the 2011 Mineral Product Association’s restoration and biodiversity event.

The Marfield area has a long history of mineral extraction, dating back to the 16th century, according to parish records. The site was initially quarried on an ad hoc basis by the Swinton Estate, before it was sold in the 1950s. Extraction stopped in 1989, before Lafarge acquired the land in the late ’90s. The concrete and aggregates group recognised the potential for biodiversity, and revised the original restoration plans.

Jonathon Porritt: We need growth, but not heedless growth

Jonathon Porritt — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:41:31 +0000

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The Founder-Director of Forum for the Future urges politicians to start taking the low-carbon agenda seriously.

I normally kick off with the good news. This time, let me start with a bit of the bad. In fact, quite a lot of bad news. The official CO2 figures for 2010 tell us that overall emissions increased by 6%, at a time when half the world’s economies were flat-lining in terms of economic growth. China and India were of course responsible for much of that increase – no flat-lining there.

Did any world leader, on hearing this news, even twitch? Make a speech? Press a panic button? Not one.

Osorb: the nemesis of water pollutants?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:33:48 +0000

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A high-tech chemical sponge that separates oil and other pollutants from water has enormous market potential.

It’s often said that oil and water don’t mix – but all too often they do, like in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, a high-tech chemical sponge has been developed that soaks up oil and other pollutants, separating them from water.

Marketed by ABSMaterials as Osorb, this organically modified silica attracts small organic toxins into its matrix, swelling up to eight times its initial size – but repels water. It can be cleaned for re-use up to 100 times, and generates no solid waste. Chemist Paul Edmiston, who created Osorb and founded ABS, has been known to prove its efficacy by spiking a glass of water with oil, adding Osorb, and then drinking the water.

The US Department of Energy carried out field tests and declared it highly effective, removing more than 99% of oil and grease from water and over 90% of poisonous volatile organic compounds.

David Attenborough on wind turbines and the arts

Anna Simpson — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +0000

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Anna Simpson speaks to the UK’s best-known naturalist at the launch of Glyndebourne’s wind turbine.

The wind was high on Friday at Glyndebourne, where David Attenborough launched its new turbine. The opera house is the first UK arts organisation to generate its own wind power.

David Attenborough has done so much to transform public appreciation of the natural world, and so I asked him what he would say to those who see wind turbines as a blot on the landscape:

“I wonder what they say about pylons; what do they say to motorways, what do they say to aeroplanes? Human beings have transformed the landscape, there’s no getting over that. This is one of the least damaging of the ways in which we can change the landscape.”

Low energy innovations meet family habits

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:10:37 +0000

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The impact of any retrofit depends on how people use the building. A single mother, three teenagers and an East London terrace offer the Technology Strategy Board a living piece of research.

Having her washing on show in Green Futures may not have been quite what Tracey Hillyard envisaged when she agreed to be a guinea pig in a low-carbon technology pilot. But the family’s laundry proved a key player in the story of single mother Tracey, her three teenagers, and their three-bed East London home: 61 Warwall.

Are we on the cusp of a third industrial revolution?

Martin Wright — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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Jeremy Rifkin shares his compelling vision of a bright new energy economy with Green Futures’ Editor in Chief, Martin Wright.

Jeremy Rifkin shares his compelling vision of a bright new energy economy with Green Futures’ Editor in Chief, Martin Wright.

Imagine the internet, only for energy.

Imagine that, as well as tens of millions of personal computers all linked together, exchanging information this way and that, you had tens of millions of personal power stations, pumping electricity to and fro.

Imagine if, working together, they made fossil fuels redundant, resolved all our fears about energy security, and kickstarted a new era of peer-to-peer power sharing. Oh, and made a decisive impact on climate change, too…

Then you’re imagining the sort of future laid out by Jeremy Rifkin, maverick economist and adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a clutch of EU leaders.

Will 3D printers see the end of consumerism?

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:48:40 +0000

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Radical technology looks set to turn consumers into creators, cutting out waste, packaging and miles.

There are disruptive technologies, and then there are insanely disruptive technologies. Without much fanfare, one of the latter is coming down the road, and it could be as transformative as, oh, the personal computer.

The technology is 3D printing, which is exactly what it sounds like. Imagine your standard printer placing one layer of material on top of another, according to a strict template, leaving you with complete objects – mouse traps, shower curtains, whatever you were just about to add to that endless list…

The world’s tallest hospital gets a makeover

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:19:47 +0000

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Work is about to begin on Guy’s Tower, London, giving its crumbling walls a sleek new shell.

The Shard may be attracting admiring glances from far-flung corners of London, but another tower in its shadow has a more interesting story to tell.

London gets wireless charging for EVs

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:01:15 +0000

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Transport authorities hope wireless charging will increase the take-up of electric vehicles.

If you think it’s strange to plug your car into the mains overnight, then how about this for something even weirder: a recharge that’s completely wireless. Just park over a special pad, and your electric car’s batteries start to charge.

Historic buildings embrace the future

Fiona King — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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Our buildings have been adapting to survive over centuries of modernisation. Now, they are facing up to new challenges, writes Fiona King.

As a self-confessed enthusiast of all things heritage, I love the stately homes, ancient churches, and many of the other beautiful historic buildings that Britain has been building for centuries.

But I’m even more excited when I discover that these buildings are not what they seem: when they reveal adaptations and additions that are surprising, creative and even challenging. And this is happening more and more. Once considered static, sacred and untouchable, the rhetoric around our heritage buildings has moved towards one of managed change and conservation, rather than simple preservation.

It’s time luxury took a lead on sustainability, says Sally Uren

Sally Uren — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:15:00 +0000

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Just showing off isn’t enough. Forum for the Future’s Deputy Chief Executive has new hopes for the world of high-end goods and experiences.

Can luxury be sustainable? Surely it’s an irrelevant question, given another record leap in levels of global carbon dioxide?

Think again. One of the biggest drivers of carbon emissions is consumption, and a key driver of consumption is the desire for social status. Right now, owning luxury products equals status for many people across the globe. And as entire economies lift themselves out of poverty and aspire to the lifestyles of the West, the demand for luxury goods and services is rocketing. Luxury may not make us healthier or happier, but at least we can show off.

Featured Partners

Featured partners:

Jaguar Land Rover

Marks & Spencer

Unilever