Women and girls across much of the developing world lack access to menstrual products. This means that for at least a week or so every month, many girls don’t go to school, so they fall behind educationally and often never catch up economically.
Many conventional menstrual products have traditionally been made of hydrogels made from toxic petrochemicals, so there has been a push to make them out of biomaterials. But this usually means cellulose from wood, which is in high demand for other purposes and isn’t readily available in many parts of the globe. So Alex Odundo found a way to solve both of these problems: making maxi pads out of sisal, a drought-tolerant agave plant that grows readily in semi-arid climates like his native Kenya.
Putting an invasive species to work
Sisal is an invasive plant in rural Kenya, where it is often planted as livestock fencing and feedstock. It doesn’t require fertilizer, and its leaves can be harvested all year long over a five- to seven-year span. Odundo and his partners in Manu Prakash’s lab at Stanford University developed a process to generate soft, absorbent material from the sisal leaves. It relies on treatment with dilute peroxyformic acid (1 percent) to increase its porosity, followed by washing in sodium hydroxide (4 percent) and then spinning in a tabletop blender to enhance porosity and make it softer.
They tested their fibers with a mixture of water mixed with glycerol—to make it thicker, like blood—and found that it is as absorbent as the cotton used in commercially available maxi pads. It was also as absorbent as wood pulp and more absorbent than fibers prepared from other biomaterials, including hemp and flax. Moreover, their process is less energy-intensive than conventional processing procedures, which are typically performed at higher temperatures and pressures.
In a cradle-to-gate carbon footprint life cycle analysis, including sisal cultivation, harvesting, manufacturing, and transportation, sisal cellulose microfiber production fared roughly the same as production of cellulose microfiber from wood and much better than that from cotton in terms of both carbon footprint and water consumption, possibly because cotton requires so much upstream fertilizer. Much of the footprint comes from transportation, highlighting how useful it can be to make products like this in the same communities that need them.
Science for the greater good
This is not Odundo’s first foray into utilizing sisal; at Olex Techno Enterprises in Kisumu, Kenya, he has been making machines to turn sisal leaves into rope for over 10 years. This benefits local farmers since sisal rope and even sisal fibers sell for ten times as much as sisal leaves. In addition to making maxi pads, Odundo also built a stove that burns sawdust, rice husks, and other biodegradable waste products.
By reducing wood stoves, he is reducing deforestation and improving the health of the women who breathe in the smoke of the cookfires. Adoption of such stoves have been a goal of environmentalists for years, and although a number of prototypes have been developed by mostly male engineers in developed countries, they have not been widely used because they are not that practical or appealing to the mostly female cooks in developing countries—the people who actually need to cook with them, yet were not consulted in their design.
Manu Prakash’s lab’s website proclaims that “we are dedicated toward inventing and distributing ‘frugal science’ tools to democratize access to science.” Partnering with Alex Odundo to manufacture menstrual products in the low-income rural communities that most need them seems like the apotheosis of that goal.
We have all seen the gloomy headlines over the past week. VC funding for European tech startups will have dropped by a whopping $45bn in 2023. However, some sectors, such as build world climate tech are faring… less horribly than others.
Specifically, a new report by sustainability investor A/O released today has found that despite the global downturn, climate tech is attracting as much as 70% of built world VC investment — up from around only 20% five years ago. In addition, investment in early stage rounds in European startups in the sector has, for the first time, exceeded that in North America.
The built world includes anything that is human-made and created to adapt the natural environment into a habitable and usable area for the purpose of living, working, and playing. This includes architecture and parks, and covers everything from road infrastructure to building construction and operations. Nearly 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings — a number that is set to double by 2050 if left unchecked.
According to the report by A/O, the largest European built world VC firm, the trend has been driven by the energy crisis along with mounting pressures from regulators to decarbonise the real estate and construction industries.
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Indeed, while total venture capital funding has dropped by over 30% in the first half of 2023, and climate tech overall lost 40%, built world climate tech only saw a 13% decrease in funding.
“The built world is not immune to the wider macroeconomic challenges in the tech and startup world in 2023,” Gregory Dewerpe, Managing Partner at London-based A/O commented. “However, climate themes have proven more resilient relative to the wider venture market, and within the built world specifically, we have observed both a more muted downturn and faster recovery.”
Meanwhile, not all themes throughout the sector fared equally well. While retrofit installers, grid storage, infrastructure monitoring, and renewable energy procurement continue to see the most investment, areas such as water efficiency and heat pump technology remain significantly underfunded.
The report also found that for the first time Europe and North America now see the same dollars invested for early stage built world climate tech. Germany and the UK grew significantly (+73% and +27% respectively), while the US contracted (-32%). Indeed, the top three cities for dollars invested were all European — London, Berlin, and Munich.
“It’s great to see Europe’s ecosystem continue to grow with early-stage investment in Europe on par with North America for the first time, showcasing that some of the most exciting innovation is coming out of the continent,” Dewerpe continued.
On a more sombre note, later-stage rounds have suffered the most with total investment volumes and median deal size dropping -53%.
With COP28 underway in Dubai making it again glaringly obvious just how little lawmakers are prepared to bend for the sake of future generations of Earthlings, the release of the first “green filter” generative AI search chatbot could not have been more timely.
Berlin-based Ecosia, the world’s largest not-for-profit search engine, hopes the launch of its new product will assist users in making better choices for the planet, and further differentiate its offerings from the “monolithic giants” of internet search.
Powered by OpenAI’s API, Ecosia’s chatbot has a “green answers” option. This triggers a layered green persona that will provide users with more sustainable results and answers. Say, suggest train rides over air travel.
GenAI + DMA = search market disruption?
Ecosia, which uses the ad revenue from its site (read, all its profits) to plant trees across the globe, is among the first independent search engines to roll out its own GenAI-powered chatbot. When speaking to TNW last month, Ecosia founder and CEO Christian Kroll stated how important it was for small independent players to stay up to date with the technology.
Further, he highlighted the opportunities generative AI could present in terms of disrupting the status quo in the internet search market. “I think there is potential for us to innovate as well — and maybe even leapfrog some of the established players,” he said.
Upon the launch of the company’s “green chatbot,” Kroll today added that the past year had introduced more change to the internet search landscape than the previous 14 combined (Ecosia was founded in 2009). “Generative AI has the potential to revolutionise the search market — no longer does it cost hundreds of billions to develop best-in-class search technologies,” he said, adding that Ecosia was targeting a “global increase in search engine market share.”
Something else that could potentially disrupt the market is the coming into play of the EU Digital Markets Act. From March 2024 onwards, consumers will no longer be “encouraged” to use default apps on their devices (say Safari web browser on an iPhone, or Google Maps on an Android device). This may come to include offering users a “choice screen” when setting up a device, which would invite them to select which browsers, search engines, and virtual assistants to install, rather than defaulting to the preferences of Apple and Android. Ecosia says it is “pushing hard” for this provision.
Green chatbot powered by clean energy
Many companies pay lip service to sustainability. Ecosia actually puts its money where its mouth is. A few years ago, its founder turned Ecosia into a steward-owned company. This means that no shares can be sold at a profit or owned by people outside of the company. In addition, no profits can be taken out of the company — as previously mentioned, all profits go to Ecosia’s tree-planting endeavours.
“It [tree planting] is one of the most effective measures we can take to fight the climate crisis. But unfortunately, it’s often not done properly. So that’s why it also gets a lot of criticism,” Kroll told TNW.
“We’re trying to define the standards of what good tree planting means. So first of all, you count the trees that survived, not just the ones that you have planted — then you also have to check on them.” This, we should add, falls under the purview of Ecosia’s Chief Tree Planting Officer. To date, the community has planted over 187,000,000 trees and counting.
In addition, Ecosia’s search engine is powered by solar energy — accounting for 200% of the carbon emitted from the server usage and broader operations.
LLMs and CO2 are still an undisclosed relationship
You may ask how adding generative AI to a search function is compatible with an environmental agenda. After all, Google’s use of generative AI alone could use as much energy as a small-ish country.
Ecosia admits that it does not yet have “oversight of the carbon emissions created by LLM-based genAI functions,” since OpenAI does not openly share this information. However, initial testing indicates that the new GenAI function will increase CO2 emissions by 5%, Ecosia said, for which it will increase investment in solar power, regenerative agriculture, and other nature-based solutions.
Environmental credentials aside, a search engine still has to perform when it comes to its core function. “For us to compete against monolithic giants that have a 99% market share, we have to offer our users a product they’ll want to use day in, day out,” Michael Metcalf, chief product officer at Ecosia, shared. “That means not only offering a positive impact on climate action, but a best-in-class search engine that can go head-to-head with the likes of Bing and Google.”
Metcalf added that user testing had shown very positive feedback on the company’s sustainability-minded AI chatbot. “We’re going to market with generative AI products before peers precisely because we want to grow: Grow our user base, grow our profits, and then grow our positive climate impact — which is mission critical for our warming planet.”
Renewable energies like wind and solar are clean, abundant, and cheap — but notoriously unpredictable. That’s why so much time and money has been pumped into scaling energy storage solutions: we need to keep the lights on even when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
While lithium-ion batteries have received the bulk of this investment, there’s another kid on the block that could be cheaper and greener. In an ironic twist, the whole system is powered by the same molecule it is attended to fight — carbon dioxide.
Imaginatively, it is called the CO2 battery. The way it works is relatively simple. CO2 gets stored in a gigantic dome. When charging, the system pulls the gas from the dome, compresses it into a liquid and stores it in big carbon steel tanks. The compression process also produces heat which is stored in ‘bricks’ made of steel shot and quartzite for later use.
Then, when power is needed, the liquid carbon dioxide is heated up using the hot bricks, rapidly turning it back into a gas — which refills the dome. On its way back to the dome, however, the gas spins a turbine, producing electricity.
And what about all the CO2 to fill that dome, you may ask? Well, it’s a closed-loop system so you only need to inject gas into the dome once across the battery’s entire 30-year lifespan. So by using a pinch of CO2 it can support the rollout of renewable energies that can cut our emission of the gas altogether.
‘Half the cost of lithium-ion’
The brainchild of Italian startup Energy Dome, the battery builds upon existing compressed air and liquid air energy storage technologies. Except, the use of CO2 brings a couple of distinct advantages.
Pure carbon dioxide is a lot denser than air, which means you can store the same amount of energy in a much smaller space. Up to ten times smaller than compressed air, in fact. And while liquid air energy storage is admittedly more space efficient than either CO2 or compressed air, it must be cooled to almost -200 degrees Celcius to achieve the desired results. This requires a lot of energy, which cuts efficiency, and is why liquid air energy storage has struggled to compete with other storage technologies on cost.
But affordability is exactly where CO2 batteries excel. They’re built using steel, carbon dioxide, and water. That’s it. The rest of the components — like pipes, compressors, and turbines — can be purchased off the shelf. According to Energy Dome, this means its system can produce electricity at half the cost of lithium-ion batteries.
Those are some impressive figures, which have naturally caught the attention of investors. At COP28 last week, Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and the European Investment Bank jointly committed €60mn to help Energy Dome build its first commercial-scale plant on the island of Sardinia, Italy. This adds to the €80mn in funding the startup has already secured.
‘Game-changing technology’
The CO2 battery will store some 20MW of renewable energy supplied by nearby solar and wind farms on the island. Energy Dome already built a demonstration plant on the island last year. The smaller, 2.5MW, facility is currently operating and transmitting power to the grid.
Gelsomina Vigliotti, vice president at the EIB, called the initiave an “inspiring example of game-changing technology that we need more of in Europe and worldwide”.
Energy Dome’s founder, Claudio Spadacini, said the Sardinia plant will be the “first of many identical full-scale CO2 batteries”. The company said that the modular, simple design of its CO2 battery means it can be scaled relatively rapidly.
The company has already signed a deal with Norwegian wind energy giant Ørsted to install “one or more” of the CO2 batteries at its sites in Europe. If all goes well, construction on the first storage facility using Energy Dome’s CO2 battery could begin in 2024.
While lithium-ion batteries will no doubt continue to play an important role in the energy transition, the negative environmental and social consequences of their production have been thrown into the spotlight in recent years. They rely on a number of rare earth metals like lithium, nickel, and cobalt, the mining of which has been linked to extensive environmental degradation and even human rights abuses the world over.
If CO2 batteries can circumvent some of these impacts and undercut lithium-ion on cost, who knows, perhaps they could become the next big thing in energy storage.
The eastern bluebird isn’t simply beautiful to look at. Its feathers also feature a unique structure that could revolutionise sustainable applications such as batteries and water filtration.
Specifically, the brilliant blue of the bird’s wings isn’t the result of colour pigmentation. Instead, it’s due to a network of channels with a diameter of a few hundred nanometres, traversing the feathers.
This network structure inspired researchers at ETH Zurich to replicate this material in the lab. They have now developed a synthetic material that exhibits the same structural design of the bluebird’s feathers — with the potential to deliver practical use cases, such as improved battery life.
The researchers experimented with a transparent silicone rubber that can be both stretched and deformed. They placed it in an oily solution, leaving it to swell for several days in an oven heated at 60 °C. They then cooled and extracted it.
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The team observed that the rubber’s nanostructure had changed during the procedure and they identified similar network structures to the ones in the bluebird’s feathers. The only essential difference was the thickness of the formed channels: the synthetic material was 800 nanometres next to the feather’s 200 nanometres.
The achievement was a result of the new method based on the phase separation of a polymer matrix and an oily solution. Phase separation is a common physics phenomenon we’ve all witnessed in our everyday life. For instance, think of a salad dressing made of oil and vinegar — the substances separate unless vigorously shaken and separate again when the shaking stops.
But it’s also possible to mix the substances with heating and separate them again with cooling — and that’s exactly what the scientists did in the lab.
“We are able to control and select the conditions in such a way that channels are formed during phase separation. We have succeeded in halting the procedure before the two phases merge with each other completely again,” said Carla Fernández Rico, lead author of the study.
A notable advantage of this method is that the material remains scalable. “In principle you could use a piece of rubbery plastic of any size. However, you’d then also need correspondingly large containers and ovens,” added Rico.
The technology could prove useful in batteries by replacing liquid electrolytes, which facilitate the transfer of lithium ions between the electrodes, but often react with the ions and, this way, reduce battery capacity and health. Solid electrolytes with a network structure like the one developed by the researchers would not only eliminate the issue, but also enable good ion transport and increase battery life.
Water filters are another potential field of application thanks to the network’s transport properties and large surface area, which could enable the removal of contaminants, including bacteria and other harmful water particles.
Rico aims to further develop her research with a view to sustainability and notes that the team’s work is far from over.
“The product is still a long way from being ready for market,” she said. “While the rubbery material is cheap and easy to obtain, the oily phase is quite expensive. A less expensive pair of materials would be required here.” Perhaps DeepMind’s deep learning tool could be of service.
The world’s first transatlantic flight with 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has been attacked as “greenwashing” by critics.
The Tuesday trip from London to New York on a Vrigin Atlantic 787 has been celebrated by airlines and politicians as a “milestone” in the journey to net zero. Scientists and climate campaigners, however, have poured scorn on these claims.
Opinions are divided over the potential of SAFs, which derive from various alternatives to fossil fuels. For Tuesday’s flight, the SAF was made primarily from waste fats and plant sugars, according to a Virgin Atlantic factsheet [PDF] shared with TNW. The airline expects the resulting carbon emissions to be 70% lower than those produced by petroleum-based jet fuel.
Shai Weiss, Virgin Atlantic’s CEO, said the Boeing 787 test flight would prove that SAF “can be used as a safe, drop-in replacement for fossil-derived jet fuel.” She added that it was “the only viable solution for decarbonising long-haul aviation.”
The reactions from the UK government — which partly funded the fight — have been even more optimistic. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak praised the journey as “the first net zero transatlantic flight,” while the Department for Transport declared that it was “ushering in a new era of guilt-free flying.” Both claims were promptly pilloried by environmental groups.
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Cait Hewitt, policy director of the Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), said promises that the trip will take us closer to “guilt-free flying” were “a joke.” She notes that SAFs currently comprise around 0.1% of global aviation fuel — and will be extremely hard to scale sustainably.
“Trying to scale up production of alternative fuel, using the waste products of fundamentally unsustainable industries like intensive animal agriculture, or using unrecyclable plastic — as the UK government is planning to do – is hardly a sustainable solution,” Hewitt told TNW.
She added that SAFs also emit as much CO2 as kerosene at the tailpipe. This is because they’re still hydrocarbon fuels and produce the same volume of CO2 emissions as kerosene when combusted. According to the AEF, any CO2 reduction will be “net” savings made during the production phase — as with a carbon offset.
“Linking it to the idea of ‘guilt-free flying’ is deeply misleading and risks setting back a proper, honest discussion about how much we can fly while achieving climate goals,” Hewitt said. “If the public is led to believe the industry has found the solution to green flying, that could be environmentally harmful.”
The AEF’s concerns were echoed by Stay Grounded, a global network of climate crisis campaigners. The group described the flight as “greenwashing.”
Stay Grounded insists that SAF isn’t a net zero flight or even sustainable, as it relies on vast quantities of biofuels and inefficient use of renewables. The group also lambasted SAF as “wasting biomass and renewables on transport for the rich.” It said a more fitting term for the power source is “Fossil Fuel Substitutes” or “Agrofuels.”
“[The] fuel has been produced via a process which is a technological dead-end,” Finlay Asher, a former aerospace engineer at Rolls Royce and a member of Stay Grounded, said in a statement. “It can’t be sustainably scaled beyond a few percent of existing jet fuel use.”
Until truly green flying is possible, both the AEF and Stay Grounded say the only sustainable option is to dramatically reduce air travel. According to the aviation industry, that simply isn’t realistic.
The sector has also pointed to the social and economic benefits of SAF.
Like many airlines, Virgin Atlantic wants SAF to account for 10% of aviation fuel by 2030. The company predicts that this will contribute around £1.8bn (€2.1bn) in Gross Value Added to the UK, as well as more than 10,000 jobs.
Virgin Atlantic does, however, agree with the campaigners on one point: reaching SAF production at scale remains immensely challenging. To achieve this goal, the airline is calling for more government investment.
Scientists from Cranfield University in the UK are developing a kind of underwater wing for ships that could help decarbonise a sector responsible for more emissions than air travel.
Known as wave devouring propulsion technology, it is essentially a flapping foil system installed at the bottom of a ship’s hull that helps propel it along. Inspired by the tail fin of a whale, the system harnesses the kinetic energy of the waves to achieve propulsion without fuel.
As the wing flows through the water, it automatically flaps up and down generating thrust — much like when a bird glides through the air or a fish cruises through the water.
Just like a fish or a bird, however, the system won’t work unless there is an engine to provide initial power. But once a ship is cruising, the foils reduce the overall effort needed to push the boat forward.
This graphic from Norwegian startup Wavefoil illustrates the basic concept:
Lab-scale test models of the wave-devouring propulsion system at Cranfield’s ocean laboratory found it could reduce the fuel use of ships by up to 15%. While that might not sound all that much, it is a relatively simple technology that could be retrofitted onto existing vessels. In combination with the plethora of other technologies being developed to decarbonise shipping — like giant windwings or solar sails — the foils could help set the global shipping industry on course for net zero emissions.
The concept of using flapping foils to generate thrust from flowing water was discovered and demonstrated by German researchers over a century ago. But for a long time, the process simply wasn’t well understood enough to scale on a practical level, and the urgency to cut fuel use wasn’t as great as it is today.
Over the last few years, however, there have been a few attempts to commercialise wave devouring propulsion and bring it to market. Two companies, Wavefoil from Norway and Liquid Robotics from the US, have shown the most promise.
Wavefoil made headlines in 2019 when it installed retractable bow foils on a ship for the first time in history. The giant fibreglass foils are designed to fold up into the ship’s hull when not in use, the first technology of its kind to do so. This means the foils can be retracted during heavy storms (they can withstand wave heights up to 6m, not more) and when docking.
By harnessing the up and down motion of the waves, the foils help save fuel but they also increase comfort in rough seas, said their creators. Having raised €5mn so far (the latest round being a grant in 2022 from Innovation Norway), Wavefoil has installed its technology on several ships since its founding.
While Wavefoil is tackling bigger ships like ferries, Liquid Robotics has developed an autonomous surface vehicle called Waveglider. Fitted with solar panels and a wave propulsion system, the ocean-going robot can spend up to a year at sea collecting data for research and defence applications without any human intervention. The company was acquired by Boeing in 2016 and is currently valued at around $200mn, according to Dealroom data.
While still a nascent field, these two companies have shown that wave-devouring technology has the potential to offer a surprisingly simple solution to cutting the energy consumption of ships great and small. Back at Cranfield, lead researcher Dr Liang Yang envisions the technology will be used for all kinds of maritime applications in the future — from waste-collecting robots to giant cargo ships.
Check out this video to nerd-out on Wavefoil’s technology:
Construction is a tough job, and in Europe there is a chronic shortage of workers to build the homes, schools, and roads we use every single day. So why not get a robot to do the hard work so we don’t have to?
That’s exactly what researchers at ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab in Switzerland are working on. They’ve trained an autonomous excavator to construct stone walls using boulders weighing several tonnes — without any human interference. In the machine’s first assignment, it built a six metre-high and 65 metre-long loading bearing wall. If scaled, the solution could to pave the way for faster, more sustainable construction.
Using LiDAR sensors, the excavator autonomously draws a 3D map of the construction site and identifies existing building blocks and stones for the wall. Specifically designed tools and machine vision (the ability of a computer to see) enable the excavator to scan and grab large stones in its immediate environment. It can also register their approximate weight as well as their centre of gravity.
An algorithm then determines the best position for each stone, and the excavator places each piece in the desired location to within a centimetre of accuracy. The autonomous machine can place 20 to 30 stones in a single consignment – about as many as one delivery could supply.
The digger, named HEAP, is a modified Menzi Muck M545 developed by the researchers to test the potential of autonomous machines for construction. Because HEAP is so precise, it opens up the possibility of using locally sourced stones and rubble for the construction of walls, instead of new material like bricks.
The wall was constructed at an industrial park next to Zurich Airport, managed by Eberhard construction company. The firm is using the site, and various ETH Zurich technologies, to demonstrate ways to make construction more circular — by minimising waste to the greatest extent possible.
The use of autonomous diggers has been on the cards for a while now, not just in Switzerland. In 2017, US startup Built Robotics was founded to bring robot diggers into the mainstream. At the time, CEO Noah Ready-Campbell predicted that fully autonomous equipment would become commonplace on construction sites before fully autonomous cars hit public roads. But the idea has yet to advance beyond the prototype stage.
Automation is easiest to implement on repetitive tasks with predictable outcomes — like in manufacturing assembly lines. But a construction site is a complex, messy environment where safety if paramount. Similar to autonomous cars, the world is simply not yet ready for the widespread deployment of autonomous diggers, cranes, and trucks.
However, there are other applications of robotics technologies in construction that are being implemented right now. For instance, UK startup hyperTunnel combines swarm robotics and AI to excavate tunnels up to 10 times faster than conventional methods. The proposed process involves injecting the lining of a tunnel into the ground and then removing the waste using a swarm of small autonomous robotic vehicles.
Another area of rapid growth is the construction of homes using giant 3D printers, like those developed by Danish company COBOD. In the UK, a 36-home housing development is currently being built this way. Its proponents claim the huge robots will build the homes faster, safer, and more sustainably than traditional methods.
As the minutes ticked by, the paper-dunking sound of files hitting the digital bin became oddly satisfying. As I hunted through the dusty corners of my laptop looking for unneeded documents, duplicate photos, and, the ultimate treasure, an old video file, I got a rush seeing the storage space bar on my laptop dwindle down by megabytes and gigabytes. But perhaps the most satisfying moment of all was the crinkling sound of the bin being emptied at the end of the hour.
This was not a type A personality’s fantasy, this was Miele X’s Digital Clean-Up Challenge. Unlike the first time I visited the company’s hip new workspace in Amsterdam’s Zuid district, this time there was a mission: to clear as many unneeded OneDrive files and emails from your laptop as possible within one hour.
In the past, Miele X had participated in several different physical environmental clean-up initiatives, including Clean the Beat organised by Bye Bye Plastic. This time the team wanted to see how they could continue to be more environmentally conscious on a daily basis.
As the heart of digital services at Miele, this group of tech-focused employees spend the entirety of their working day on their devices. The fact is that, even if we recycle religiously, navigate to work every day on a bike, and take part in regular park clean-ups, our digital carbon footprint is hard to tangibly quantify. The Digital Clean-Up Challenge aimed to do just that: drive awareness of and build a movement towards green IT internally.
But does keeping inboxes and OneDrive folders clean really have that big an impact on the environment?
Just how bad is digital build-up for the environment
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What I was shocked to discover was that, when comparing personal devices, networks, and data centres, personal devices are the highest energy users and polluters. Although we’re continuously hearing about electricity-sucking data centres, user equipment and the manufacturing of it is a bigger problem. A whopping 83% of emissions come from production. And we replace our personal devices much more regularly than networks and data centres replace their equipment.
Vergeynst also shared some simple ways we can lower our digital carbon footprint on a regular basis. For example, turning off your video during a call when you don’t need it.
Of course, keeping the camera on during meetings is important because of the human impact you get from seeing someone’s facial expressions, but if you’re watching a webinar for an hour then having everyone else switch off their cameras is good practice.
Instead of sending an attachment, send a link when possible to lighten the weight of your emails.
And, most important of all, “buy less and keep it longer.” During Vergeynst’s presentation, we found out it takes 200 kg of material to manufacture a smartphone.
Opinions vary on the actual impact that sending and storing emails has on the environment. Author Mike Berners-Lee argues in How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything, that email usage generates up to 40 kilograms of CO2 annually, the equivalent of driving 200 kilometres. Yet, an academic study by researchers in Canada argues that sending and storing fewer emails has a minimal impact compared to simply using our devices less.
“The Digital Clean-Up in itself is more like an awareness exercise. The key element is about understanding that this is a part of something much bigger. We need to start taking a deeper look at how we can lower the impact of the equipment we use and the data we transmit and store. The goal is to change habits,” says Vergeynst.
An example he posed is the emergence of AI. It’s such a transformative technology that can really make a difference in the workplace. Of course, it also generates more emissions. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it.
“It’s about understanding and choosing, rather than just saying it’s bad,” Vergeynst explained.
And of course, company-wide initiatives will have a much bigger impact than individual efforts.
Amid a global race for green tech sovereignty, the European Parliament on Tuesday passed the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA) — a bill intended to boost the EU’s manufacturing output in the technologies needed for decarbonisation.
Initially proposed by the Commission in March, the NZIA sets a couple ambitious goals. Firstly, it seeks to ensure that at least 40% of the bloc’s net-zero technology demand is produced domestically by 2030. Secondly, it aims to capture 25% of the global market share for these technologies.
To achieve this, the act proposes several key actions to drive investment in domestic production of strategic technologies, spanning from solar and wind power to carbon capture, battery storage, and renewable hydrogen.
The measures include the acceleration of permits, a designated platform to enable the cooperation between the Commission and member states, the increase of skilled workers, and regulatory sandboxes member states can use to test innovative technologies.
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With their Tuesday vote, MEPs suggested the expansion of the draft legislation’s scope to cover the entire supply chain of net-zero technologies, including components, materials, and production machinery. They also proposed a more comprehensive list of technologies and added nuclear fission, fusion technologies, and sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs).
“Without these steps to reduce the administrative burden, speed up processes, and increase public investment in our industry and innovation, Europe would face decarbonisation by deindustrialisation. This proposal shows we can prevent this”, said lead MEP Christian Ehler.
To finance this endeavour, the union will leverage support from funding programmes such as InvestEU, the Innovation Fund, and the upcoming European Sovereignty Fund. An overall budget plan has yet to be disclosed, but the bloc will have to compete with the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — a $369bn subsidy package for North American-made green tech that has already raised fears over its potential to lure EU companies to the other side of the Atlantic.
Meanwhile, China accounts for 90% of global investments in net-zero tech manufacturing facilities, and the bloc still heavily relies on Beijing for strategic products such as photovoltaic components, EVs, and batteries.
It remains to be seen whether the NZIA — subject to approval by the Council — will manage to reverse this trend and boost the EU’s competitiveness and independence in the sector.
For UK battery startup NyoBolt, six seems to be the magic number. First, in June it showcased an EV that could be fully charged in just six minutes (a claimed record). And today it unveiled a new kind of supercharger that can also be recharged in — you guessed it — six minutes.
Dubbed Bolt-ee, it essentially looks like a four-wheeled metal box with an interactive touchscreen for a face. Unlike fixed charging stations, this fast-charging, direct current, 300kW device is fully mobile.
“Bolt-ee can reach a parked vehicle in any bay, delivering up to 100 miles of range in under 10 minutes, with a battery life of over 10,000 charging cycles,” the company told TNW.
Bolt-ee was designed to solve one of the biggest barriers preventing the widespread adoption of electric cars — a lack of charging infrastructure.
Globally, 14% of all new cars in 2022 sold were electric, up from 9% in 2021. In Europe, that figure is higher, at 22%.
However, the booming demand for EVs risks outpacing the supply of the technology needed to charge them. In 2021, the EU had an estimated 375,000 public charging stations, but experts predict it will need to build at least 3 million new ones by 2030.
Obstacles such as planning permission, lengthy construction works, and connection to the grid have all delayed progress.
The Bolt-ee looks to sidestep these hurdles. It acts like a massive power bank — but for your car. Aside from being used in homes, car parks, and gas stations, the startup says the mobile charger could also be placed aboard recovery vehicles to help drivers stranded on the side of the road because they’re out of juice.
“NyoBolt’s ready-to-deploy technology, which will go into production in early 2024, will help accelerate the adoption of EVs — particularly for drivers who may not be able to charge at home,” said the company’s chief scientist and co-founder Professor Clare Grey.
Founded in 2020, NyoBolt has already secured almost $100mn in funding, according to Dealroom data. It operates an anode-manufacturing facility in Cambridge, UK, and recently opened a new battery factory in Boston, US.
Back in June, the startup unveiled an electric sports car concept based on the Lotus Elise that could be fully recharged in less than six minutes. The car was fitted with a lightweight battery pack developed by NyoBolt that provides a claimed range of about 250km on a single charge.
NyoBolt’s VP of engineering Steve Hutchins said his team have charged and discharged their battery at this incredibly fast rate over 2500 times with a total degradation in the battery’s ability to hold electricity of less than 15%.
How is that possible you may be wondering? Basically, it comes down to tinkering with lithium-ion batteries to accept more electrical charge in a smaller amount of time.
“To put a lot of power in, you need to get a lot of current through it. To get a lot of current through, a lot of charge needs to flow in and out of the materials,” explained Nyobolt co-founder and CEO Sai Shivareddy.
Essentially, NyoBolt has invented a new type of material to accept that level of power — but is remaining hush-hush on the details.
In an industry where range anxiety and slow charging times still remain a significant hurdle, a battery with a six-minute charging time could be a game-changer. Whether these battery packs could be scaled up to millions of units however remains to be seen.
While the glittering lights of Europe’s cities hold the promise of new opportunities, ideas, and fun, they also hold smog and a growing air pollution problem. Not to mention the fact that it’s hard to live your dream city life as you’re trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic or spending your morning folding yourself into one metro after another. As the population of urban dwellers increases across cities from Stockholm to Milan, getting from point A to point B will only get that much more difficult.
“We believe it doesn’t make sense for people to spend one year of their lives commuting while sitting in queues and congestion,” says Fredrik Hanell, Director of Impact Ventures at EIT Urban Mobility, an initiative started by the European Union to address some of the biggest mobility challenges facing Europe’s cities.
Hanell’s focus is on identifying startups with viable solutions to these problems and providing them with support through matchmaking and funding opportunities. Since its inception in 2019, EIT Urban Mobility has invested in 86 startups.
With an eye on the latest innovations and tech trends in mobility, we asked Hanell: will our futures actually be filled with drones and hoverboards?
Cities are changing shape
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Perhaps one of the most apparent changes that are taking place across Europe’s cities is the reclaiming of busy central streets. From Brussels, where the once busy Place la Bourse has been repaved and designated pedestrian-only, to the more cautious “Open Streets” project in Bucharest, which shuts down central streets for vehicles over a weekend and hosts events to get people out and about.
“We don’t hate cars, but we see that the natural place for them needs to change. We need to look at initiatives that can contribute to change in the city. One of the consequences you see from this is that life expectancy increases, accidents decrease, and of course, pollution decreases,” says Hanell.
Rather than a new initiative, this can be seen more as a return to the historic plaza, piazza, or plateía that Europe’s cities have historically been built around, giving it an advantage in this new urban movement over sprawling car traffic-built cities like Los Angeles or Hong Kong.
In fact, EIT Urban Mobility is headquartered in Barcelona which was one of the first to introduce ‘superblocks,’ or small traffic-regulated groups of city blocks, in 2016. The most recent study of the project found there has been a 25% decrease in NO2 levels and a 17% decrease in PM10 particle levels. To put this into perspective, studies estimate that, if implemented more widely across the city, the initiative could prevent almost 700 premature deaths a year.
However, while this project has been lauded by city planners in fellow EU cities, some residents in the neighbourhoods where it’s been introduced have been less than enthusiastic. The pilot superblock project in the Poblenou neighbourhood faced political and civil society resistance. Several court cases have been brought against the project with a judge ruling in September 2023 that superblocks in the Eixample district would have to be restored to their former state.
Therein lies the quintessential challenge of urban mobility. Put simply, cities are full of people with different needs, jobs, attitudes, beliefs, political leanings, and behaviours. Any change being introduced by city planners has to come with a comprehensive plan to get residents on board. While superblocks might be a great concept for a parent who has more safe space to take their kids out, it might be a bigger burden for a business owner who needs to find a new way to transport goods.
Enhanced logistics planning will be key as traffic flows change. With this in view, one startup EIT Urban Mobility has invested in is Vonzu, a SaaS delivery and logistics management platform, aimed at giving businesses a full overview of all their urban deliveries from supply chain to couriers. As urban logistics become more complex with changing streets and caps on emissions, AI-powered recommendations and automation will be a necessity.
Along with reducing pollution and congestion, city planners also hope these changes will encourage citizens to choose healthier and more sustainable transport options. Rather than taking a car or bus to work, pedestrian zones and bike lanes could encourage more walking and biking. But changing behavioural patterns is even more complex than changing cityscapes.
Another interesting startup EIT Urban Mobility has invested in is Nudged, a company that encourages sustainable choices through behavioural design. A pilot in Gotland was able to reduce car commuting by 14% simply by ‘nudging’ commuters to choose more climate-friendly options. Another in Gothenburg helped make users 76% more positive about switching to cycling.
Waterways make a comeback
Many of Europe’s historic cities flourished along rivers and canals as boats were the fastest and most efficient way to transport large cargo, before the invention of motorised vehicles. These waterways were key to the movement of both goods and people.
Now, with the evolution of sustainable, autonomous mobility, we’re seeing a revival in waterborne transportation routes. “There are a lot of cities in Europe where public transport across harbours, rivers, and lakes could contribute a lot to changing the mobility patterns and making it much more environmentally friendly,” Hanell says.
On June 8th, Stockholm launched the world’s first commercial autonomous, electric ferry providing a shortcut for passengers across the harbour between Kungsholmen and Södermalm. Solar panels on the roof allow it to charge during the day, and it can be charged via electric plug at night. The ferry, built by Zeabuz, features radar, lidar, cameras, ultrasonic sensors, AI, and GPS technology which allow it to scan and navigate the waters safely.
Meanwhile, the city of Paris is planning to introduce its own smart ferries, built by Norwegian startup Hyke, to provide extra transport routes across the Seine for visitors during the Summer Olympics in 2024.
Of course, cars aren’t going anywhere…
No matter how many pedestrian and cycling-friendly lanes we build in our cities, we’ll still need cars for longer haul journeys.
While the EU’s shift towards electric vehicles is a great step towards reducing both air and noise pollution, it’s also increasing its dependence on batteries. In fact, the EU predicts EV battery demand and production will increase at a rapid rate until 2030, but the bloc faces a looming shortage of raw materials to meet future demand. As Hanell explains, policymakers are already concerned about the effect this could have across the bloc:
One of the big challenges of Europe is that we’re currently very dependent on China and importing batteries. There are a lot of discussions going on about limiting the import of Chinese electric vehicles and also how we can make ourselves more independent of battery technologies.
Swedish startup Elonroad believes the solution could lay in electrifying Europe’s roads. Much like a power bank, the company has developed a conductive rail that can charge cars as they pass over them on the highway or trucks as they’re parked at a loading bay.
“If vehicles can charge while they’re driving or when they’re parked, then you don’t need as much battery capacity,” Hanell says.
The startup is already beginning a large project to electrify highways across France.
Another interesting startup working to meet this challenge is Circu Li-ion which aims to maximise the potential of each battery through upcycling. Rather than focusing on producing new batteries, giving existing batteries a second life is a great way to save CO2 and get the most out of the valuable raw materials inside. And investors are seeing the potential here too. Circu Li-ion recently raised €8.5mn in seed funding.
The future of mobility in Europe won’t be the same
As Hanell emphasised, there is no one size fits all solution to Europe’s mobility challenges. Copenhagen, with its bicycle culture, won’t necessarily follow the same urban mobility path as Madrid. “There are local flavours of everything.”
While the future of urban mobility may not look like a sci-fi movie with flying cars dotting the horizon, Hanell posits that:
The best solutions are pretty much low tech but every once in a while we find these gems, these innovations that can help people change.
Want to learn more about the future of mobility in Europe? EIT Urban Mobility will be hosting a session at Slush 2023 on “Where to invest next in the mobility sector.” Fredrik Hanell and other experts will address topics like how investment in mobility differs from other sectors, the opportunities, traps and where the sector is heading in the coming years. Check it out on 1st of December, 11: 30 am GMT+2.