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Don’t blame plastics!

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A timely article from Chris Cheeseman, Professor of Materials Resources Engineering at Imperial College London and an Associate of the Grantham Institute. He stands up for the versatility of the plastics that have made them such a central part of modern life, but have also resulted in them ending up in places they shouldn’t.

Part of the challenge is to improve recycling rates. Not only in the UK but also amongst the 2 billion people in the world for whom there is no waste collection system. But it is also for designers, product developers and materials engineers to do more to design for recycling and for entrepreneurs to find ways to make more from waste in moves towards a circular economy.

Public concern about plastic pollution, partly catalysed by Blue Planet II, coupled with China’s decision to ban imports of low grade plastic waste for recycling, has created a ‘golden opportunity’ for change that needs to be grasped. Politicians have responded by promising regulations to reduce plastic waste and some companies have announced how they are reducing single use plastic in their products. But, Chris argues, the biggest impact will come from innovations in materials and design that helps create a more circular economy. He also argues that we desperately need to support the development of proper waste management in developing countries.

Read the full article ‘Don’t blame plastic, blame poor waste management‘ (19 February 2018), which contains lots more evidence and references, on the Grantham Institute web site.

WasteAidUK is a charity working to address waste management problems in developing countries and the challenges of the circular economy across the world.

Find out more about the Grantham Institute’s work on Plastic pollution in the ocean.

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The Conversation: Cities could save billions of pounds, while saving the planet – here’s how

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File 20171113 27635 1x8qpfh.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
from www.shutterstock.com

Andrew Sudmant, University of Leeds and Andy Gouldson, University of Leeds

National governments have historically led efforts to address climate change; setting the targets, planning the actions and then succeeding (or often failing) to achieve climate action goals. But increasingly, local, city and regional authorities are stepping up to tackle the challenge. Municipal governments are setting climate targets; corporations, investors and pension funds are funding local initiatives; and communities and individuals are driving the shift to a lower-carbon future.

Local actions have the potential to save as much as £7 billion each year across the 50 largest cities in the UK – that’s equivalent to £300 per year for every person in each of these cities – and create more than 90,000 years of extra employment. A range of measures could deliver striking savings for individual households (£2.3 billion annually), schools, hospitals, offices and other non-residential buildings (£1.2 billion annually) and industry (£510m annually).

To support further action from this diverse coalition of governments, business and citizens, we have worked with our fellow researchers at the University of Leeds – Joel Millward-Hopkins and Rafael Luciano Ortiz – to come up with emissions projections and action plans for every local authority, local enterprise partnership, region and country in the UK, working as part of the Can-Do Cities initiative. This initiative is designed to be used as a model by other cities and communities, to develop their own climate and energy strategies.

Huge potential

Our work shows that a wide range of actions can be taken to complement national policy and reduce emissions even further – all while delivering economic returns. Exploiting opportunities for climate action at a regional or local level could help cities to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 23%, over and above the reductions happening through measures that have been planned already.

Extra measures taken by cities can cut emissions even further.
Andrew Sudmant/University of Leeds, Author provided

What’s more, these measures can yield further social, economic and environmental benefits if they are effectively implemented. For instance, in Leeds, Yorkshire, investments in energy efficiency and retrofits in homes could reduce energy bills more than £80m pounds annually, helping the poorest households to afford to keep warm in the winter.

In London, investments in low-carbon industrial processes could save the entire industrial sector more than £161m annually, improving competitiveness and freeing up funds to hire new workers and invest in new technologies.

Meanwhile, in Birmingham, investments in commercial buildings, hospitals, schools and local shops to upgrade heating and cooling systems, appliances and lighting could save £46m annually, helping small business owners expand and public services improve. And in Glasgow, investments in low carbon actions across each of these sectors could generate 2,400 years of employment: the equivalent of 240 full-time jobs for ten years.

Priorities in order

To make this information readily accessible, the Can-Do Cities team have produced reports and generated league tables of the most cost and carbon-effective actions, revealing opportunities for low carbon investment for every locality, city or region in the UK. Below, you can see the league tables for Leeds.

The most effective ways of reducing carbon emissions for the city of Leeds.
Andrew Sudmant/University of Leeds, Author provided
The most cost-effective forms of climate action for the city of Leeds.
Andrew Sudmant/University of Leeds, Author provided

Of course, concerted efforts must to be made to actually realise these benefits. Significant investments are needed. In a typical local authority, the total cost of low carbon measures across all sectors is about 1% of the Gross Value Added (GVA) each year, for the next ten years. Even though these measures provide financial returns, they would benefit from support from central government.

Actions also need to be coordinated: land-use and transport developments must be planned with neighbouring cities and regions, in order to maximise the benefits.

The need for climate action must be embedded in the decisions made by local governments, businesses and citizens. Homes and offices are rarely designed with climate change as a primary consideration, and the same goes for transport networks and industrial plants. But the types of buildings and roads constructed today will influence the level of emissions coming from communities far into the future.

Climate action needs to be sustained, while adapting to advancements in technology, which promise to provide new ways of reducing emissions, and may significantly lower the cost of existing options. For example, the uptake of electric vehicles could have a dramatic impact on emissions, if prices continue to fall and the grid continues to become less reliant on energy from fossil fuels. And while batteries and small-scale renewables such as solar and wind power are still a relatively costly way to store and produce electricity, advances seem imminent.

The ConversationThese kinds of changes don’t undercut social, economic or environmental development; in fact, they contribute towards it. The analysis from our Can-do Cities team shows that reducing emissions can often lead to more liveable homes, more productive offices, improved urban mobility, and financial savings for industry: just the sort of improvements which all cities are looking to achieve.

Andrew Sudmant, Research Fellow in the Economics of Climate Smart Cities research programme, University of Leeds and Andy Gouldson, Professor of Environmental Policy and Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Interdisciplinary Research), University of Leeds

This article was originally published on 13 November 2017 on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Dezeen: Brewdog launches beer designed to “remind leaders to prioritise climate-change issues”

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Beer brand Brewdog has released a new drink, featuring both a recipe and packaging designed to raise awareness about the impact of climate change.

The beer is titled Make Earth Great Again, in reference to the slogan used by Donald Trump for his election campaign. It features packaging that shows the US president battling a polar bear, and a recipe that uses ingredients from areas affected by global warming.

Read the full article on the Dezeen web site (Published 11 November 2017)

The Conversation: Vanishing act – why pedestrians and cyclists disappear when it starts getting dark

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File 20171023 1695 1ubql06.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
Iakov Kalinin/Shutterstock

Jim Uttley, University of Sheffield

Picture the scene: it is 5:30pm on a Tuesday at the end of October and the streets are full of people walking and cycling home from work. The following week, at the same time, the number of walkers and cyclists has dropped by almost half. The only difference is the clocks have moved back one hour to mark the beginning of Daylight Saving Time.

Naturally, the number of people walking or cycling varies greatly at different times during the day. But twice every year, when the clocks change, researchers like myself get a rare opportunity to compare numbers of pedestrians and cyclists in the same hour of the day, but under different lighting conditions. This enables us to measure the impact that darkness has on how people choose to get around, while other influential factors such as the reason for travelling or the temperature remain largely unchanged.

Using open-source data from automated pedestrian and cyclist counters in a United States district, my colleagues and I analysed the number of pedestrians and cyclists in the same hour of the day, over a two-week period, both before and after the clocks changed.

Darkness effectively reduced the volume of pedestrians by 38% and the volume of cyclists by 27%, after taking into account any changes unrelated to light conditions.

Night and day

There are a number of reasons why people might prefer not to walk or cycle after dark. It’s more difficult to see the path when it’s dark and harder to spot potential trip hazards. Pedestrians have to spend more time looking down and are also less likely to be able to detect obstacles.

Darkness also makes it more difficult for walkers and cyclists to be seen by other road users. As a result, pedestrians are 1.7 times more likely to be hit by a vehicle while using a pedestrian crossing at night, compared with during the day.

Example pedestrian crossing in daylight (left) and after-dark (right)

Another reason people may not choose to walk or cycle when it is dark is because they feel less safe. One theory suggests that people assess the safety of an environment based on three things: the ability to see clearly for a distance, the presence of features which could conceal a threat and the potential to escape from the area. Therefore, most places are likely to feel less safe at night, because we cannot see as well in the dark.

Fighting the darkness

Ideally, people should be encouraged to walk or cycle, even when it turns dark, because of the huge potential health and environmental benefits. Of course, networks of public street lights have been combating darkness in cities since the 19th century, following the discovery of coal-gas as an illuminant by Scottish engineer William Murdoch. Smoking his pipe beside a fire one night, Murdoch decided to put coal dust in the pipe and put it in the fire. The bright flame that emerged from the mouthpiece prompted the revelation of using gas as a light source.

William Murdoch, pioneer of street gas-lighting.
Wikimedia Commons

But it’s increasingly important to use street lighting effectively to avoid wasting energy and creating needless light pollution, which can have negative effects on plants and animals. To that end, lots of research has been carried out to pinpoint the perfect level of lighting, which still enables pedestrians and cyclists to see effectively without wasting any energy.

Current guidelines for street lighting recommend average light levels of two to 15 lux, depending on the type of street. The evidence supporting these guidelines may be flawed however. The 2.5 GWh of energy used by street lighting every year may therefore be misplaced.

Laboratory research has been conducted to measure the impact of light spectrum and intensity on a pedestrian’s ability to detect a trip hazard. The study found that people are able to perceive a hazard with just two lux of illuminance. When the light was brighter than this, people did not get any better at detecting hazards.

The research also found that white light can be used at lower intensities, without affecting pedestrians’ visual performance. Similar results were found for cyclists’ ability to detect hazards.

Experimental apparatus to assess effect of lighting on cyclists’ detection of a hazard in the road (Fotios, Qasem, Cheal & Uttley, 2017).

Building on work carried out in the US at the end of the 1990s, our team at Sheffield University is also trying to identify lighting conditions which help people feel safe on the streets at night. The US research, carried out in parking lots, found that people felt safer when lights were brighter but that the benefits did not increase correspondingly as brightness increased. We are now verifying these findings on residential streets.

The change of the clocks this weekend – and the earlier onset of darkness – serves as a reminder of how significant daylight is to people’s everyday behaviour, particularly the way they choose to travel. Lighting can help us continue our day-to-day lives even when the sun goes down – and in this new age of highly controllable and efficient LED lighting it is tempting to assume “the more light the better”.

The ConversationIdentifying lighting conditions that meet our requirements without being excessive can help us save energy, reduce carbon emissions, reduce the ecological impact of our lighting and even make astronomers happier.

Jim Uttley, Postdoctoral Researcher in Lighting and Environmental Psychology, University of Sheffield

This article was originally published on The Conversation on 27 October 2017. Read the original article.

The Conversation: Pace of renewable energy shift leaves city planners struggling to keep up

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File 20170810 32177 1chb5b7.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
The BedZED eco-housing development in the UK challenged planning regulations.
Tom Chance/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Tony Matthews, Griffith University and Jason Byrne, Griffith University

Renewable energy is driving profound changes in cities. It’s happening much more quickly than was expected even five years ago. Responding to climate change, networks of decision-makers, such as the C40 collective of major cities, have begun adopting strategies to promote the uptake of renewable energy. Yet land use planning has seemingly begun to lag behind.

As an example, few, if any, planning codes in Australia prevent overshadowing of rooftop solar systems (photovoltaic and hot water). Instead, disputes are being decided in the courts.

Effective guidance on the retrofitting and redesign of built environment energy systems must occur across scales, from rooftops to wider electricity grids. We need reliable institutional and policy guidelines to improve investment certainty and limit negative outcomes.

So what is the role of planning? What challenges and actions must planners consider for the renewable energy transition to be effective?

The Urban Squeeze S01Ep05 – Energy Futures.
Tony Matthews, Jason Byrne, Author provided 9.44 MB (download)

 

Renewables are proliferating

Historically, cities have been built on fossil fuels. These power buildings, lighting, transport, air conditioning, water supply systems, sewage treatment and more.

A roadside PV solar farm in Germany with 338kWp of installed capacity doubles as a sound barrier.
Isofoton.es/Wikimedia, CC BY

Technological change and concerns about climate change threats, energy security, air pollution reduction and fossil fuel power costs have recently driven huge advancements in renewable energy options for cities. As renewables rapidly gain market traction, the costs are falling dramatically relative to fossil fuel options.

Many different types of renewable energy have the potential to radically transform built environments. These include solar (both photovoltaic and molten salt), wind, tidal, biogas, biofuel, pumped hydro and potentially even nuclear fusion – though the latter may still be some time away.

At present, this technological growth appears to be outpacing land-use planning systems, and many planners seem to be fighting a rear-guard action.

What role can planners play?

Traditionally, planners have assessed the acceptability, or otherwise, of different types of development. Land uses that were deemed incompatible were separated into different zones.

Infrastructural and technological provisions associated with developments are usually strategically planned in advance. Site-specific issues are then assessed through development approval processes.

There are, however, still relatively few land use planning policies and guidelines for engaging effectively with renewable energy. This is a global problem, though some jurisdictions are ahead of others.

A front-runner is the UK, where the Department for Communities and Local Government issued planning practice guidance for renewable and low-carbon energy in 2013. This was a welcome early response. And perhaps surprising, given the comparative lack of sunlight in the UK.

Conversely, Ireland still lacks a strategic plan for solar farm development. This seems remiss given Ireland has an almost identical planning system and roughly the same amount of sunlight as the UK.

In sunnier Australia, the signs are that things are beginning to change. For example, the New South Wales government recently issued guidelines on the approval of solar and wind farms. Queensland has a wind farm state code and guidelines. The City of Melbourne now provides planning guidance for solar energy.

California is forging ahead with solar leasing and is experimenting with mandatory solar for new buildings. The state is also making strides in wind energy.

How should planning systems adapt?

We urgently need more renewable-friendly planning systems to capture its potential benefits and avoid overshooting the 2°C target for global warming. This will mean finding ways to “fast-track” energy generation deemed to be low risk with manageable impacts.

As well as developing practical guidance, planners need to ask some key questions. Are these technologies safe? Might they disrupt other land uses? Does large-scale uptake potentially have unintended consequences?

An easy win for planners is to devise codes and planning scheme provisions to protect rooftop solar installations from overshadowing. Rooftop solar is becoming an integral part of the energy mix in many areas, with surplus production often feeding back into the grid.

A failure of planning to manage a simple issue like overshadowing will result in a loss of potential electricity production, with negative implications for householders and grids.

Medium-scale commercial solar PV farms, providing 1-10MW generating capacity, are likely soon to be a common feature of many suburbs and communities. However, these facilities can present challenges when placed in urban areas. Again, clear planning guidance is needed.

The planning implications of these solar PV farms are only beginning to be understood. The issues include, but are not limited to, site selection, (re)zoning, stakeholder engagement, visual impact minimisation and mediating social, economic and/or ecological constraints.

Suburbs could increasingly be home to medium-scale solar farms like this.
Grand Canyon NPS/flickr, CC BY

Even as planners begin to engage with the issues of current renewable technologies, newer technologies are quickly encroaching. This adds to the urgency of the planning challenges; constant reappraisal is needed.

Where to next?

Soon we will likely have to better consider emerging technologies such as solar windows, integrated solar roofs, backyard biogas generators and even algae biofuel farming.

For example, could using backyard waste-to-biogas systems create issues with hygiene and infectious disease? What about maintenance? Will microgrids, which can help transitions to a grid with significant volumes of renewable energy, be able to handle demand?

The ConversationWe’ll need effective land use planning to answer these questions and many more. In times of intense transformation, planners will have to provide clear guidance. They must not let themselves fall behind the pace of urban energy transitions.

Tony Matthews, Lecturer in Urban & Environmental Planning, Griffith University and Jason Byrne, Associate Professor of Environmental Planning, Griffith University

This article was originally published on The Conversation on 14 August 2017. Read the original article.