Discover CleanTech, Issue 6, February 2023

ISSUE 06

| FEBRUARY 2023 | COVER PRICE: £5.25

Geothermal - are we finally getting below the surface?

PLUS THE CLEANTECH TECHNOLOGIES THAT WILL DEFINE 2023 PFAS – TRAPPING THE ‘FOREVER CHEMICALS’ INTERNATIONAL COPIES €9.99

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Contents FEBRUARY 2023 6

COVER FEATURE Geothermal energy provides a stable year-round high-capacity source of electricity and heat, and while it seems we have only scratched the surface of its potential, escalating gas prices have caused interest to deepen across the world. We explore the technologies that could help realise and raise the potential.

SPECIAL FEATURES: 14

Cleantech entrepreneur Kevin Chin has a long history of spotting important future trends in the cleantech sector. In an interview with Christopher Walker, he predicts two technologies that will make an impact in 2023.

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As awareness of the damaging effects of PFAS is growing, the wide extent of water pollution is becoming a cause of concern for governments and publics alike. We look into the innovative cleantech solutions taking up the challenge of eliminating the ‘forever chemicals’.

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Beverley Gower-Jones, member of the UK Government’s Net Zero Innovation Board and founder of the climate venture capital fund Clean Growth Fund and the cleantech consultancy Carbon Limiting Technologies, tells Discover Cleantech how she spots a technology that will “move the needle” in the race to net zero.

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AI, 3D-modelling and orange-peel fabrics – Helen Massy-Beresford looks into the many new technologies being employed to bring the fashion industry in line with the greatest trend of the century, sustainability.

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Will the houses of the future be printed in concrete? John Sempill explores whether 3D printing might offer a new, more sustainable way to build with concrete.

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SPECIAL THEME: WIND ENERGY

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The last three decade have seen a breathtaking development within wind energy technology; we explore some of the weird and wonderful new ideas being explored in the sector as well as the gigantic scale of traditional turbines and wind farms.

REGULARS AND COLUMNS 56 58 60 79 81 82

The Cleantech Market, by David Hunt Cleantech Products of the Month News Book of the Month Cleantech Events Writers of the Month

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Dear Reader,

Discover CleanTech Issue 6 February 2023 Published 11.2022 ISSN 2753-8729 Published by Scan Magazine Ltd.

Contributors Christopher Walker Maria Stranne Jason Deign Helen Massy-Beresford David Hunt John Sempill Anders Lorenzen Cover Photo Istock/jesselindemann

Executive Editor Thomas Winther Creative Director Mads E. Petersen Editor Signe Benn Hansen Copy-Editor Karl Batterbee Graphic Designer Mercedes Moulia

Sales & Key Account Manager Vera Winther Publisher: SCAN CLIENT PUBLISHING SCAN MAGAZINE LTD. The News Building, 3 London Bridge Street SE1 9SG, London Phone: +44 (0)870 933 0423 Fax: +44 (0)870 933 0421 Email: info@scanclientpublishing.com For further information please visit www.discovercleantech.com

In the wake of the US’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), 2023 has begun with what has been named a ’cleantech arms race’. And while this might be the best arms race possible, it’s not unequivocally positive. As cleantech giants begin to show signs of moving business towards the tax credits offered by the IRA, the EU is planning to match the act with an incentive of its own, a Net-Zero Industry Act. While this will undoubtedly mean more incentives for cleantech organisations, some fear the cleantech race will escalate into a full-on cleantech trade war.

At Discover Cleantech, we believe market competition and innovation incentivised and directed by legislation and economic stimulus are key to solving the climate challenge, but not at the cost of collaboration.

To reach the goal of net zero, knowledge sharing, cross-sector partnerships and collaboration across borders are vital; intellectual protectionism and a short-sighted race for market advantage won’t do it. Thus, we have launched an all-encompassing business directory highlighting and connecting the entire cleantech industry to promote collaborative opportunities across sectors and borders.

In this issue too, we explore the importance of a cross-sector view as Beverley Gower-Jones, founder of the Clean Growth Fund and member of the Government’s Net Zero Innovation Board, tells us how she thinks innovation and legislation can help us save the planet. Moreover, we explore how increasingly tight legislative thresholds for PFAS have spurred on innovative solutions from the biotech sector. We also get below the surface of one of the sectors that both the US and EU are currently showing increasing interest in: namely geothermal energy. Indeed, the magazine is a testament to the fact that we need contributions from all sectors and regions to succeed in the net-zero race.

Diving into the following pages, we thus hope you will enjoy exploring the numerous new and old, high- and low-tech, local and global cleantech innovations, remembering that in cleantech it’s not ‘either or’, but ‘both and’.

Signe Benn Hansen Editor of Discover CleanTech

© All rights reserved. Material contained in this publication may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior permission of Scan Group – a trading name of Scan Magazine Ltd. This magazine contains advertorials/promotional articles.

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CLEANTECH BUSINESS DIRECTORY

A Resource for Investors, Researchers, Job Seekers and Industry Professionals www.discovercleantech.com

The Cleantech Business Directory is a comprehensive resource for investors, researchers, job seekers and industry professionals interested in the cleantech sector. This directory gives an overview of the many companies that are changing our world for the better.

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Geothermal

GEOTHERMAL

View of industry to exploit geothermal energy near the Blue Lagoon in Reykjavik. Photo: dreamstime.com

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Discover CleanTech

– are we finally getting below the surface?

As the current energy crisis has taken the discussion on whether wind and solar needs to be supplemented by nuclear energy to a new level of shrillness, Discover Cleantech explores alternative methods to supply baseload energy. In this issue, we explore the potential of geothermal energy, a renewable energy source that can provide a stable, year-round high-capacity generation of electricity and heating. Still, it seems we have only scratched the surface of its potential.

BY SIGNE BENN HANSEN

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Geothermal

Only modern humans can split atoms, but geothermal energy has been used by humans and non-humans for millennia.

Photo: Istock

For some reason, geothermal energy is not amongst the trendiest of topics in the climate debate. Maybe that’s because it is, in comparison to some of the usual front-page technologies, almost ancient.

Geothermal energy from natural hot pools and springs has, as a matter of fact, been used for cooking, bathing and warmth for millennia. When it comes to electricity, the first commercial electricity plant to generate electricity from hydrothermal reservoirs opened in Larderello, Italy, in 1913, generating 250 kW. However, while it has had a long time underway, it is widely agreed that the full potential of the Earth’s geothermal resources is far from exploited.

The reason? Much like it has happened with other renewables, high upfront costs, higher risks and a lack of incentives to 8 |

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switch away from gas has dissuaded developers from bringing the potential from below to the surface.

directly from the ground, directly from the core, providing heat to the system with no ancillary support, no ancillary cost.

In the current climate, however, geothermal energy provides an obvious solution to one of the biggest challenges in decarbonisation, says Karl Farrow, CEO and founder of CeraPhi Energy, the UK’s first company to offer an end-to-end geothermal energy solution. “Replacing baseload heat with something that does not require something else to generate that heat is one of the biggest challenges of the decarbonisation process,” he says.

“Providing heat directly from geothermal eliminates electrification, eliminates burning something to create heat, eliminates all those aspects; you can generate heat

With heat constituting around 50 per cent of global energy consumption, that provides a convincing argument for the expansion of geothermal. But geothermal energy can also be used for electricity generation, in which case steam or hot water from high-temperature geothermal reservoirs is used to drive a steam turbine generating electricity. Traditionally, electricity production thus requires temperatures between 180 – 300 Celsius; a problem, since the majority of geothermal reservoirs are below 150 Celsius. But this problem has been solved with the introduction of binary power plants, utilising secondary fluid with a

Geothermal

lower boiling point than water to generate steam. According to a report produced by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2019: “If full life cycle emissions are calculated, it is estimated that a geothermal binary power plant is one of the most favourable technologies, with 11.3 grammes (g) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 eq) per kilowatt hour (kWh).”

On top of this, geothermal power plants can have a capacity factor above 90 per cent in small systems and thus provide reliable baseload generation that is not impacted by weather or price volatility. This means geothermal plants can offer flexibility and ancillary services to the electricity grid, helping integrate intermittent sources like solar and wind. They can adjust supply multiple times a day to balance electricity demand, with a ramp rate of around 15 per cent per minute for binary ORC (organic Rankine cycle) turbines, which is better than most natural gas plants.

SMOKING HOT BUT STILL NEGLECTED Considering the above, it is only natural that many believe that geothermal energy has the potential to make a real difference.

In 2009, Al Gore famously dubbed geothermal energy the potentially largest and Photo: Innargi

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“Providing heat directly from geothermal eliminates electrification, eliminates burning something to create heat, eliminates all those aspects; you can generate heat directly from the ground, directly from the core, providing heat to the system with no ancillary support, no ancillary cost.”

– Karl Farrow, CEO and founder of CeraPhi Energy most misunderstood source of energy in the world; in 2015, Bill Gates placed geothermal as one of five promising but underfunded areas that his fund, Breakthrough Energy, was to focus its investments in.

Since then, significant growth has happened, especially in recent years. At the end of 2022, geothermal energy accounted for around 16,127 MW of renewable energy, having increased by 1.89 GW from 2020, according to a report by IRENA. Meanwhile, the installed geothermal capacity for direct heating or cooling from geothermal had grown to 107 GWt from

70 GWt in 2015. Still, we seem to have just scratched the surface. According to the IPPC report of 2007: “Estimates show that geothermal energy can supply about 8.3 per cent of the total electricity needs of the world and serve about 17 per cent of the global population (IPCC, 2007).”

And according to IRENA and the Global Geothermal Alliance, there is a global technical potential of 5,000 GWt for geothermal heat applications utilising existing technologies, and 1,000 GW more if considering technologies currently being tested in the market.

According to Farrow from CeraPhi Energy, the proprietary technology from his company alone could help enable the generation of geothermal heat to meet six per cent of the global heat demand in the next 28 years. “Geothermal is the only baseload energy source that can provide 100 per cent efficient heat load to replace gas, coal and even nuclear, full stop,” he stresses.

Cornish Lithium is developing ways to extract lithium from geothermal brines pumped up from two kilometres underground at a plant, whilst using the geothermal heat energy too. Photo: Cornish Lithium

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Geothermal

INCREASING INTEREST The good news is that the energy crisis looks set to catapult the geothermal sector into a new era. Last year, the skyrocketing gas prices saw several European countries look to the energy source for a reliable, renewable alternative to gas for heating. According to research by Rystad Energy, the total installed capacity in Europe is set to surge by 55 per cent by 2030. Additionally, according to a paper published in Thermo in 2022, world usage is estimated to be at 23.4368 GW by 2030, in contrast to 15.644 GW in 2021.

In Europe, Germany especially is investing heavily in geothermal projects. The country is projected to spend over $1.5 billion by 2030 and has already doubled its installed capacity from 200 megawatt thermal (MWt) in 2012 to 400 MWt today. This capacity is set to double again to reach 850 MWt by 2030. The Netherlands is the only European country with a higher increase in capacity and will reach 1 GWt capacity by 2030, after investing $1.1 billion.

In Denmark, Innargi, a geothermal heating company established by A.P. Moller Holding, has signed an agreement to build and run the largest geothermal heating plant in the EU. Set in Aarhus, where 95 per cent of households are already connected to the district heating system, the planned capacity of the geothermal heating plant is 110 MW, equalling 20 per cent of the city’ district heating demand.

“We see a huge potential for geothermal-based heating in many European cities that are struggling to phase out coal to meet the climate targets,” said Samir Abboud, CEO at Innargi when the plant was announced last year. “We believe countries like Denmark, Germany and Poland offer the right subsurface conditions to significantly reduce the need for coal, gas and imported biomass.”

Panoramic view of the geothermal plants and solar panels of the Miravalles Volcano in Guayabo de Bagaces in Costa Rica. Volcanic regions usually have easy access to geothermal energy. Photo: shutterstock

Across the Atlantic, The U.S. Department of Energy expects geothermal energy to increase 16-fold to 60 GWe by 2050, supplying 20 per cent of U.S. renewable energy generation.

A COLD SHOULDER FROM THE UK The UK, which relies on gas for heating for approximately 78 per cent of households, has, however, been more focused on geothermal power projects than geothermal heating. With many interests vested in maintaining the existing gas network, other renewables struggle to compete, and

the country currently has around only 20 MWt of geothermal capacity. This despite the fact that it is widely documented that geothermal heating could provide 100 per cent of the UK’s heating needs. As a matter of fact, geothermal could “meet the UK heat demand for over a century,” according to Durham University, which leads research into the potential of geothermal energy in the UK and abroad.

At the end of 2022, the low focus on the sector caused the Environmental Audit Committee to send a letter to the secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industri-

“Geothermal is the only baseload energy source that can provide 100 per cent efficient heat load to replace gas, coal and even nuclear, full stop.”– Karl Farrow 10 |

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Geothermal

al Strategy, pointing out that the failure to integrate geothermal in the government’s net-zero strategy “appears to be holding back a sector which could be transformative for the UK’s capacity to meet climate goals, use homegrown energy and grow the economy.” The letter went on to state: “The opportunities offered by harnessing geothermal technologies can offer considerable economic benefits: it is estimated that the sector could support as many as 25,000 jobs by 2050.”

The relevance of the UK’s geothermal sector has been further highlighted by the possibility of combining lithium extraction from geothermal brine with geothermal power and heat production, as is pursued by Geothermal Engineering Ltd and Cornish Lithium.

According to Rystad Energy, the UK government is expected to spend more than

$470 million on geothermal heating by 2030, and its geothermal heating capacity is expected to top 100 MWt in 2030, a significant increase but making a small dent in the UK’s total heating market.

LOOKING PAST THE IMMEDIATE ATTRACTION Some of the explanation for the hesitation to pursue geothermal developments may also be found in the risks involved. At the surface, geothermal seems simple; however, the difficulties, literally, lie below what is visible to the eye.

While the main technologies for direct uses in district heating, geothermal heat pumps, greenhouses as well as electricity generation are widely used and considered mature, they rely on the presence of hydrothermal reservoirs – hot fluids circulating in the permeable layers of Earth’s crust. Traditionally,

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extracting energy from hydrothermal reservoirs involves drilling between 500-5,000 metres into the ground to reach the hot water which is then pumped to the surface.

The heat is then either transferred to a heat exchanger, where it is used to heat water for use in homes and buildings, or used to generate gas, which drives an electricity producing turbine. After use, the water needs to be injected back into the reservoir to maintain the pressure of the system.

Improperly managed, this process can cause geothermal brines to seep into the surrounding environments. Furthermore, depending on depth and ground conditions (which cannot always be known in advance), well development can prove slower and costlier than forecasted. But the main challenge lies in the fact that only a small part of the available geothermal energy is located within high-permeability hydrothermal reserFebruary 2023

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voirs which allow the extraction and injection of water geothermal fluids. Thus, while some regions like Iceland, California and New Zealand have geothermal reservoirs that are easily detectable and reachable – in some places literally bursting through the surface – the majority of the world’s undeveloped geothermal resources is within low-permeability reservoirs or dry hot rock. This means that extracting heat relies on Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS), which can involve methods such as pumping high-pressure water – or even CO2 – into dry hot rock to create small fissures and greater permeability for fluids to circulate through; in other words, creating a human-made hydrothermal reservoir. However, while one EGS heating system and one EGS power plant are operating in France and two demonstration projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) operate in the United States, the technology is still not considered commercially mature, due the varying success

Geothermal

Geothermal energy is a renewable energy source that harnesses heat from the Earth’s interior to generate electricity or heat. Photo: Shutterstock

in creating the sufficient permeability in the high pressure and extreme temperatures of geothermal wells, as well as concerns about micro-seismic activity created by the process.

There are, however, numerous organisations working to improve the technology, and there is much private and public investment going into improving the technology. In September 2022, for instance, the DOE in the U.S. announced a new goal to cut the cost of EGS by 90 per cent (to $45 per megawatt hour) by 2035, believing that it holds the key to realising the vast potential of geothermal energy outside the traditional hydrothermal regions.

WORKING THROUGH THE PROBLEMS

“Providing heat directly from geothermal eliminates electrification, eliminates burning something to create heat, eliminates all those aspects.” says Karl Farrow, founder and CEO of CeraPhi Energy.

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While the technical possibility of reaching the vast theoretical geothermal sources of the Earth through EGS is widely debated, CeraPhi Energy suggests offering plug-and-play solutions for ‘Geothermal Everywhere’ through its Intellectual Property Patent Box and Scalable Licensable Technology Platform. “We brought together an effective solution to drill for heat rather than the thermal water systems that are usually connected with deep geothermal systems,” explains Farrow. “We designed what is effectively a closed loop system that allows us to circulate fluids very much like a ground-source heat pump [designed at more shallow depths, ground-source heat pumps exploit not the heat from the core of the Earth, but the heat from the sun stored in the Earth’s surface]. But we are several kilometres underground at high temperatures, and that allows us to draw up far more energy. So it is a different order of magnitude, a bigger solution to ground-source heat pumps or small heat networks. Our approach is looking at

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Photo: Shutterstock

“Estimates show that geothermal energy can supply about 8.3 per cent of the total electricity needs of the world and serve about 17 per cent of the global population.”– IPCC, 2007 scaling quickly, looking at large-scale infrastructure using what are effectively oil and gas solutions.”

Drilling down several kilometres under the ground, the company can reach temperatures of 60 to 100 degrees, and using its patented technology can bring that heat to the surface without interacting with the subsurface. Furthermore, the company’s technology enables abandoned oil and gas wells to generate a profit as well as a source of renewable energy. “It is a core

focus of ours,” says Farrow, who himself transitioned into the geothermal sector after decades in the oil and gas sector. “If we can use existing end-of-life wells instead of pouring concrete down and abandoning them, it means we don’t have to drill, so we’re saving money, and we can use the energy in the well for another 20- 30 years, maybe in some cases 40 years if the well is in good integrity. Now, that makes total sense as you support a natural energy transition, and most countries around the world, certainly in the developing world,

have large amounts of oil and gas wells, offshore and onshore. We can help energy companies transition these assets, which usually just sit on the balance sheet as a liability, into a revenue generating energy source, supplying clean energy.”

Having been awarded funding as part of the Net Zero Technology Centre in 2022, CeraPhi Energy has recently signed a number of partnership agreements to help advance and execute its proprietary technology within the UK heat network sector.

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Kevin Chin interview

GreenAntz, a market leader in the plastic recycling industry in Southeast Asia, will introduce valorisation, which can rapidly break down different plastic polymers at scale, in 2023. Photo: GreenAntz

Kevin Chin predicts two technologies will make a mark in 2023 Cleantech entrepreneur Kevin Chin has a long history of spotting important future trends in the sector. In a talk with Discover Cleantech, he looks forward to the coming year and chooses two technologies which he believes will move from development to rollout, having revolutionary effects in plastic waste and EV charging

BY CHRISTOPHER WALKER

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Kevin Chin interview

According to Kevin Chin, electric-vehicle fleet charging will make its mark in 2023. Photo: Tembo

Kevin Chin is the founder of Arowana, the global B Corporation investment group.

He has been investing in and building businesses in the clean technology space since 2014, including utilities, commercial and industrial solar, electric vehicles, energy storage and plastic recycling.

Chin believes there are two clean technologies to watch out for in the year ahead.

Given his significant expertise in batteries and electric vehicles, it is perhaps no surprise that one should be in that space - a revolution he sees coming in EV fleet charging. On top of this, Chin thinks that valorisation will transform the handling of plastic waste, a major challenge using current technology, and he has made an investment in GreenAntz.

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A REVOLUTION IN PLASTIC WASTE Looking forward to what might happen in 2023, a technology that stands out to Chin is in the plastic recycling sphere, called valorisation. This is a crucial new technology applied to mixed plastic waste. “I think it is highly likely it will move from the development to commercialisation stage next year,” he says, “and it will be just a matter of a time before it has a major impact globally in solving the problem of plastic waste recycling and upcycling.”

In its development stage, the technology came out of the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which used chemical oxidation to break down different types of plastic. This is because the building blocks that make up

plastic, the polymers, are radically different in different types of plastic. This requires their separation, a lengthy, time consuming and costly process. At present, only five per cent of plastic can actually be recycled or upcycled due to the different chemical composition of different plastic types. This is a very real problem. Apparently, when you burn one tonne of plastics at present, you generate two and a half tonnes of Co2.

Valorisation, involving tandem chemical processes and biological funnelling, can break down different plastic polymers at scale and with speed.

Chin believes solving this problem will be “a real game changer”. “We look forward to introducing it through one of our investee

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companies, GreenAntz, which is a market leader in the plastic recycling industry in Southeast Asia,” he says. “We believe this could propel GreenAntz’s already strong growth trajectory to another level, as it will be able to more readily procure and process more types of plastic waste feedstock.”

There is certainly a favourable regulatory background to this, with more and more governments imposing new regulations on major plastic producers. These require them to recycle and upcycle in some cases the entire equivalent volume of all the plastic they have produced. There is a particular focus on this in Asia, which produces 48 per cent of the Globe’s plastic waste.

“The procurement of plastic waste feedstock will be the key challenge to overcome in order to capitalise on the immense growth opportunities,” says Chin. Companies such as GreenAntz can increasingly help solve this problem for major corporates that are big plastics users, such as Shell, Colgate Palmolive and Procter and Gamble.

Chin’s interest in overcoming the plastic waste challenge is shared by others. Mura Technology has partnered with KBR, the US petrochemical engineering company, and Dow Chemical, to ensure smooth construction of large-scale plants that can cope with up to 300,000 tonnes of plastic using new technology. Earlier this year, LG Chem announced an investment in Mura’s Hydro-PRTSM Technology.

ELECTRIC-VEHICLE FLEET CHARGING In Chin’s opinion, “the other major technology which we will see make its mark in 2023 will be electric-vehicle fleet charging.” Chin is seeking to have an impact here through another company he is involved in – Tembo, an electric-vehicle

Kevin Chin, the founder of Arowana, a global B Corporation investment group, has been investing in and building businesses in the clean-technology space since 2014. Photo: Kevin Chin

“The procurement of plastic waste feedstock will be the key challenge to overcome in order to capitalise on the immense growth opportunities.”– Kevin Chin, founder of Arowana

company providing electrification solutions for owners of light-utility vehicle fleets.

Charging fleets of electric vehicles need considerable power from the grid. However, in time, these electric vehicle fleets will be able to generate their own power, February 2023

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“It will be relatively easy to transition a fleet to electric, but the real-life problem that needs to be solved is simultaneous charging of multiple vehicles that comprise fleets.” – Kevin Chin which can then feed back into the grid.

“We call this grid-to-fleet-to-grid (G-F-G),” says Chin. “It is quite simple to charge one electric vehicle at home, but imagine doing that if you have a fleet of two or three hundred vehicles. When you’re doing so at such a scale, a very difficult technology is required and there is a need to optimise the time and method of charging in order to minimise electricity costs.”

Plastic Waste. Photo: GreenAntz

This is a significant problem given the aggressive net-zero commitments by corporates and countries alike, and the significant power needs of EV fleets. There is a need for technological systems that enable fleet owners to address this problem, but there will, at the same time, be an opportunity created to sell power back into the grid at times when it is needed.

“It will be relatively easy to transition a fleet to electric, but the real-life problem that needs to be solved is simultaneous charging of multiple vehicles that comprise fleets. Going into 2023, we think smart fleet charging of EV vehicles will take off in a major way,” says Chin.

He believes there are a range of possible different solutions. Starting with, in effect, building a bank of charging stations dedicated to a single fleet owner at a particular site which permits grid-to-fleet-to-grid charging.

Moving on from that, he sees other possible models, such as an industrial park which is a charging site for multiple fleet owners: “In effect, a communal ‘chargepark.”

EV charging. Photo: Tembo

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Chin concludes: “We are in discussions with companies based in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Europe, with a view to establishing joint ventures that help solve the problem of multiple vehicle charging for fleet owners.”

JOB O F T H E M O N T Hxxxxxxx | xxxxx | Discover CleanTech

Providing accessible renewable energy to emerging countries via crowdinvesting. Want to play your part?

THE COMPANY: Ecoligo is a rapidly growing Climate- and FinTech company with a mission to drive the global energy transition. The company enables retail investors to contribute to the expansion of clean energy use in emerging markets and reducing global CO2 emissions, whilst also getting generous ROI. The firm offers a complete solar-as-a-service solution to businesses in emerging markets, who are typically confronted with ever rising utility costs.

Through long term PPAs, customers can achieve savings, reduce their energy CO2 footprint and do not have to invest. The key of the business model is that the investment is made by impact investors from Germany, enabling these projects. In return, they receive not only attractive returns, but also know their capital is fighting against the climate crisis globally!

Company: Ecoligo Location: Berlin / remote Opportunity: Chief Marketing Officer

THE ROLE: The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is a newly developed key role in the management team, created to drive and implement ecoligo’s marketing strategy, aiming to win more and more retail investors for impact investing every day. The role will also be responsible for developing a long-term operational excellence and driving ecoligo’s success by developing, implementing and scaling the right structures, processes and tools, while constantly improving them.

By continuing to build on the company’s established brand, the CMO will help reach new retail investors and support the rapid growth trajectory to make impact investing mainstream. The CMO will be a key member of the young, passionate and tightknit team and will collaborate across the company as part of the senior management team as well as leading and supporting the marketing function in their day-to-day. Finally, the role will be responsible for developing a long-term marketing vision.

THE PERSON: The Chief Marketing Officer will have a successful track record of owning, leading and scaling marketing at growth firms, and demonstrate experience in digital community building. As a data-driven and analytical individual, decisions will be based on facts rather than intuition.

Ecoligo will disrupt the global retail investment landscape in a unique and positive way and the CMO will be instrumental in this journey and will therefore need to demonstrate a real entrepreneurial growth mindset and the ability to turn a vision into reality.

For more information, please contact wolfgang.kick@hyperionsearch.com

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PFAS

Raising the bar on PFAS removal Highly stable and resistant to degradation once in the environment, PFAS is a large group of manmade chemicals, known as ‘forever chemicals’. As the chemicals are being linked to several serious health problems in humans, including cancer, thyroid disease and immune system disorders, the removal of PFAS from water sources is becoming increasingly urgent. Writing for Discover Cleantech, Maria Stranne, PhD in biotechnology, explores the problem and its solutions.

BY MARIA STRANNE

In 2018 alone, about 25,000 tonnes of PFAS were released into the atmosphere, soil and water.

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PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of more than 4,700 manmade chemicals, including fluorine-containing compounds, such as PFOS, PFOSA, and PFOA. As the total number of PFAS substances released into the environment has been rising since the early 2000s, addressing the issue is becoming increasingly urgent. In 2018 alone, about 25,000 tonnes of PFAS were released into the atmosphere, soil and water. Even rainwater in the Himalayas and Antarctic contain unsafe levels of PFAS, according to recent studies published from Stockholm University and ETH Zurich.

With concerns about the potential health risks associated with PFAS continuing to increase, new legislations addressing the issue are being proposed all over the world, and scientists are researching and developing new technologies to help reduce human exposure to the chemicals.

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“The more stringent the regulations, the better our product performance versus competitive technologies” – Henrik Hagemann, CEO and co-founder of Puraffinity These technologies include advanced filtration systems, new materials and more sustainable methods of manufacturing without, or with reduced, PFAS. Among the new innovations is a technology from the London-based science-materials company Puraffinity, which promises to remove PFAS from water sources more efficiently and at a lower cost than existing solutions. The technology utilises a special type of resin that attaches to the PFAS molecules retaining them from the water. The resin can then be cleaned and

reused, making the process both cost-efficient and sustainable.

STRICTER REGULATIONS Since their development in the 1940s, PHAS have been used in a variety of industrial and consumer products and are known for their non-stick, waterproof and heat-resistant properties. In domestic products they are everywhere, from car and floor polish, textile and fabric treatments to food packaging, cookware, cupcake forms and skin cream. In the industry too, they are used in a wide range of prod-

Firefighting foam is one of the products that can cause PFAS pollution to percolate into waterbodies. Photo: Puraffinity

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ucts, including firefighting foam, semiconductors and space suits, making them an important pillar in society.

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Henrik Hagemann, CEO and co-founder of Puraffinity, welcomes the stricter regulations on PFAS, as he believes it will enhance the competitiveness of their products.

At this stage, the regulatory framework for PFAS is constantly being revised; currently, new legislations are being proposed in the EU, USA and UN to minimise outlet and usage.

Henrik Hagemann, CEO and co-founder of Puraffinity, welcomes the stricter regulations on PFAS, as he believes it will enhance the competitiveness of their products. “The more stringent the regulations, the better our product performance versus competitive technologies,” he says.

The Puraffinity adsorbent materials deliver high selectivity and fast kinetics, and according to Hagemann: “The fast kinetics of Puraffinity’s media means that water and wastewater industries can do more with less – they can increase the treatment capacity of an existing plant to fulfill new legislated requirements to treat PFAS to lower levels, without needing to expand their treatment plant, which means CapEx savings. This combination maximises the water treatment performance and amplifies the spectrum of unwanted substances removal, allowing customers to get sustainable removal of PFAS at the lowest Total Cost of Ownership.”

The Puraffinity absorbent material has the potential to be used in a wide range of products, such as small pitcher-type filters and large steel tanks or vessels for industrial applications.

CLEANING THE WORLD’S WATER SUPPLY While nearly all of us have some level of PFAS in our bodies today, the highest concentrations of PFAS have been found in the blood serum of people living or working near manufacturing, industry or disposal sites, with some concentrations being up to ten times higher than the general population, as stated in a report from the European Environment Agency.

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“We increasingly hear of the Granulated Activated Carbon lifespan being just two to four weeks for the new 2022 EPA health advisory levels, even in regions where the lifespan used to be 12 months.”

– Henrik Hagemann pounds preferentially over other contaminants present in water, even in the presence of co-contaminants at 10^5 higher concentrations, because we have tailored the surface of our materials at the molecular level.” Frequent replacement of filtration materials in treatment plants can be a logistical challenge, adding additional stress to plants that are already facing external factors, such as increased storm surges and rising sea levels due to climate changes. According to Peter Hagemann: “We increasingly hear of the Granulated Activated Carbon lifespan being just two to four weeks for the new 2022 EPA health advisory levels, even in regions where the lifespan used to be 12 months.”

lished about PFAS exposure and health effects, it is difficult to link PFAS directly to health conditions in humans. Since the majority of the linked diseases have long latency periods, the negative health effects of exposure are often seen after many years of accumulation in the body.

However, increasing amounts of evidence is coming to light and one group of PFAS, the PFOS (restricted in Europe for more than ten years), has been proven to have a negative effect on reproduction and to be linked to immune system disorders and hormonal disturbances.

Thus, as chemical build-up in humans continues to increase, removing PFAS from water and preventing more from being let into the environment is crucial.

Currently, solutions to remove PFAS from water sources include filtration systems placed in wastewater plants and near industry sites. Most systems rely on ionic interactions, Granulated Activated Carbon or petroleum-derived Ion Exchange, but these methods are nonspecific and have trouble binding smaller PFAS, as well as 24 |

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other pollutants. The solution developed

by Puraffinity utilises a combined mechanism of ion exchange and adsorption to bind PFAS. According to Hagemann: “Puraffinity’s material binds PFAS com-

Puraffinity’s products, on the other hand, have been developed to be reusable, explains Hagemann. “Once all the Puraffinity material is filled up with PFAS, the material is engineered to unclick the bound PFAS using a safe regeneration step. The Puraffinity material can then be re-used for

According to Puraffinity, the fast kinetics of its media means that wastewater industries can fulfill new legislated requirements to treat PFAS to lower levels, without needing to expand their treatment plant.

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non-point-of-use applications, like industrial or environmental remediation, enabling a circular economy for the future of water filtration materials.” This is a huge advance in comparison to previously-used methods.

Finally, recent studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of the Puraffinity material in removing PFAS chemicals to levels well below the current regulatory threshold. Trials were undertaken at two independent institutions in the USA – the Water Hub at Colorado School of Mines and at the Heritage Research Group. They showed the material can remove PFAS to below the 10 ppt (0,01ng/L). This highlights the potential of the technology, combined with stricter regulations, to significantly improve the chances of lower PFAS levels in the water supplies of future generations.

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The water treatment technology from Puraffinity utilises a special type of resin that attaches to the PFAS molecules retaining them from the water.

REGULATORY FRAMEWORKS FOR PFAS One group of PFAS, namely the PFOS, has already been restricted in Europe for more than ten years, under the Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) regulation. Furthermore, the European Union is considering a ban on thousands of PFAS chemicals, except when their use is deemed essential. If successful, a final agreement could come by 2025.

The recast of the Drinking Water Directive, which is EU’s main law on drinking water, took effect on 12 January 2021 setting a limit of 0.5 µg/l for all PFAS in drinking water. The Nordic countries are moving faster. In Sweden for example, a drinking water limit of 4 ng/l is set to take effect next year, while Denmark has already moved ahead with a threshold value of 2 ng/l for four PFAS groups.

In the UK, the Drinking Water Inspectorate has set a guideline value of 0.5 µg/l for the sum of six specific PFAS, known as PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFHpA, PFNA and PFDA, in drinking water. The guideline value applies to all public and private water supplies in the UK, including those from surface waters and groundwater. Furthermore, it is likely that more restrictions will follow, since PFAS is a top priority under the UK REACH programme. On top of this, The Environment Agency and HSE are conducting a Risk Management Options Analysis (RMOA) on PFAS, to identify risks and determine appropriate action, which may include restriction of use.

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An artist’s impression of one of Odin Energy’s vertical-axis wind turbine towers. Image source and rights: Odin Energy.

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The enduring lure of vertical-axis wind turbines Visit any wind farm in the world and you will find three-bladed turbines with upwind rotors and horizontal nacelles perched on top of tall towers. This horizontal-axis wind turbine design, sometimes called the Danish concept because of the country where it was first commercialised, has become an industry standard worldwide. But not everyone is convinced it is the way forward.

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Back in 2010, UK architecture firm Grimshaw and engineers Arup unveiled what they thought would be the wind turbine design of the future. The biggest wind turbines then on the market had a capacity of seven MW per machine, and there were doubts over how much larger they could get. Grimshaw and Arup envisaged an offshore wind turbine that was more than twice as powerful, delivering 15 MW per unit, and looked very different to the ones on the market thus far.

Instead of three rotors on top of a tower, the Aerogenerator X – designed for a now-defunct company called Wind Power Limited – had two blades arranged more like those of a blender, spinning on a vertical axis at the base of the machine. The design was the fruit of an 18-month feasibility study involving the defence contractor QinetiQ plus the universities of Cranfield, Strathclyde and Sheffield, Wind Power Limited said at the time.

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ish concept from scaling up. While the Aerogenerator X concept has languished on the drawing board, the GE Haliade-X has been certified up to 14.7 MW and the Chinese firms Goldwind and China Three Gorges have announced a 16 MW machine.

These real-life turbines, along with similar-sized offerings from other manufacturers, share the standard three-bladed horizontal axis design. Does this mean the brains behind the Aerogenerator X got it wrong? There are some who think not.

After all, vertical-axis designs are already used routinely for small-scale onshore turbines, so the technology is established and relatively well understood. Companies such as Whirlwind Wind Turbines of Spain offer small vertical-axis turbines for domestic and industrial customers.

VERTICAL AXES IN FLOATING OFFSHORE WIND

“The Aerogenerator X is considered one of the only real alternative solutions available to help deliver the UK’s offshore wind strategy in a reliable and cost-effective manner,” the company said. “It does not have the same weight constraints as a normal wind turbine and the blades do not suffer weight-induced fatigue. This new design is half the height of an equivalent horizontal-axis turbine and its weight is concentrated at the base of the structure.”

Whirlwind Wind Turbines claims its products are well suited to gusty conditions and are easy to install and to maintain.

Other vertical-axis wind turbines can be purchased on Amazon for the price of a top-of-the-range flat-screen TV. At the other end of the scale, some experts question the wisdom of using bigger and bigger horizontal-axis wind turbines offshore, where there is a growing trend towards putting the machines on floating platforms.

In the event, the constraints listed by Wind Power Limited have not stopped the Dan-

“Just looking at it from an engineering standpoint, I see the benefits of verti-

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cal-axis turbines,” says William Walker, senior associate at Stress Engineering Services, which in 2017 worked with Sandia National Laboratories of the USA on a study of the technology. “If you have the gearbox and all the important, expensive, heavy stuff down low, it makes it a lot easier to access when you have to do maintenance. And for a floater, when you put all the mass lower down, it can likely lead to reductions in loads on your mooring lines.”

Maintenance would be further simplified by the fact that vertical-axis wind turbines should not need complex controls for pitch, which is the angle of the blades, and yaw, which is the direction the nacelle is pointing in. As well as lessening the chance of faults, not needing these controls would cut the cost of the turbine, advocates believe. Further cost reductions would come from not needing a tower.

Beyond having easier maintenance and greater stability on floating platforms, vertical-axis wind turbine proponents believe the technology could be less prone to wake effects. These are what happens to the wind stream after it passes through the swept area of a turbine. With horizontal-axis turbines, the first machine facing the wind causes turbulence and reduces the amount of energy that can be produced by the machines behind it.

Wake effects are less pronounced with vertical-axis wind turbines, allowing the machines to be placed closer together and thus theoretically increasing the amount of

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Though it has been hailed by some as the future of wind, the vertical-axis wind turbine has yet to make a mark in the growing wind market.

Photo: Dreamstime.com

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“If you’ve got a horizontal-axis wind turbine and it is a hundred metres up, you’ve got more stable wind speeds versus something that’s ten metres. Someone’s got to do an economic and technical analysis.”

– Kenneth Bhalia, CTO, Stress Engineering Services.

energy that can be generated for a given area. Such benefits have prompted several modern start-ups to follow in the footsteps of the Aerogenerator X with vertical-axis offshore wind turbine designs.

The towers are designed to create a pressure difference that increases the wind speed across the turbines, he says. “Odin towers can be installed in weak wind areas where existing wind power cannot be installed,” he says.

COMPANIES WITH A VERTICAL APPROACH World Wide Wind of Norway, for example, has not one but four vertical-axis models, including a giant floating design with two sets of counter-rotating turbines that the company says could deliver up to 40 MW of power per unit. Hydro Wind Energy, meanwhile, is seeking backers for a sail-bladed floating design that incorporates an energy storage system under the turbine. And Swedish technology developer SeaTwirl has a product with three vertical blades supported by arms attached to a central tower.

“The company’s unique system ensures lower manufacturing costs, lower life-cycle costs and thus a lower overall cost,” says SeaTwirl on its website. “This is especially important for offshore structures.”

Other technology developers see a growing role for vertical-axis wind turbines onshore.

One eye-catching concept, from Odin Energy of South Korea, is a tower of up to 12 floors, each containing a central turbine.

Soo-Yun Song, Odin Energy’s vice president and chief technology officer, says the company is looking to install two 500 kW towers in Las Vegas, USA. The company also has plans for demonstration projects in South Korea and a 300-metre-high tower “at a famous tourist attraction in China”.

Despite these innovative concepts, the fact remains that the vertical-axis turbine market was valued at less than 13 billion dollars in 2022, little over a tenth of the 101-billion-dollar wind market overall. And for all those that believe in the technology’s potential, there are others that question its value. For example, says Kenneth Bhalia, chief technology officer at Stress Engineering Services: “If you’ve got a horizontal-axis wind turbine and it is a hundred metres up, you’ve got more stable wind speeds versus something that’s ten metres. Someone’s got to do an economic and technical analysis.”

LIMITED MARKET APPEAL Another common criticism of vertical-axis wind turbines is that they are not as efficient as horizontal-axis machines because the return half of each rotation of a blade happens against the wind. What is clear is that while vertical-axis wind turbines are useful for some niche applications, such as generating energy in places where there is a constraint on height or area, they struggle to beat traditional three-bladed horizontal-axis machines for large-scale, low-cost power production.

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“Odin towers can be installed in weak wind areas where existing wind power cannot be installed.”

– Soo-Yun Song, vice president, Odin Energy

machines, making it hard for vertical-axis models to compete. Even on floating platforms, where the traditional wind turbine approach requires massive ballasts and strong moorings for stability, it is hard to see vertical-axis machines displacing horizontal-axis models in the short term.

In 2022, the USA Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auctioned five leases for the establishment of floating wind farms off the coast of California. The state has no supply chain to speak of for offshore wind, potentially throwing the market open for innovators to try new approaches.

However, most of the companies that won the leases were European developers such as Equinor of Norway and RWE of Germany, which all have a long history of working with three-bladed horizontal-axis wind turbines. The chances of them changing tack and developing projects with untested vertical-axis machines would seem slim.

“The Danish concept of three-bladed wind turbines has proven to be the most efficient so far,” says Christoph Zipf, press and communications officer at the technology-neutral wind industry body WindEurope. “Europe’s five wind turbine manufacturers have consistently improved this concept. Scale effects and technological innovations have led to impressive cost reductions for these turbines. WindEurope is tracking wind turbine orders across Europe. The new orders clearly show that the three-bladed turbine concept will continue to dominate new installations.”

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The standard three-bladed horizontal axis design, also known as the Danish concept, has dominated the wind market since its inception.

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With 277 of GE’s Haliade-X turbines, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, UK, currently under construction, will produce 3.6GW. Photo: GE Renewable Energy

Ten gigantic wind farms From the first 100-200Kw turbines erected in the late 1980s to this month’s announcement of a 18MW turbine from CSSC Haizhuang – it has been a breathtaking couple of decades for the wind sector. All over the world, wind farms with almost unbelievable capacity are mushrooming out of the land and sea. We take a look at ten of the world’s biggest wind projects, operating or under development.

BY SIGNE BENN HANSEN

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1: JIUQUAN WIND POWER BASE/GANSU WIND FARM, CHINA Since the first 5.16 GW phase of the Jiuquan Wind Power Base was completed in November 2010, the wind farm, which is also referred to as Gansu Wind Farm, has comfortably held the spot as the world’s largest wind farm. When finished, the farm will comprise 7,000 wind turbines installed in Inner Mongolia, Jiuquan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei and Xinjiang Provinces in Gansu, China. In 2021, the farm had reached a capacity of 10GW. It is set to reach a capacity of 20GW when complete.

capacity. In total, Dogger Bank will feature 277 of one of world’s currently most powerful operating offshore wind turbines – GE’s Haliade-X. The 3.6GW wind farm will provide five per cent of the UK’s electricity and power up to six million homes.

Currently, Equinor and SSE Renewables are carrying out early scoping work to explore options for developing a fourth phase, Dogger Bank D, which would add an additional 1.32 GW in fixed-bottom offshore wind capacity to the 3.6 GW already in construction.

3: THE JAISALMER WIND PARK, INDIA

2: DOGGER BANK WIND FARM, UK The Dogger Bank Wind Farm, currently under construction, is a three-phase offshore wind farm located off the NE coast of England. When operational in 2026, it will become the world’s largest offshore wind farm, with each phase having 1.2GW

With a capacity of 1,600MW the Jaisalmer Wind Park is the largest wind farm in India and among the largest in the world. Developed by Suzlon Energy, it consists of several onshore wind farms located in the Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan, India. Initiated in August 2001, the project was developed by

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Suzlon Energy and encompasses their full wind portfolio, from their initial 350 kW model to their latest S9X 2.1 MW series.

4. WIND PRIME, USA, IOWA In January, MidAmerican Energy, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, proposed a $3.9 billion project called Wind Prime to the Iowa Utilities Board. The project will include wind and solar farms and generate 2,042 MW of energy through wind and an additional 50 MW through solar. If approved, construction could be completed by late 2024 and it would become the largest wind farm in the US. 5: ALTA WIND ENERGY CENTER/MOJAVE WIND FARM, UNITED STATES Owned by Terra-Gen Power, The Alta Wind Energy Center is the third-largest onshore wind energy project globally and the largest in the US, with an installed capacity of 1548

With wind turbines installed in Inner Mongolia, Jiuquan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei and Xinjiang Provinces in Gansu, China, the Jiuquan Wind Power Base is the largest in the world. Photo: Dreamstime.com

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Fully operational in the summer of 2022, Hornsea 2 and its sibling Hornsea 1 can power 2.5 million homes. Photo: Ørsted

MW. Located in the Tehachapi Pass of the Tehachapi Mountains in California, the wind farm comprises 600 GE Renewable Energy turbines. The first phase of the energy centre was completed in April 2011.

6: HORNSEA 2 Fully operational in the summer of 2022, Hornsea 2, a 1.3GW offshore wind farm, comprises 165 Siemens Gamesa wind turbines, located 89 kilometres off the 36 |

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Yorkshire Coast. The wind farm is situated alongside its sibling Hornsea 1, and together the plants can power 2.5 million homes. The Hornsea zone, an area of the North Sea covering more than 2,000 km2, is also set to include Hornsea 3. According to Orsted, the Danish energy company behind the farm, the blades of the turbines measure 81 metres and “One revolution of the wind-turbine blades can power an average UK home for 24 hours.”

7: THE MUPPANDAL WIND FARM, INDIA. With a capacity of 1,500MW, the Muppandal Wind Farm is the largest offshore farm in India and comprises several wind farms in the Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu, India. Developed by the Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency (TEDA), the farm features wind turbines from various private players, some of which are among the oldest in the country. The turbines range in capacity from just 200 KW to 1,650 KW.

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and Karara. The wind farms will use 180 Nordex Delta 4000 turbines with a power rating of 5.7MW, the latest generation of turbines by the German manufacturer.

The turbines will generate clean electricity to supply nearly 700,000 homes and avoid the emission of around three million tonnes of CO2 each year.

9: GREATER CHANGHUA 1 & 2A, TAIWAN Located 35-60 kilometres off Taiwan’s west coast, Greater Changhua 1 & 2a has a total capacity of 900 MW, making it the largest and first far-shore wind farm in Taiwan. The wind farm, which became operational in August 2022, is capable of providing clean energy to one million households.

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10: WILL THIS BE THE WORLD’S LARGEST WIND FARM? In the Taiwan Strait, off the coast of Chaozhou – a city in China’s Guangdong province – China is planning the world’s largest wind farm. Located between 75 and 185 kilometres offshore, the ten-kilometre-long farm will feature thousands of powerful turbines, adding up to a total of a 43.3 gigawatt – enough to power a small European country. Because of the windy location, the turbines are expected to run between 43 per cent and 49 per cent of the time. Work on the project will start before 2025 and, once completed, it will eclipse the world’s current largest wind farm, the Jiuquan Wind Power base in China, at the top of this list.

Commissioned in 1986, many of the Muppandal Wind Farm’s turbines are running past their expected lifecycle.

Photo: Dreamstime.com

Commissioned in 1986, many of the farm’s turbines are running past their lifecycle, and it is currently being discussed how turbines should be decommissioned or replaced.

8: THE MACINTYRE COMPLEX, AUSTRALIA When completed in 2024, the MacIntyre complex, the largest wind farm in Australia, will have a total capacity of 1,026MW. Operated by ACCIONA Energía, the complex consists of two wind farms: MacIntyre

Initiated in August 2001, The Jaisalmer Wind Park encompasses a variety of new and old turbines, from 350 kW to 2.1 MW models. Photo: Dreamstime.com

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Airborne wind energy: flight of fancy or grounded idea?

The eastern coast of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean is home to what at first sight might seem like a kite maker’s folly. On windy days, a 120-square-metre red-and-white kite may be seen soaring and dipping over the sugar canes on the tropical island.

BY JASON DEIGN

Photo: Kitepower/Henri Werij

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The SkySails Power airborne wind-energy generator in action. Image source and rights courtesy of SkySails Group.

Yet the kite, designed by a German company called SkySails Power, is in fact the first commercial example of a form of renewable energy that proponents believe could one day help power not only remote islands but many other locations besides. SkySails is one of a select group of companies pursuing what is known as airborne wind energy, which relies on kites or gliders to access the strong, constant winds high above ground – beyond the reach of conventional turbines.

Today’s technology encompasses two main power-generation concepts.

In one, a flexible kite pulls a tether which unwinds from a drum, driving a motor in the process. When the tether is fully un-

wound, the kite is reorientated so it can be brought back to its starting position with minimum effort and the process starts again. The second concept involves fitting rotors to a rigid glider tethered to the ground. The glider does loops in the sky, creating an airflow that turns the rotors and produces electricity. Since the electricity is generated in the air rather than on the ground, this idea is dubbed ‘fly-gen’.

The jury is still out over which mode of operation is most effective, but the evidence points to rigid fly-gen gliders falling behind in the race for commercialisation. Fly-gen was the technology of choice for Makani Power, a company that brought airborne wind ener-

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gy to mainstream attention after being incorporated into X Development, a research and development subsidiary of the tech giant Alphabet, which also owns Google.

Despite Alphabet’s blank-cheque patronage, Makani folded after 13 years of development, leading to questions over the future of the whole airborne wind-energy segment.

The reasons for Makani’s demise have been hotly debated. One of the more prosaic explanations is simply that the project was favoured by Google and Alphabet’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and when they stepped away from the day-to-day running of the businesses in 2019, the support for airborne wind energy evaporated.

However, X boss Astro Teller also admitted that achieving commercial viability with the technology “is a much longer and riskier road than we’d hoped.”

A LONGSTANDING CHALLENGE Maximilian Isensee, co-founder and chief executive of German firm Kitekraft, which is developing a system like Makani’s, says technology advances are helping over-

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come some of the challenges that Makani may have faced. “We have a digital twin of our system now,” he says, “that can do everything the kite does in software instead of flying.”

Kitekraft is working on smaller machines than Makani’s, which could help with development. Yet it is also true that most fly-gen hopefuls have dropped out of the market. “From what we know, we are only one of two companies now doing the flygen approach,” Isensee says.

None of this is to say that the alternative kite-based approach is easy. The idea of using kites to generate electricity goes back at least four decades and yet progress towards commercialisation remains minimal.

Besides the SkySails installation in Mauritius, the nearest the airborne wind-energy sector has got to a commercial project is a pilot on the island of Aruba in the Caribbean, operated by the Dutch Ministry of Defence using a system developed by Kitepower of Delft in the Netherlands.

Despite this, the idea of pulling electricity out of the air continues to attract adherents – and money. In Europe, a project called MegaAWE has injected more than 12 million euros into the development of an airborne wind-energy test site in Mayo, Ireland. Flights are due to start this year.

And an industry body called Airborne Wind Europe has 15 members including technology developers from Germany, It-

Photo: Kitepower

aly, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, the UK and the USA, plus academic representation from TU Delft, Politecnico de Milano, RWTH Aachen, and the University of Stuttgart.

If they can get the technology to work commercially, then it “makes large-scale wind-energy potential accessible in altitudes up to 500 metres,” says Kristian Petrick, Airborne Wind Europe’s secretary general. “There is no other technology able to tap into these vast renewable energy resources. It also enables increased

energy generation per square kilometre, at lower carbon intensity, compared with other renewables. And, eventually, at lower cost.”

To make the technology competitive with traditional wind energy, consultancy firm BVG Associates estimates the industry might need five billion euros of public funding over the next decade and a half. At less than a fifth of what the UK is paying for its latest nuclear reactor, that figure may not be as big as it seems – and airborne wind energy’s sky-high benefits could be worth it.

Kitepower in Aruba: A Kitepower Falcon airborne wind-energy system being tested by the Dutch Ministry of Defence in the island of Aruba. Image source and rights: Airborne Wind Europe.

Photo: Kitepower

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Interview Beverley Gower-Jones

A net-zero leader on how investment and innovation might save us Last year, Beverley Gower-Jones, the founder of the climate venture capital fund Clean Growth Fund, and the cleantech consultancy, Carbon Limiting Technologies, was appointed to the UK Government’s Net Zero Innovation Board. This year, King Charles bestowed her an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), for services to net-zero innovation. Discover Cleantech asks the climate leader whether investment and innovation can actually save the planet.

BY SIGNE BENN HANSEN

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After two decades dedicated to accelerating the transition towards net zero, Beverley Gower-Jones, the founder of the climate venture capital fund Clean Growth Fund, believes we have reached the turning point. Photo: Clean Growth Fund

For two decades, Gower-Jones has advised major corporates, UK and overseas governments, SMEs and cleantech startups on addressing the challenges of climate change. Through her cleantech consultancy, Carbon Limiting Technologies, she has helped hundreds of cleantech entrepreneurs to commercialise and grow their business. ”We make sure that the technology is based on the laws of physics – that it’s real tech,” says Gower-Jones matter-of-factly when asked how she discerns between the myriads of cleantech ideas and innovations trying to get on the net-zero train. Among the many other factors the founder and managing partner of the Clean Growth Fund looks at, is what the total carbon saving would be if the technology was to be commercialised over five to ten years. In short: “does it move the needle”.

Photo: Sunswap

But these are just two among a host of structural, human and market factors that Gower-Jones examines. Because, February 2023

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Interview Beverley Gower-Jones

The Clean Growth Fund has invested in measurable.energy, a company that designs and manufactures smart, machine learning enabled power sockets that reduce the energy costs of commercial buildings by more than 20 per cent. Photo: measurable.energy

while being innovative and disruptive is essential, more pragmatic factors, such as whether the management team comes off as “credible, ethical people that will be able to pivot when things change – because nothing ever goes the way we want it to all the time”, are also critical. So too is the customer and client interest, the level of market engagement achieved, and the

projected business model – the mechanism by which the entrepreneurs plan to get the technology to market and make revenue. Finally, the fund carries out an assessment report that looks at the potential greenhouse gas reduction from the related innovation, analysing what the cost per tonne of saved carbon would be.

“There is no point in having something that

Among the technologies to have met the investment criteria of Clean Growth Fund is tepeo’s Zero Emission Boiler technology, through which boilers are powered by electricity and work like batteries to store heat efficiently until it is needed. Photo: tepeo

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saves carbon but is too expensive to be affordable,” stresses Gower-Jones.

TWO DECADES AT THE FOREFRONT OF DECARBONISATION Despite her impressive and somewhat intimidating status in the world of cleantech, Gower-Jones’ path into the net-zero transformation was not unlike that of many a grassroot activist. An avid Scuba diver, she observed and regretted the degradation of corals; upon discussing the subject with her colleagues at QinetiQ, her workplace at the time, she discovered how deeply she actually felt about the topic. “I remember arguing that we would be remembered not as the age of communication, but as the age of pollution, and I thought – if I feel that deeply, I should do something about it,” she says.

With an educational background in geology and an in-depth knowledge of technology commercialisation – for 20 years, Gower-Jones had worked for Shell, where she co-founded Shell Technology Ventures of which she was vice president – Gower-Jones knew she had a skillset vital to the net-zero transition. So, she left her position at QinetiQ to pursue her passion for the planet. “I could see that the energy transition was going to be a huge piece of this and that we needed new technol-

Interview Beverley Gower-Jones

“When talking about GDP, there is no way to factor, for instance, biodiversity, or anything like that. How do you put a value on a bee?

And yet, without pollination, humans will cease to exist.” – Beverley Gower-Jones, founder and managing partner, Clean Growth Fund ogy to achieve that transition, and I wanted to play my part – to make sure we do everything we can to get to net zero as soon as possible,” she says.

Soon after, Gower-Jones set up Carbon Limiting Technologies, and her work with cleantech entrepreneurs and SMEs quickly made her realise the scale of the funding gap. However, getting people to appreciate and understand the huge investment gap in the early development of technologies was a challenge. “One of the barriers to tech commercialisation is finance. It took ten years to set up the Clean Growth Fund, to get people to appreciate and understand the huge gap and equally huge financial opportunity in early development, but in the end, we raised 101 million pounds [government and

private funds] so now we can begin to invest in that opportunity and deliver commercial returns to our shareholders.”

Indeed, says Gower-Jones, the response she meets today is a world away from what she experienced two decades ago. “Today, climate change is talked about in all FTSE board rooms, whereas when I started, no one knew or talked about it. In 2006, the conversation was – is it a real thing? Now, the conversation is – oh my god it is real, what are we going to do about it? But often managers don’t know what to do or where to start, so we can look at how to help, what’s the low-hanging fruit, where should we start and how do we create a roadmap to net zero to futureproof our company for the next century.”

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WHERE WILL THE NEXT BIG THING HAPPEN? When asked in which sector she sees the biggest potential for disruptive developments and investment opportunities, Gower-Jones does not hesitate to say that it is everywhere. “Every sector you look at offers such enormous opportunities. In the energy sector, it’s all about long-term energy storage and flexibility, where the demand side and supply side can trade their need for electricity. For someone who can crack the challenge of that or long-term storage, there are massive opportunities.

The same goes for the building sector if you can solve the issue of domestic heating. Heat pumps are good for about 50 per cent of our housing stock, but not the rest, so we need innovations for proper insulation and other forms of electric heating,” she stresses.

She goes on to list the need for innovations that can assist the industrial sector to utilise the enormous amount of waste heat currently produced. Of course, carbon capture is another critical technology, she stresses. But there are so many more sectors mushrooming and sprouting with incredible speed: the micro-mobility sector, batteries and solar for distributed

MOF Technologies, one of the companies in the Clean Growth Fund’s portfolio, is helping to decarbonise heavy industries through its next-generation carbon capture system, Nuada. Photo: MOF Technologies

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“I think, since 2019, the tide has turned in terms of the public; the heightened awareness and the understanding of the dire situation the planet is in has gone up exponentially.” – Beverley Gower-Jones generation, as well as hydrogen-driven propulsion for planes, ammonia for ships, and combinations of it all. “You cannot just say ‘this’ is an interesting area – there are fantastic opportunities in and across all these sectors,” she stresses.

HOW TO GET THE BIG PLAYERS TO DRIVE THE CHANGE While the cleantech market is literally boiling with innovation and initiative, and in turn opportunities for early-stage investors, the big established players are often per-

ceived to be dragging their feet and even resisting the change. This is, according to Gower-Jones, predictable but unfortunate.

“It is the newcomers that bring in disruptive change; it is very difficult for industry incumbents to make change and transition, because they have too many vested interests – employees are worried about their jobs, and the business needs to keep returning shareholders’ dividend,” she says.

“This means the old ships are turning slowly to point in the right direction, while small and nimble new players lead the way.”

Among the cleantech companies the Clean Growth Fund has invested in, is Indra, which has developed the Smart Pro, an EV charger which automatically optimises for the cleanest, cheapest electricity and enables vehicle-to-grid discharge. Photo: Indra

Just like big corporations are often accused of slowing down the transition, governments are commonly suspected of using words rather than actions to quieten environmental concerns. When asked what she thinks could help this situation, Gower-Jones points to accountability as one of the biggest issues.

“The UK government set up the Committee on Climate Change as an independent body to hold the government to account to their goals – the goals have been held so far; the prediction is that they might not meet the next one, but it has been a successful monitoring structure. I wish we could export that to every other country.

Promising net-zero contributions is fine, but we have to deliver, and having someone holding us to account helps.”

THE SNOWBALL IS ROLLING When asked about her OBE, which was one of many awarded for environmental and net-zero services at the 2023 New Year’s Honours, Gower-Jones explains that she believes she received it as a recognition of her work to support hundreds of cleantech SMES commercialise. As such, it is symbolic of the increasing number of awards and organisations recognising and supporting innovators developing low-carbon solutions. “I think, since 2019, the tide has turned in terms of the public; the heightened awareness and the understanding of the dire situation the planet is in has gone up exponentially,” she says.

“What I see now is a wave of other funds commercialising in this space, focusing on low-carbon cleantech. I’ve had calls from many organisations from Europe and the UK, saying – we want to set up a cleantech fund, and it’s that kind of private money we need to commercialise the solutions in this space, so I consider that a major achievement.”

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Beverley Gower-Jones standing with her portfolio founders during one of the Clean Growth Fund’s regular Portfolio Days. Photo: Clean Growth Fund

However, while innovation and investment may do a lot to turn the ship, governmental support and structures are necessary to help speed up the process. Among the tools needed are, according to GowerJones, financing packages to help customers buy low carbon-solutions, which often come with higher capital costs and lower operational costs, assisted “no regret trials” of new technologies, and policies “adapted to the world we live in”.

There is, however, one critical problem that needs to be solved first and foremost.

“When talking about GDP, there is no way to factor, for instance, biodiversity, or anything like that. How do you put a value on a bee? And yet, without pollination, humans will cease to exist, and I think that is a problem. She goes on to explain that it’s not about putting a price on nature. Humans completely rely on nature, and without nature there is no planet; so it is about changing the very system in which we operate. We cannot get a sensible price on carbon even though we have been talking about that for over ten years – it’s a fundamental issue,” she says, adding: “We still have policies that have been set up for a world where gas was considered clean and electricity dirty. With renewables generating our electricity, that has changed

completely, but the incentives and structures, whether in the building or power sectors, are constructed for the world that was, not the world that we are moving to.

There is a lot of regulative policy work that needs to be redesigned and put in place to enable the transition.”

Still, after two decades in cleantech development, Gower-Jones, is confident and optimistic that we have reached the turning point, that right now decarbonisation is ”right at the top of the agenda, and the snowball is running down the hill, faster and faster.”

THE CLEAN GROWTH FUND The Clean Growth Fund is a commercially run venture capital fund, which aims to speed up the deployment of innovative clean technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by making direct investments in companies seeking to commercialise promising technologies. The Fund’s focus is on commercial returns and UK-based innovations that demonstrate clear reductions in greenhouse gases. The Fund’s current portfolio of investments is available from the Clean Growth Fund website.

In March 2022, the Clean Growth Fund announced the final fund size of £101 million, with seven private-sector investors backing the Fund, alongside BEIS. CARBON LIMITING TECHNOLOGIES Since its foundation in 2006, CLT has worked with hundreds of cleantech entrepreneurs to help them commercialise low carbon technologies.

CLT is committed to ensuring innovations stack up commercially, technically, financially and socially. By delivering public sector programmes and incubation support, and working with companies to innovate and internationalise, the company aims to accelerate the transition to a low carbon, sustainable economy.

Furthermore, the consultancy has supported national and regional governments to create the policy conditions that support clean growth, and is increasingly targeting green finance as the third pillar to enable rapid scale-up of transformative solutions.

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Fashion

Digital dressing by: The Fabricant. Model: Jeremia Turangan.

Owner of NFT: The Fabricant. Photo: The Fabricant

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AI, 3D modelling, and orange-peel fabrics - could technology ease fashion’s environmental conscience?

From piles of fabric offcuts wasted during the manufacturing process to a massive wastewater production and heavy carbon footprint, fashion has a sustainability problem. Helen Massy-Beresford looks into the many new technologies being employed to bring the fashion industry in line with the greatest trend of the century, sustainability.

BY HELEN MASSY-BERESFORD

The clothing and textile industry, which contributes $2.4 trillion to global manufacturing, employing approximately 300 million people, is responsible for two to eight per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Alliance for Sustainable Fashion.

global wastewater and has a carbon intensity that exceeds aviation and shipping combined,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a May 2022 report on the sector.

Big names in the fashion world have recognised the scale of the challenge and are taking steps to limit their impact.

“The apparel industry uses enough fresh water to quench the thirst of five million people a year, produces 20 per cent of

While technological solutions – everything from 3-D printing to artificial intelligence (AI) – can’t provide all the answers, they

can help. A May 2022, McKinsey report noted fashion companies invested 1.6 to 1.8 per cent of revenues in technology in 2021. By 2030, that figure is set to rise to 3.0 to 3.5 per cent. “Technologies such as robotics, advanced analytics and in-store applications may help streamline processes and support sustainability, as well as create an exceptional customer experience,” McKinsey said.

REDUCING WASTE WITH DIGITAL SAMPLING “Technology is the cornerstone for things to be done in a better way,” says Ana Diaz Schiavon, fashion consultant and co-founder of sustainability-in-fashion training specialist Honest Fashion. “It’s just we don’t yet know how far that technology can go and how to implement it in the right February 2023

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Environmental NGO Redress is focused on reducing waste in the fashion industry. Photo: Redress

way.” At the design stage, big manufacturers are looking at ways that technology can help them cut waste, including digital sampling using 3D modelling.

Hong Kong-based clothing manufacturer TAL Apparel Ltd, which makes one in every six dress shirts sold in the United States every year, is using digital sampling to cut waste. “At TAL, we are progressively switching to digital sampling because of its ability to benefit the environment by saving natural resources in manufacturing,” says Delman Lee, vice chair of TAL Apparel Ltd.

“Using a cotton T-shirt as an example, according to the World Wildlife Fund, 2,700 litres of water are needed to make one cotton T-shirt. For every 1,000 digital samples produced, we save 2.7 million litres of water.

Digital samplings also allow us to save time on logistics and avoid unnecessary carbon emissions generated by human activities.”

Digital sampling can dramatically reduce the number of physical samples that go back and forth between a manufacturer and a designer, explains Hannah Lane, director of partnerships at Redress, an

“3D modelling can replicate exactly what a garment will look like in reality, using a virtual sample, down to how different fabrics with different compositions will drape on a model.”

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environmental NGO focused on reducing waste in the fashion industry: “3D modelling can replicate exactly what a garment will look like in reality, using a virtual sample, down to how different fabrics with different compositions will drape on a model.”

Traditional sampling can call for as many as ten physical samples, but digital sampling is gaining traction, partly driven by COVID-19, which made getting samples to and from factories and organising meetings more challenging. Many brands using digital sampling now ask for just one ‘top’ physical sample before launching production, while some have even done away with physical samples altogether. “This dramatically reduces wasted fabric, but also eliminates the unnecessary logistics of getting the samples back and forth between factory and designers, as well as reducing the time and costs involved: good news for the businesses involved, as well as the planet,” Lane adds.

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NFT Owner Simona El Fiky.

Photo: The Fabricant

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Start-up The Fabricant specialises in digital-only clothing through photo-real 3D fashion design and animation, believing that clothes do not need to be physical to exist.

Digital dressing by: The Fabricant Owner of NFT: The Fabricant Photo: The Fabricant

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Sustainable Fashion

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Redress also works with TAL on the Redress Design Award, which aims to encourage emerging fashion designers to adopt circular design techniques.

CITRUS FABRICS AND CHEMICAL RECYCLING The materials used to make clothes and accessories are the biggest contributor to fashion’s environmental footprint, Morgan Stanley says, with between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of items of clothing made using synthetic petroleum-based fabrics, which, when washed, shed microplastics that end up in oceans.

One solution to that problem is developing and using alternative, biodegradable fibres, and many companies are focusing research efforts in this field, using by-products from the food industry to create the likes of apple, mushroom or leaf leather or algae-based textiles and dyes.

Sicilian start-up Orange Fiber extracts cellulose from citrus fruit by-products to create fibres that are spun into yarn: Italian designer Salvatore Ferragamo used the resulting eco-friendly material in a 2017 sustainable womenswear capsule collection.

The industry is also tackling another challenge: completely rethinking the lifecycle of the fibres used to manufacture clothing, by increasing circularity. That means keeping materials in the loop, reusing and recycling them into new products rather than consigning them to landfill.

Dealing more sustainably with wasted fabrics, whether offcuts or discarded garments, is another important area of research in which technology will play a major role.

“One of the main challenges is sorting,” says Diaz Schiavon. “We have textiles mixed together with different chemicals,

Finalists of the Redress Design Award, which encourages emerging designers to adopt circular techniques, visit the TAL factory. Photo: Redress

colours, fibres that won’t respond the same way to processes. It’s very challenging to fully recycle mixed fibres.”

The industry is looking for efficient and cost-effective solutions that go beyond traditional mechanical sorting of fibres for recycling.

“In the sorting process we can use technology to automatically identify fibres, separate and remix it and turn it into a new fibre. There are many start-ups working on different mechanical, chemical and composition processes,” Diaz Schiavon says.

In October, chemical recycling specialist Worn Again Technologies, whose strategic investors include fashion giant H&M, completed a new funding round, raising £27.6 million to help it build a textile-recycling demonstration plant in Winterthur, Switzerland. The plant will make use of innovative polymer processing technologies and be able to upcycle 1,000 tonnes of textiles per year as the company expands.

INCREASING USE Many large retailers, including some luxury brands, are also dipping their toes into the resale market, a challenge for retailers that need to coordinate the ‘reverse logistics’ of reselling, as well as managing transport cost and operations for second-hand items, Morgan Stanley says.

With the rise of fast fashion, and an increasing tendency to view cheap clothes as throwaway items fit only for a few wears, overproduction is also a huge issue.

“One of the important things is knowing what people will want to buy in the future and not producing things that they won’t want,” says Diaz Schiavon. “It’s about changing the way we understand consumption – imagining how a future-conscious consumer would dress and how they would purchase what they wear, and thinking about creating that system for them.”

Making better use of data to manage brands’ product portfolios, and thereby in-

“Technology can make great advancements, but it can’t do it alone.

It’s also a question of changing consumer attitudes.”

– Ana Diaz Schiavon, co-founder, Honest Fashion February 2023

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Sustainable Fashion

“If you’re a company committed to sustainability, you’ll actually make a bigger impact with strategic inventory management than with ten per cent of your line being in recyclable materials”. – Juliana Prather creasing efficiency and reducing waste, is one of the aims of EDITED. The company uses artificial intelligence (AI) driven algorithms to sort and aggregate market data, creating easy-to-use decision-making tools that reveal patterns in consumer behaviour and help brands make smart choices that limit overproduction and waste.

The company’s data tools can help to optimise inventory levels, including through smarter size management, improve merchandising and pricing – all of which helps fashion houses to reduce wasteful and costly leftover stocks, explains chief marketing officer Juliana Prather.

“If you’re a company committed to sustainability, you’ll actually make a bigger impact with strategic inventory management than

Digital images created by Redress Design Award candidates using Browzwear VStitcher software. Photo: Redress

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with ten per cent of your line being in recyclable materials,” Prather says. “It’s not as sexy, but that’s the reality – if you significantly reduce excess inventory, that’s less being produced at all levels, from energy consumption to materials that go to landfill.”

Through comparisons with other brands and products, EDITED’s data can also help customers make smart decisions about pricing, another important way to cut waste: even a garment made from sustainable materials represents unnecessary waste if it is too expensive to sell.

“If a company is launching new sustainable products, one of the big challenges for retailers to expand these programmes is to know what to charge,” Prather says.

“More and more brands are seeing that

Better managing of inventory can make a bigger impact on sustainability than initiatives such as using a percentage of recyclable materials, says EDITED’s chief marketing officer Juliana Prather. Photo: EDITED

they have to participate in sustainable objectives and have a profitable way to do that – which allows them to grow their (sustainable) programmes and get more management support for them.”

Meanwhile, US-based software company Optoro specialises in improving the returns process for retailers and estimates that in 2021, customers using its platform, based on cloud-based software, data and machine learning, diverted 13.1 million pounds (almost 6,000 tonnes) of waste

Sustainable Fashion

from landfill and were able to send 95 per cent of their returned and excess inventory to reuse channels. On average, its clients see a 25 per cent reduction in returns sent to landfill, the company says.

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The Fabricant uses photo-real 3D fashion design and animation to allow users to create digital-only clothing.

FASHION IN THE METAVERSE Start-up The Fabricant takes sustainability one step further – into the metaverse, specialising in digital-only clothing through photo-real 3D fashion design and animation. “We aim to show the world that clothing does not need to be physical to exist,” The Fabricant says.

Its platform allows consumers to become creators, coming up with their own unique NFT fashion items with a curated collection from brands, creators and designers.

New fashion seasons are hosted and designers and brands release raw materials for creators to mint, wear or trade their garments. “The Fabricant wastes nothing but data and exploits nothing but imagination,” the digital fashion house says.

This innovative approach to fashion, which uses blockchain technology to track the provenance of garments and eliminate the risk of counterfeit, not only cuts down on waste but also democratises fashion and appeals to a younger generation instinctively at home in the digital world.

Looking ahead, there’s plenty more potential for technological innovations to shake up the fashion industry, says Diaz Schiavon: “AI and the Internet of Things, automation, 3D printing and the virtual environment are all going to revolutionise the way we consume fashion.”

However, technology does not have all the answers. “It’s a mix of a different range of technologies, put together creatively, that has to be attached to the human factor, in the factories. Technology can make great advancements, but it can’t do it alone.” It’s also a question of changing consumer attitudes, she adds. “We can’t buy tonnes of garments every year that are so cheap we don’t end up knowing the value of them.

As long as we keep buying things like that, companies will keep selling them – it’s a business.”

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The Cleantech Market

No silver bullet required – how we can make a positive impact on climate change with existing clean technologies

BY DAVID HUNT

Electricity generated by photovoltaic solar panels is already cheaper in many locations than that powered by fossil fuels.

If you are reading this magazine, chances are you fully appreciate that climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity today. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that we need to take immediate and significant action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to prevent the worst effects of global warming. There is often a perception that we are waiting for some kind of ‘silver bullet’ technology that will solve the problem for us; hydrogen, fusion or some new battery chemistry. The reality is we already have the necessary clean technologies to make a huge positive impact in the fight against climate change, we just need to deploy them at scale and with speed.

and have become increasingly efficient and cost-effective over time. In many parts of the world, solar power is already cheaper than fossil-fuel generated electricity. The cost of solar panels has decreased significantly in the last ten years. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the average cost of solar panels in 2010 was around $4.00 per watt. By 2020, the average cost had dropped to around $0.30 per watt, a decrease of approximately 93 per cent. Solar power can be used to generate electricity for homes, businesses and even entire communities. It can also be used for heating and cooling buildings and for powering electric vehicles.

AN ODE TO SOLAR AND WIND

Another established and scaling technology is wind turbines. From the Netherlands of old, to the massive offshore wind farms of today, wind has been captured for power for a very long time, and mod-

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ern wind turbines have scaled in size and output significantly. Like solar power, wind power is now competitive with fossil fuels in many parts of the world and is rapidly becoming cheaper. Modern offshore wind turbines have a power output of 8-12 MW. These wind turbines are much larger than the onshore wind turbines you may see driving along the motorway. The most powerful offshore wind turbine currently in operation is the GE Haliade-X, which has a power output of 13 MW and a rotor diameter of 220 metres. That’s huge!

Heat pumps are another brilliant and efficient clean technology that has been around for years and are picking up significant momentum as we move away from gas to heat our homes and buildings. Heat pumps are devices that transfer heat from one location to another and can be used for heating and cooling buildings. They

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David Hunt is Founder and CEO of Hyperion Cleantech Group, parent of global executive search and recruitment businesses exclusively working in the cleantech sectors. He is a mentor for a number of international cleantech accelerators, host of the Leaders in Cleantech podcast, and a regular commentator on cleantech and talent issues in trade and the mainstream media. Here he writes on why we should not wait for the silver bullet before acting to stop climate change.

are much more energy-efficient than traditional heating and cooling systems and can be powered by clean electricity. Heat pumps can also be used to heat water for homes and businesses and can even be used for industrial processes. Replacing gas heating with heat pumps will have a massive impact, and contrary to popular myth, they work very well in cold countries, and have been installed in large numbers in Scandinavia for some years.

age is important for many reasons, not least that electricity from solar and wind is, whilst more predictable than many think, variable and, at times, intermittent. Batteries are key to the electrification of everything. The good news is that like solar, the cost of batteries has decreased significantly and continues to do so, while, at the same time, batteries improve energy density (more power in a smaller battery). Battery gigafactories and investments in battery manufacturing capacity are scaling at a mind-boggling rate.

Of course new innovation, making batteries cleaner and easier to produce and recycle, is happening at pace and needs to continue to do so, but we have the technology and resources to build sufficient for both the escalation of grid storage and, of course, for electric vehicles. Electric vehicles too are, as you will see on the roads, becoming increasingly prevalent and affordable, and all major automakers are investing heavily to support the global trend, especially with many countries and states banning the sale of ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles by 2025.

STORING ELECTRICITY

WE DON’T HAVE TO WAIT

Much of this requires the ability to generate and store large quantities of electricity. Stor-

Innovations are great and exciting, but we don’t need to wait for them to be devel-

oped in order to make a positive impact on climate change. The technologies we already have work and can be deployed at scale, quickly. Scale and speed are important, and it’s been great to see companies like 1Kommer5 and Enpal creating business models that make it easy and affordable for home-owners to install solar and heat pumps; both raising over £200m recently to help them to scale.

No silver bullet is required. We don’t have to wait – we already have the necessary clean technologies to make a huge positive impact on climate change. Instead, we need to focus on deploying the technologies we already have, at scale and quickly.

I had the pleasure of being in Brussels last month to hear the announcement of an EU Net Zero Industry Act, an equivalent to the US policy the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act), both committing to both policy and financial support, with $billions to support the development of cleantech companies and technologies. Investing in clean-energy infrastructure, policies and support like this enables us to act now, and not to wait for the next technological breakthrough.

We have the tools and the knowledge, let’s put them to work.

Replacing gas heating with heat pumps will have a massive impact, and contrary to popular myth, they work very well in cold countries, and have been installed in large numbers in Scandinavia for some years.

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Cleantech Products of the Month

Cleantech Products of the Month Cleantech can be many things – products specifically aimed at making your lifestyle or home more sustainable, or innovations to make the products we must have more sustainable. Moreover, products that make it easier, safer or more fun to make a sustainable choice also play an important role in the cleantech transformation.

The products selected here represent a bit of all of that. Clean, green and innovative, they help you enjoy the budding spring in a sustainable manner, whether that means finding comfort at home on cold days or outdoor explorations in the spring sun.

BY SIGNE BENN HANSEN

Photos: Lumos/ Dave Lehl

LUMOS KICKSTART HELMET For many bicyclists, springtime is the time to dust off the bike and rejoice in the ability to save petrol money or bus fares while getting active outside and reducing their carbon footprint. However, with the long bright days of summer still a little while away, doing so safely requires adequate lighting. This is something which can cause a bit of a hassle, because the best and most traffic-safe lights tend to be expensive, and you don’t want to leave them unsecured when locking the bike to go into a shop or similar.

On the other hand, you want to be able to easily mount and dismount the lights to take them on and off for charging. On top of that, who hasn’t tried rummaging through a bag looking for a set of lights before realising that they were still sitting in the charging station back home.

cause with the lights incorporated in the helmet, you will never forget to bring them along with you or leave them unsecured on the bike. For an avid, but forgetful bicyclist like this writer, this is bound to prevent many an annoyed bus ride back home. On top of that, the helmet adds some extra safety features. With integrated brake and turn signals, the helmet has been designed to help warn drivers of a cyclist’s presence and manoeuvres. The turn signals are operated wirelessly via a remote, which can be attached to handlebars.

That’s where Lumos Kickstart Helmet comes to the rescue, be-

Lumos Kickstart helmet sells at $199.95

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The Lumos helmet comes in several models, including a super futuristic Matrix mode, but our favourite is still the original Kickstart helmet, which took the Kickstart community by storm in 2015.

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NEBIA BY MOEN QUATTRO SHOWERHEADS As we slowly emerge from the cold winter months, the luxury of a long hot shower is one that few people relish giving up, even in the name of sustainability.

However, with global water demand expected to increase by 55 per cent from 2000 to 2050, and many areas already struggling with supply strains, saving water is becoming imperative. Fortunately, it can be done so without sacrificing the morning shower.

Described as “an enveloping and immersive cloud of water droplets, steam and air”, the patented atomisation technology from Nebia saves 50-60 per cent of water and around 55 per cent of energy (for heating) when showering. At the core of Nebia’s shower product are five patented technologies creating the atomising spray nozzles that produce smaller, faster droplets than conventional showers.

Nebia by Moen Quattro, described by Nebia as “the company’s most advanced and affordable water-saving shower to date”, was launched as a result of the company’s 2019 partnership with Moen, a leader in the shower industry for over 70 years. At the end of 2021, the Nebia by Moen Spa Shower received Gold in the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA).

Furthermore, the company’s recently-launched Nebia by Moen Quattro Handshower is, says the company, the first shower to have recycled ocean-plastic components.

Founded in Mexico City in 2012, Nebia got off to a flying start, launching its first product on Kickstarter in 2015. By 2019, the company had saved over 120 billion gallons of water worldwide.

Photos: Moen

Nebia by Moen showerheads start at $129.

THE SR/F ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLE FROM ZERO MOTORCYCLES Founded by the former NASA engineer Neal Saiki, who built the first prototype in his garage in 2006, Zero Motorcycles today offers a leading range of silent, industry-leading motorcycles with exceptional range and torque.

One of the newest additions from the California-based company, the SR/F, delivers 190 Nm of torque and 110 horsepower with the simple twist of a throttle, thanks to the class-leading performance and efficiency of Zero’s new ZF7510 motor. Equipped with the new in-house developed ZF17.3 kWh lithium-ion battery, the motorcycle is capable of a 365-kilometre maximum range, has an optimal charge time of 60 minutes and offers a top speed of 200Km/h.

Indeed, for motorcycle enthusiasts looking to enjoy the beginning spring on a smooth, effortless ride through the landscape, this motorcycle offers the possibility of doing so in a silent, powerful and sustainable way.

Retail prices starting at: £23,350

Photos: Zero Motorcycles

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Innovative 100-in-five battery set to be produced in Italy by 2024 The eradication of ‘charging anxiety’ has come closer thanks to an agreement between the Israeli battery developer StoreDot and manufacturer Italvolt. StoreDot, which plans to release an electric-vehicle battery that can fill up with 100 miles of charge in five minutes by 2024, has licenced its technology to Italvolt, which has plans to manufacture the products at a plant in Italy.

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Itavolt and StoreDot

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StoreDot’s 300 Wh/kg EV form factor pouch cells achieve over 1,000 consecutive extremefast cycles, while guaranteeing auto makers no battery degradation due to extreme fast charging. Photo: StoreDot

Set to be the largest battery factory in Italy, The Italvolt facility is set to manufacture a new battery developed by StoreDot, which can be filled up with 100 miles of charge in five minutes. Photo: Itavolt

The Italvolt facility will be the largest battery factory in Italy and “will be crucial for us securing European manufacturing capacity,” says StoreDot’s chief executive, Doron Myersdorf.

Once StoreDot achieves its aim of mass producing a battery that can take 100 miles of charge in five minutes, it plans to cut charge times to three minutes by 2028 and two minutes by 2032. The company is focused on developing extreme-fast charg-

ing (XFC) batteries, batteries with ‘extreme’ energy densities, which are more efficient and longer lasting than today’s products.

“Our advanced 100-in-five technologies will eradicate charging anxiety, which is currently the biggest barrier to widespread electric vehicle ownership,” Myersdorf says. “We are excited to be forming this strategic collaboration with Italvolt, a company that shares our ambition for the entire battery ecosystem.”

Italvolt’s Italian manufacturing facility will be technology agnostic and use a modular production process allowing it to accommodate other battery technologies alongside StoreDot’s XFC fast-charging products, as well as upgrading processes to meet changes in XFC’s specifications. The agreement between Italvolt and StoreDot is seen as key to helping Italy create a modern, electric-vehicle based automotive industry that generates skilled jobs.

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Itavolt and StoreDot

With its 100-in-five technologies, StoreDot hopes to eradicate charging anxiety, which is currently the biggest barrier to widespread electric vehicle ownership, says chief executive, Doron Myersdorf. Photo: StoreDot

MANUFACTURING CAPACITY The collaboration includes an offtake agreement enabling StoreDot to purchase Italvolt’s batteries for its own business and customers once production is complete.

The Italvolt facility is scheduled to open in 2025 and will employ around 3,000 people, with sufficient manufacturing capacity to make 45 GWh of batteries a year.

In October 2022, Italvolt appointed Bosch executive Joerg Klingler to speed up the development of the plant.

“Our collaboration with StoreDot is an inflection point in our journey to deliver high-quality lithium-ion battery cells at scale,” says Lars Carlstrom, Italvolt’s founder and chief executive. “Italvolt’s technology-agnostic, modular approach to production will ensure that we remain at the forefront of the industry as battery cell technology advances.”

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which is currently dominated by Chinese providers, but the path to creating so-called gigafactories is not always easy. In the UK, for example, the manufacturing hopeful Britishvolt went into administration in January 2023, laying off 232 employees and shelving plans for a massive electric car battery factory in Blyth, Northumberland.

The collapse has left a question mark over where the UK will get batteries for automotive manufacturers such as Jaguar Land Rover. With Britishvolt’s demise there is only one active gigafactory development in train in the country, which will supply up to 38 GWh of battery capacity for Nissan in Sunderland.

THE STOREDOT TECHNOLOGY Independently verified by the leading battery lab Shmuel De-Leon Energy in December 2022, StoreDot XFC battery technology was described as a “breakthrough and game changer for the automotive industry”. The battery, which is currently tested by over 15 global automotive brand manufacturers, has reshaped the conventional Li-ion battery by designing and synthesising proprietary organic and inorganic compounds optimised

by Artificial Intelligence algorithms. The reduction in charging time is achieved primarily by replacing graphite in the cell’s anode with metalloid nano-particles, such as silicon, to overcome major issues in safety, cycle life and cell swelling during the charging process.

The battery tech has been in development for four years and is backed by patents in cell design, software and a self-repairing system that allows batteries to regenerate while in use.

Velux Group and BayWa r.e.

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Europe’s first agri-PV power-purchase agreement signed as interest grows

Renewable energy developer BayWa r.e. believes agri-PV can increase a farm’s economic value by up to 30 per cent.

At the end of last year, Skylight maker Velux Group and BayWa r.e., a renewable energy developer, signed the first European power-purchase agreement (PPA) involving agriculture and solar power. The move underscores growing interest in agri-PV, where photovoltaic solar plants are combined with food production on farmland.

BY JASON DEIGN |

PHOTO: BAYWA R.E.

Under the terms of the PPA, BayWa r.e. will build two solar parks in Spain to power Velux’s European operations with 100 per cent green electricity by 2024, saving 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

The parks – one close to Seville and the other near Granada – will be connected to the grid between 2023 and 2024, with a combined output of 167 GWh a year; equal to the energy consumption of around 45,000 European homes.

The Granada plant, called Alhendín, will be BayWa r.e.’s first agri-PV project in Spain, with crops being grown between the solar panels across ten per cent of the development. To accommodate plant growth and farm machinery, the solar panels will be raised further off the ground than usual. The panels will also be used to collect rainwater for the crops in the project.

A GREAT POTENTIAL IF CHALLENGES CAN BE OVERCOME On its website, BayWa r.e. claims agri-PV can increase a farm’s economic value by

up to 30 per cent. In China, where agri-PV is practised widely because of a shortage of available land near grid connections, the analyst firm BloombergNEF has found this is not always the case. Instead, a 2020 study of Chinese agri-PV found the solar plants had higher costs and lower yields than traditional projects, and farming operated at a loss because of the need for manual labour to work between panels.

Nevertheless, if the challenges can be overcome then the potential for agri-PV is immense, according to the industry body SolarPower Europe. If just one per cent of Europe’s arable land were combined with solar-power generation, then it could deliver more than 700 GW of electricity, SolarPower Europe says. “Installed directly above crops, agri-PV provides shade, protects against hail or frost, enables stable crop yields and increases the electrical yield of solar PV panels,” claims Alain Desvigne, chief executive of Amarenco Group and chair of SolarPower Europe’s agri-PV work stream.

BIODIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Furthermore, says BayWa r.e., the development of both solar plants will include a comprehensive suite of social and environmental measures to enhance local biodiversity and foster community involvement. The developer intends to set up interdisciplinary research groups with local universities – the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Universidad de Córdoba – to make sure local community and environmental considerations are prioritised in both plants.

“BayWa r.e. is happy to support Velux on their journey towards reaching carbon neutrality,” BayWa r.e.’s global director of energy solutions, Andrea Grotzke, tells Discover Cleantech. “We believe that innovative projects like this one in Spain perfectly showcase the many opportunities that renewables offer, not only in terms of energy, but also community engagement and food production.”

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The Energy Warehouse units being supplied by ESS Inc can supply electricity for up to 12 hours before recharging and will be part of Schiphol’s electrification and decarbonisation strategy. Photo: ESS Inc

Top European airport swaps diesel generators for iron flow batteries Mainland Europe’s second-largest airport, Amsterdam Schiphol, is taking a step towards lower-carbon operations by swapping diesel generators for environmentally benign flow batteries. The diesel generators supply electrical power to aircraft on the ground. In the first quarter of 2023, Schiphol will take delivery of the flow batteries to see if they can be used to charge electric ground power units instead.

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Schiphol

Unlike the lithium-ion battery systems used in many large-scale energy applications, the Energy Warehouse units being supplied by ESS Inc of the USA have an almost unlimited cycle life and can supply electricity for up to 12 hours before recharging. The flow battery technology also uses commonly found, easily recycled and non-toxic materials in its electrolyte. The main ingredients are ferrous chloride, potassium chloride and water. Each Energy Warehouse unit has up to 600 kWh of capacity and comes in a 12-metre, 38-tonne container.

“We hope that the partnership with ESS enables Schiphol to advance our electrification and decarbonisation strategy,” says Oscar Mann, the airport’s manager of innovation. “If this pilot is successful, this is a double win as it both reduces our carbon footprint and reduces air pollution.”

The pilot will be part of a consortium called TULIPS (derived from ‘DemonsTrating lower pollUting soLutions for sustaInable airPorts acrosS Europe’) that is being

financed by the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 research and innovation fund to facilitate the transition to low-carbon mobility.

DECARBONISING AVIATION “The consortium aims to speed up the rollout of sustainable technologies in aviation and significantly contribute towards zero emissions and zero waste at the EU’s 300plus airports by 2030 and climate-neutral aviation by 2050,” says Mann.

Schiphol, which leads the TULIPS consortium, is said to have selected the Energy Warehouse because it has no fire or explosion risk, making it safe to use close to

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passenger aircraft. The flow batteries are one of several novel technologies being used for long-duration storage, providing large amounts of energy for hours, or even days at a time, at low cost thanks to the use of cheap, widely available materials.

“The decarbonisation of air travel is crucial, and Schiphol is leading the way,” says Alan Greenshields, ESS’s European director. “We are proud to partner with a leading airport operator to demonstrate and pilot the key role that long-duration energy storage will play in helping to decarbonise airport operations and reduce ground level emissions, improving air quality for airport and airline employees and passengers.”

FLOW BATTERIES Flow batteries are electrochemical storage systems where chemical energy is stored in liquids that are pumped across separate sides of a membrane to produce electricity.

The liquids can be relatively cheap and commonplace. ESS Inc uses a mix of iron, salt and water. This means storage costs are low. And because storage capacity of the system depends on the amount of liquid, or electrolyte, flow batteries can be equipped with massive tanks that will allow them to store dozens of megawatts of energy that can be delivered for hours on end.

Amsterdam Schiphol is swapping diesel generators for environmentally benign flow batteries. Photo: iStock

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Qnovo

Smart software to extend EV battery range and cut charging time The eye-catching sports vehicles produced by Vanderhall Motor Works will be getting more bang under their bonnets this year thanks to some fancy battery tech. Utah, USA-based Vanderhall, which makes vehicles including the two-seat, three-wheel Laguna and Brawley quad off-roader, is set to boost the performance of its electric motors by ten per cent thanks to novel battery management software.

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PHOTO: QNOVO

Vanderhal’s all-electric Brawley off-roader will feature Qnovo’s SpectralX, software which can cut charging times to almost 20 minutes, while extending range by up to a tenth. Photo: Qnovo

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Qnovo

The software, called SpectralX, comes from a company called Qnovo, of California, and can cut charging times to almost 20 minutes while extending range by up to a tenth. SpectralX uses intelligent predictive analytics to enhance battery performance and safety.

“This partnership with Vanderhall builds on our work with the world’s leading mobility providers and represents a true vote

of confidence from one of the electric vehicle industry’s most innovative players,” says Nadim Maluf, chief executive and co-founder at Qnovo. “A major barrier in the widespread adoption of electric vehicles has been long charging times, range anxiety and concerns around thermal events. Qnovo eradicates these issues and lays the foundations for mass electric-vehicle adoption around the world.”

A NO-BRAINER The Vanderhall-Qnovo collaboration was launched in January at the Consumer Technology Association’s CES 2023 show in Las Vegas, where a Brawley equipped with SpectralX was on show. The all-electric Brawley is a departure for Vanderhall, which has previously specialised in internal combustion engine vehicles.

“Implementing Qnovo’s SpectralX software in the Brawley, our all-electric side by side, was a no-brainer,” says Stephen Hall, Vanderhall’s chief executive officer.

“It helps us provide a superior all-electric vehicle by optimising and reducing charging times, extending range and mitigating potential safety risks. We’re excited to deploy this solution in multiple all-electric vehicles that will be launching globally in upcoming years.”

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million US dollars from investors, including BorgWarner, OGCI Climate Investments, Constellation Technology Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, and RockPort Capital.

“Software will increasingly become key to advance the state of the battery, in similar ways software brought computation to the fingertips of every human being,” says Maluf. “Software can add about ten per cent to the accessible energy in a battery, thereby increasing the vehicle driving range by the same proportion. For calibration, ten per cent is the equivalent of two generations of batteries.”

Beyond helping to improve electric vehicle adoption, SpectralX could reduce carbon emissions by allowing vehicles to run for longer on a single set of batteries, Maluf says.

Qnovo’s new technology eradicates concerns about long charging times, range and thermal events, says Nadim Maluf, chief executive and co-founder at Qnovo. Photo: Qnovo

Qnovo aims to augment battery chemistry with computation and learning software, allowing batteries to charge faster without compromising their life span, extending range through increased depth of discharge and providing all-weather safe charging. SpectralX works on top of a manufacturer’s existing battery-management system. In addition, Qnovo’s Battery Genome system helps to automate cell selection processes, saving time in qualification to facilitate deployment of SpectralX in a matter of weeks, Qnovo says.

CHARGING TIMES Qnovo software is used to manage battery life in more than 150 million smartphones around the world and the company, founded in 2010, holds more than 50 patents.

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Sensor technology used to cut wildfires A German technology firm is using sensor technology for the early detection of wildfires as fire-induced forest loss grows around the world. Dryad Networks is hoping its solar-powered sensors will help curtail the 6.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide that are released into the atmosphere every year because of forest fires.

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Dryad Networks

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“When strengthening global commitments to fight climate change, investing more in wildfire prevention should be high on the agenda,” says Carsten Brinkschulte, Dryad’s chief executive. “We must minimise the risk of extreme wildfires by raising awareness of their increasing severity and increasing contribution to global carbon emissions.”

Dryad’s technology uses solar-powered gas sensors in a large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) sensor network to reduce unwanted wildfires, which cause up to 20 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions and have a devastating impact on biodiversity. The company calculates that deploying 120 million of its early-warning sensors worldwide by 2030 could cumulatively save up to 3.9 million hectares of forest from burning, and potentially prevent 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

Wildfire prevention could form part of a carbon credit framework put forward by the USA at the COP27 climate conference to help fund the energy transition in developing countries and contribute to loss and damage compensation. By applying detection technology to wildfire-prone forested areas in developing countries, carbon credits could be awarded for wildfire prevention, with sensor and IoT technology making detection reliable and data led, Dryad says.

A GROWING NEED FOR PROTECTION The need to protect forests from fire is growing along with changes to the world’s weather systems. Eight of the worst wildfire seasons on record have occurred in the last decade, and wildfires are becoming more widespread, burning nearly twice as much tree cover today as they did 20 years ago, Dryad notes.

“If the 1.5C target slips and we reach two degrees of warming, recent data from the United Nations Environment Programme show that we will see 62 per cent more burned areas,” says the company. “If we reach three degrees, that figure rises to 97 per cent.”

Dryad says current estimates of greenhouse emissions from wildfires are mis-

Dryad Networks’ solar-powered sensors are designed to prevent forest fires and thus help curtail the 6.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere every year because of forest fires. Photo: Dryad

calculated because they use carbon and carbon dioxide interchangeably, when the latter is 3.7 times heavier than the former.

“When we measure the amount of carbon emitted by wildfires and compare that to the CO2 emissions of other sectors, we are underrepresenting the severity of the wildfire problem by a factor of 3.7,” Brinkschulte says.

“The most common statistic that gets thrown around is from 2021 and states that wildfires emit 1.76 billion tonnes of carbon globally,” he adds. “That figure

is then used interchangeably with CO2.

However, when calculated correctly, global CO2 emissions of wildfires are a whopping 6.5 billion tonnes.”

Another challenge for wildfire greenhouse gas accounting is that emissions are often written off as carbon-neutral natural phenomena, when in fact 80 per cent of wildfires are caused by humans. “Omitting emissions from global CO2 inventories is both inaccurate and cynical,” Dryad says.

“It leads to inaction on tackling a significant emitter.”

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Megawatt battery system charges electric trucks in just 45 minutes A Swiss consortium has designed a special battery system that could help electric heavy goods vehicles charge six times faster than with current technology. The system, due to enter service in 2023, will have an output of 2.1 MW, far exceeding today’s 350 kW charging infrastructure and allowing trucks to fully charge within 45 minutes.

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Designwerk

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A new battery system, due to enter service in 2023, could help electric heavy goods vehicles charge six times faster than with current technology.

“A new kind of charging infrastructure is needed for long-distance trucks, as well as for ships and aircraft,” says Vivien Dettwiler, chief commercial officer for battery and charger projects at Designwerk. “It is different from the infrastructure for electric cars and makes it possible to charge heavy commercial vehicles in a short time. This helps to ensure that zero-emission freight transport reaches every field of application.”

The chargers will use nickel manganese cobalt lithium-ion batteries that Designwerk says may be sourced from electric trucks once the battery life has dropped below the optimum needed for road transport. Such second-life batteries can still charge and discharge well enough to work in stationary storage applications, such as electric vehicle charging.

SECOND-LIFE BATTERIES

The 25-tonne, container-sized megawatt battery system could help speed the electrification of heavy goods vehicles while avoiding problems for the grid that could be caused by trucks simultaneously charging and causing excessive drains on the electricity network. The Swiss consortium is being led by Designwerk Technologies, part of the Volvo Group, and includes the Bern University of Applied Sciences, the University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the marketing services firm Wyssmann.

Reusing them in chargers provides greater longevity to the batteries and reduces the need for new battery materials including cobalt and nickel, which are expected to face supply bottlenecks as the electric vehicle market expands. Demonstration systems are being installed at Swiss firms Galliker Transport, Käppeli Logistik and Murg Flums Energie. Dettwiler says the megawatt charging system will also help stabilise the grid, by discharging back to the electricity network at times of peak demand.

pand the grid, it also means that the battery system should be able to feed renewable electricity back.”

While adoption of electric cars is rising fast in many parts of the world, the heavy transportation industry has been hesitant to embrace electrification because of the lack of vehicles and charging infrastructure, plus high costs. This situation looks set to change in 2023, however. In addition to charging systems such as Designwerk’s megawatt-scale charger, commercial electric trucks have begun to roll off manufacturing lines.

The food and drinks giant PepsiCo, for example, is expecting to add 100 Tesla Semis to its fleet in the USA in 2023, using them to make deliveries to customers such as Walmart. Volvo, meanwhile, is due to begin production of electric versions of its FH, FM and FMX trucks in the first quarter of 2023. And logistics company Dachser is adding 50 Mercedes-Benz eActros e-trucks to its European fleet.

“We install second-life e-truck batteries in our charging containers as a buffer to cope with peak demand,” Dettwiler says.

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Prosus

The money coming from the new energy funding initiative will mostly go into clean energy supplies for communities in India and South Africa. Photo: iStock

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Prosus

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New renewable energy funding initiative Two companies recently announced a ground-breaking renewable energy funding initiative. Prosus, a technology investor, committed to buying 3 GWh of clean energy from South Pole, which is involved in more than 700 projects worldwide to reduce global warming. As one of the first deals of its kind, the power will be delivered in the form of distributed renewable energy certificates (D-RECs) rather than kilowatt-hours.

BY JASON DEIGN

Each D-REC proves that a certain amount of carbon has been avoided thanks to a small-scale renewable energy project in a developing economy. Prosus intends to sell the D-RECs to companies that want to offset their emissions but are not able to do so by other means. Under the terms of the deal, South Pole will deliver 1 GWh of D-RECs a year between 2022 and 2025.

Proponents say D-RECs are a good way to fund climate-friendly schemes in developing markets where it may be hard to get finance for solar mini grids and similar projects. The energy generation from clean technology projects is logged and linked to a D-REC using blockchain technology. The money coming from Prosus will mostly go into clean energy supplies for communities in India and South Africa.

Without it, these communities would likely have to use diesel generators to power homes, schools, healthcare centres, irrigation systems and more.

D-RECs aim to mimic an established Renewable Energy Certificates scheme that operates in North America and helps fund large-scale clean energy projects. The global renewable energy certificate market was worth almost 13 billion US dollars in 2021, according to Precedence Research.

South Pole’s D-REC Initiative is backed by organisations including the Shell Foundation, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the International Finance Corporation, British International

Investment, USAID and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

FINANCING RENEWABLES “We’re witnessing a real focus on the ‘just transition’,” says Gian Autenrieth, renewable energy platforms manager and D-REC Initiative co-lead at South Pole. “For the D-REC Initiative this means connecting global businesses, renewable energy project developers and communities in emerging markets using D-RECs to supercharge investments in renewable energy.”

Providing finance for climate-friendly projects has been one of the top agenda items at the COP27 talks. There are 759 million people without access to electricity across the world and more than 500 billion US dollars is needed a year until 2040 to meet growing energy demand. “Financing underpins the development of an energy transition pathway for Africa, but the unsustainable levels of public debt countries are managing acts as a block on advancing necessary climate initiatives,” says COP27 President H.E. Sameh Shoukry.

“D-RECs offer an innovative and verifiable platform to accelerate affordable and clean energy access for underserved communities,” says Prajna Khanna, vice president and global head of sustainability at Prosus.

“With Prosus’s portfolio of companies in high-growth markets, our multi-year partnership with the D-REC Initiative shows our commitment to transition to a greener economy that is inclusive, leaving no one behind.”

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AiDash

AiDash’s Intelligent Sustainability Management System (ISMS) uses satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to determine the carbon offset potential of plots of land.Photo: AiDash

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New tool helps unlock carbon offset potential of land A Californian technology firm has launched a digital tool to help organisations explore the carbon capture potential of their own backyards. AiDash’s Intelligent Sustainability Management System (ISMS) uses satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to determine the carbon offset potential of plots of land, so private and public sector bodies can reduce their emissions using their own holdings.

BY JASON DEIGN |

PHOTOS: AIDASH

ISMS is designed to complement carbon offset schemes, where organisations pay third parties for projects that cancel out their emissions as part of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) programmes focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 or earlier. Many of these projects, such as planting trees or restoring wetlands, involve land management practices which the organisations could do themselves on the plots they own.

AiDash says: “The solution not only provides measurements that meet carbon credit standards, but also continuous evidence to prove that credits are based on additional carbon captured and that carbon remains permanently captured in the ground, which is crucial for credible ESG reporting.”

The company also notes that organisations “cannot rely solely on purchased carbon credits to meet their net-zero commitments.” But, it says, governments and businesses in sectors such as utilities,

farming, mining and timber can use the emissions reduction potential of their own land “as a simpler and more affordable way to measure, control and implement this element of their carbon reduction strategy.”

OFFSETTING EMISSIONS AiDash also claims the system could help companies to offset emissions despite predicted increases in carbon credit pricing. The carbon credit market grew 164 per cent in 2021, AiDash says, and is expected to increase further as more organisations make pledges to combat climate change. Bloomberg has reported that the price of credits may rise by as much as 3,000 per cent by 2029, as rules governing the market get tightened.

Higher carbon credit pricing is generally a good thing, as it forces polluters to invest in low-carbon operations rather than just paying for their emissions.

If carbon credit prices are too high, however, it could dissuade organisations from offsetting the emissions they can-

not get rid of. Establishing carbon sinks on land holdings could be up to 90 per cent cheaper than buying credits in offset markets, AiDash says. “Many organisations will soon be priced out of the carbon emissions market, or they will spend much more than they originally anticipated,” comments Abhishek Singh, co-founder and chief executive of AiDash.

“An easier path is to run your own offset programme on your own land and mitigate the price risk for carbon,” he adds. “With ISMS, you will not need to buy as many credits as before to reach net zero, and you might achieve your net-zero goal just by using your own land.”

ISMS can also be used to calculate the biodiversity value of land, helping to inform wider sustainability programmes. In November 2022, AiDash announced a strategic investment of ten million US dollars from SE Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based global venture fund backed by Schneider Electric, a digital transformation of energy management and automation leader.

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The world’s first 3D-printed house with concrete walls and 3D-printed window frames, in Tumba, Sweden. A collaboration between ConcretePrint and NorDan.

Will the houses of the future be printed in concrete?

Many people look to preserve energy in everything they do, be it perfecting the way they drive to work, shower or eat. The construction trade is no different – John Sempill looks into whether 3D printing might offer a new, more sustainable way to build with concrete.

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PHOTOS: CONCRETEPRINT

Traditionally, the construction sector has been plagued with unsustainable habits, risk aversion and a tendency to do things ‘the good old way’. However, Swedish start-up, ConcretePrint, is looking to disrupt the game by printing homes instead of building them.

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it means a cut in production costs by 30 per cent, as well as less planning and less transport and, crucially, the method almost eliminates all waste product.

where between 40-100 litres, and that is basically in the printer cleaning process and when the first bit of concrete is pumped through the printer system.”

“We can basically utilise all of the planned material,” says von Haslingen. “If we print a 150 m2 villa, we might use a total of 30 m3 concrete, for inner and outer walls et cetera, and we might throw away some-

A CLOSER LOOK AT CONCRETE Concrete is interesting in itself, but its production is not without controversy. Traditional methods of making cement and concrete involve extremely high temperatures

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“Concrete is the most used material on the planet – if the whole world were to use wood instead, then all the trees of the Earth would disappear rapidly.”

- Tobias von Haslingen, founder, ConcretePrint

NorDan developed 3D-printed window frames specifically for the project, reducing installation times to a third.

and thus release high amounts of carbon dioxide; with the climate agenda, this, of course, causes resistance. Von Haslingen, however, says critics aren’t seeing the bigger picture. Concrete, he says, is produced to last for ages, and under the correct circumstances can compensate for its carbon dioxide release through binding carbon dioxide back into itself. His words are backed by researchers at RISE, Sweden’s research institute, who have studied the lifetime properties of the material. “The latest IPCC report [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] describes the role of cement in carbon dioxide emissions, but it also shows that, over their lifetime, concrete structures absorb 50 per cent of the carbon dioxide emitted during cement production,” says Katerina Malaga, who researches sustainable concrete at RISE. “And there is another aspect,” von Haslingen adds: “Concrete is the most used material on the planet – if the whole world were to use wood instead, then all the trees of the Earth would disappear rapidly.”

What is more, Norway is looking at other ways to solve the carbon dilemma, by burying it in cavities below the seabed, and “if you bury the carbon dioxide, under the correct conditions, new bedrock is produced,” von Haslingen says.

Tobias v. Haslingen, founder, ConcretePrint.

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According to ConcretePrint, the future of the construction trade is digital: design and purchase your home with the push of a button. Photo: Istock

buries the carbon. Combined with carbon capture and storage projects, the concrete can thus become net carbon neutral or carbon negative, and the bedrock produced in the process could even be used in the construction industry. Of course, huge research and development resources are also deployed around the world to discover new and more carbon-dioxide efficient concrete mixtures and production methods.

WHY PRINT YOUR HOME? On top of being a more precise construction process, entailing less waste, the printing process also helps reduce the total cost of a building project. “If you do the maths, we’re talking about huge sums,” von Haslingen explains. “Just looking at the Swedish construction industry, there is a construction faulty rate of up to a fifth of the total construction cost in a project.”

Printed houses also make the next steps in the building process easier. According to electricians, installation time is cut in half simply because the ground work is done – holes are already ‘printed’ in the right places, and most of the wall chasing is prepared in the printing process. “Today, more than 50 per cent of all decisions in a build are done on site,” von Haslingen explains.

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steps, all of the holes are in the right places, everything is where it is supposed to be. Of course, this has to be planned before print, but this then means the construction process will in turn be a lot swifter.”

The vision of ConcretePrint is to produce houses ready for use after 30 days. But there are a couple of obstacles before this becomes a reality. “This isn’t totally possible with the concrete used today, there is a moisture ratio to be considered. But looking forward, this area will develop and we’ll have concrete with the correct characteristics.”

PEOPLE SHOULD DO WHAT PEOPLE ARE GOOD AT AND ROBOTS THE REST Looking ahead, ConcretePrint’s vision is digitalisation – to be able to design your dream home in an online application, and simply click the purchase button. A fleet of robotic workers will arrive on site, print your house, ready for painters and electricians to do the finishing touches. “This is still in the future,” von Haslingen concludes. “But the vision is that people do what people are good at while heavy lifting and things like that are offloaded on construction robots.

We won’t need to do that anymore.”

Book of the Month

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Discover CleanTech

Book of the Month

Be the Ultimate Friend of the Earth, by Lucy Siegle Be the Ultimate Friend of the Earth is not your typical book for technology geeks. Rather, as the title suggests, it sets out the role individuals can play in leading an eco-friendlier life. But because cleantech is only a part of the solution, it is the book Anders Lorenzen presents as this month’s Book of the Month.

BY ANDERS LORENZEN

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PHOTOS: MICHAEL O’MARA BOOKS

Lucy Siegle is a journalist, author and frequent contributor to various outlets focusing on sustainability and green living, and this is the topic she explores in Be the Ultimate Friend of the Earth. The light and easy-toread book covers areas such as activism and green heroes, science, forests and oceans, consumerism, an eco-friendlier life, and the changes required to create it. Set up as an interactive read, the book breaks the subjects up with tests to assess the reader’s knowledge at the end of each chapter, giving the particular subject and random snippets of facts on individual pages.

issues of overconsumption. However, the book does bring a refreshing different point of view. For instance, when we read about carbon storage today, it is predominantly related to the technological innovations that help us capture and store carbon; Siegle, on the other hand, focuses on the natural elements of carbon storage – through trees and plant life, and she presents some remarkable examples of ways that nature stores carbon, probably unknown to most.

In the introduction to the book, Siegle explains that her motivation for writing Be the Ultimate Friend of the Earth was feedback from parents, kids and teachers who told her that they did not feel they got to study enough about climate change. As such, this is not a book to analyse amongst environmental professionals, but it is a great book to involve the whole family in the issues facing our planet and the possible ways to become part of the solution.

While climate change and the breakdown of ecosystems are complex issues, in Be the Ultimate Friend of the Earth, Siegle attempts a holistic approach to the issues. She touches on the science, but she does so without going into too much of the details, ensuring that no one will feel overwhelmed or confused by complicated statistics.

Furthermore, as the overarching focus of the book is on reducing consumption and being more mindful of the impact of individual choices and lifestyles, the solutions proposed are largely based on individual ways to reduce consumption and recycle more, a circular economy, and activism.

Hence, some might miss a section on the technologies and innovations bringing down emissions and aiming to mitigate the

Lucy Siegle.

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All Cleantech Events in One Place www.discovercleantech.com

If you're looking for the complete overview of all the cleantech events taking place next year, look no further.

Events

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Discover CleanTech

Discover Cleantech’s Cleantech Events Directory is the ultimate guide to the key events taking places in the global cleantech sector. The events listings include a range of exhibitions and conferences within solar, wind, biofuels, EV Charging and infrastructure, recycling, geothermal, smart cities, as well as many other areas of cleantech. Below, you will find a small selection of upcoming events from our events section, visit our website for more.

ENERGY STORAGE SUMMIT, UNITED KINGDOM As Europe grapples with an energy security crisis, net-zero targets and increasing amounts of intermittent renewable generation, energy storage continues to play an essential role in the power sector. After a record-breaking event last year, join us for the 8th edition in 2023 where we are expanding in line with the growing opportunities for energy storage across the renewable sector. We follow the market as it navigates government policy, increased capital and an urgency to ensure grid resilience, but can the necessary scale be met across the value chain in order to meet renewable targets?

Date: February, 22-23, 2023 Place: London, United Kingdom Website: https://storagesummit.solarenergyevents. com

WORLD SUSTAINABLE ENERGY DAYS, AUSTRIA

3, 2023. Europe’s largest geothermal trade fair with congress focuses on current developments in the industry and creates a platform dedicated exclusively to the topic of geothermal energy. At the on-site trade fair, an average of around 3,600 trade visitors and 200 exhibitors from 40 nations make highly valuable contacts. In addition, two congresses on Shallow and Deep Geothermal Energy offer you concentrated expertise, current developments and the latest practical experience reports.

Date: March, 2-3, 2023 Place: Offenburg, Germany Website: www.geotherm-offenburg.de

FUTUREBUILD, UNITED KINGDOM Futurebuild is about building a better future for the built environment. We provide the stage for inspiring ideas; innovative solutions and knowledge sharing to drive sustainable construction and help us reach our goal of net zero. Futurebuild is taking a stand for a

better built environment and is urging companies and professionals throughout the construction supply chain to make a similar commitment by ‘taking a stand’ on an issue they passionately believe will help propel the industry towards a more sustainable future.

Date: March, 7-9, 2023 Place: London, United Kingdom Website: https://www.futurebuild.co.uk

SOLAR SOLUTIONS INTERNATIONAL, NETHERLANDS Solar Solutions International is the largest trade fair for solar energy in Northwest Europe and revolves around more than 500 innovations and 100 practical seminars on the latest developments in energy storage, smart products, and an ever-widening range of solar panels.

Date: March, 14-16, 2023 Place: Amsterdam, Netherlands Website: www.solarsolutions.nl

In 2023, the World Sustainable Energy Days show the critical role of the energy transition in securing our clean energy future and concrete policies, technologies and markets to get us there. The annual conference is a leading event on the energy transition and climate neutrality with over 650 participants from over 60 countries.

Date: 28 February, 2023 - 3 March, 2023 Place: Wels, Austria Website: www.wsed.at

GEOTHERM EXPO & CONGRESS, GERMANY GeoTHERM expo & congress will take place for the sixteenth time on March 2 +

GeoTHERM expo & congress, Germany.

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Discover CleanTech

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Writers of the Month

Writers of the Month This issue of Discover CleanTech includes special features by:

HELEN MASSY-BERESFORD Helen Massy-Beresford is a British freelance journalist, writer, and editor. She covers a wide variety of subjects, including aviation, environment, energy, business, science, travel, food and culture. She has written for nationals, trade publications, newswires and consumer magazines and is also the author of The Food Lover’s Guide To Paris (White Owl, 2019). Before going freelance she spent six years at Reuters, covering the automobile sector in Paris and then working as a sub-editor in London. She is originally from London but lives in Paris with her husband, two daughters and cat.

CHRISTOPHER WALKER Christopher Walker is a senior journalist and columnist (The Times, The Independent, Impact Investor, IPE). He has written extensively on ESG issues and most market sectors, with a particular focus on technology and energy. He has significant experience advising institutional investors on investing and has sat on the investment policy committee of one of the largest investment companies. He also sat on a major policy think tank advising Government, and on several arts boards.

He holds an MA from Oxford University.

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Cleantech Education The Cleantech Education Directory is the ultimate guide to opportunities for education in the global cleantech sector.

The education listings cover a wide range of educational programmes within corporate sustainability, renewables engineering, ESG training, environmental sciences, sustainable building designs, as well as many other areas of cleantech.

www.discovercleantech.com