Issue 6
December 2020
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Are hybrid cars environmentally friendly? The links between Covid and air pollution
HOW TO TURN YOUR HOME INTO A POWER STATION
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Editorial Comment and Contacts
Welcome to Air Quality News magazine Contacts Publisher: David Harrison d.harrison@spacehouse.co.uk 01625 614 000 Group Editor: Jamie Hailstone jamie@airqualitynews.com 01625 614 000 Journalist: Pippa Neill pippa@airqualitynews.com 01625 666 396 Advertising Director: Andy Lees andy@airqualitynews.com 01625 666 390 Finance Manager: Jenny Leach jenny@spacehouse.co.uk 01625 614 000 Administration: Jenny Odgen admin@spacehouse.co.uk 01625 614 000 Subscriptions: Andrew Harrison subscriptions@airqualitynews.com 01625 614 000 Published 6 times a year Annual Subscription - £19.95 +VAT
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This year will forever be remembered as the one that nobody saw coming, but everyone will be glad to see the back of. The pandemic has impacted everyone. Many people have lost loved ones, jobs and faced unimaginable struggles, so as we take time out this month to reflect on 2020, it’s hard to think of many ‘good news’ stories. But in terms of the environment, there is no doubt that the first national lockdown in the Spring did show what impact transport has on the air we breathe. City centres and motorways were deserted as people obeyed government orders to stay at home. Perhaps not surprisingly, the air quality in those city centres dramatically improved. Many people also discovered the joys of active travel, as they walked and cycled around their local communities, which can only ever be a good thing. The second half of the year saw an easing of restrictions and a return to heavy road traffic, with many people avoiding public transport. In some areas, the air quality gains of the first half of the year were arguably lost. And just when you thought the year could not throw up any more surprises, Boris Johnson unveiled his ’10-point plan’ for a green industrial revolution, which included bring the end date for the sale of new petrol and diesel cars down from 2040 to 2030. There’s no question that this is a bold move for a government, whose track record on the environment has been lacking in recent years. Quite how this and the other points in the plan will be implemented remain to be seen. But given the recent announcement, many drivers will now be looking to switch to a hybrid vehicle and in this issue, we put their environmental credentials under the microscope. Are they really as green as manufacturers claim? And with the prospect of more EVs, heat pumps and solar panels, we look at how you can turn your home into a power station. It’s not as daft as it sounds. One day we could all be running our homes off home batteries or EVs. Reporter Pippa Neill also talks to the director of the Clean Air Fund, Jane Burston about the inequalities and gaps in funding when it comes to air pollution and there is also a fascinating look at the work behind the scenes for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which could benefit more than just football and Qatar. As we think about 2021 and the possibility that life may return to some sort of normal, air quality will remain high on the agenda. But with the festive season almost upon us, we would like to wish all our readers a merry Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year.
Jamie Hailstone, editor. All rights reserved. Reproduction, in whole or part without written permission is strictly prohibited.
Printed on FSC certified paper stock, using vegetable oil inks. Fulfilment and distribution using 100% recycled envelopes.
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Contents
Features Contents Page 6-8: News
Page 10-12: Feature
Page 6-8 News: Air pollution may increase women’s risk of dementia
Page 20-21 The Big Interview: Jane Burston, director of the Clean Air Fund talks about the inequalities and gaps in funding when it comes to air pollution
Page 14-16: Feature
Page 18-19: Votex Advertorial
Page 20-21: The Big Intervew
Page 22-24: Feature
Page 25-27: International Page 10-12 Feature: The great hybrid car debate
Page 22-24 Feature: The link between air pollution and COVID-19 mortality
Page 29: Local Government Interview
Page 30-31: Local Government
Page 32: Legislation
Page 33: Marketplace Page 14-16 Feature: How to turn your home into a power station
Page 18-20 Advertorial: Hammersmith & Fulham Council combats climate emergency by deploying Vortex IoT hyperlocal air quality sensors
Page 25-27 International: Kicking clean air into touch
Page 30-31 Local Government: Declaring compliance – a challenge for policy makers?
Page 34: Jobs
Thanks to our contributors: Jane Burston, Thomas Münzel, Andrea Pozzer, Jos Lelieveld, Mohammed Ayoub, Claire Goldfinch and Stuart Thompson
Partners
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in brief The Clean Air Act saved 1.5 billion birds To examine the relationship between bird abundance and air pollution, researchers from Cornell University, New York, tracked the monthly changes in bird abundance, air quality and regulation in over 3,000 U.S counties over a 15-year period. Ozone directly harms bird’s respiratory systems while also indirectly harming their food sources. Bird populations in North American have declined by nearly 3 billion birds since 1970 and according to this study, without the regulations and ozone-reduction efforts of the Clean Air Act, a further 1.5 billion birds may have been lost. Brits are driving 550 million miles less than before lockdown Commuters are driving an average 30 miles less per week than they were before the fi rst lockdown, according to a new survey conducted by pay-as-you-go insurance provider By Miles on 2,500 UK residents. The decrease in driving is largely due to an increase in the number of people working from home, the number of people commuting to work by car has reduced from 14.8 million pre-Covid to 11.4 million now. EV sales predicted to surpass petrol in 2021 If the current trends in car sales continue, the sale of electric vehicles (EVs) could overtake petrol and diesel sales by this time next year, according to research conducted by Mercury Car Centre. Data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders (SMMT) has revealed that in September 2020 diesel sales were down by 38.4% and petrol sales were down by 20.9%. In comparison, EV and hybrid sales were up by a dramatic 139%.
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Chancellor reveals funding to decarbonise transport Rishi Sunak has announced plans to accelerate the decarbonisation of transport, however, environmental campaigners have criticised the funding of falling far short of what is needed to reach net-zero.
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n an announcement made on November 25, the chancellor has promised a series of measures to: ‘Invest in a greener future.’ These measures include £23.5bn for the Department for Transport (DfT), which will be used in part to decarbonise rail and buses and £120m for more than 800 zero-emission buses. However, a key point of the spending review was dedicated investment for roads, which Rishi Sunak described as: ‘The biggest ever investment in new roads.’
Shaun Spiers, executive director of Green Alliance, has criticised the announcement for falling far short of what is needed: ‘The chancellor’s statement was a chance to back that plan with serious money, but he muffed it. The chancellor gave no sense that he understands the scale of the climate and nature emergencies or the potential of the green economy for immediate job creation across the country.’ Rishi Sunak also announced that cycling infrastructure will benefit from a £257m grant.
However, this funding is a fraction of the £2bn that the government has previously promised. Xavier Brice, CEO of walking and cycling charity Sustrans said: ‘Fundamentally in the longer term, we will need to build on the £2bn allocated to walking and cycling and ensure that changes to the planning system deliver more 20-Minute Neighbourhoods, where everyday services can be reached easily and safely in a twenty-minute return walking trip.’
Air pollution levels should be included in weather forecasts, says energy company E.ON Research conducted by E.ON found that almost two-thirds of people miss how clear the air was during the first lockdown.
86% of those asked said that air pollution is an issue that the British public needs to know more about and three-quarters (72%) said they believe it is as important to include air quality information as it is the pollen counts in weather forecasts. Based on these fi ndings, E.ON has launched a new ‘Change the Weather’ service – an initiative to increase understanding of the air quality index and get air pollution levels
included in widespread daily weather forecasts. Alongside weather data provider DTN, E.ON has already helped the London Evening Standard, the I and the Daily Record to make the change. Michael Lewis, Chief Executive of E.ON UK, said: ‘No level of air pollution should ever be deemed safe. ‘There are many things we can all do to help reduce our
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impact on the environment and the air we breathe. From driving less, or driving electric, and making our homes more energyefficient, to powering our homes with renewable electricity. ‘Making air quality information more accessible through our Change the Weather service is an important step in the right direction and will help ensure this critical topic stays front of mind as we navigate our daily lives.’
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Green Homes Grant can be used to improve indoor air quality The Green Homes Grant presents a crucial opportunity to improve indoor air quality, say experts from the BEAMA ventilation group.
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he Government scheme, which launched in September, aims to support improvements to energy efficiency by offering grants for measures such as insulation, double glazing and making buildings more airtight. As a consequence of the health implications of indoor air pollution, the scheme also provides grants for ‘repairing and improving controlled ventilation.’ The BEAMA ventilation group have highlighted that homeowners and landlords should use the funding to ensure the safety of occupants, which is more important now than ever
before as we are all spending more time at home and an increasing body of research has highlighted the link between poor air quality and the severity and spread of Covid-19.
Colin Timmins, Head of the My Health My Home campaign and Director of Member Services at BEAMA, said: ‘There is no doubting the potential value of the Green Homes Grant, however, it is essential that installers and the public are aware that the vouchers can cover ventilation improvements alongside insulation installations. ‘With the growing evidencebase around the health impacts of poor indoor air quality, this represents a key opportunity to drive ventilation standards and protect people’s health. The Green Homes Compliance Scheme seeks to facilitate this.’
Air pollution may increase women’s risk of dementia Living in an area with higher levels of air pollution may increase the risk of dementia in older women, according to a new study published by the American Academy of Neurology.
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he researchers looked at 712 women with an average age of 78 who did not have dementia at the start of the study. Each woman provided health histories as well as information on race, education, employment, smoking and physical activity. All women received an MRI brain
scan at the start of the study and five years later. The researchers then used the residential address of each woman to determine their average exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5) in the three years before the first MRI scan. Following this analysis, the researchers found that for each
3 µg/m3 increase in particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure there was a greater extent of brain shrinkage over five years, which was equivalent to a 24% increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The increases remained the same even after adjusting for age, education, employment, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, physical activity and other factors that could affect brain shrinkage. Diana Younan, lead author of the study said: ‘Our study found that women in their 70s and 80s who were exposed to the higher levels of air pollution had an increased risk of brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease over five years. ‘Our research suggests these toxins may disrupt brain structure or connections in the brain’s nerve cell network, contributing to the progression toward the disease.”
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in brief in brief New project to deliver cleaner and cheaper hydrogen Researchers at London South Bank University (LSBU) and the School of the Built Environment and Architecture have been awarded funding to investigate using hydride to absorb, release and store hydrogen. This would remove the need for large high-pressure cylinders which is the way hydrogen is currently stored on buses. They hope that by using smaller cylinders this would make more space on hydrogen-powered buses and could also provide the bus with cooling power for air conditioning. Leading businesses call on government to reduce air pollution Fifteen transport businesses and organisations have joined up with environmental lawyers ClientEarth to urge the UK government to accelerate action on air pollution. In an open letter to the Chancellor, the group have called on the government to support a four-point plan to accelerate action on air pollution. They write: ‘Illegal and harmful levels of air pollution in the UK are estimated to cause over 40,000 early deaths each year and impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, particularly vulnerable groups including children.’ North East of England has the most EV charge points per vehicle Following the government’s announcement to bring forward the ban on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles to 2030, Moneybarn analysed the latest available data to reveal which regions across the UK are most prepared for this shift. The research revealed that the North East is leading the way for EV infrastructure with just 3.8 vehicles for every EV charger, in comparison the West Midlands has the least.
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in brief Artificial intelligence (AI) and satellite technologies reveal that the South-East of England is the most polluted region in Britain. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have used satellite data to provide accurate estimates of concentrations of air pollution across the country. The model offers measurements provided at a daily level with a 1×1 km grid across the whole of the country. This data has highlighted various regional pollution hot spots as well as highlighting pollution spikes in urban and industrial areas. Cycling Alliance in support of low traffic neighbourhoods The Walking and Cycling Alliance have announced support for low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), despite public concern. In May this year, the Department for Transport (DfT) announced a £250 million Emergency Active Travel Fund. This funding has been used to widen pavements, create temporary cycle lanes and to introduce schemes such as low-traffic neighbourhoods. Despite their intended benefits, LTNs have been widely controversial, petitions demanding the removal of the schemes have attracted hundreds of signatures and there have even been demonstrations in a number of London boroughs including Ealing, Wandsworth and Islington. New app to encourage shared EV charging Access to EV charge points still remains to be one of the biggest barriers preventing EV uptake. To date, the solution to this has been to dramatically increase the number of public charging points. However, installing them can be a lengthy and costly process. Therefore, Co Charger has created a new app enabling those who do have a charger, whether that is motorists, businesses, or community buildings, to share their charger with neighbours who don’t.
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Ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030 New petrol and diesel cars and vans will not be sold in the UK from 2030, ten years earlier than planned, Boris Johnson has said.
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he sale of hybrid cars and vans will also be banned, however not until 2035. To support the electrification of the UK’s vehicle fleet, the Prime Minister has announced £1.3bn to accelerate the rollout of charge points for electric vehicles (EVs) in homes, streets and on motorways. Caterina Brandmayr, head of climate policy at Green Alliance, commented on this
announcement: ‘Bringing forward the phase-out of new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans to 2030 is genuinely ambitious. ‘While allowing the continued sale of hybrid vehicles until 2035 is a missed opportunity to accelerate the transition to clean transport, the 2030 ban will help get the most polluting cars off the road, cutting carbon from the largest emitting sector and stimulating the market
for clean vehicles. ‘The government must now set out a comprehensive package of policies to boost uptake of battery electric vehicles and translate its commitment into action. As well as incentives for consumers and expanding charging infrastructure, this will require the government to set targets for car-makers to sell an increasing share of zero-emission vehicles.’
Professional drivers put at greater risk of cancer Exposure to air pollution is putting professional drivers at a greater risk of cancer, according to research funded by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).
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esearchers from Imperial College London analysed over 11,000 hours of professional driver’s air pollution exposure data. The data revealed that, on average, professional drivers were exposed to 4.1 micrograms of black carbon per cubic metre of air (µg/ m3) while driving. This is around four times higher than their exposure at home or in an office (1.1 µg/m3). The drivers also often experienced extremely high spikes in black carbon, often exceeding 100 µg/m3 and lasting up to half an hour as black carbon remained trapped within the vehicle
cabin. These spikes predominantly occurred in congested traffic within Central London, or in areas where vehicles congregate, such as in car parks, tunnels or between high buildings. Exposure to black carbon is known to be carcinogenic to humans and it has
also been linked to other chronic lung and cardiovascular conditions. Dr Ian Mudway, Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London, said: ‘The aims of this project was to quantify the exposure of urban professional drivers to diesel exhaust, to provide a framework for evaluating their risk and to facilitate the formulation of risk reduction strategies. ‘We know quite a lot about the dangers of exposure to traffic pollution. However, there has been surprisingly little research on levels of professional drivers’ exposure to pollution and its effects on their health.
Open fires negatively impact cognitive health The study, which was conducted by researchers at Lancaster University and Trinity College Dublin involved close to 7,000 open-fire users, aged 50 or over.
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he researchers estimated each individual’s cognitive ability using various tests including word recall and verbal fluency. The research revealed that open fire usage negatively impacts cognitive health, with adverse association largest and strongest among women. The negative association between open fire usage and cognition was also higher among older people.
The researchers have said that this is a consequence of women of that age group typically having spent more time at home, with greater exposure to open fires. Professor Barbara Maher, joint lead researcher from Lancaster University, said: ‘Indoor air pollution forms when soot, particles and gases linger in the air inside a building, affecting the quality of the air inhaled into the lungs – the finest particles can even enter the brain directly
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through the olfactory nerves. ‘We know that exposure to indoor air pollution affects both respiratory and cardiovascular health, but, before now, little was known about how it affects cognitive function in older adults.’ Dr Vincent O’Sullivan, from Lancaster University Management School, added: ‘This collaborative study has found strong evidence of the health risks that open fire usage poses not just to older adults, but to people of all ages.
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Feature
The great hybrid car debate With the government calling time on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, should drivers go hybrid? Jamie Hailstone investigates
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hile the debate around the decarbonisation of transport continues, a revolution is occurring on British roads. The age of the hybrid is well and truly upon us, with glossy ads aplenty encouraging drivers to ditch traditional petrol and diesel engines and switch to a newer, greener and sexier form of transport. And that revolution is gathering pace. Figures released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) earlier this month show more than 40,000 were registered in October – out of a total of 140,495 of all the new vehicles on the road last month. For many drivers, hybrids seem to be the logical next step to a low-carbon future, especially given the government’s recent announcement that the sale of new petrol and diesel cars is to end in 2030. Although there is a slight caveat in the government’s plans, it says new cars and vans can be sold between 2030 and 2035 if they have the capability to drive a significant
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distance with zero emissions - for example, plug-in hybrids or full hybrids – but this will be defined through a forthcoming consultation. Whatever happens, hybrid cars will remain in showrooms for some time to come. But there have been some reports recently querying the environmental credentials of hybrids, and in particular plugin hybrids, with some campaigners arguing they are ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’. In September, a study by the German Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI and the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) claimed the real fuel consumption and CO2 emissions of plug-in hybrids are two to four times higher on average than in test cycles. It found the low frequency of recharging reduces the share of electric driving and thereby increases fuel consumption and CO2 emissions of plug-in hybrid vehicles in real-world driving. On average, private plug-in hybrid vehicles are driven only 37% of their mileage in electric
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mode; for company car vehicles it is only 20%. And another study by Transport & Environment (T&E) and Greenpeace found most hybrid vehicles are in fact emitting over two and a half times the supposed 44g of CO2 per kilometre in official tests. Speaking to Air Quality News, Nick Molden, the founder and chief executive of Emissions Analytics says drivers have to be really be ‘quite an expert’ on the differences between the various types of hybrids currently for sale in car showrooms up and down the country. ‘Mild hybrids should not even be called hybrids in my opinion,’ he tells Air Quality News. ‘They are basically slightly more clever internal combustion engines. You can’t go any kind of distance, maybe just half a mile on the battery. ‘It’s moving to the point where most internal combustion engines are mildly “hybridised”. ‘The terminology is not controlled and therefore manufacturers can add to the confusion. Toyota has got a lot of criticism for calling their full hybrids self-charging hybrids, which to the uninitiated observer makes it sound like a plug-in hybrid, but it just means the engine is charging the battery.’ Emissions Analytics has tested 37 PHEVs for its independent emissions programme, using the EQUA Index test route, which combines urban, rural and motorway driving. Mr Molden says real-world CO2 emissions are as high as 299g/km in average urban driving if road users never charge the battery up. But at the other extreme, if drivers charge up the battery and only ever take short journeys, CO2 emissions will be almost zero. ‘Plug in hybrids should not be allowed unless there is a solution to the problem of people not charging them up,’ he explains. ‘If people do not charge them up, they are at least as bad as an “unhyrbidised” internal combustion engine. If you charge them up three quarters or more and mostly do urban journeys, they are better than full battery electric vehicles, because the battery is much smaller and therefore the vehicle is much lighter. ‘They need to introduce a system where drivers get a credit every time they go a mile on a battery and a tax every mile they run on an engine to create an incentive for them to charge up. If the authorities do not put in some sort of solution, I don’t think they should be allowed because they could actually be making the CO2 situation worse.’ ‘Most hybrids are petrol, so they are not a problem from a NOx point of view,’ he adds. ‘There is potentially an issue with ultra-fine particle emissions. There are some hybrids which create high particle emissions.’ ‘Let’s say you have a plug-in hybrid and you work in the middle of town, so you drive from your house on your battery, but just as you get into town, the battery runs out of juice and the engine starts. So, you have a cold start right in the middle of town. There is some work to do to cut off that problem.’
He adds that drivers may also like to consider a diesel hybrid, which he adds are making something of a ‘comeback’. ‘Companies like Mercedes are releasing diesel plug-in hybrids. They are typically big SUVs with batteries that will give you 50km on the battery, but once that has expired you have a diesel engine on the SUV. Historically, diesel hybrids have been a disaster, because the after-treatment systems never work properly, but our testing shows they have now cracked it.’ Dr.Gavin Bailey, the sustainable transport lead at Eunomia Research & Consulting, says there are also issues with Euro 6 after-treatment systems and exhaust treatment systems, which reduce harmful exhaust emissions from internal-combustion engines, on some hybrid vehicles. ‘After-treatment systems need to operate at around 200
degrees celsius in order to be effective in catalysing the nitrogen oxides,’ explains Dr. Bailey. ‘If the vehicle is in stop-start traffic, then the engine temperature does not hold at that 200 degrees level, so the actual real-world emissions of the engine can be worse than expected. There’s a concern that hybrid technology produces the same conditions, that is the battery electric portion of the drivetrain will kick in at low traffic speeds (c.30 miles per hour), causing the internal combustion engine temperature to drop, so it may not be as effective as it could be at
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catalysing the exhaust gases.’ ‘Where the combustion engine does not come into play at all in urban driving, and it’s driving all electric, then there is a clear benefit for emissions. But when the electric engine is turning on and off every so often, the internal combustion engine system cools and you get engine puffs, which include engine condensate and particulates from the engine and exhaust systems, resulting in diminished engine performance.’ But Dr. Bailey says hybrid vehicles still have an important role to play as a ‘bridging technology’ to help drivers move towards a low-carbon future. ‘The transition to pure EVs is highly complex in terms of achieving 100% switchover or significantly increased market penetration,’ he explains. ‘Widespread acceptance and adoption of pure electric vehicles is not there yet due to range anxiety and initial purchase costs, so we need people to go over to a middle ground technology such as hybrids instead of hopping between petrol and diesel vehicles. Alongside this, hybrid manufacturers also need to look at solutions to address issues like cold start emissions. For example, there are a range of technologies on heavy duty vehicles that heat the exhaust pipes to keep them at the 200 degrees, so you don’t
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get a cold start every time you move off.’ ‘There are some people who say we should immediately switch straight over to the most sustainable option and EVs are the current dominant solution towards which we are heading. But hybrids are a viable option for urban driving scenarios, although only when they are helping to address the air quality issue, rather than making it worse.’ The government’s recent announcement that sales of hybrid cars will end in 2035 presents some obvious issues for drivers and the automotive industry. The Green Alliance’s head of climate policy, Caterina Brandmayr says allowing the continued sale of hybrid vehicles until 2035 is a ‘missed opportunity to accelerate the transition to clean transport’. ‘Government must now set out a comprehensive package of policies to boost uptake of battery electric vehicles and translate its commitment into action. As well as incentives for consumers and expanding charging infrastructure, this will require the government to set targets for car-makers to sell an increasing share of zero emission vehicles. ‘As well as incentives for consumers and expanding charging infrastructure, this will require the government to set targets for car-makers to sell an increasing share of zero emission vehicles,’ she adds.
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How to turn your home into a power station It might sound like science fiction, but your home could soon be generating its own electricity Jamie Hailstone investigates
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he ‘good life’ used to be all about growing your own vegetables, but in the brave new world of the 21st century, even self-sufficiency has had an upgrade. Although the advent of putting solar panels on the roof of a house is nothing new, the latest advances in smart technology mean your home could soon become a ‘mini renewable power station’. ‘Combining solar panels, a home battery and an electric vehicle (EV) enables consumers to generate and store energy throughout the year,’ explains Smart Energy GB’s head of public affairs, Fflur Lawton. ‘By adding a smart meter, which
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accurately monitors the energy you’re using and tells you how much it costs in near real-time, you could also access new time of use tariffs. These can see you paid to use energy when there is an excess supply of energy, enabling you to charge your EV or home battery for free.’ A recent report by the energy platform Kaluza estimated that there could be 2m smart heating systems and 11m EV chargers in UK homes by 2030, and that households could save up to £400 a year by letting artificial intelligence (AI) drive how energy is used. There have been a number of smallscale schemes to test the concept of the
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smart home energy system in recent years. One of these is a housing estate in Parc Eirin, Tonyrefail, which is being developed by Sero Homes with Pobl Group and Tirion Homes. Sero has developed an advanced solution for heat, hot water, electricity and vehicle charging in the homes on the estate, which is all linked to its Sero Life platform. The estate has received funding from the Welsh Government and the UK Government and Western Power Distribution is running a trial of three phase power cables into the homes, which can carry more power than traditional cables. Peter White, Western Power
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Distribution’s lead for low carbon technologies, says the homes on the estate have been fitted with heat pumps, battery storage and solar panels. ‘They all talk to a computer, which is hooked up to the smart meter, so it knows what tariff is being supplied to the house. The computer looks at what tomorrow’s weather is going to be and it’s got artificial intelligence so it’s learning, day by day. ‘So, if you always use the washing machine on a Tuesday, it will look ahead and look to pull use the cheapest electricity rate. It’s designed to manage your energy consumption and keep your bills, as low as possible. ‘For example, if you have a typical gas-fired four bed house with an EPC rating of D or E, you could be paying about £190 on electricity a year. They are looking to drop that down to £90 for your first bill in a Sero Home. And after a year of the computer learning how you live, it could drop even further to £55. That’s a substantial saving to a household.’ Mr White says there has already been huge public interest in these smart energy homes. ‘I think the general public is actually going to wake up and realise that the goalposts have moved, and it’s in their best interests to go down this road,’ he tells Air Quality News. Western Power Distribution’s DSO development manager, Paul Jewell adds use of phase three cables on the estate is also very important. ‘The weakest bit of the network is between the mains in the street and the customer meter in the home,’ explains Mr Jewell. ‘We’ve laid in three phase services to all of the properties on the estate to give that element of future proofing with more batteries and EVs. They may not need three phase cables now, but we just want to have something ready for the future.’ The road to net zero and the shift away from gas boilers also presents some challenges for the energy networks and Mr Jewell says smart systems can help with the transition. ‘If you start with a sort of standard assumption that decarbonisation probably puts four times the amount of energy on the electricity grid than
there is at the moment, in very broad figures. ‘We haven’t got the time, the money or the capacity to build a network that is four times as big. So, what we have to do is use the network that was built for the existing peak usage and start filling in the space at times of lower usage at night and away from the early evening peak. ‘The best way to fill in those gaps is
‘vehicle to grid’ or V2G, as it is sometimes known. At present, only the Nissan Leaf has the necessary tech to make this happen, but many argue that future generations of EVs will all have this capacity. And then there is the idea that the National Grid could draw off a plugged EV and use its energy storage capability. You might be thinking so what? Well, imagine if it could draw
by using battery storage in the home to help store energy away after the peak times. ‘We’re expecting that when customers get electric vehicles, they will move to time of day tariffs, which will take them away from the evening peak periods because it’s cheaper to charge your car during the middle of the night than it is in the early evening. That’s great. Again, it takes a load away from that, that peak period for us and fills in some of the troughs in our network.’ One of the more intriguing ideas is the notion that you could run your home off an EV battery when electricity prices are high, which then could charge itself off the grid overnight when energy prices are much lower. The technical term for this is
off thousands of EVs at the same time, which had formed a ‘virtual’ power station. ‘Vehicle-to-grid is a real game changer as we transition to an intelligent, zero carbon grid,’ says the managing director of OVO Smart Home, Jessica Tan. ‘Earlier this month, as National Grid issued a “margin notice”, a serious security of supply alert, OVO Energy members and their V2Gconnected EVs powered the grid,’ she adds. ‘OVO Energy called upon its V2G members to keep their chargers plugged in and help supply the grid with electricity stored in their EV batteries. ‘New modelling based on data from OVO’s V2G fleet shows that if the 164,000 EVs on Britain’s roads
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The Mill Houses, courtesy of Sero Homes
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Parc Eirin, courtesy of Sero Homes
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today were V2G-enabled, they could produce daily flexible capacity to boost enough supply to power 100,000 homes and support the grid at times of tight energy supply margins. ‘And in the future, if just half of all EVs were V2G-enabled by 2030, this would provide at least 5GW of export capacity - estimated to be enough to meet approximately 77% of all annual system balancing needs including instances of tight energy supply margins,’ adds Ms Tan. Simon Daniel, founder and chief executive of Moixa, which has developed its own Gridshare platform to opitimise energy usage, says there are already enough EVs in Britain to provide around 8GWh of combined storage, which is the same as the Dinorwig pumped hydro plant in Wales. ‘And as more people buy EVs, then very soon you could have tens of Dinorwigs on the grid, but sitting in people’s homes ready to be used,’ says Mr Daniel.
He believes home power plants could play an important role in managing the peaks the troughs on the grid as the UK moves to low-carbon energy. ‘At the end of the day, the UK is an island and a third of our energy comes from renewables, which is set to double over the next five years,’ explains Mr Daniel. ‘But it is not controllable generation. If there’s no sun or wind, then there’s a problem. Because we are an island, we are more exposed to issues around intermittency on the grid. We don’t have lots of interconnectors to Europe. Presently, the UK has around four GW cables connected to the continent, which means we can only get 5% or 10% of electricity from Europe. ‘Looking at the future, when we reach a point where 60% of our energy is renewable, the grid could be exposed. We will either need to have 30GW of cables to Europe or we need more storage here in the UK,’ says Mr Daniel.
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“The technology to manage virtual power plants in people’s homes is therefore critical to how we manage nation states in the future. Countries like the UK will have to solve this problem because we don’t have the physical connections to our friends in Europe.’ The government’s recent announcement that sales of new petrol and diesel cars will end in 2030 might suggest that millions of EVs are about to hit the nation’s roads and driveways. In terms of managing the ebbs and flows of the grid, that really could be a game-changer. But, just this once it’s not just about EVs. Batteries for the home, or power walls, could play a huge role in helping homeowners became more savvy about their energy use, because they don’t require driveways or proximity to charging units. Napoleon famously once said that Britain was a nation of shopkeepers, but who knows, maybe the UK will become a nation of electricity traders as well?
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Advertorial
Hammersmith & Fulham Council combats climate emergency by deploying Vortex IoT hyperlocal air quality sensors
O
ne of the first councils to declare a climate emergency, Hammersmith & Fulham Council is to start a pioneering air quality monitoring project which will target measures to reduce traffic, congestion and pollution. It will deploy fifty of Vortex IoT’s sensors attached to existing lamp columns to measure multiple particulates and gases across South Fulham. Hammersmith & Fulham Council is to install the largest concentration of air quality monitors (AQMs) anywhere in Europe as part of its mission to enhance the quality of life for residents. Real time data from the sensors will be used to empower policy initiatives in a bid to make the borough of Hammersmith & Fulham the greenest in Britain. The council launched the initiative back in July with its South Fulham Traffic, Congestion and Pollution Reduction scheme putting in place restrictions on out of borough traffic using residential streets as cut throughs. The council has recognised the need to measure the impact of traffic reduction schemes and is therefore partnering with British cleantech firm Vortex IoT who will provide the sensors and the ultra-low power cognitive wireless mesh network to support it. Vortex IoT enables the green transition through digital, helping create smart cities, deliver council local plans and healthier communities. Its air quality sensors will by rolled out in January. Live data will be captured at one-minute
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intervals and available for all to view online in real time to show levels of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Ozone (O3), and particulates PM2.5 and PM10. The two main air pollutants of concern in London, based on their impact on human health are Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM2.5). Poor air quality stunts the growth of children’s lungs and makes chronic illnesses like asthma, lung and heart disease worse. For particulate matter, the situation is even more serious. All schools in London still exceed the World Health Organization guideline for PM2.5. Vortex IoT sensors are fully operable with existing business systems so that councils can connect sensor data to financial and other data types. They are designed for harsh environments and are self-healing and low maintenance. Other benefits include: • Geofencing capabilities, monitoring hyperlocal air quality levels to improve health outcomes • Support for Low Emission Zones through Ulez monitoring • Pollution source apportionment – data analysis on weather conditions related to traffic providing information to drive behaviour change • Pollution hotspot detection – real time continuous monitoring for evidence-based decision making Pollution from diesel cars are the single biggest local contributor to Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) pollution at London primary schools. Vortex IoT’s sensor technology will help Hammersmith & Fulham Council measure air quality and how its traffic reducing initiatives are performing to help reduce pollutant levels. The geofencing sensor capabilities will enable the council to deliver air quality audits and put into place local traffic measures quickly to protect children. One advantage will be the ability of the air quality sensors to trigger an alarm in real time. Audit recommendations for measures to help cut pollution could include closing surrounding roads to traffic at school pick-up and drop-off times, walking and scooting campaigns, adding green assets and tackling engine idling. The sensor technology will support vehicle charging initiatives that may be planned. Following the introduction of the first scheme previously titled the SW6 Traffic Reduction Scheme - 170,000 vehicles a week have been removed from the area to the east of Wandsworth Bridge Road (WBR). However, a quadruple whammy of temporary bridge closures - Hammersmith, Vauxhall, London and Tower and lane restrictions on Wandsworth Bridge have increased congestion on Wandsworth Bridge Road and side streets to the west. Options for extending the scheme to the west of WBR and to improve traffic control and management of traffic
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on WBR are currently being developed with three working parties of residents across south Fulham. Highways engineers hope that by using data from traffic counters and Vortex IoT air pollution monitoring, they can highlight trouble-spots and benchmark the success of the TCPR schemes. Said John Galsworthy, Assistant Director, Parking, “This technology linked with ANPR camera has meant there is now an affordable solution to understanding the changes in air pollution when traffic schemes are introduced. We have mainly had to rely on the perception of residents for feedback, now the data will demonstrate how well a traffic measure has performed.”
Vortex IoT air quality monitors are part of a suite of cleantech IoT products the firm produces that support the development of smart cities and transport infrastructure. Using a combination of intelligent sensors, IoT, AI and unique low power mesh networks they can provide rich, real-time data to be used to support policy decisions and enable new urban revenue models to be developed.
Talking about the air quality monitoring technology, Councilor Harcourt from Hammersmith & Fulham Council said: “Hammersmith & Fulham Council was one of the first boroughs in the country to declare a climate emergency and this pioneering air quality monitoring project will empower policy initiatives, helping us reduce traffic, congestion and pollution.” Adrian Sutton, CEO of Vortex IoT said: “We are delighted to be working with Hammersmith & Fulham Council on this pioneering project. Its adoption of hyperlocal air quality monitoring as a source of data to shape policy and inform carbon reduction and environmental initiatives is to be applauded and will provide a ‘new normal’ blueprint for local authorities.” Said Andrea Jones, Director of Strategic Accounts from Marston Holdings, “Marston Holdings is excited to be working with the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham on the South Fulham Traffic, Congestion and Pollution reduction scheme. Using our Videalert ANPR technology and Vortex IoT air quality monitors, together we are able to meaningfully support Hammersmith and Fulham to measure and tackle the impact of poor air quality.”
For more details about Vortex IoT’s sensor technology, please contact info@vortexiot.com or call 01792 732053. www.vortexiot.com
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The Big Interview
Zooming out on air pollution, the big picture Air Quality News reporter Pippa Neill spoke to Jane Burston, director of the Clean Air Fund to talk about the inequalities and gaps in funding when it comes to air pollution.
The Clean Air Fund is a philanthropic organisation which was founded in 2019 at the United Nations Climate Summit. The fund began with £50m worth of donations which has since been used to fund projects in the UK, India and across Eastern Europe. To date the Clean Air Fund have worked on various projects including the launch of Breathe London, a network of granular air quality monitoring equipment that is used to measure and offer real-time data on air pollution as people move around the city. They have worked with the Confederation of Indian Industry to establish the CEO Network for Clean Air, working with some of India’s biggest companies to raise awareness of air pollution and they have also helped to fund C40, a network of mayors around the world who work on climate change and air pollution related issues. Since then, 27 mayors have since set up a declaration for clean air committing them to ambitious projects. As executive director and founder of the Clean Air Fund, Jane Burston plays a key role, working with the board, team and partners and leading the organisation to implement the strategy. She previously led climate and energy science in the UK government, responsible for the UK greenhouse gas inventory and a £45m science programme. And prior to that, as head of energy and environment at the National Physical Laboratory, she managed a team of 150 scientists working in air quality, greenhouse gas measurement and renewable energy. Local vs global The Clean Air Fund tends to focus on the bigger picture, funding the large-scale projects that aim to address the main
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barriers to clean air. However, when it comes to air pollution it is important not to forget about the smaller more local issues. As Jane says: ‘I think the best way to engage with the public is by focusing on the impact that air pollution has on themselves and on their family.’ ‘Sometimes when people hear the big global statistics, they don’t think it is relevant to them. By localising the health and economic impacts of air pollution, it can really resonate with people.’
‘The pandemic has made the public aware of how polluted their towns and cities were before lockdown.’ In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the government introduced the £250m Emergency Travel Fund. This funding has allowed local authorities to introduce various measures to encourage sustainable and active travel on a local scale. Although the majority of these measures have been largely well received, Jane highlighted that, when focusing on local issues, it is essential not to forget about the role of the whole community. ‘We have seen vast polarisation of opinion with things like low-traffic neighbourhoods,’ adds Jane. ‘Because of the speed at which these measures have been introduced there hasn’t been the same level of consultation that the public and local authorities are used to and so differences in opinion have become entrenched extremely quickly.’ ‘People want clean air. The pandemic has made the public aware of how polluted their towns and cities were before lockdown, but it has also taught people how very quickly air pollution can be reduced.’
The Big Interview
‘One of the opportunities we have now is that millions of people around the world have grasped that change is possible and can be immediate if there is concerted action.’ ‘Local authorities cannot ignore the role of the public in achieving this, if we could harness even part of the collective community response to the pandemic to address the issue of air pollution the results would be amazing.’
‘When it comes to air pollution and inequality it is not just about who is the most exposed, it is also about who is the most affected by the policies implemented to reduce air pollution.’
Unequal air
‘If there are chargers for polluting activities, policy makers need to ensure that those chargers won’t be incurred by the people who can afford them the least.’
Another lesson that the pandemic has highlighted is the vast inequalities across the world, from those of us who have access to health care, to those who have available green space. When it comes to air pollution, inequality is just as entrenched. ‘Globally, the vast amount of countries that are severely affected by air pollution are lower- and middle-income countries,’ says Jane. ‘But also, locally in any given city those who are most likely to live by a busy road or by a polluting factory are lower income families.’ Again, Jane highlights that to reduce this inequality, it is essential to work with those who are the most affected. In order to close this gap, the Clean Air Fund are currently working with one of their main funders, Guy’s and St Thomas charity in order to engage with local community groups in the UK who are most exposed to air pollution and to find out what solutions would work best for them.
‘There is a complete lack of resources in Africa to measure, let alone tackle, air pollution.’
Funding gaps In a recent report, the Clean Air Fund identified that over the past five years just £206m worth of grant funding has been dedicated to directly tackling outdoor air pollution. The report also identified that there are huge inequalities when it comes to which countries have benefited from this funding and which have not. ‘Over the past five years, Africa has received just 0.2% of the total grant funding available for air pollution, this is a tiny figure and far less than any other geography,’ says Jane. ‘There is a complete lack of resources in Africa to measure, let alone tackle, air pollution.’ ‘When you think about the health and potential climate benefits of improving air quality, this funding is a drop in the ocean compared to overall philanthropic spending.’ ‘The headline is that there are gaps everywhere.’
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Feature
The link between air pollution and COVID-19 mortality Thomas MĂźnzel, Andrea Pozzer and Jos Lelieveld from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany examine the links between the pandemic and health. COVID mortality and air pollution
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n important observation during the COVID-19 pandemic was a huge reduction in the admission of patients with an acute coronary syndrome to hospitals 1. Importantly, similar was observed for patients with heart failure and arrhythmia such as atrial fibrillation 1. There are several possibilities to explain this phenomenon, including the fear of contagion in hospitals or a substantial reduction in air pollution. Indeed, during the first SARS pandemic Cui et al. reported an ecologic study concerning air pollution and case fatality of SARS in the people republic of China 2. With these studies the authors found that there is a positive association between air pollution and SARS case fatality in Chinese population and they calculated that in case of even a moderate air pollution index, infected patients had a 84% increased risk of dying from SARS 2. Thus, a marked reduction of air pollution may indirectly indicate that air pollution has a significant effect on the incidence and outcome of patients with acute coronary syndrome 1.
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The mortality of COVID-19 clearly depends on comorbidities including conditions such as cardiovascular risk factors such as diabetes mellitus, arterial hypertension, obesity and smoking (for review see 3). Increased COVID-19 mortality is also associated with cardiovascular complications such as myocardial infarction, heart failure, arrhythmia and increases in biomarkers that are also found in connection with high levels of air pollutants 3. Considering the cardiovascular and respiratory health impact of air pollution a relationship to COVID-19 mortality is not very much surprising. Recently the severity of COVID-19 outcome was linked to PM2.5 Âľm exposure in the USA 4. With these studies the authors established that the computed mortality rate ratios (MRRs), which express the relative increase in COVID-19 deaths for each microgram per cubic meter increment of PM2.5 in ambient air was found to be 11% 5. Pozzer et al. characterized the exposure to fine particles based on satellite data and calculated the anthropogenic fraction with an atmospheric chemistry model 6. The degree to which air pollution influences COVID-19 mortality was derived from epidemiological data in the USA and China. The authors estimated that air pollution contributed around 15% to COVID-19 mortality worldwide, 27% in East Asia, 19% in Europe and 17% in North America. Globally 50-60% of attributable anthropogenic fraction is related to fossil fuel use, up to 70-80% in Europe, West Asia and North America. The authors concluded that air pollution may represent an important risk of mortality from COVID-19 5. Importantly, recent studies from Italy 7 & England 8 corroborate our findings of a significant link between air pollution and COVID-19. Why does air pollution worsen the prognosis for patients with COVID-19 infections? Air pollution is targeting the endothelium: Air pollution results from the complex interaction of multiple emissions and chemical reactions in the atmosphere, and the traditional classification of fine particles based on size or mass may provide an incomplete picture. Over 70% of the fine particulate mass in the mixture in urban settings is from gases or vapour-phase compounds and secondary pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2), volatile organic compounds (including
Feature
benzene), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and ammonia (NH3). Combustion aerosols may contain coarse (PM10, <10µm in diameter) fine (PM2.5, <2.5 µm) and ultrafine particles (PM0.1, <0.1 µm). While 10µm approximates the size of a cell, the ultrafine particles have the size of a virus. The smaller the particle the more likely it will penetrate the lung epithelium, enter the blood stream and is then taken up by the vessel wall. Recent studies have indicated that worldwide around 8.8 Million excess deaths occur in response to air pollution (PM2.5 µm) 9. This translates into a reduction in life expectancy by 2.9 years while the cardiovascular risk factor tobacco smoking causes a reduction in life expectancy by 2.22 years pointing to the importance of ambient air pollution as a cardiovascular risk factor6. Fine particulate matter PM2.5 has been demonstrated to increase oxidative stress within the vasculature, to reduce nitric oxide, to increase inflammation, to increase oxidative
stress and to cause endothelial (vascular) dysfunction 10. These features caused by air pollution are strikingly parallel the “vascular pathology” caused by the COVID-19 infection and may lead to cardiovascular diseases such a chronic coronary artery disease, acute coronary syndrome, heart failure, thrombosis, pulmonary embolism as well as COPD and asthma. 3 This may explain at least in part why high levels of air pollution and thus an already damaged vasculature is more susceptible to additional damage caused by the COVID-19 virus.
Currently we are facing two pandemics, the air pollution and the COVID-19 pandemic. The diagram describes similarities of cardiovascular damage caused by air pollution and the COVID-19 virus, which may explain that the link between air pollution and increased COVID-19 mortality. Inhaled particulate matter (PM) may enter the brain directly (ultrafine particles) or are getting inhaled into the lungs, where a transmigration process takes place into the bloodstream. PM will cause inflammation, production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as superoxide. ROS formed by a dysfunctional endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) of by the phagocytic NADPH oxidase
(NOX-2) are eating up nitric oxide (NO), a potent vasodilator and antiatherosclerotic radical thereby causing endothelial dysfunction, which may be considered a first step towards overt atherosclerosis. Importantly, the COVID virus is taken up by the endothelial cell via the ACE-2 receptor and causes a cytokine storm within the cells linked with similar side effects for the vasculature such as inflammation, oxidative stress and a marked prothrombotic milieu. Thus, considering the cardiovascular and respiratory health impact of air pollution, a relationship to COVID-19 mortality is not very much surprising.
COVID-19 infection: in the end an endothelial disease too? Lung injuries, respiratory failure as well as acute coronary syndrome, heart failure arrhythmia, thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and myocarditis have been shown to
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be critical complications of a COVID-19 infection 3. With respect to the pathophysiology, Peter Libby and Tom Lüscher postulated in a recent review that COVID-19 may be at the end an endothelial disease 11. The endothelium, which can be considered as a mechanical barrier between the bloodstream and tissues displays many features that regulate the vascular environment. Thus, the endothelium strikingly participates on the regulation of the vasodilator/ vasoconstrictor balance, the balance between thrombosis and fibrinolysis and antioxidants/prooxidants and the inflammatory balance. In case of an COVID-19 virus invasion, the endothelial cell is experiencing a so-called “cytokine storm” that will stimulate the production of procoagulants such as tissue factor, thromboxane and the CD40 ligand, will act antifibrinolytic by inhibiting the formation of the plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI-I), will decrease the endothelial nitric oxide production und increase the production of reactive oxygen species such as superoxide and peroxynitrite leading to endothelial dysfunction and thus to a procoagulant/prothrombotic milieu and subsequently to severe cardiovascular complications mainly myocardial infarction, acute heart failure, severe arrhythmia or myocarditis 11
Conclusions and clinical implications The results of the presented studies suggest the potential for substantial benefits from reducing air pollution exposure even at relatively low PM2.5 levels. Refinement of the exposure–response relationship and reducing uncertainties will require additional data analyses, including from large cohort studies as the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, but may appear too late to guide decision-making. A lesson from our environmental perspective of the COVID-19 pandemic is
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that the quest for effective policies to reduce anthropogenic emissions, which cause both air pollution and climate change, needs to be accelerated. The pandemic ends with the vaccination of the population or with herd immunity through extensive infection of the population. However, there are no vaccines against poor air quality and climate change. The remedy is to mitigate emissions. The transition to a green economy with clean, renewable energy sources will further both environmental and public health locally through improved air quality and globally by limiting climate change. Cited References: 1. N iccoli G, Luescher TF, Crea F. Decreased myocardial infarction admissions during COVID times: what can we learn? Cardiovasc Res 2020;116(10):e126-e128. 2. C ui Y, Zhang ZF, Froines J, Zhao J, Wang H, Yu SZ, Detels R. Air pollution and case fatality of SARS in the People’s Republic of China: an ecologic study. Environ Health 2003;2(1):15. 3. G uzik TJ, Mohiddin SA, Dimarco A, Patel V, Savvatis K, Marelli-Berg FM, Madhur MS, Tomaszewski M, Maffia P, D’Acquisto F, Nicklin SA, Marian AJ, Nosalski R, Murray EC, Guzik B, Berry C, Touyz RM, Kreutz R, Wang DW, Bhella D, Sagliocco O, Crea F, Thomson EC, McInnes IB. COVID-19 and the cardiovascular system: implications for risk assessment, diagnosis, and treatment options. Cardiovasc Res 2020;116(10):1666-1687. 4. Wu X, Nethery RC, Sabath BM, Braun D, Dominici F. Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States: A nationwide cross-sectional study. medRxiv 2020. 5. P ozzer AD, F.; Haines, A.; Witt, C.; Münzel, T.; Lelieveld, J. Regional and global contributions of air pollution to risk of death from COVID-19. Cardiovascular Research 2020. 6. Lelieveld J, Pozzer A, Poschl U, Fnais M, Haines A, Munzel T. Loss of life expectancy from air pollution compared to other risk factors: a worldwide perspective. Cardiovasc Res 2020;116(11):1910-1917. 7. Dettori M, Deiana G, Balletto G, Borruso G, Murgante B, Arghittu A, Azara A, Castiglia P. Air pollutants and risk of death due to COVID-19 in Italy. Environ Res 2020:110459. 8. Travaglio M, Yu Y, Popovic R, Selley L, Leal NS, Martins LM. Links between air pollution and COVID-19 in England. Environ Pollut 2020;268(Pt A):115859. 9. L elieveld J, Klingmuller K, Pozzer A, Poschl U, Fnais M, Daiber A, Munzel T. Cardiovascular disease burden from ambient air pollution in Europe reassessed using novel hazard ratio functions. Eur Heart J 2019;40(20):15901596. 10. Munzel T, Gori T, Al-Kindi S, Deanfield J, Lelieveld J, Daiber A, Rajagopalan S. Effects of gaseous and solid constituents of air pollution on endothelial function. Eur Heart J 2018;39(38):3543-3550. 11. L ibby P, Luscher T. COVID-19 is, in the end, an endothelial disease. Eur Heart J 2020;41(32):3038-3044.
International
Kicking clean air into touch Mohammed Ayoub, senior research director at the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI) at Qatar Foundation writes for Air Quality News about how learnings from the 2022 FIFA World Cup could benefit more than just football and Qatar.
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s preparations continue for the World Cup, you can see many of the changes happening around Doha. New stadiums are being completed and opened. Qatar’s metro system is back, carrying passengers with increased health security measures. Air quality has been improving year-on-year since 2018, and a tremendous amount of work is ongoing to further improve and manage air quality throughout the tournament. As one of Qatar’s biggest air quality projects to date, this work will not only make the World Cup a better experience for fans, players, volunteers and organizers, but will also leave a legacy of homegrown research, technology development, and informed decision making, to help manage the Qatari airshed for generations to come. Those crucial learnings will also be made available to FIFA for the 2026 World Cup in North America, as well as to interested air quality professionals around the world. Like Beijing and London, which previously hosted major global sporting events, Doha has its challenges when it comes to air quality and thermal comfort – though some are unique to a desert environment. Active Shamal winds (Arabic for ‘north’) kick up dust storms that can sweep through the entire Arabian Peninsula. Urban emissions coupled with a strong sea breeze can contribute to ozone and fine particulate matter (PM) event days. Climate change is increasing dust storm intensity and altering rainfall patterns in the region, requiring the likes of flood management in the desert emirate. Starting in 2016, the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI) deployed a network of five air quality monitoring stations strategically located around greater Doha, to measure concentrations of pollutants of common concern. We’ve developed a robust photochemical modeling platform for
diagnostic and prognostic assessment of regional air quality. We are working on air quality sensor applications to increase the spatial density of measurement points to serve either as inputs for our models, or as validation tools for model output. Collectively, these efforts will provide more representative and actionable air quality data. To bring this all together, we’ve conceived a Six-Point Air Quality (Six-PAQ) management framework for the development, assessment and evaluation of intervention strategies to better manage and improve air quality. Six-PAQ will identify the most impactful and feasible intervention
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strategies for priority adoption and will put greater resources in the hands of decision makers. It also provides a new approach to urban air quality management in the region that includes greater public involvement. Dissemination of higher accuracy air quality forecasts will allow families and individuals to make better-informed decisions about their individual exposure. Schools can utilize this information to make decisions on outdoor activities based on near real-time conditions. Six-PAQ will also serve as a mechanism to communicate public calls for action in the event of a forecasted pollution event. These
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International
could include shelter-in-place recommendations related to an upcoming dust-storm, for example. In 2022, we hope to have in place an Environmental Operations Command Centre for the World Cup. Climatological, near real-time and forecast data on weather and air quality will be made available to tournament organizers and national decision makers, allowing for timely, informed and proactive decisions. Of particular interest is understanding the effects of our local air quality and thermal comfort on the experience of our guests from around the world. We know the eyes of the world will be on us in Qatar, and we’re aware people want assurance that we can deliver on air quality, which is why we intend to be transparent and share our lessons with future planners. As parents, we are keenly aware that the stakes are a lot higher than the success of one football tournament. At a recent public event, I was asked by an asthmatic 10-year-old if the air in Doha was safe for him to breathe. I have an asthmatic child, and I too am concerned about the air she breathes. It is how we respond to questions and concerns like this and what actions they precipitate on our end, that define who we are as a country. Air quality management is an investment in everyone’s health, wellbeing and productivity.
Why air quality matters in the sporting life Pippa Neill looks at why air quality is increasingly becoming an important issue at other sporting events.
A Mohammed Ayoub, senior research director at the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute
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s Qatar goes about improving air quality ahead of the World Cup, it is important to highlight why, in terms of sporting events this is so important. When taking part in aerobic activity, people inhale more air and breathe it more deeply into their lungs, meaning that athletes of any kind are at a high risk of exposure to air pollution. The impact that air pollution can have on athletes is often invisible, but long-term exposure to air pollution is known to have a detrimental impact on our health, from increased risk of cardiovascular disease to an increased
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likelihood of dementia in later life. However, in some instances air pollution is no longer hiding in the shadows. Earlier this year at the Australian Open, tennis player, Dalilia Jukapovic was forced to retire from her match after she collapsed on court following a period of extremely high air pollution. This led tennis icon, Novak Djokovic to publicly state that if conditions do not improve, then the competition organisers would have to think about creating rules to accommodate it. This air pollution was a direct result of the bushfires which were destroying
International
huge parts of Australia at the time of the competition. Bushfires are a natural occurring event in Australia; however, the climate crisis and longer dry periods is increasing the strength and likelihood of these fires. When it comes to air pollution, forest fires can be detrimental. Bushfire smoke is rich in fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a pollutant which can cause a myriad of health conditions, from lung disease to cardiac arrest. According to recent research, the air pollution from these forest fires was responsible for more than 400 deaths, 10 times more than the number of people killed by the fires themselves. The threat of air pollution is not just limited to our physical health, air pollution also has a known impact on our cognitive behaviour. In the context of football, where players are often faced with extremely pressurised situations, where one wrong move can cost the match, this is extremely important. A recent project
conducted by the IZA economic institute in Bonn, Germany found that even at levels of air pollution below EU recommended safe limits football players performance was impeded by air pollution. They also found there to be a significantly notable decline in performance, by as much as 16% when air pollution exceeded the EU limits. This research reiterates a point that has been made many times before, that there is no ‘safe limit’ when it comes to exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5). When it comes to mitigating air pollution at sporting events, steps such as those taken by Qatar are extremely important. However, sporting events themselves are also a known contributor to localised spikes in air pollution. As thousands of people flock to watch a football match at Wembley or a tennis tournament at Wimbledon, they have to travel to the event, and the most
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common form of transport remains to be the passenger car. With transport being one of the single biggest contributors to air pollution, we cannot ignore this when looking at ways to mitigate air pollution at sporting events. Authors of the Sustainability Report outline that sporting venues should offer a clean transport policy to help encourage people to use alternative modes of transport. Perhaps offering a combination ticket that allows ticket holders to use buses, trains and trams for free on the day of the game, or offering park and ride schemes, which although will not solve the issue, may move the pollution away from the match itself. Air pollution in the sporting world is something that cannot be ignored, and although it may be a while until we return to watching live sporting events en masse, when it does happen, air quality must be part of the conversation.
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Local Government Interview
Why climate change is a local issue too The National Association of Local Councils’ (NALC) projects officer, Claire Goldfinch writes on the role communities can play in protecting the environment.
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he effects of climate change were evident within every community in 2020 – most notably in the extreme weather conditions. In February, Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis hit the UK which resulted in mass flooding in West Yorkshire. In July, Heathrow Airport saw temperatures of 37.8 degrees Celcius. While in August rampant wildfires ran through Surrey, causing mass damage. Finally, the 3 October was the wettest day on record which saw an average on 31.7mm of rain across the UK. As evidenced by these events, climate change has affected each community drastically. It will only get worse in years to come. It is down to every community to understand the tasks that they can implement to tackle climate change. And, as localised community action is part of the solution to climate change, local (parish and town) councils, being the most local of local government and nearest to their communities, are crucial to changing the hearts, minds and actions of individuals. The National Association of Local Councils (NALC), the membership body for 10,000 local councils in England, is taking action to help local councils in their endeavour to rebuild communities after the coronavirus pandemic and create sustainable communities. NALC is supporting its members by providing solutions to climate change through its website guidance, and by providing good practice examples. For instance, we have highlighted the excellent work local councils are doing around climate change by publishing over 100 occurrences in our Climate Change case studies document. One featured council is Frome Parish Council, Somerset, which declared a climate emergency in 2018 and has committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2030. It introduced a solar funding project which helps residents install solar panels at a discounted rate. So far, 15 homes have used the Solar Streets programme, and more are in progress. The council is also introducing sustainability measures such as pledging to stop using single-use plastics in the town hall. The council has made a clear impact within the community and has made it easy for others to do the same. Penrith Town Council, Cumbria, is a member in its local climate change group, Plastic Clever Penrith. The group provides initiatives and advice to residents and businesses on how small changes can reduce plastic waste. This initiative helps stop unnecessary waste and improve the local environment. The Plastic Clever Vision, set up by this group, is to have every consumer business in Penrith sign up to a voluntary plastic-clever scheme which includes replacing plastic bags, cups, stirrers, straws, and packaging with biodegradable alternatives. Fownhope Parish Council, Hereford, declared a climate emergency in 2019 and, has since been working to create a document that sets out what this means for the council, local
businesses and the community. It has considered how to set up community groups to run ‘make-do and mend’ or ‘repair’ cafes to reduce waste. It is implementing a collective green energy purchase; a communal composting area, a communal green waste skip to reduce individual journeys of the 12 miles round trip to the nearest refuse centre; and recycling stations for both visitors and residents. Additionally, Fownhope hopes that the development of a parish-wide electronic carbon calculator and reporting toolkit would enable the community to gain an understanding of where their carbon emissions need addressing, allowing them to reduce emissions collectively. NALC has also been encouraging councils to join the Woodland Trust’s Tree Charter to take action in their communities. The Woodland Trust states that to reach the government target of net-zero carbon by 2050, we would need to increase the tree cover in the UK from 13% to at least 19%. The Tree Charter group encourages local councils to plant the right trees in the right place and increase woodland cover. For Tree Charter Day 2019, 16 local councils planted over 8,500 trees in their communities. We believe that across our local councils, we can rebuild our communities, and rebuild them in a more climatefriendly way. We want to spread the message that climate change is a real threat to even our smallest communities and that local councils are taking the lead in pursuing sustainable communities.
Claire Goldfinch, The National Association of Local Councils’ (NALC) projects officer
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Local Government Feature
Declaring compliance – a challenge for policy makers? Dr. Richard Maggs of Bureau Veritas writes on what the long-term effects of the lockdown could mean for air quality monitoring
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ou can’t even trust the air we breathe’ is a line in the song Demon Days from the album of the same name by Gorillaz, and it certainly feels like 2020 has a sense of armageddon about it. Notwithstanding this, it’s been an incredible year in relation to the single largest intervention experiment on emissions control through the nationwide lockdown. But have the curbs on our freedom of movement become part of the problem with respect to the compliance outlook? Various phrases used by air quality professionals trying to explain the uniqueness of 2020 like ‘things are different this year’ do
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not even consider the longer-lasting benefits of the changes taking place. Levels of pollution might have fallen across the board, so you could be forgiven for thinking job done - not quite! Why chase a number? Air quality standards across the globe are based on evidence gained from epidemiological studies and controlled exposure studies, as well as analysis of hospital admissions during high pollution episodes. Health and epidemiological professionals form a consensus on where the greater body of evidence suggests that No Observed Adverse Effect Levels (NOAELs)
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or Lowest Observed Adverse Effect Level (LOAELs) of pollutants arise. How such standards are adopted and what management regime is put in place then give rise to whether the benefits are received equally across the population as a whole, or just in specific ‘hot-spots’. In recent years, this scenario has been played out in the UK with government losing legal challenges brought against it by Client Earth around the failure to achieve EU legally binding limit values for NO2. But the wider benefits of population health improvements attributed to reducing PM2.5 fall outside of such deliberations due to the lack of stringent adoption of standards into
Local Government Feature
UK statute. Increasing pressure on the UK government to adopt the WHO annual mean guideline values for PM2.5 of 10 µg/m3 may lead to further changes, but at what cost? At the moment, there is a focus on NO2 compliance in hot-spots and efforts to improve levels of NO2 to below the annual average value of 40 µg/m3 at kerbside locations. The benefits of this, although not significant in geographic extent compared to where the majority of the population live, are considerable for those people living in such areas. The sad case of Ella Kissi-Debrah and the opening of an inquest into her death highlights the increasing links of disproportionate impact of traffic emissions on those that live near busy roads: areas often with a higher deprivation indice. Lockdown impacts Lockdown has given great insight into the effects of turning off emissions in many areas, and the improvements in levels of pollution have been widely reported such that many locations previously reporting levels above the air quality standards are now reporting levels below such standards. The results will continue to be scrutinised by many consultants, academics and policy makers in years to come. In many respects this is what the policy makers wanted to happen – a large scale intervention that gave rise to emissions reductions and improvements in the air we breathe. But this is too simplistic a view – it needs to be done without adversely affecting the general wellbeing of the economy and the prosperity of the population. Sadly, we have gained an insight into what a largely unplanned largescale intervention on air quality can do as we read about lower economic activity, as a result of lower demands for services and goods, giving rise to redundancies and uncertainty in investment. For years we have discussed air quality improvement measures and the associated costs and benefits of implementation. No doubt, further analysis of emissions reduction, and its cost and benefits, will arise from the experience of the
lockdown intervention in the coming years. But there’s little point in gaining the confidence in the air we breathe if it results in increased job losses, and a widening of the socio-economic gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. The dilemma currently faced by policy makers regarding their forecast trajectories on reporting compliance, is to what extent, and how long, will reductions in pollutant levels arising from lockdown last? Analysis has shown that almost all monitoring stations across the UK air quality network are reporting lower concentrations of NO2 currently than they were in the preceding years. This contrast is best exemplified through results at Marylebone Road in London, which was reporting concentrations of NO2 in the range of 60 – 65 µg/ m3 and now (at the time of writing) reports concentrations some 20 µg/ m3 less: a reduction of some 30%. When compared to the typical values of reduction attributed to measures to reduce air pollution such as vehicle charging and promotion of cycling and walking – which are of some 10-fold magnitude less in value, the change seen in concentrations of NO2 through the lockdown and pandemic have been unprecedented. But caution is required. Some monitoring sites have already shown concentrations of NO2 return to concentrations observed in preceding years and prior to lockdown taking place. Moreover, in 2019 the chancellor committed to a £30m fund for air quality management of NO2 through local authority plans. Do these changes mean that no further effort is required, or does the government continue with the implementation of local NO2 plans, only to show that the extent of further improvement in NO2 levels arising from these plans becomes marginal relative to the gains in improvements already achieved? Indeed, a number of local authorities have put their local NO2 plans on hold this year, although it is unclear as to whether this is due to re-distribution of resources to respond to the pandemic or whether it is an artefact of the improvements in air quality already gained as a consequence of the lockdown and new ways of working.
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The continued challenge. . . Public engagement with environment – and specifically air pollution – is as high as it has ever been in recent years. Links between air pollution and coronavirus impacts on respiratory health and increased mortality rates, tied in with this heightened concern from the public on pollution, shows that the need to reduce pollution levels further
is essential. Locking in the shortterm gains on air quality arising from the pandemic for longer-term benefits, married with the need to show sustained compliance in ‘hot-spots’, whilst not widening the disparities between rich and poor is critical. Adoption of the WHO PM2.5 guideline to provide the best return for health outcomes for a greater number of the population can only be a good thing. The pandemic has shown that we all have a role to play in this and certainly the new norm of working from home can continue to make a contribution towards ridding us all of the Demon Days of air pollution. 31
Legislation
The revolution will be green Stuart Thomson, head of public affairs at BDB Pitmans, writes on the government’s recent announcement that the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will end in 2030
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he government’s announcements to support a ‘green industrial revolution’ marks a significant shift in its approach to the environment. But the proof of its commitment will come in its delivery of a range of policies. Unlike other centre-right governments around the world, Johnson appears convinced by the need to tackle climate change. Johnson’s government focuses on the economic benefits that can be delivered by ‘going green’. Rather than being seen as a threat to jobs, often perceived as being caused by increased costs and regulation, the Johnson view is that the UK economy can gain an international advantage by leading on the green agenda. It could, for instance, allow the UK to grab more manufacturing opportunities. But the real picture is much more complex and needs the government to deliver continued support, financial and in terms of policy. One of the more eye-catching proposals saw the ban of the sale of new petrol and diesel cars being brought forward to 2030. This was partly an attempt to jump-start the market for electric cars in the UK, as well as propelling the
Stuart Thomson, head of public affairs at BDB Pitmans,
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country towards its goal of net zero emissions by 2050. That would represent an environmental as well as economic win. But any shift to electric vehicles is going to take time and it needs to be remembered that the announcement covered the sale of new cars and vans. HGVs will still have to be dealt with, a consultation is expected, and there will remain a second-hand market for existing vehicles. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has suggested that more needs to be done to ensure a smooth transition from petrol and diesel to electric and help improve our air quality. In other words, more effort is needed to reassure potential purchasers about the green option. There was speculation about the prospect of a national road charging scheme. We have seen this policy before and under different governments. Therefore, the government must be clear about why it is choosing to consider a national road user charging scheme. This is critical because it will help to decide whether the public will support it or not. The outcry from the public and some national newspapers against previous schemes was overwhelming. If the government is committed to a national charging scheme, then it will need to sell its benefits and be prepared for a long and hard political fight. It has, however, already been suggested that the chancellor really isn’t very keen on such a scheme; if it doesn’t carry his signature this will surely signify that he isn’t committed to it. This is not just a discussion about central government but also the local level as well. Local government is already grappling with the challenge of improving air quality through the development of clean air zones. Whilst the possibly temporary downturn in traffic may have altered the argument in the short-term for some, it does not mean that such action can be neglected. Dealing with air quality will remain an issue that needs attention. So central government needs to help and support local government to act now. That is partly about helping areas develop the infrastructure required for electric vehicles. The economics of rural areas may make them an obvious case for support, but urban areas are not without challenges as well, not least the number of charging points required for the population sizes. Certainly, the difficulties relate to funding, but it is also about devolving powers and supporting local decisions, not double-checking them. Different authorities will want to design their own tailored local measures and should be allowed to do so. The now delayed devolution white paper will be as fundamental to the success of the green industrial revolution as is the prime minister’s 10-point plan. Doubtless there will also be exciting new solutions coming from the private sector as well and the government will certainly not want any of their measures to curtail that. To be successful, the green agenda needs to feature at the heart of all the government’s policies.
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