BBC Radio 4
In the 12th April 2010 episode of BBC Radio 4’s Click On programme there was a feature covering Smart Meters and the emerging Smart Grid.
Currently, this episode of Click On (Episode 3, Series 6) is still available to listen to on the BBC web site.
BSRIA reports that the Zero Carbon Task Force has concluded that the challenges are too great to achieve the government’s 2016 target for zero-carbon schools.
Too many technical, financial and social challenges stand in the way of the 2016 zero-carbon deadline for new schools, an influential report has concluded.
The final report of the Zero Carbon Task Force (ZCTF) cites the three to four year construction cycles for schools as being too long for all new schools to be zero-carbon in the time available. Some zero-carbon schools may be possible says the report, but these are only likely “in rural settings with access to renewables and in city centres where there are low carbon community energy schemes.”
The 2016 target should be replaced by a series of step-changes towards zero carbon, says the report, beginning with a target of 10 kgCO2/m2 per annum for new schools from 2013 – a reduction of 80 percent on 2002 building standards.
The department for Children, Schools and Families established the Zero Carbon Task Force (ZCTF) to advise on how England can achieve the ambition for new school buildings to be zero carbon, and to develop a roadmap for implementation.
Among the report’s 30 recommendations the ZCTF calls for the governent’s delivery vehicle for new schools, Partnerships for Schools, to develop the role of the client design adviser as well as perform the role of funding agency. This should extend throughout the design and construction processes and into the operation of buildings, says the report.
The report also calls for four pilot zero-carbon schools to be operational in each government region before 2016 to show how zero carbon can be achieved.
Processes should also be introduced to ensure that energy and carbon are a priority from the inception through to the operation of school projects. The energy and carbon performance of schools should be monitored and published.
The report calls for “radically reduced requirements” for the energy and carbon performance of ICT services. This places responsibility with the BECTA – the government agency tasked with promoting information and communications technology – to develop a methodology to measure the actual energy performance of ICT service providers.
The ZCTF authors warn that achieving zero carbon for new build is just one part of the picture: “If DCSF’s aim is to significantly reduce carbon emissions across the school sector and make progress towards carbon targets, then action will be required that affects all schools, not just new build.”
SOLO-TREC underwater vehicle
NASA reports that U.S. Navy and university researchers have successfully demonstrated the first robotic underwater vehicle to be powered entirely by natural, renewable, ocean thermal energy. Though not quite a perpetual motion machine it is close to that.
The Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangrian Observer Thermal RECharging (SOLO-TREC) autonomous underwater vehicle uses a novel thermal recharging engine powered by the natural temperature differences found at different ocean depths.
Scalable for use on most robotic oceanographic vehicles, this technology breakthrough could usher in a new generation of autonomous underwater vehicles capable of virtually indefinite ocean monitoring for climate and marine animal studies, exploration and surveillance.
Solar Impulse aeroplane
A solar-powered airplane designed to fly day and night without fuel or emissions successfully made its first test flight above the Swiss countryside on Wednesday.
The Solar Impulse, which has 12,000 solar cells built into its wings, is a prototype for an aircraft intended to fly around the world without fuel in 2012.
It glided for 87 minutes above western Switzerland at an altitude of 1,200 meters (3,937 feet) with German test pilot Markus Scherdel at the controls.
“Everything went as it should,” Scherdel told Reuters Television at Payerne military base after landing.
It took six years to build the carbon fiber aircraft, which has the wingspan of an Airbus A340 and weighs as much as a mid-size car (1,600 kg).
The prototype made a “flea hop” in December 2009, flying a distance of 350 meters one meter above the runway of a military airbase near Zurich. It was then transported to Payerne airfield in the west of Switzerland for its maiden flight.
The propeller plane is powered by four electric motors and designed to fly day and night by saving energy from its solar cells in high-performance batteries.
It is ultimately expected to attain an average flying speed of 70 kms per hour and reach a maximum altitude of 8,500 meters (27,900 feet).
Bertrand Piccard, one of the Swiss pilots behind the project, is best known for completing the first non-stop, round-the-world flight in a hot-air balloon in March 1999.
The other main pilot, Swiss engineer Andre Borschberg, has described it as “ten times lighter than the very best glider.”
“Such a large wingspan for so little weight is something completely new in the world of aviation,” he said on the initiative’s website www.solarimpulse.com.
The project’s budget is 100 million Swiss francs ($94 million), 80 million francs of which has been secured from sponsors, according to spokeswoman Rachel de Bros.
Belgian chemicals company Solvay, Swiss watchmaker Omega, part of the Swatch group, and German banking giant Deutsche Bank, are the three main sponsors.
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), one of two Swiss federal polytechnic universities, is scientific advisor.
(Source – Reuters)
