sustainability – Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

Engaging with visions of mobilities within the landscape of risk

Posted on July 19, 2022April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

When describing the commercial port land of Felixstowe (fig. I) as a ‘nerve ganglion of capitalism’ in 2006, a proto-nostalgic horizon ‘blighted by cargo ships’, Mark Fisher was describing a vision of the natural’s collision course with the monetary in words that ooze forth from the ascetic expanse he walked us through, right up to the journey’s reposeful end point, the burial ground at Sutton Hoo (fig. II). Here, in this space, palpable is the sense that the increasingly unseen in today’s world is seen so lucidly that upon listening closer, Beowulf’s verses may come rushing forth upon the Deben mists to play amongst the ancient mounds and time-worn grasses.

Figures I (top) & II (bottom): Felixstowe container port (top) the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom, a point of arrival and nerve ganglion of capitalism responsible for the distribution of material commodities across the land along established networks of commerce. By contrast, the ‘sunlit planetary quality of serenity’ offered at Sutton Hoo (bottom) engages with a vision of departure, two different points within a geography that speaks to themes of migration, mobility, and the conflict of boundary in space and time. (sources: Institution of Civil Engineers (top) & thesuffolkcoast.co.uk (bottom)).

In a space as innately human as this, the purpose of the city, the urban, and what it means to exist in it becomes overwritten in the victorious verse and rhythm of nature and the environment, yet there is an eeriness inherent in this vision. A sense of disconnection and immobility that is increasingly disassociated with the ever-expanding urban centres across the world. This is a sense that many might argue is, itself, becoming increasingly overwritten through development and, possibly more directly, through proliferating networks of digital visualisation and communication.

More of us are living in urban settings and more of us are moving to them, what drives this flight to the city, the deeper motivations can only be described as, much like the conditions of the British weather, myriad. What this mobilisation and migration looks like is relatively more straight forward to describe: a need for access to resources through labour, coupled with a space in which to live and be at home, to rest. Mirrored perfectly in Fisher’s visions from Felixstowe to Sutton Hoo, a seamless cross section of the Anthropocene. Capturing the stillness afforded by a space so radically different to the city, where the scale of achievement, to simply occupy a space with as much concrete matter as is condensed into the wondrous square miles of London, Birmingham, and Manchester, amongst many others, by comparison to that which does not occupy the vastness of Suffolk is astonishing. Historically, progress for those who have settled in these cityscapes has, in many senses, been assured, simply through an increased likelihood of encountering streams of revenue and capital, or so goes the utopian visions of the upwardly mobile Mondeo Men and Worcester Women.

Loosely this might be described as the enabling of capital progress, however these connections, patterns and trends underpinning, however loosely, such stereotypical visions of city living have become much more distant for most within the current global climate. A crude utilisation of Tobler’s first law of geography would, when coupled with Mark Fisher’s nerve ganglion metaphor, lead us to deduce that those closest to capital, to the contemporary capital markets of the city, are not as readily likely to benefit from this proximity as they might once have. This sense of capital mobility associated with the city is now fundamentally more precarious and is visually very different from that seen in the past, offering the first glimpse of the landscape of risk.

Of course, this form of mobility is not completely linear as the city has long also been associated with a flux of capital mobility represented by a great, and growing, disparity between those operating at the top of the metropolitan hierarchy, in gleaming beglassed monoliths, and those looking up at them from the mosaic of avenues and streets below. This structural and spatial inequality of the cityscape is as symbolic of the urban as it is of the human condition it embodies, where products of value are exchanged for labour and where, as David Harvey explained in Social Justice and The City, ‘capitalism annihilates space to ensure its own reproduction.’ Historically facilitated by barbaric internal mechanisms in the West, from blockbusting and redlining amongst a spectrum of variable living standards that extend from unthinkable to the decadent, urbanisation and urban expansion reassembling the natural spaces in the pursuit of capital will naturally enhance and further facilitate the growth of inequity and thus, further strengthen the boundaries of the risk landscape.

This does come down to a fundamental connection between capital and risk, where risk is largely framed in the context of ‘asset loss’ but the landscape in which it is most acutely observed, where capital value is most apparent, the city, is where it is, and will continue to be, predominant. Harvey concludes his vision on the engagement with political process as fundamental to traversing the forms of inequality and injustice generated and facilitated through ties to this form of ‘development’. Consequent of the unprecedented recent times we have lived in, and now continue to live through, together, the public inquisitions regarding the moral constitution of those responsible for overseeing political processes challenges any desire for engagement. Age old theoretical undercoats of societal constitution and modernity begin to peel away under the searing heat of growing public discontent whilst those at the very zenith continue to profit financially.

The risk landscape is one fraught with conflict and is perpetually in crisis. However, were this crisis to be wholly one of capital, it would affect everyone. Capital and inequity are one facet of the greater conflict the risk landscape has with the environment at large, as even when this crisis is framed in the context of equity, it finds equilibrium in the continuation of the trend that, depending on where you are categorised within the social hierarchy of the city, you will continue to be worse off from here on out and no amount of ‘levelling up’ will bring about a truly positive change to this course. We are beginning to feel this at home, on a personal scale now through a volatile geopolitical landscape, but that doesn’t mean that labour is any less abundant. The boundaries of the risk landscape will continue to expand beyond this and find a continuing but ultimately existential conflict with the natural environment, generating an accelerated form of risk that is much more linear in outcome. The general message related to this is clear: ‘Adaptation of current modes and systems to emergent environmental risk is needed, with further mitigation required to prevent the acceleration of this risk’

The modern human age is liquid, where change and continuity are seen to different degrees and operate at various tempos across time. Were I to define which of the processes discussed throughout this missive are representative of change and continuity, I would posit that the ultimate defining factor of both lie in the hands of nature and not my own. Whilst social categories become redefined through mechanisms closely tied to the city, overwriting of old landscape structures through the proliferation of the urban over time generates a legacy of risk through reparation and over expansion. In appropriating space that is not in the interest of that which inhabits that space, be it the development of floodplains to accommodate homes, the utilisation, or lack, of land due to pollution from past industry, processes of land reclamation, we are clutching at straws. Yet, capital is generated and claimed with little interest for the longevity or safety of those inhabiting these new spaces, asserting a dynamic of equitability for whom exactly?

It is in this dissection of value, it’s definition and by whom (or what), that the vision of the risk landscape becomes truly material. How these values shift, and to what benefit, must continue to be explored if we are to make a sustainable vision of the city into a liveable environment, equitable for all who will call it home. If our mobility within this exploration could be versed in the cognitive, as Mark Fisher did for us, then we are becoming more aware of the trends that connect the naturally seen and unseen with the landscape of risk. Supporting us in the delineation of what is really of and for us against that which appears to be, revealing what it is to be truly of and for the natural.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member, Dr. Thomas O’Shea. Dr O’Shea is a postdoctoral research associate with the University of Bristol School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies. The primary focus of his research is on developing understanding of the human-water interface with specific interests in the application of social theory, urban and hybrid geographies towards shaping narratives and strategies of sustainability.

This blog is the final blog in the Migration, Mobilities and the Environment blog series, in conjunction with Migration Mobilities Bristol.

Digital home working and its sustainability potential: human immobility and the mobilities of stuff

Posted on May 24, 2022April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

Despite the huge human and economic costs of the COVID pandemic, many commentators have observed that this disruption – or shock – to our resource-intensive daily lives could offer a catalyst for the great societal transformations necessary to meet the climate emergency.

Radical growth of home working is an oft-cited example. According to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures 50% of those in employment did some work from home in April 2020. This mainstreaming of home working has been facilitated by the rapid appropriation of digital devices and services into our everyday lives. It has been accompanied by equally rapid development of cultural skills and competencies required to (collectively) use those devices and services in a satisfactory way. And has led to major adjustments in how we work but also how we shop, interact, use our homes, engage with our local communities, learn, care for others and so on.

Home working during the pandemic, March 2020 (image: Simon Evans on Flickr)

The question is whether these shifts could lead to systemic environmental gains. Is it an environmental ‘good’ or ‘bad’? As ever with academics, our answer is ‘it’s not straightforward…’, but when viewed from a systemic perspective it does offer an opportunity to re-imagine sustainable ways of life.

When considering the environmental impacts of any technology or practice, understanding will be shaped by the scope of the analysis: what is considered inside the system being studied and what is ignored. A narrow scope, focused only on the technological parts of the system, makes it more straightforward to quantify the results (such as a ‘carbon footprint’ of something) but means missing out the broader implications – such as how any technology interacts with diverse social practices. One approach to this problem is to consider different scopes for analysis that address the direct, indirect and systemic impacts of a technology. We apply this framing to home working to consider some possibilities.

Direct impacts are the environmental costs of constructing, using and disposing of a technology. Engineering methods, such as life cycle assessment (LCA) (or more colloquially, ‘carbon footprinting’) can be used to model the technology’s life cycle, systematically collect the relevant data and then apportion the ‘environmental burden’ to the different applications of that technology. In the case of digital home working, this will include the impacts of manufacturing the equipment used and providing the electricity to keep it operational: both the home laptops and Wi-Fi, but also a share of the networking equipment used to connect workers with their offices and each other, and the data centres used to power the applications they use. Accounting for this ‘hidden materiality’, and the large consumption of energy used by data centres, has led to some fearing that the impacts of digital home working are substantial. Applying University of Bristol models developed for digital services to video conferencing suggests that the truth is somewhere between the two. A ballpark estimate for the climate impact of a one-hour video conference, for example, would be about 50-100g CO2e depending on the setup used – roughly equivalent to driving 400-800m in a typical family car. This suggests that we should not let concerns about the direct environmental impact of digital services put us off a move to home working.

Indirect impacts are the environmental costs of changing social practices related to the digital service. What do people stop doing? What do they start doing? Again, LCA can be used to quantify these – but only if one understands the nature of these changes. Social science insights are essential here, both to identify what changes to practice might occur, and to collect the data to quantify the extent to which they change across diverse populations.

In the case of home working, the most obvious changes to practice are reduction in travel to work and decreases in energy use within workplaces. These two factors will potentially be substantially larger than the direct impacts of technology use – but will be more variable and harder to predict across the population. Reductions in heating and lighting in the workplace were, it would appear, largely offset by rises of domestic energy use (Hook et al., 2020). The most dramatic potential environmental savings are from the sharp reduction in commuting, with the Department for Transport reporting a 60% reduction in private car usage during 2020 and a 90% decline in the use of public transport. But even here we must consider a range of related indirect effects of the apparent immobility of people. During the same period, we witnessed a huge increase in online shopping as people ordered their goods for home delivery. The ONS shows that online retail sales increased from just under 19% of total retail sales in November 2019 to almost 40% within a year. Groceries, clothing, household products and takeaway foods saw the largest growth.

The digital devices and services that allowed us to adapt so quickly to conditions of apparent human immobility also offered the technological affordances and cultural skills necessary for a commensurate growth in the circulation of goods, ordered online and delivered (often as individual items) to the homes of the immobile. Measuring these effects – especially if trying to capture the relative weighting of a trip to the shopping mall to purchase multiple items versus delivery of multiple individual items purchased online – would be necessary to estimate indirect impacts.

Systemic impacts consist of a huge range of elements that shape, and are shaped by, technologies and social practices. In the case of home working, we pick out three core elements: infrastructures, cultures, and modes of provision. To consider the impact and potential of home working we need to recognise the changing home to include the re-purposing of space for home offices and the technologies required, from the high tech (digital devices and networks) to the low tech (desks and storage). Local communities are also changing, and development of local service infrastructures to support mass home working (for example, the re-invention of the local high street) together with a corresponding decline of city-based office infrastructures will be required if home working is to be viable over the longer term. Each of these changes come with their own direct and indirect environmental impacts.

Cultural shifts must also be considered. Workplace cultures of presenteeism, long working hours, the status of private offices, and daily meetings are all challenged by home-working regimes. In addition, the rising use of digital platforms shows signs of fostering modes of provision through informal networks (such as familial and community based) that have, in recent history, been marginalised by the dominance of market modes of provision. Community sharing initiatives (such as food box schemes, local delivery hubs, community stores) coupled with the accumulating practical challenges of privately owned goods (as symbolised by the increasing percentage of domestic space devoted to storing seldomly used consumer goods and the decreasing use of expensive private cars) have been argued to indicate a shift towards collaborative consumption: the rejection of privately owned goods in favour of sharing (Southerton and Warde, forthcoming). While the direct and indirect environmental impacts of such systemic shifts are unknown, the potential to reduce the material flows of goods and reduce the impacts of human mobility are clear.

Thinking in terms of the systemic implications of home working – symbolised by the immobility of people and rising mobility of goods during COVID – is more important than only measuring direct and indirect impacts. As things stand, we are moving in the direction of ‘hybrid’ working, presumably on the grounds of a ‘best of both worlds’ assumption. From a systems level perspective there is a huge risk that we end up with two systems: workplaces and home working. Whether this ends up being the worst of both worlds, layering new resource-efficient systems over old resource-intensive systems, will largely depend on whether debates regarding the post-COVID world takes the opportunity to re-imagine and re-configure the systemic impacts of technology and human practice on the environment (Geels et al., 2015).

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This blog is written by Chris Preist, Professor of Sustainability and Computer Systems at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on the environmental impact of digital technology and consumer electronic goods; and Dale Southerton, Professor in Sociology of Consumption and Organisation at the University of Bristol. He studies consumption, its role in organising everyday lives and its significance in processes of societal change.

Teaching sustainability in computer science?

Posted on May 19, 2022April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

The Faculty of Engineering at the University of Bristol ran a discussion panel on if and how should (environmental) sustainability be taught to the Engineering students. Here are my 2 pence on teaching sustainability to Computer Science students.

Why should our students engage with Environmental Sustainability in their formal education?

Well because the ICT/Software impacts and drives every activity in the present society – from the day to day business to entertainment, education, and policy. This impact is felt in two ways:

through production and use of ICT equipment and software, and
through changing the way that the society itself operates.

I will only mention some brief points about the impact of production and use of ICT:

Energy Consumption of the ICT systems seems to be growing unstoppably, e.g.,
- In 2018 the data centres were accountable for about 1 % of the global electricity use
- The energy consumption of the ICT is projected (in worst case) to account for 20% of the world electricity consumption in 2030 [1].
Materials, including rare earth metals are also increasingly depleted for use of ICT hardware production. Even worth, as much of the hardware is quickly outdates and distracted, it creates the problem of e-waste.
Waste form ICT hardware is either put into landfill or damped at the developing countries.

So yes, to point out a few issues that we, as computer scientists and engineers we need to learn to think about: how about teaching and learning about how to minimise energy and material consumption, how to design modular and long-living hardware and software solutions, how to make our software maintainable and hardware bio-degradable?

But, even more importantly, Software Engineers must learn about the impact that their software solutions have within their situated environments.

Let’s look at the problem of traffic congestion: we all know that when too many vehicles are trying to get through a given road, they create a traffic jam; as the vehicles use (fossil) fuels while sitting in a traffic jam, they ends up generating excessive CO2. So what can a software engineer do to help? How about we some ride sharing software solutions, like Uber or Lyft?

Figure 1: Ride sharing software to reduce CO2 emissions.

We know that, as shown in Figure 1, this software will reduce the need for car ownership and as lesser number of people own and drive their cars, it will also reduce traffic congestion problem!

We already teach our students how to develop such applications. They already learn about platform development for data collection, and data analytics, distributed systems development and could computing and user interface design: all that they need to develop a ride sharing application is well covered in the current Computer Science curriculum.

But what happens once this application goes out to be used by people? It turns out that car ownership does decrease, so great. But, as studies into ride sharing show, these also increase the distance travelled by the shared cars. Even worse, as ride sharers become accustomed to the Uber/Lyft services, which are convenient and cheap compared to “normal” taxies, they start to substitute the journeys previously taken by public transport (i.e., bus or train) for ride sharing services.

In short, traffic congestion and respective CO2 emissions do not improve at all, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Longer term environmental impact from use of ride sharing.

I suggest this is because, while the software developers for the ride sharing solutions may have wished to reduce environmental impact, they did not know how to account for such an impact. As and education providers, we do not teach our Software Engineering students about:

Systems Thinking,
Environmental Life Cycle Assessment,
Responsible Innovation and Software Impact Assessment, about
Human Behaviour and Rationality, or
Sustainable Living.

What should be offered to students within our faculty with regards to Environmental Sustainability?

Well, all of the above. Unless we teach our students to account for the human behaviour and longer term software use, software impact assessment and responsible decision making in what, how, and why is integrated into software solutions, we are not likely to see such solutions having any positive impact in addressing the challenges of the environmental degradation and climate change.

So how can we integrate Sustainability into our programs?

I suggest that each module taught to our students must cover content of how it relates to sustainability and sustainable development. So each module needs to be reviewed. As stated in the Karlskrona Manifesto for Sustainability Design [2,3]:

There is a perception that sustainability is a distinct discipline of research and practice with a few defined connections to software.

Whereas sustainability is a pervasive concern that translates into discipline- specific questions in each area.

So, we really do need to teach students about which questions does sustainability translate in each of our modules, and how to address these questions, some examples of these are shown in Fig 3.

Figure 3: Additional issues to consider in Computer Science Curricula.

References

[1] https://ictfootprint.eu/en/news/decreasing-ict-energy-consumption-%E2%80%93-power-data-centres-and-people%E2%80%99s-will-ictfootprinteu-webinar

[2] The Karlskrona Manifesto for Sustainability Design, url: https://www.sustainabilitydesign.org/karlskrona-manifesto/

[3] Becker, C., Chitchyan, R., Duboc, L., Easterbrook, S., Penzenstadler, B., Seyff, N., Venters, C. C. (2015). Sustainability design and software: The Karlskrona manifesto. ICSE’15: 37th International Conference on Software Engineering. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2015.179

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member Dr Ruzanna Chitchyan, from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol.

Low-technology: why sustainability doesn’t have to depend on high-tech solutions

Posted on February 24, 2022March 29, 2023 by janet.crompton

Encouraging recycling is part of the low-tech approach to life.
PxHere

It’s a popular idea that the path to sustainability lies in high-tech solutions. By making everyday items like cars electric, and installing smart systems to monitor and reduce energy use, it seems we’ll still be able to enjoy the comforts to which we’ve become accustomed while doing our bit for the planet – a state known as “green growth”.

But the risks of this approach are becoming ever clearer. Many modern technologies use materials like copper, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements. These metals are in devices like cell phones, televisions and motors. Not only is their supply finite, but large amounts of energy are required for their extraction and processing – producing significant emissions.

Plus, many of these devices are inherently difficult to recycle. This is because to make them, complex mixes of materials are created, often in very small quantities. It’s very expensive to collect and separate them for recycling.

Among others, these limitations have led some to question the high-tech direction our society is taking – and to develop a burgeoning interest in low-tech solutions. These solutions prioritise simplicity and durability, local manufacture, as well as traditional or ancient techniques.

What’s more, low-tech solutions often focus on conviviality. This involves encouraging social connections, for example through communal music or dance, rather than fostering the hyper-individualism encouraged by resource-hungry digital devices.

“Low-tech” does not mean a return to medieval ways of living. But it does demand more discernment in our choice of technologies – and consideration of their disadvantages.

Origins of low-tech

Critics have proclaimed the downsides of excessive technology for centuries, from 19th century Luddites to 20th century writers like Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford. But it was the western energy crisis in the 1970s that really popularised these ideas.

A person rides a cargo bike on a city road — Low-tech emphasises efficiency and simplicity.
CityHarvestNY/Wikimedia

British economist E.F. Schumacher’s 1973 book Small is Beautiful presented a powerful critique of modern technology and its depletion of resources like fossil fuels. Instead, Schumacher advocated for simplicity: locally affordable, efficient technologies (which he termed “intermediate” technologies), like small hydroelectricity devices used by rural communities.

Schumacher’s mantle has been taken up by a growing movement calling itself “low-tech”. Belgian writer Kris de Dekker’s online Low-Tech Magazine has been cataloguing low-tech solutions, such as windmills that use friction to heat buildings, since 2007. In particular, the magazine explores obsolete technologies that could still contribute to a sustainable society: like fruit walls used in the 1600s to create local, warm microclimates for growing Mediterranean fruits.

In the US, architect and academic Julia Watson’s book Lo-TEK (where TEK stands for Traditional Ecological Knowledge) explores traditional technologies from using reeds as building materials to creating wetlands for wastewater treatment.

And in France, engineer Philippe Bihouix’s realisation of technology’s drain on resources led to his prize-winning book The Age of Low Tech. First published in 2014, it describes what life in a low-tech world might be like, including radically cutting consumption.

An infographic showing principles of low-tech — Principles of low-tech include efficiency, durability and accessibility.
Arthur Keller and Emilien Bournigal/Wikimedia

Bihouix presents seven “commandments” of the low-tech movement. Among others, these cover the need to balance a technology’s performance with its environmental impact, being cautious of automation (especially where employment is replaced by increased energy use), and reducing our demands on nature.

But the first principle of low-tech is its emphasis on sobriety: avoiding excessive or frivolous consumption, and being satisfied by less beautiful models with lower performance. As Bihouix writes:

A reduction in consumption could make it quickly possible to rediscover the many simple, poetic, philosophical joys of a revitalised natural world … while the reduction in stress and working time would make it possible to develop many cultural or leisure activities such as shows, theatre, music, gardening or yoga.

Ancient solutions

Crucially, we can apply low-tech principles to our daily lives now. For example, we can easily reduce energy demand from heating by using warm clothes and blankets. Food, if it’s packaged at all, can be bought and stored in reusable, recyclable packaging like glass.

Architecture offers multiple opportunities for low-tech approaches, especially if we learn from history. Using ancient windcatcher towers designed to allow external cool air to flow through rooms lets buildings be cooled using much less energy than air conditioning. And storing heat in stones, used by the Romans for underfloor heating, is being considered today as a means of dealing with the intermittency of renewable energy.

Windcatcher towers against blue sky — Windcatchers in Yazd, Iran, cool buildings using wind.
Ms96/Wikimedia

Design and manufacture for sustainability emphasises reducing waste, often through avoiding mixing and contaminating materials. Simple materials like plain carbon steels, joined using removable fasteners, are easy to recycle and locally repair. Buses, trains and farm machinery using these steels, for example, can be much more readily refurbished or recycled than modern cars full of microelectronics and manufactured from sophisticated alloys.

In some places, the principles of low tech are already influencing urban design and industrial policy. Examples include “15-minute cities” where shops and other amenities are easily accessible to residents, using cargo bikes instead of cars or vans for deliveries, and encouraging repairable products through right-to-repair legislation in the EU and US.

Meanwhile, in Japan, there’s emerging interest in the reuse and recycling practices of the Edo period. From 1603 to 1867, the country was effectively closed to the outside world, with very limited access to raw materials. Therefore, extensive reuse and repair – even of things such as broken pottery or utensils with holes that we’d now regard as waste – became a way of life. Specialist repairers would mend or recycle everything from paper lanterns and books to shoes, pans, umbrellas and candles.

By following examples like these, we can make discerning technological choices a central part of our search for sustainable ways of living.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member Professor Chris McMahon, Senior Research Fellow in Engineering, University of Bristol

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How ancient plants ‘learnt’ to use water when they moved on to land – new research

Posted on February 18, 2022March 30, 2023 by janet.crompton

“Plants, whether they are enormous, or microscopic, are the basis of all life including ourselves.” This was David Attenborough’s introduction to The Green Planet, the latest BBC natural history series.

Over the last 500 million years, plants have become interwoven into every aspect of our lives. Plants support all other life on Earth today. They provide the oxygen people breathe, as well as cleaning the air and cooling the Earth’s temperature. But without water, plants would not survive. Originally found in aquatic environments, there are estimated to be around 500,000 land plant species that emerged from a single ancestor that floated through the water.

In our recent paper, published in New Phytologist, we investigate, at the genetic level, how plants have learnt to use and manipulate water – from the first tiny moss-like plants to live on land in the Cambrian period (around 500 million years ago) through to the giant trees forming complex forest ecosystems of today.

How plants evolved

By comparing more than 500 genomes (an organism’s DNA), our results show that different parts of plant anatomies involved in the transport of water – pores (stomata), vascular tissue, roots – were linked to different methods of gene evolution. This is important because it tells us how and why plants have evolved at distinct moments in their history.

Plants’ relationship with water has changed dramatically over the last 500 million years. Ancestors of land plants had a very limited ability to regulate water but descendants of land plants have adapted to live in drier environments. When plants first colonised land, they needed a new way to access nutrients and water without being immersed in it. The next challenge was to increase in size and stature. Eventually, plants evolved to live in arid environments such as deserts. The evolution of these genes was crucial for enabling plants to survive, but how did they help plants first adapt and then thrive on land?

Stomata, the minute pores in the surface of leaves and stems, open to allow the uptake of carbon dioxide and close to minimise water loss. Our study found that the genes involved in the development of stomata were in the first land plants. This indicates that the first land plants had the genetic tools to build stomata, a key adaptation for life on land.

The speed in which stomata respond varies between species. For example, the stomata of a daisy close more quickly than those of a fern. Our study suggests that the stomata of the first land plants did close but this ability speeded up over time thanks to gene duplication as species reproduced. Gene duplication leads to two copies of a gene, allowing one of these to carry out its original function and the other to evolve a new function. With these new genes, the stomata of plants that grow from seeds (rather reproducing via spores) were able to close and open faster, enabling them to be more adaptable to environmental conditions.

Images of a plant's stomata, open and closed. — Shutterstock

Old genes and new tricks

Vascular tissue is a plant’s plumbing system, enabling it to transport water internally and grow in size and stature. If you have ever seen the rings of a chopped tree, this is the remnants of the growth of vascular tissue.

We found that rather than evolving by new genes, vascular tissue emerged through a process of genetic tinkering. Here, old genes were repurposed to gain new functions. This shows that evolution does not always occur with new genes but that old genes can learn new tricks.

Before the move to land, plants were found in freshwater and marine habitats, such as the algal group Spirogyra. They floated and absorbed the water around them. The evolution of roots enabled plants to access water from deeper in the soil as well as providing anchorage. We found that a few key new genes emerged in the ancestor of plants that live on land and plants with seeds, corresponding to the development of root hairs and roots. This shows the importance of a complex rooting system, allowing ancient plants to access previously unavailable water.

A dam floor cracked by lack of water. — Hot weather and climate changes left this Bulgarian dam almost empty in 2021.
Minko Peev/Shutterstock

The development of these features at every major step in the history of plants highlights the importance of water as a driver of plant evolution. Our analyses shed new light on the genetic basis of the greening of the planet, highlighting the different methods of gene evolution in the diversification of the plant kingdom.

Planting for the future

As well as helping us make sense of the past, this work is important for the future. By understanding how plants have evolved, we can begin to understand the limiting factors for their growth. If researchers can identify the function of these key genes, they can begin to improve water use and drought resilience in crop species. This has particular importance for food security.

Plants may also hold the key to solving some of the most pressing questions facing humanity, such as reducing our reliance on chemical fertilisers, improving the sustainability of our food and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

By identifying the mechanisms controlling plant growth, researchers can begin to develop more resilient, efficient crop species. These crops would require less space, water and nutrients and would be more sustainable and reliable. With nature in decline, it is vital to find ways to live more harmoniously in our green planet.

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This blog has been written by Alexander Bowles, research associate, University of Bristol.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Alexander Bowles

COP26: How Accounting and Finance can take sustainability beyond ‘blah, blah, blah’

Posted on November 15, 2021April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

“Accounting and finance, isn’t that all about about making the world a worse place?” – I’m paraphrasing, but this is basically the response from a friend, involved in climate activism, when I mentioned that sustainability is now a core topic in Bristol’s School of Accounting and Finance.

I had to admit that she had a point.

Plenty of people are angry and frustrated at the moment. Corporations, banks, and governments often seem to talk about ‘sustainability’ and ‘corporate social responsibility’, but then continue on with business as usual. There is a lot of ‘blah, blah, blah’, as Greta Thunberg put it. Yet, while this is an important critique, accounting and finance practices, such as measuring costs or planning investments, and those who can engage critically with them, have vital roles to play in going beyond all the talk, in putting sustainability into practice. While we might feel powerless as individuals, as accounting and finance professionals, we can definitely try to make the world a better place.

Thinking of accounting and finance as a force for change might sound a bit surprising. After all, accounting is a dry technical subject, right? It’s for people who are good with numbers, who like things routine and orderly, isn’t it? Stereotypes in the media, and the way many accounting textbooks are written, might give the impression that accounting is a boring, formulaic process, which follows rules and laws that ordinary people can’t understand. But we should be skeptical about these impressions. Talk to anyone who actually uses accounting measures and concepts in their daily work, and they’ll likely tell you a very different story. They will probably tell you about how accounting numbers underpin the decisions they make about how they organise what they do (including the human labour and natural resources they use), what to prioritize, what to develop, and how to do it.

Contained in any organisation’s ‘cost’ and ‘profit’ data is a story about how much it depends on its workers, their community, and the natural eco-system. Decisions made using this data have important implications for how a business impacts on society and environment. They can make the difference between a company that just exploits its workers and environment, and one that shifts the focus onto ‘giving back’.

Accounting and finance organisations are actively telling us that they want critical and creative thinkers. They don’t want ‘number crunchers’, but people who are capable of finding innovative solutions to problems like how companies can reduce their carbon emissions, enrich their local eco-systems, and foster inclusive work places and communities.

The world of finance is also changing, as investors reassess the meaning of risk and opportunity. Instead of just seeking to acquire more ‘things’, many people are seeing that the world is ‘ours’ to look after and protect, as well as to discover and enjoy. Sustainability reporting, and other techniques to assess social and environmental performance, have often been problematic, functioning as ways to improve a company’s image, rather than signify real change. Yet, as debates about priorities happen, and attitudes change, these reporting techniques could play more substantive roles. Accounting and finance education therefore has a role to play in enabling future decision-makers to look critically beyond ‘what is’ to see what ‘could be’, and take action to make it happen.

More opportunities to make a difference can be found in the millions of alternative organisations developing today, including worker cooperatives and social enterprises. Worker cooperatives are organizations that the members own and manage collectively. Because the members are their ‘own boss’, they generally have greater freedom from the bureaucratic structures and procedures, which can hold back change in traditional organizations. Cooperatives have a history of leadership in sustainable development. In the US in the early 20th century, for example, cooperatives formed by African American communities saw themselves as ‘custodians of the land’ and were pioneers of organic farming.

Today, Bristol is emerging as a major hub for cooperative and sustainable business. Giving the city its creative energy are examples like the Bristol Energy Cooperative, a leader of community-based renewable energy, and the Bristol Bike Project, a social institution in the heart of the city that provides affordable transport for asylum seekers and promotes green and healthy living for all. For ethical banking and investing, Bristol has Triodos Bank, there is Bristol Green Capital Partnership, a membership network for businesses and organisations who want to work towards a sustainable Bristol, while Aardman Animations, the employee owned animations studio, demonstrates the benefits of democratic and inclusive management practices. Joining a cooperative or forming one, with the added freedom they provide, could enable you to put that vision of sustainable fashion, housing, lifestyle, or whatever it might be, into practice.

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This blog is written by Dr Alice Bryer, Reader in Accounting, School of Accounting and Finance, University of Bristol. This blog has been reposted with kind permission from The University of Bristol’s Accounting and Finance blog.

Dr Alice Bryer

‘Together we’ve got this’ – creating space for social sustainability in Bristol

Posted on June 29, 2021April 13, 2023 by janet.crompton

Towards the bottom of Park Street large white letters against a pink backdrop read ‘Together, we’ve got this’. Alongside it the words ‘Bristol together’ are framed above an inscription reading: ‘Bristol’s safely reopening. Help us keep it open by washing your hands, wearing a face covering and keeping a safe distance from other shoppers. Thank you and enjoy your visit.’ I first spotted this sign in September last year. However, in the months that have slowly crept by since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic filled with lockdowns, isolating and social distancing, the word ‘together’ seems to have popped up all over the city. It can be found on street corners and shop fronts all along the Park Street-Queens Road-Whiteladies Road corridor that runs through the University’s campus, connecting the harbour and city centre to the Downs. Along this strip, a sign outside a cafe encourages social distancing with the words ‘We stand together by standing apart’, while a notice on the glossy sliding doors of a supermarket and the red and yellow of a post office poster remind patrons that ‘We’re all in this together’. Yet my personal favourite is the board outside a frozen food shop I spotted one day proclaiming ‘Together never tasted this good’ above a picture of a cheesecake. But what is it about ‘together’ that tastes so good? And, perhaps more importantly, what is togetherness? (If not an Eton mess cheesecake).

Two years ago I set out to explore the question ‘How do people live together in cities?’ through a PhD. Growing up in post-apartheid South Africa the idea of togetherness has always haunted me like an ungraspable treasure chest at the end of our so-called rainbow nation. As many readers will appreciate the dominant narrative about post-apartheid South Africa is one in which the lasting legacy of segregation is well documented such that the ‘post’ of post-apartheid is rendered something of a fantasy and a failure. And yet I had noticed that despite the country’s long history of apartness, urban life in South Africa seemed to be full of small moments of togetherness which defy the common grammar of apartness with which accounts of South African cities are typically written. One such moment arrived in April 2020 when, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic a collective called ‘Cape Town Together’ was born. Through neighbourhood based mutual aid groups residents in Cape Town came together under to self-organise and share resources and information in response to the pandemic. My research has been dedicated to studying practices such as these in answer to the question: ‘How do people live together in cities?’ and the related question of what togetherness is.

Three themes emerged in response to these questions which I argue are not only applicable to Cape Town, but also to cities elsewhere such as Bristol. First, in answer to the question ‘What is togetherness?’, I learnt that it is as much, if not more, a practice as it is a sentiment or a state of being. This is significant because the implication is that, despite what form it takes (whether it be empathy, solidarity, or sharing,) togetherness takes practice; through repeated action we learn to be together by practicing togetherness and in doing so forming new habits and repertoires for living together. Secondly, I learnt that togetherness has a spatial component. Public space in the city provides an ever present training ground on which people can practice togetherness; rehearse social interactions, test, and develop new repertoires of being together. But the practices of togetherness which emerge also shape and are shaped by by the spaces in which they occur. This means that the quality of public space in the city matters because it has an impact on shaping social relations. Finally, togetherness is mediated by institutions just like the University of Bristol which provide places and repeated opportunities for practice along with guidelines, and pre-existing repertoires for social interactions.

Earlier this year the Cabot Institute for the Environment put out a call for short video submissions about activities and ideas for how the University could create positive impact by addressing a sustainability challenge in Bristol. This blog piece stems from the idea I pitched to create spaces where people can practice togetherness as a step towards realising greater social sustainability in our city. To return to the cheesecake, perhaps togetherness has never tasted this good because we’ve never craved it this much. In the wake of COVID-19, which has introduced a host of new ways to be apart and to be together, the University and city are thus presented with an opportunity to build truly inclusive spaces which not only bring or ‘throw’ (to use Geographer Doreen Massey’s term) people together but encourage engagement and practice in learning how to be together.

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This blog is written by Cara Mazetti Claassen, PhD Candidate at the Cabot Institute for the Environment.

World Water Day 2021: What does water mean to the Cabot community?

Posted on March 22, 2021April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

It’s World Water Day (22 March) and we have joined the global public campaign on the theme for 2021 of valuing water. The campaign is designed to generate a worldwide conversation about how different people in different contexts value water for all its uses.

So we asked researchers, students and staff at the Cabot Institute for the Environment, what does water mean to you? Whether it is something learnt through research, personal experiences or simply what you think when you think of water, we asked our community for stories, thoughts, and feelings about water!

All responses including ours and many others across the world will be compiled by UN-Water to create a comprehensive understanding of how water is valued and to help safeguard this resource in a way that will benefit us all.

Cabot Institute for the Environment researchers and students are doing lots of wonderful and important work to deliver the evidence base and solutions to protect water (find out more). Here is what some of them shared with us for World Water Day #Water2me.

What does water mean to you?

“Water is the most special substance on Earth. Everyone has a relationship with it. It is ubiquitous yet still enigmatic. As a hydrologist I have been working for years to better understand where it goes after it rains. As a person who grew up in semi-arid Cyprus, I know that water scarcity can shape a culture as much as it shapes the landscape. As a person who has been living in the UK, I know that too much water can also shape a culture. Too little or too much – water is both a life giver and a life taker. It is everywhere, nowhere, hidden, precious, ever changing, elusive, wondrous, yet taken for granted.” – Dr Katerina Michaelides, Co-lead of Cabot Institute for the Environment water theme

“Liquid water can take any shape of its recipient. As water vapor, it becomes invisible and travels into the air… but it is still there. As ice and it can sometimes provide a hard surface. Water reminds me of adaptation and opportunities. We face a global challenge in ensuring water to all living beings on Earth, but the nature of water tells me that we must adapt to any changes coming in future years and turn challenges into opportunities to develop more sustainable and earth-friendly measures to tackle our societal needs.” – Dr Rafael Rosolem, Co-lead of Cabot Institute for the Environment water theme

“Water is the essence of life and its tiny moving molecules connect almost everything on Earth – bodies of water in rivers, glaciers, oceans, atmospheres are connected to our bodies as humans. What happens in one body trickles down and impacts others, so we have to be careful with how we manage this vast cycle of water, and of life.” – Professor Jemma Wadham, Director of Cabot Institute for the Environment

“When you grow up in a country, where 2/3 is a desert with 1 hour of water supply per 48 hours (mainly at 2am!), water is more precious than oil and sometimes gold.” – Dr Hind Saidani-Scott, Cabot Institute for the Environment researcher

“Simply put, water means health, safety, and life 💧 Without clean water, access to this becomes limited, whereas with it – we can thrive 🌍” – Olivia Reddy, University of Bristol PhD candidate and member of Cabot Institute for the Environment ‘Cabot Communicators’ group.

As a kid to me water meant fun, it sparked feelings of joy and excitement for swimming in the ocean and having a good time. While water remained a magical thing to me, as I grew older, I began to consider its role as a global resource, its precarity, need for protection and how lucky I was to have access to it. Now as I undertake my research at Cabot, I am learning more about the spirituality and sacrality of water amongst indigenous cultures, not only as a “resource” but at as point for worship, ceremony, and community and something to learn from. Today I understand water as part of us as well as our world” – Lois Barton, post-graduate researcher, Global Environmental Challenges, Cabot Institute for the Environment

“The first thing I would have said when asked to think about water two years ago is a refreshing glassful from the tap. But watching the film Cowspiracy and following this up with my own research into animal agriculture has made me look at water differently. Now, I think of water in terms of cows. 2,500 gallons of water are needed to produce one pound of beef. Animal agriculture is responsible for up to 33% of freshwater usage globally! For me, a new understanding of water and water-use was a key factor in prompting the decision to change to a plant-based diet and advocate that others do the same for the good of the planet and the people who do not have water on tap like I do every day.” – Lucy Morris, post-graduate researcher, Global Environmental Challenges, Cabot Institute for the Environment

Hidden Water: Valuing water we cannot see

Cabot Institute for the Environment is also hosting a public event for World Water Day (17:15 GMT, 22 March 2021) which is bringing together two leading researchers to discuss the value of ‘hidden water’ resources: groundwater and glaciers.

Dr Debra Perrone, University of California, will discuss her research which revealed millions of groundwater wells and strategies to protect them. Professor Jemma Wadham, Cabot Institute for the Environment, will discuss the impacts of glacier retreat in the Peruvian Andes and solutions to adapt to these changes. Chaired by Cabot Institute for the Environment water experts, Dr Katerina Michaelides and Dr Rafael Rosolem. More information here.

Join the discussion

What does water mean to you? Tag @cabotinstitute and #WorldWater #Water2me on Twitter to let us know.

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This blog is written by Adele Hulin, Cabot Institute Coordinator at the University of Bristol, and Lois Barton, Cabot Institute for the Environment MScR student and temporary communications assistant at the Institute.

Adele Hulin

Safeguarding sustainable future communities: Lessons from Covid-19

Posted on January 5, 2021March 30, 2023 by janet.crompton

Volunteers packing shopping. Image credit: We Are Bristol

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought hardship to many people across the UK, both in terms of the direct health impacts of the virus and the economic and social consequences of lockdowns. However, it has also demonstrated the resilience of our communities, and the importance of strong social infrastructure in responding to crises. Within hours of the first lockdown being announced, community organisations took rapid action, with many completely shifting their models of service delivery to meet the changing needs of their communities. This extraordinary response has been one of the good news stories of the pandemic, as many more people and local governments have realised the value of services provided by community organisations. My research sought to build an understanding of the experience of the community sector in Bristol during the Covid-19 pandemic to determine what allowed them to coordinate such an effective response, and how they can be better supported to respond to future crises.

Why study community resilience?

Climate change has made it more important to understand how we respond to major shocks and disasters, as they are likely to increase in both frequency and severity in future. While the physical infrastructure required to respond to different shocks – such as floods, heatwaves and pandemics – varies greatly, building strong social and community infrastructure strengthens resilience to many different events. A recent report from the national community network Locality discussed the case of Calderdale Council, which has faced three major flooding incidents in the last eight years. The knowledge, networks and partnerships built through coping with floods in the past made Calderdale more resilient and responsive to the Covid-19 crisis, despite being developed for a different purpose. Understanding the strengths and vulnerabilities of Bristol’s community infrastructure when exposed to a crisis is key to building long-term community resilience.

Community organisations in a crisis

To understand the strengths and weaknesses of community resilience in Bristol, I interviewed thirteen people working across the sector.

I found that community organisations were very well-placed to respond to this crisis. Those interviewed discussed how they could act quickly to meet community needs because their decisions weren’t subject to the same bureaucracy or hierarchical decision-making structure as local governments. The highly localised nature of community organisations also meant that they could deliver solutions and services that were tailored to the needs of the populations they served, like culturally appropriate meals or shopping for older residents.

Community organisations also had access to informal networks within their localities which allowed them to coordinate with local businesses, residents, and other voluntary organisations to deliver necessary services. In Easton, for example, there was coordination across community groups and businesses which allowed each organisation to focus on the service they were best placed to deliver, even if it meant ceding responsibility for their normal functions to another organisation who could deliver it more effectively. Up Our Street, for example, focused on providing resources for children, such as milk, nappies, and activity packs to their communities, identifying that this was a necessary role that they were well-placed to fill. Community alliances were particularly effective at this coordination, especially those who had access to physical spaces to use as community hubs for service delivery.

There were, however, a number of barriers which community organisations faced. Every single interviewee from the community sector raised the importance of funding sources. Due to central government cuts in recent years, many organisations became reliant on traded income and fundraising to deliver their services, sources of income generation which disappeared quickly during the lockdown. This meant that community organisations had to furlough staff and work on reduced incomes when the need for their services was at an unprecedented high. In contrast, those organisations with access to flexible, long-term grant funding emphasised how valuable it was to their response. A key message was that many organisations may not survive to respond to the next crisis without more resilient funding models.

Effective communication with local government was also cited as a challenge. Many Bristolians, particularly vulnerable members of the population, did not have direct access to information about the evolving crisis and relied heavily on community organisations. Improving communication between local governments and citizens, particularly through faith-based organisations, such as gurdwaras, mosques, and churches was recommended. More generally, many organisations felt communication and coordination with local government needs to be improved in future, given the depth of local knowledge and networks such organisations can offer to help improve services.

Indeed, the most effective community responses were achieved where Bristol City Council sought to enable and support the existing work being undertaken by community organisations. For example, the City Council’s Can Do platform and “We Are Bristol” helpline become important mechanisms for urgent recruitment of volunteers. BCC also removed a lot of superfluous red tape and bureaucracy, trusting organisations to act in the best interests of their communities and take greater responsibility. The Council became more reliant on the efforts of the community sector than before, and the trust built between them has provided community organisations with more “soft power” to influence decision-making. Continuing this trusting and enabling relationship will be key to recovery, and ensuring that community resilience is enhanced moving forward.

Key lessons

Building resilient community and social infrastructure is key to safeguarding Bristol’s sustainable future. Community organisations are vital first responders in a crisis and have the necessary networks and knowledge in their communities to understand and deliver what their communities need. By supporting these organisations, through promoting their long-term financial stability and including them in community decision-making, it is possible to create a more resilient Bristol which will be able to respond to any future shocks.

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This blog is written by Environmental Policy and Management MSc graduate Eveline Hall.

Eveline Hall

Hydrogen: where is low-carbon fuel most useful for decarbonisation?

Posted on November 10, 2020March 31, 2023 by janet.crompton

Is hydrogen the lifeblood of a low-carbon future, or an overhyped distraction from real solutions? One thing is certain – the coal, oil and natural gas which currently power much of daily life must be phased out within coming decades. From the cars we drive to the energy that heats our homes, these fossil fuels are deeply embedded in society and the global economy. But is the best solution in all cases to swap them with hydrogen – a fuel which only produces water vapour, and not CO₂, when burned?

Answering that question are six experts in engineering, physics and chemistry.

Road and rail

Hu Li, Associate Professor of Energy Engineering, University of Leeds

Transport became the UK’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, contributing about 28% of the country’s total.

Replacing the internal combustion engines of passenger cars and light-duty vehicles with batteries could accelerate the process of decarbonising road transport, but electrification isn’t such a good option for heavy-duty vehicles such as lorries and buses. Compared to gasoline and diesel fuels, the energy density (measured in megajoules per kilogram) of a battery is just 1%. For a 40-tonne truck, just over four tonnes of lithium-ion battery cells are needed for a range of 800 kilometres, compared to just 220 kilograms of diesel.

With the UK government set to ban fossil fuel vehicles from 2035, hydrogen fuel cells could do much of the heavy lifting in decarbonising freight and public transport, where 80% of hydrogen demand in transport is likely to come from.

A fuel cell generates electricity through a chemical reaction between the stored hydrogen and oxygen, producing water and hot air as a byproduct. Vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells have a similar driving range and can be refuelled about as quickly as internal combustion engine vehicles, another reason they’re useful for long-haul and heavy-duty transport.

Hydrogen fuel can be transported as liquid or compressed gas by existing natural gas pipelines, which will save millions on infrastructure and speed up its deployment. Even existing internal combustion engines can use hydrogen, but there are problems with fuel injection, reduced power output, onboard storage and emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOₓ), which can react in the lower atmosphere to form ozone – a greenhouse gas. The goal should be to eventually replace internal combustion engines with hydrogen fuel cells in vehicles that are too large for lithium-ion batteries. But in the meantime, blending with other fuels or using a diesel-hydrogen hybrid could help lower emissions.

It’s very important to consider where the hydrogen comes from though. Hydrogen can be produced by splitting water with electricity in a process called electrolysis. If the electricity was generated by renewable sources such as solar and wind, the resulting fuel is called green hydrogen. It can be used in the form of compressed gas or liquid and converted to methane, methanol, ammonia and other synthetic liquid fuels.

But nearly all of the 27 terawatt-hours (TWh) of hydrogen currently used in the UK is produced by reforming fossil fuels, which generates nine tonnes of CO₂ for every tonne of hydrogen. This is currently the cheapest option, though some experts predict that green hydrogen will be cost-competitive by 2030. In the meantime, governments will need to ramp up the production of vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells and storage tanks and build lots of refuelling points.

Hydrogen can play a key role in decarbonising rail travel too, alongside other low-carbon fuels, such as biofuels. In the UK, 6,049 kilometres of mainline routes run on electricity – that’s 38% of the total. Trains powered by hydrogen fuel cells offer a zero-emission alternative to diesel trains.

The Coradia iLint, which entered commercial service in Germany in 2018, is the world’s first hydrogen-powered train. The UK recently launched mainline testing of its own hydrogen-powered train, though the UK trial aims to retrofit existing diesel trains rather than design and build entirely new ones.

Aviation

Valeska Ting, Professor of Smart Nanomaterials, University of Bristol

Of all of the sectors that we need to decarbonise, air travel is perhaps the most challenging. While cars and boats can realistically switch to batteries or hybrid technologies, the sheer weight of even the lightest batteries makes long-haul electric air travel tricky.

Single-seat concept planes such as the Solar Impulse generate their energy from the sun, but they can’t generate enough based on the efficiency of current solar cells alone so must also use batteries. Other alternatives include synthetic fuels or biofuels, but these could just defer or reduce carbon emissions, rather than eliminate them altogether, as a carbon-free fuel like green hydrogen could.

Hydrogen is extremely light and contains three times more energy per kilogram than jet fuel, which is why it’s traditionally used to power rockets. Companies including Airbus are already developing commercial zero-emission aircraft that run on hydrogen. This involves a radical redesign of their fleet to accommodate liquid hydrogen fuel tanks.

Three aeroplanes of different designs fly in formation.

An artist’s impression of what hydrogen-powered commercial flight might look like.
Airbus

There are some technical challenges though. Hydrogen is a gas at room temperature, so very low temperatures and special equipment are needed to store it as a liquid. That means more weight, and subsequently, more fuel. However, research we’re doing at the Bristol Composites Institute is helping with the design of lightweight aircraft components made out of composite materials. We’re also looking at nanoporous materials that behave like molecular sponges, spontaneously absorbing and storing hydrogen at high densities for onboard hydrogen storage in future aircraft designs.

France and Germany are investing billions in hydrogen-powered passenger aircraft. But while the development of these new aircraft by industry continues apace, international airports will also need to rapidly invest in infrastructure to store and deliver liquid hydrogen to refuel them. There’s a risk that fleets of hydrogen aeroplanes could take off before there’s a sufficient fuel supply chain to sustain them.

Heating

Tom Baxter, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, University of Aberdeen & Ernst Worrell, Professor of Energy, Resources and Technological Change, Utrecht University

If the All Party Parliamentary Group on Hydrogen’s recommendations are taken up, the UK government is likely to support hydrogen as a replacement fuel for heating buildings in its next white paper. The other option for decarbonising Britain’s gas heating network is electricity. So which is likely to be a better choice – a hydrogen boiler in every home or an electric heat pump?

First there’s the price of fuel to consider. When hydrogen is generated through electrolysis, between 30-40% of the original electric energy is lost. One kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity in a heat pump may generate 3-5 kWh of heat, while the same kWh of electricity gets you only 0.6-0.7 kWh of heat with a hydrogen-fuelled boiler. This means that generating enough hydrogen fuel to heat a home will require electricity generated from four times as many turbines and solar panels than a heat pump. Because heat pumps need so much less energy overall to supply the same amount of heat, the need for large amounts of stored green energy on standby is much less. Even reducing these losses with more advanced technology, hydrogen will remain relatively expensive, both in terms of energy and money.

So using hydrogen to heat homes isn’t cheap for consumers. Granted, there is a higher upfront cost for installing an electric heat pump. That could be a serious drawback for cash-strapped households, though heat pumps heat a property using around a quarter of the energy of hydrogen. In time, lower fuel bills would more than cover the installation cost.

A large fan unit sits outside an apartment building. — Heat pumps, like this one, are a better bet for decarbonising heating.
Klikkipetra/Shutterstock

Replacing natural gas with hydrogen in the UK’s heating network isn’t likely to be simple either. Per volume, the energy density of hydrogen gas is about one-third that of natural gas, so converting to hydrogen will not only require new boilers, but also investment in grids to increase how much fuel they can deliver. The very small size of hydrogen molecules mean they’re much more prone to leaking than natural gas molecules. Ensuring that the existing gas distribution system is fit for hydrogen could prove quite costly.

In high-density housing in inner cities, district heating systems – which distribute waste heat from power plants and factories into homes – could be a better bet in a warming climate, as, like heat pumps, they can cool homes as well as heat them.

Above all, this stresses the importance of energy efficiency, what the International Energy Agency calls the first fuel in buildings. Retrofitting buildings with insulation to make them energy efficient and switching boilers for heat pumps is the most promising route for the vast majority of buildings. Hydrogen should be reserved for applications where there are few or no alternatives. Space heating of homes and buildings, except for limited applications like in particularly old homes, is not one of them.

Electricity and energy storage

Petra de Jongh, Professor of Catalysts and Energy Storage Materials, Utrecht University

Fossil fuels have some features that seem impossible to beat. They’re packed full of energy, they’re easy to burn and they’re compatible with most engines and generators. Producing electricity using gas, oil, or coal is cheap, and offers complete certainty about, and control over, the amount of electricity you get at any point in time.

Meanwhile, how much wind or solar electricity we can generate isn’t something that we enjoy a lot of control over. It’s difficult to even adequately predict when the sun will shine or the wind will blow, so renewable power output fluctuates. Electricity grids can only tolerate a limited amount of fluctuation, so being able to store excess electricity for later is key to switching from fossil fuels.

Hydrogen seems ideally suited to meet this challenge. Compared to batteries, the storage capacity of hydrogen is unlimited – the electrolyser which produces it from water never fills up. Hydrogen can be converted back into electricity using a fuel cell too, though quite a bit of energy is lost in the process.

Unfortunately, hydrogen is the lightest gas and so it’s difficult to store and transport it. It can be liquefied or stored at very high pressures. But then there’s the cost – green hydrogen is still two to three times more expensive than that produced from natural gas, and the costs are even higher if an electrolyser is only used intermittently. Ideally, we could let hydrogen react with CO₂, either captured from the air or taken from flue gases, to produce renewable liquid fuels that are carbon-neutral, an option that we’re investigating at the Debye Institute at Utrecht University.

Heavy industry

Stephen Carr, Lecturer in Energy Physics, University of South Wales

Industry is the second most polluting sector in the UK after transport, accounting for 21% of the UK’s total carbon emissions. A large proportion of these emissions come from processes involving heat, whether it’s firing a kiln to very high temperatures to produce cement or generating steam to use in an oven making food. Most of this heat is currently generated using natural gas, which will need to be swapped out with a zero-carbon fuel, or electricity.

A worker in silver, protective gear stokes a furnace spewing molten metal. — Furnaces in the steel industry are generally powered by fossil fuels.
Rocharibeiro/Shutterstock

Let’s look in depth at one industry: ceramics manufacturing. Here, high-temperature direct heating is required, where the flame or hot gases touch the material being heated. Natural gas-fired burners are currently used for this. Biomass can generate zero-carbon heat, but biomass supplies are limited and aren’t best suited to use in direct heating. Using an electric kiln would be efficient, but it would entail an overhaul of existing equipment. Generating electricity has a comparably high cost too.

Swapping natural gas with hydrogen in burners could be cheaper overall, and would require only slight changes to equipment. The Committee on Climate Change, which advises the UK government, reports that 90 TWh of industrial fossil fuel energy per year (equivalent to the total annual consumption of Wales) could be replaced with hydrogen by 2040. Hydrogen will be the cheapest option in most cases, while for 15 TWh of industrial fossil fuel energy, hydrogen is the only suitable alternative.

Hydrogen is already used in industrial processes such as oil refining, where it’s used to react with and remove unwanted sulphur compounds. Since most hydrogen currently used in the UK is derived from fossil fuels, it will be necessary to ramp up renewable energy capacity to deliver truly green hydrogen before it can replace the high-carbon fuels powering industrial processes.

The same rule applies to each of these sectors – hydrogen is only as green as the process that produced it. Green hydrogen will be part of the solution in combination with other technologies and measures, including lithium-ion batteries, and energy efficiency. But the low-carbon fuel will be most useful in decarbonising the niches that are currently difficult for electrification to reach, such as heavy-duty vehicles and industrial furnaces.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Valeska Ting, Professor of Smart Nanomaterials, University of Bristol, Tom Baxter, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, University of Aberdeen; Ernst Worrell, Professor of Energy, Resources and Technological Change, Utrecht University; Hu Li, Associate Professor of Energy Engineering, University of Leeds; Petra E. de Jongh, Professor of Catalysts and Energy Storage Materials, Utrecht University; and Stephen Carr, Lecturer in Energy Physics, University of South Wales.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.