Spotted: By now, we are all familiar with the environmental impacts of single-use plastic. Made from fossil fuels, these plastics don’t really break down, but they do break up – into microplastics and chemicals that are harmful to all life. And each year, half of all plastic we produce is used once and thrown away.
Textile designer Renuka Ramanujam has now developed a plastic packaging alternative made from onion skins, after testing an onion-based fabric dye. She has dubbed the new material Huid (Dutch for ‘onion skin’).
Although the proprietary process has not been fully revealed, it involves boiling ground, waste onion skins, then binding them together with a natural casein-based adhesive. The result is a material that is strong and waterproof. And, onion skin contains anti-bacterial and antioxidant compounds that slow down the oxygenation process that causes food to go off, making the finished product especially useful for food packaging.
Ramanujam has recently won a Scottish Edge award of £10,000 (around €11,300) and a £5,000 (around €5,600) Young Innovator award to help develop the material. She is also looking for investment to fund a prototype 3D modelling process for the material.
Ramanujam is not alone in using food waste to develop a circular plastic substitute. Similarly innovative products Springwise has spotted include a helmet made from waste scallop shells, and food packaging made from surplus grain.
Sloppiness and misinformation are threatening to prevent large-scale wood construction from reaching its full potential, argues Hermann Kaufmann – the “grandfather of mass timber” – in this interview as part of our Timber Revolution series.
“Now is a really dangerous time for wood as a resource,” the Austrian architect told Dezeen. “You can say it’s the saviour of the construction industry. And I believe it has a part to play, where it makes sense to use it.”
“But it’s also a limited resource so you have to be careful not to overuse it, especially now that other industries are jumping on the bandwagon,” he continued. “Timber is being kind of abused.”
Mass timber could “shoot itself in the foot”
Since buildings offer long-term storage for the carbon locked away in wood, Kaufmann argues that the construction industry should have first dibs on the world’s limited timber supplies.
But currently, the industry is being held back by a lack of skilled craftsmen and technical knowledge, which he warns could have a detrimental effect on building quality.
Hermann Kaufmann (top) has designed notable timber buildings including Schmuttertal secondary school (above photo by Stefan Müller-Naumann)
“Building with wood requires diligence but diligence is disappearing,” Kaufmann said. “If you compare the building culture across Europe, there are huge differences in the execution quality when looking at a building in Switzerland or in, say, France or England.”
“If you do a sloppy job when you’re building with wood, and you get condensation or water ingress that you don’t notice right away, the material will rot quickly and you can get huge structural damages,” he added.
“So I’m a bit scared that there will be some cases of damage in the future, and mass timber could shoot itself in the foot.”
Building in mass timber for more than 30 years
Although perhaps less well-known outside of the German-speaking world, Kaufmann is considered a pioneer of modern timber construction, dubbed the “grandfather of mass timber” by Canadian architect Michael Green.
Born to a long line of carpenters, Kaufmann dedicated himself to the “forgotten topic” of wood construction as early as the 1970s, when he was studying architecture at the technical universities of Innsbruck and Vienna.
“At the time, there was beginning to be some modern timber construction in the Alpine region,” he said. “But internationally, there was almost nothing. Even in Japan, the good architects that are now working in wood didn’t do much back then.”
Kaufmann perched an office for an Austrian power company on top of a hydropower lake. Photo by Bruno Klomfar
“I questioned whether I was on the right path when my fellow students were getting bigger and bigger projects and I was still working on relatively small things,” he added. “Back then, there were no really big projects in timber.”
“You had to go to a welder and get them to make you custom screws and steel parts so that you could build modern wood structures.”
Kaufmann’s expertise in tall wood structures was also crucial in the construction of Brock Commons – a student residence at the University of British Columbia that was the tallest mass-timber building in the world upon its completion in 2016.
But even in places like Canada and Scandinavia, which currently have a number of other record-breaking mass-timber projects in the works, the architect says that there is still a considerable skills gap that needs to be addressed.
“Timber architects live off good craftsmen,” he said. “And in countries where you don’t have that, it’s difficult.”
“We advised on the construction of a high-rise in Canada with 18 storeys, which was the tallest at the time, and we were happy we found any craftsmen that knew what they were doing,” Kaufmann continued.
“And whenever I visit the nordic countries like Sweden and Finland, my colleagues complain that they don’t have any more craftsmen, just big manufacturers that end up screwing their buildings together.”
“It will be an evolution, not a revolution”
Kaufmann predicts that timber could only become the main building material in “very few countries” such as his native Austria, where timber is an abundant local resource and where manufacturers and craftsmen can build up the necessary skills to work with the material at scale.
“Many architects are changing course and discovering timber but the industry can’t keep up,” he said. “We need to have apprenticeships to train young people up and we need to build know-how amongst engineers.”
“This whole chain needs the right knowledge to get moving,” Kaufmann added. “This is happening at the moment and it could happen relatively quickly. But it won’t explode. It will be an evolution, not a revolution.”
The architect also advised on the construction of Brock Commons. Photo by Michael Elkan courtesy of Acton Ostry Architects
At the same time, he warns that a growing number of architects are already “playing fast and loose” with the term mass-timber and using it to greenwash their buildings.
“People will screw a couple of square metres of wood onto their facade and say the building is sustainable,” Kaufmann explained, comparing the process to adding a decorative spoiler to a vehicle to make it look like a racing car.
“It’s become a bit of an epidemic,” he added. “I will only speak of a sustainable building if the majority of its mass is made up of wood. Everything else is greenwashing.”
Architects can find opportunity in challenge
While the increased complexity and precision required for timber construction poses a challenge for the industry, Kaufmann says it also presents an opportunity for architects to once again become more involved in the process of building their projects, rather than just designing them.
“When you’re building with wood, you have to bring construction know-how into the process way earlier if you want the project to be successful,” he said. “This change in the planning culture is extremely exciting for us because it’s asking way more of the architect.”
“It’s much more interesting, and the competencies of the architect will likely have to go much deeper into the building process again, rather than just acting as a surface or colour designer and making renderings for anyone to build.”
This interview was conducted in German and has been translated into English by the author.
The photography is by Lisa Dünser unless otherwise stated.
This article is part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series, which explores the potential of mass timber and asks whether going back to wood as our primary construction material can lead the world to a more sustainable future.
What is a business? What does and should it do? Is making profits all that matters?
According to the principles of the B Corporation Movement, business should be a force for good. And in this time of climate crisis and rapid change, this idea has never been more important.
B (‘Benefit’) Corporations adhere to high standards when it comes to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. They also measure success by the positive impact they cause. In this way, they are going beyond the current model of ‘business as usual’ by taking action to proactively change the status quo.
B Corp Month is an annual, month-long event that promotes the values of the B Corp Community. And, this year, the celebrations are based around the theme of ‘We Go Beyond’. This will invite people to understand how and why B Corporations go beyond expectations to pursue a more impactful path.
As one of the first certified B Corporations in the UK, Springwise is proud to support this campaign. Every day we spot the latest innovations that matter, developed by a whole range of different organisations from startups and non-profits to large corporations and established universities. But a significant proportion of the innovations in our library come from environmentally focused B Corporations who are living their commitment to positive impact through the products and services they produce.
Embarking on its B Corp journey in February 2021, Wild Cosmetics was first featured on Springwise early last year. Since then, many UK consumers will have become familiar with the brand from both billboards and supermarket shelves. And the vegan, refillable deodorant is also available in Ireland, Germany, Austria, and Norway. The company’s flexible subscription service allows users to receive personalised, mix-and-match refills of vegan deodorant. With their first package, subscribers receive a lightweight case made largely from aluminium with a small number of recycled plastic parts. They then receive scent refills with their subsequent deliveries. These refills come in a bamboo pot that can be composted at home or recycled with other papers. Switching to this model helps to save a lot of plastic. In fact, according to the company’s latest B Corp impact assessment, its community of 1 million users has saved up to 150 tonnes of plastic from entering landfill. Most recently, the company announced the addition of a new camomile tea and French lavender scent to its range. Read more
Another B Corp providing sustainable packaging refills – this time for medicine – is Cabinet Health. The company has developed the world’s first refillable and decomposable medicine system, under which pharmacy HealthHavenRX refills prescriptions using Cabinet Health products – which include refillable bottles and biodegradable pouches. In addition to prescriptions, Cabinet Health’s packaging is also used for over-the-counter medicines, such as those for hay fever relief, pain relief, cold and flu treatment, and digestive health. According to the company, by switching to its refillable system, customers can eliminate up to one pound of plastic annually and hundreds of pounds of plastic over the course of a lifetime. Read more
All kinds of businesses can become a B Corp, and in late 2021, Springwise spotted Leaf & Limb, the first-ever tree service company to achieve B Corp certification. This longstanding family business employs a unique approach. In the tree service industry, a significant proportion of revenues comes from cutting down trees. For example, until 2019 – when the company shifted its approach – half of Leaf & Limb’s revenue came from tree felling. Today, however, the company only cuts down diseased trees – and only when completely necessary. Instead, it focuses on caring for existing trees by providing pruning services, improving the soil through practices such as adding wood chips and leaf compost, and avoiding harmful practices such as the use of herbicides and mulch volcanoes. Furthermore, it plants new trees and shrubs with a focus on choosing the right native species for a given location. Read more
First spotted by Springwise in 2020, Oxwash became a certified B Corporation last year. The company has developed a comprehensive system for improving the sustainability of commercial laundry. Oxwash’s solution revolves around the use of ‘wet’ cleaning, which replaces the harsh solvents used in dry cleaning with biodegradable detergents. The startup also uses ‘ozone technology’ to deodorise and sanitise clothes at lower temperatures than those used in traditional commercial laundry processes – a method also used in hospital sterilisation and during space missions. To improve sustainability further, electric vans and e-bikes are used to pick up and deliver orders, with robots assisting with ironing and folding at scale. Read more
Meeting the stringent criteria for becoming a B Corporation is not easy and takes time. One company currently undertaking this process is Dayrize, a climate tech startup that has developed a platform to rapidly and cost-effectively evaluate the environmental impact of consumer products. Dayrize’s Sustainability Assessment Tool uses geospatial analytics, datasets, and a complex algorithm to collect and cross-reference information for individual products and calculate a score out of 100, called the Dayrize Score. This allows consumers to easily understand and compare the sustainability of products as they shop. Read more
Please note: Dayrize is a Pending B Corp and is working towards full certification.
Written By: Matthew Hempstead
For more innovations, head to the Springwise Innovation Library.
The way we build must fundamentally shift to harmonise with tree and carbon cycles in order to realise the Timber Revolution, writes Smith Mordak.
There’s an argument that’s often trotted out against building with timber: there isn’t enough of it. The fear is that if we built everything out of wood there wouldn’t be a tree left standing.
This fear seems to be rooted in the idea that sustainability is about substitutions. For example, swapping out concrete, steel, and masonry for timber, but otherwise carrying on exactly as we have been. If we did that, we could well deforest the earth; meeting our targets while catastrophically missing the point. The pursuit of sustainability shouldn’t be to find a ‘green’ way to destroy ecosystems – yes I’m going to poison you, but don’t worry, the poison is organic – it should be about finding a way to live as part of a healthy, regenerative ecosystem.
The pursuit of sustainability shouldn’t be to find a ‘green’ way to destroy ecosystems
I sometimes detect an accompanying undertone to the not-enough-trees argument that almost suggests building buildings out of living things is somehow wrong; that exploiting bio-based materials is worse than exploiting ‘dead’ stuff; some kind of extreme architecture veganism. I wonder whether this comes from the idea that what would be best for Earth is if humans buggered off: put a big KEEP OUT sign at the edge of the atmosphere and divert humanity into little uber-urban enclaves on other planets.
Some might accept the premise of not-enough-trees and tackle it with supply and demand logic: sure, humanity is demanding too much stuff, but that’s okay – we just need to innovate on the supply side by finding ways to grow more trees faster, thereby permitting us to take more trees faster. It’s tempting to accept that argument and leave it at that, because then we don’t have to confront this deep-seated ideology that nature gives and humans take.
There’s a very seductive myth around trees being the original givers in this dynamic: that trees evolved and promptly forested the world to create a cosy oxygen-rich environment that allowed humanity to come forth. However, despite so many sexy tree-woman depictions of Mother Earth (just google it, you’ll see), I don’t buy that trees’ destiny is to provide for us.
Yes, wood is pretty amazing stuff: from a structural engineering perspective it works in compression, tension and bending making it super versatile, and it’s got a strength-to-weight ratio any gladiator would dream of. Combining these properties with its ability to suck up and store carbon from the atmosphere, it’s no wonder wood is hailed as the superfood of the built environment salad. But using timber needs to be more than a fad diet. We’re not going to address the long-term sustainability of creating habitats for humanity with the engineering equivalent of a juice cleanse.
Trees do have form when it comes to calibrating the atmosphere, but they didn’t create Earth for our liking. Early plants colonised land from around 470 million years ago, and sucked up so much carbon from the atmosphere it was never the same again. Within 50-ish million years, oxygen reached present day levels such that it was possible for large, breathing animals to evolve. This incredible feat was achieved in collaboration with fungal mycorrhizal symbionts. The plants’ fungus buddies could access the rock-bound nutrients that made all that lovely growth possible.
But this was a big change for those early plants. They were used to getting lashings of carbon dioxide through their open stomata without having to worry about drying out. In the now-carbon-dioxide-depleted environment, they were losing water fast so needed a better system of sucking up moisture from the soil. Enter lignin. Lignin is what makes your barbeque taste like barbeque, and also, one of the forms of organic polymer that create robust drinking straws for woody plants. It’s these tough, dead cells that allowed plants to evolve into towering forests.
Using timber needs to be more than a fad diet
Which brings us to another myth. This is lesser known, but you might have heard the theory that there was a lag between the evolution of lignin and the evolution of microbes and fungi that could break it down, resulting in billions of trees growing, falling over, not rotting, piling up, and eventually being squished down to create great fat seams of coal. It’s a great story, but the evidence doesn’t back it up.
There are indeed fat seams of coal that were all deposited at around the same time, but this peak actually occurred because wet tropics coincided with nice big basins for collecting the future-coal as part of the assembly of the supercontinent, Pangea. And yes, all that carbon sequestration did cool temperatures. It was an important factor in bringing about the Late Paleozoic Icehouse.
We started extracting from these thick ‘Carboniferous’ coal seams a couple of hundred years ago, and have since been making quick work of transferring all that sequestered carbon back up into the atmosphere under the auspices of ‘nature gives, humans take’. The last few decades we’ve been worrying that there’s not enough for us to take. Not enough coal, not enough oil, not enough timber, not enough ecosystem services.
We don’t seem to appreciate that we’re never really taking stuff, we’re just breaking it down and moving it about, often making it useless to the ecosystem in the process. We never really consumed that carbon, we just shifted it into the atmosphere and a few people amassed great privilege in doing so.
We characterise emissions and other toxic effluents as pollution; as stuff that’s leaked out from where it’s supposed to be to where it isn’t supposed to be. We seem to think that the solution to the climate crisis is to tackle this pollution by working out how to stop things from leaking. We seem to think that we have that much control! But we can’t detox our built environment by swapping out fossil-fuelled building materials for timber any more than we can detox ourselves by swapping out our lignin-flavoured barbeque for a juice cleanse.
What if, instead, we stopped trying to solve the problem of an unhealthy ecosystem by trying to build impenetrable walls between the ‘good’ parts and the ‘bad’ parts: walls between nature and humanity, between humans and polluting industrial processes, between polluting industrial processes and the atmosphere? What if instead we accepted that we are continuous with everything on Earth and, like those early plants, need to nurture our relationships with our buddies – fungus and otherwise – to ensure we slot into an ecosystem that can support life as a whole?
We should definitely build with timber, but not because nature is there for us to pilfer
It’s just like skipping (or jump rope). You’ve got two friends spinning the rope and you want to jump in. You don’t just career in and steal the rope. You watch, you listen, you internalise the rhythm, and then at a carefully judged moment you make a dash, and keeping pace with the rotations you jump, jump, jump as the rope goes round, round, round. It’s true for the rotations of the skipping ropes and it’s true for the water cycles, carbon cycles, nutrient cycles, rock cycles – all the cycles. We need to observe, understand the rhythm, and then keep pace.
We should definitely build with timber, but not because nature is there for us to pilfer and not because it’s a silver bullet for balancing the carbon budget. We should build with timber because we and trees evolved in the same oxygen-rich environment, so we can cohabitate; we can share our water and nutrients and carbon and lifecycles.
This means slotting our buildings into the big game of carbon jump rope in such a way that respects and keeps pace with the rhythm. This means building buildings such that the resources we use to make them can regenerate within the building’s lifetime. We should cohabitate with trees because they’re the best Earth-mates a human could dream of.
Smith Mordak is a multi-award-winning architect, engineer, writer and curator and the incoming chief executive of the UK Green Building Council.
Timber Revolution This article is part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series, which explores the potential of mass timber and asks whether going back to wood as our primary construction material can lead the world to a more sustainable future.
Spotted: Global waste generation has increased every year for decades and is likely to continue growing. Hospitals contribute a sizeable amount of waste to that total, with the global healthcare industry responsible for more than four per cent of worldwide net greenhouse gas emissions. Hazardous chemicals are part of the problem, with lab waste consisting of a mix of sharps, chemicals, plastics, and glass.
The recycling industry is struggling to cope with the volume of waste that needs processing, and new solutions are required. Irish biotechnology company Envetec has created a proprietary biodegradable chemical that processes lab waste on-site. Called GENERATIONS, the system transforms potential pollution into recyclable polymer flakes that are safe to handle and transport – and are usable in a huge range of other manufacturing processes.
GENERATIONS is a carbon-neutral process that is set up within or very near a laboratory to enable minimal transport costs. The biodegradable chemical uses far less water than traditional treatment systems, and Envetec works with teams and organisations in the diagnostics, food and beverage, and pharmaceutical industries to design bespoke treatment and recycling processes. Envetec helps organisations track their changes and results, and strive to meet international standards for recycling and net-zero commitments.
Finding ways to transform hazardous chemicals into non-toxic, useful products or replace them altogether are challenges that innovators are approaching in a variety of ways. Springwise has spotted carbon-negative chemicals produced for industrial manufacturing processes, as well as wastewater treatment sludge used to repair municipal pipes.
Dezeen’s latest series investigates the potential of mass timber. Starting today, Timber Revolution will question whether the material can break steel and concrete’s hold over the construction industry.
The world’s oldest building material is making a comeback. Timber was once used to construct the vast majority of our buildings, but in the 19th and 20th centuries it was usurped by steel and concrete, which continue to dominate the built environment today. Non-combustible, durable, strong and easy to produce in large volumes, these modern materials became favoured as buildings got taller, more complex, more profit-driven.
However, in the past couple of decades timber has re-emerged – this time not as a raw material, but in a variety of super-charged, engineered varieties that can be used to construct these large modern buildings.
Since they were first engineered in the 1990s, products like cross-laminated timber and glued laminated timber, along with lesser-known types of mass timber like dowel-laminated timber, have steadily grown in popularity. Landmark buildings made from mass-timber now feature regularly on the pages of Dezeen amid growing acceptance and understanding of the material.
Engineered timber products growing in popularity
Nevertheless, mass-timber only represents a tiny proportion of the overall number of buildings constructed worldwide each year, with steel and concrete still firmly embedded as the structural material of choice.
All that could be about to change. The world is slowly facing up to the reality and scale of the climate emergency. And with architects beginning to accept the role that construction – and particularly steel and concrete – plays in the enveloping crisis, mass-timber seems to offer a viable, low-carbon alternative.
In the past few years, embodied carbon – that is, emissions associated with bringing buildings into being as opposed to operational emissions generated during their lifetimes – has become the watchword of architects interested in sustainability. Unlike concrete and steel, which are associated with huge embodied emissions, timber represents the active sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere by trees.
But is it scalable? Can mass-timber really be the low-carbon silver bullet that dramatically reduces construction’s carbon impact?
Mass timber’s potential and the challenges
The Timber Revolution series will run throughout March. We will talk to experts to investigate whether mass-timber has the potential to truly disrupt the construction industry by becoming a mainstream structural material – or if it will remain a niche product used for a relatively small number of architect-led housing and cultural projects.
We’ll present the benefits of mass-timber, with case studies of key projects, interviews with those working in the evolving world of mass-timber architecture. We will also explore in depth the potential issues and limitations of the material.
Is this the dawn of the Timber Revolution?
Timber Revolution is the third in a trio of Revolution series run by Dezeen that investigate how materials and technology are impacting the world we live in. It follows on from the Carbon Revolution series in 2021, which looked at how the much-maligned element could be put to positive use, and the Solar Revolution, which explored how humans could fully harness the power of the sun.
This article is part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series, which explores the potential of mass timber and asks whether going back to wood as our primary construction material can lead the world to a more sustainable future.
California already has a great deal of solar electricity being generated, both on buildings and in large-scale solar farms. For example, years of Prop 39 projects for school districts around California have been completed, installing megawatts of solar farms on campuses. These sites were targeted, in part, due to lower summer occupancies, and net metering rules allowed them to reap large financial benefits. Most of these campuses are net exporters of clean renewable energy all summer long. Every day, the managers of the electrical grid must stabilize local electric networks to share this abundant load throughout the day, and quickly ramp up centralized power once the sun goes down and folks head home.
As more all-electric buildings and homes come online, it is important to look at the impacts of these buildings on grid health. The grid must continue to be updated to guard against solar saturation: where solar generation exceeds the total usage in a given area. The grid is managed by local utilities and state agencies, and this balance of supply and demand drives time-of-day pricing that encourages responsible usage.
Energy industry experts point to what is known as the “duck curve,” the risk of over-generation of renewable energy (especially solar) and the impact of having to ramp up energy production (most often these are natural gas plants) to respond to rising demand when the sun goes down. In the belly of the duck (the middle of the day), solar production is peaking and electricity sells at a loss. Yes, California is paying other Western states to take solar energy off their grid. This lets baseload generation systems like nuclear, hydroelectric, and some natural gas plants run constantly, as they cannot easily, or cost-effectively, shut down and then come back on daily.
Spotted: Much of the focus on the use of nature to capture carbon has remained above ground – on forests and trees. But ecologist and climate scientist Dr Colin Averill argues that the role of an “entire galaxy” below our feet has been ignored. Soils are made up of millions of species of bacteria and fungi and this microbial biodiversity is essential to healthy plant growth – and efficient carbon capture.
Dr Averill’s team in the Crowther Lab at ETH Zürich has spent years documenting fungi’s impact on tree growth, finding that restoration of underground fungal communities can significantly accelerate plant growth and carbon capture. To develop this concept further, Dr Averill founded Funga, a startup that plans to restore fungal biodiversity to accelerate carbon sequestration in forests.
Funga will use DNA sequencing and artificial intelligence (AI) to generate profiles for a healthy fungal microbiome in around 1,000 different forests. This will help it identify the right combination of wild fungi in each location to achieve accelerated tree growth and the highest amount of carbon sequestration. Funga will also establish around 1,000 hectares (about 2,500 acres) of forest and soil fungal communities – creating an ‘ideal’ environment for carbon removal.
Funga has recently closed a $4 million (around €3.8 million) seed funding round and is working with forest landowners and the foresters to make fungal microbiome restoration a reality.
A growing number of researchers and innovators are focusing on the role of microbes, and especially fungi, in cutting carbon emissions and moderating climate change. Springwise has spotted the use of fungi as a meat replacement, and the application of biome science to create heat-resistant coral.
Spotted: Slips, trips, and falls (STFs) are the top causes of major injuries in the workplace, according to the International Labour Organization. A new first-of-its-kind smart insole created by a team from the National University of Singapore can detect a person’s balance, which will allow companies to identify where an incident happened and highlight risk areas.
The insole has sensors that track foot pressure and changes in motion to determine when an STF has happened. It records and measures this input in real-time to assess different users’ balance. The insoles can also be custom fit to workers’ feet, using foot scanning and 3D printing.
Employers can access the information gathered by the smart insole through an app, rather than waiting for employees to file reports manually – which will allow them to act faster when needed.
The researchers were awarded funding from the Maritime Port Authority of Singapore to develop the prototype, and are collaborating with the Workplace Safety and Health Institute and Association of Singapore Maritime Industries to tweak the smart insole for the maritime sector. The team also wants to incorporate the insole into other industries in the future.
Other innovations are helping to mitigate the impact of accidents. Springwise has spotted shoes that notify the emergency services in the event of a fall, and a wearable musculoskeletal monitor that alerts a user to any dangerous movements.
Spotted: Clean energy sources, like solar and wind, are much better for the environment than fossil fuels, but they are less reliable. Increasingly, companies are exploring pumped hydropower as a means of storing renewable energy. But today’s conventional low-density hydro-power systems don’t use renewables to their full efficiency. Enter startup RheEnergise.
RheEnergise’s High-Density Hydro system pumps a special, hi-tech fluid uphill between storage tanks at times of low energy demand and cost. As energy prices rise, the fluid is released downhill through turbines, which generates electricity to supply the grid.
RheEnergise’s mineral-rich fluid is two and a half times denser than water, which is normally used in pumped hydropower. As a result, it contains two and a half times the energy and can be used on a hill that is two and a half times smaller. This means the RheEnergise system does not need high mountains to work, leading to more potential sites and substantial reductions in construction costs.
RheEnergise recently received a £1 million grant (about €1.1 million) from the UK Government’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio. It will use this investment to explore whether minerals or waste materials that do not need to be imported can be used in its fluid.
The company plans to deploy a demonstrator close to Plymouth by the middle of next year. It is also pursuing other opportunities across the UK and Europe and expects to have its first five-megawatt grid-scale project in operation as early as 2026. RheEnergise has estimated that there are around 6,500 sites in the UK alone that could use the system.
Springwise has spotted other innovations utilising hydropower, including small turbines for use in any river, and a generator that works where fresh water meets the sea.
