Spotted: It is estimated that global capacity for wind power will be over 955 gigawatts by the end of 2022, with China leading the way with 359,770 turbines as of June this year. However, the large number of wind turbines across the globe also means there is a rapidly growing need for innovative wind turbine maintenance systems – especially for offshore turbines. Company Aerones has designed a system that uses drones to conduct such maintenance work.
Aerones offers inspection, cleaning, and repair services using a variety of different drones and tools. For example, its robotic cleaning system uses a powerful brush to clean dust and oil, reusing water during cleaning to reduce waste. Other drones in the company’s repertoire can repair blades using a modular tool base that can sand, fill eroded surfaces, apply protective coatings, and more.
In addition to the utility of its system, Aerones offers reassurance that the system does not take jobs away from technicians. Instead, the company says that the drones are each controlled by certified technicians “from the comfort of a warm vehicle”. In addition, it claims that the robotic tools are more precise and efficient than technicians acting alone, resulting in four to six times less downtime.
The company adds that its “unique proprietary system brings high-quality robotic services enabling our wind turbine technicians to perform inspections, cleaning, maintenance and repairs (…) Robots will allow the wind industry to turn towards fast and efficient preventive maintenance.”
Wind power is big business and is increasingly being seen as a vital tool in reaching net zero. Springwise has also spotted a floating vertical axis wind turbine and recyclable onshore turbines.
Spotted: Hydrogen is one oft-touted ‘green’ alternative to fossil fuels. Yet in order to produce green hydrogen, solid oxide and alkaline electrolysers are needed to increase the efficiency of water hydrolysis (splitting H2O into oxygen and hydrogen). While solid electrolysers use common materials such as Nickel or Zirconia, the more eco-friendly proton-exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers use Iridium and Platinum. These are not only expensive, but also relatively scarce.
Naco Technologies, however, has now developed a way to reduce the materials needed to produce PEM electrolysers. The company has created a magnetron that can ‘sputter’ precious metals onto a surface using ‘targets’ as small as one inch in diameter and 0.5 mm thick. The process enables the creation of composite nano-coatings for use as PEM catalysts at a lower cost than previously possible.
Naco’s technology can also be used to decrease erosion, therefore increasing the efficiency of the coated material. According to the company, its solution uses 10 times fewer raw materials to create an electrolyser, decreasing costs by 30 to 50 per cent. Equipment based on the Naco designed magnetron system is also more compact and productive when compared to similar competitive solutions.
Naco recently received €1.5 million in a seed round of funding led by Untitled Ventures, with participation from Buildit Accelerator and others. Oskar Stachowiak, managing partner at Untitled Ventures explains that, “As the world looks to move towards a low-carbon future, hydrogen is now seeing increasing interest from companies and governments alike. Naco is an incredible example of a startup company that has a unique deeptech solution for a growing industry.”
Springwise has spotted an increasing number of innovations to aid in the production of green hydrogen, including hi-tech yachts that serve as mobile hydrogen plants and oil-eating microbes which produce ‘gold’ hydrogen.
Spotted: The global e-scooter market is skyrocketing as more people are shifting from private and public transport to electric scooter rentals. However, one major consideration is the ability to recharge the scooters on the go – most cities are not equipped for large-scale charging stations and swapping out batteries is expensive. Enter Meredot, a Latvian developer and manufacturer of fast wireless chargers for e-scooters which has recently unveiled its first commercial wireless charger.
Meredot’s charger consists of a charging pad, that can be placed either above or below the ground. Existing e-scooters can be retrofitted with receivers, while new ones can have them built-in during manufacturing. The pads are used in conjunction with software that enables operators to have a full overview of the amount of charge on each vehicle. Alternatively, Meredot can operate and manage the charging network on behalf of clients.
The pads use technology such as Foreign Object Detection (FOD), Live Object Detection (LOD), and Position Detection (PD) to allow scooters to be parked in any way on the pad and still be charged correctly at the same speed it takes to charge using cables. The MePower technology can also work through asphalt, snow, or ice and is functional at temperatures between –22 and 122 degrees Farenheit (–30 to 50 degrees Celsius).
Roman Bysko, CEO and co-founder of Meredot, hopes that the wireless chargers will act as the foundation to allow an expansion of micro-mobility. He explains that “With transportation moving from fossil fuels to electricity – and now to wireless electricity – it’s clear that cable charging is becoming obsolete (…) As our global market share grows with the release and installation of our Wireless Chargers worldwide, we intend to become the world’s premiere fast wireless charging provider.”
There has been a wide range of innovations in the e-mobility space. Springwise has spotted public transport employees being given e-bikes and an inflatable e-scooter that fits in a backpack.
Spotted: Construction is big business. Representing 5 per cent of the total GDP in developed countries with projected global revenues of $15 trillion (approximately €14.5 trillion) by 2025, the construction industry is also the single largest consumer of resources and raw materials. Accordingly, it’s a big producer of waste too, and over 30 per cent of materials delivered to construction sites end up discarded in landfill. California-based Aro Homes aims to make construction more time-efficient, with energy-optimised projects completed in as little as three months through carbon-negative, architect-designed homes.
Aro Homes’ algorithms and machine learning technology work alongside designers to maximise sight lines as well as privacy, all the while conforming with local zoning regulations. The precision-engineered structures have water-proofed exteriors, extremely high fire ratings, and are so well-insulated that they produce more energy than they use.
The homes also include electric heat pumps, low voltage lighting, and highly efficient solar panels to ensure that they are as green as possible. Compared to a traditionally built home, Aro homes use half as much energy; along with 6,000 fewer gallons of water per year. That translates into an annual reduction of 11.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
By maximising efficiency and sustainability within their homes, during construction and beyond, Aro ensures that costs and energy usage remain as low as possible for homeowners. The company’s approach could help to abate the endemic affordable housing crisis afflicting so many nations.
Aro recently closed a Series A funding round that raised $21 million (approximately €20.2 million) for further expansion of its methods into new locations.
Springwise has spotted many innovations hoping to make the construction industry more efficient and sustainable, including self-powered tiny homes and a carbon negative construction company.
Architects must take greater accountability for their sector to help decarbonise the built environment, says UN Race to Zero ambassador Sarah El Battouty in this exclusive interview from the final day of the COP27 climate conference.
“For years and years, we’ve had everyone create a silly building design and then stick a couple of solar panels on top and call it a green building,” the Egyptian architect told Dezeen. “This kind of sloppiness was allowed all the time.”
Climate action across the building environment is still “severely lagging”, according to two separate reports launched at COP27 last week, leaving the industry “well off track” from meeting its decarbonisation targets.
“The entire sector and all its players, including the architects, are lagging,” said El Battouty. “We’re not accountable. Nobody says: this isn’t an energy-efficient building. Nobody says: why has it been designed poorly?”
UN climate ambassadors want more architects
El Battouty spoke to Dezeen from COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where she was responsible for designing the country’s national pavilion, as well as acting as an ambassador for the United Nations campaigns to push decarbonisation and climate resilience.
This role is particularly significant, she argues, as the buildings sector has historically been sidelined in the climate change fight despite being responsible for more than 40 per cent of global emissions.
“It’s fantastic to have the Race to Zero and Race to Resilience choose an architect on board their global ambassadors’ team,” she said.
“It’s a very strong message. And I believe that this is a real game-changer because we want to have more people in this sector as decision-makers and leaders.”
Sarah El Battouty has designed buildings including the Bahareya Village complex
Last year’s COP26 marked the greatest involvement from the built environment sector in any UN climate change summit to date, with an entire day and more than 120 events dedicated to the topic.
However, the sector’s level of decarbonisation actually decreased last year, according to the Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction, as efforts to improve buildings’ energy efficiency were outpaced by increases in their floor area and energy demand.
“Not enough is being done because the sector is being addressed so late in the game,” El Battouty said.
COP27 calls for affordable green housing in Global South
Although she concedes that much of the necessary climate action will have to come in the form of regulation and financial incentives, El Battouty says that architects should lead by example to show governments that decarbonisation is doable.
This could involve securing private investment to develop low-carbon material innovations and construction techniques, as well as focusing on local, low-cost solutions – especially in the Global South where climate change is already wreaking havoc.
“Let’s take this opportunity,” El Battouty said. “Africa is young, the Middle East is young, they’ve got a lot of population and they all need housing.”
“Cities are not working very well anymore anywhere around the world when it comes to climate change. And therefore, you’ve got the case for financing.”
She was also responsible for designing the Egypt pavilion at COP27
Helping countries in the Global South to build climate resilience is a key topic at COP27, which is the first Conference of the Parties to take place outside of Europe since 2016’s COP22 in Marrakech.
“The new thing is that we’re talking about affordable green housing in Egypt, in India, in makeshift areas, in areas with displacement,” El Battouty said.
“We are now having sessions on rural communities and building for resilience. These kinds of themes are different because COP is in the Global South and because we’ve recently seen so much loss and damage to people’s homes, and to entire cities.”
Sustainable architecture shouldn’t be “haute couture”
Climate resilience is a key tenet of El Battouty’s own work, as seen in the solar-powered Bahareya Village, which her environmental design company ECOnsult completed in Egypt’s western desert in 2020.
Billed as the “first carbon-neutral project in the MENA region”, the complex integrates indigenous techniques for passive cooling to reduce indoor temperatures by up to 10 degrees Celsius without the need for air conditioning, lowering operational emissions while making the buildings resilient to rising temperatures.
El Battouty, who is also a senior climate advisor to the Egyptian president, is now working to apply this same logic to 4,500 existing Egyptian villages as part of the country’s Decent Life initiative.
“We don’t want green architecture to be haute couture,” she said. “Everybody’s suffering from climate change, so why should the solution only be given to a particular strata?”
“What we need is to make sure that every brief for a building and every brief for a product questions whether it will be serving human comfort today and in five years and in 10 years.”
“Developed countries have a responsibility towards support”
El Battouty hopes that enough pioneering projects like this are on show at COP27 – in the Buildings Pavilion and beyond – to mobilise the amount of investment needed to adopt them at scale.
“Developed countries have a responsibility towards support and we are confident that enough projects are being shown to gain that kind of support without delay,” she said.
The Bahareya Village was designed using passive cooling techniques
“We have enough brilliant architects all over the world that have taken it upon themselves to do these kinds of projects, and execute them successfully when they weren’t mandated to do so,” she added.
“So imagine what will happen when we have the backing of government and the backing of financing.”
In the lead-up to the climate summit, Egypt also faced criticism over its human rights violations and “highly insufficient” climate targets, which do not include aiming for net-zero and in fact put the country’s emissions on track to increase by around 50 per cent by 2030.
All photography is courtesy of ECOnsult.
COP27 is taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, from 6 to 18 November. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
Spotted: Reducing emissions is a top priority in every industry, and doing so as fast as possible is essential. Now, innovators everywhere are grappling with how to turn great ideas into working concepts, and then industrial-scale solutions. Canadian property technology experts at Audette have built an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that does in a few hours what it would ordinarily take humans years to do – analyse a full portfolio of commercial real estate for decarbonisation opportunities and build a plan to retrofit every building in the most cost-efficient manner.
From renewable energy opportunities to carbon-negative materials and low-carbon technologies, Audette can build a carbon-transition plan for any building. The platform layers operational data with capital planning and a breakdown of costs and energy usage of each piece of equipment and location, as well as forecasts of emissions. This allows for effective, efficient retrofitting and long-term planning for a carbon-negative future.
Property managers can add data to the platform and test out various ideas themselves. The AI projects return on investment, helping teams identify the higher priority changes to make. The platform recognises and suggests methods for maximising efficiencies across an entire business, not just a single building. Audette also connects users to a building scientist to ensure that the AI-backed decisions make business sense.
Audette recently raised $9.5 million (approximately €9.14 million) to support the launch of its technology across 150 North American cities. The initial rollout is planned for 2023 and 2024.
Springwise has spotted other means of decarbonising buildings on a sizeable scale, including a platform that allows real estate investors to monitor and reduce waste and emissions across their properties, and smart technology that prevents excessive use of heating and lighting in office buildings.
First, a near-term prediction. In a departure from the long tradition of COPs (aka the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)), week two of COP27 seems set to deliver the big stories and strongest signals. This contrasts with recent precedent, where global leaders have commanded all the headlines in the opening days of the international climate summit. Partly, this is to do with personnel. Whereas week one at Sharm El-Sheikh was marked by no-shows from the leaders of India, Australia, and interestingly, Canada (plus a ‘do-I-really-have-to-go’ appearance from Rishi Sunak), week two has some big hitters.
Indeed, the biggest star turn is not even a president, but a president-elect, as Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who takes office in January in Brazil, arrives in Egypt. The buzz around Lula is partly one of utter relief. Most of the Amazon rainforest biome, dubbed the lungs of the earth and one of the planet’s most important carbon stores, is in Brazil and, under hard-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation rates have soared. According to Carbon Brief, given his promised reinstatement of forestry protection policies, the fact of Lula’s election could avoid 75,960 kilometres squared of Amazon rainforest loss by 2030 – an area roughly the size of Panama. This would significantly curb Brazil’s emissions. Lula can presumably expect a warm welcome.
Due to the mid-term elections in the US, highly rated US envoy John Kerry pitched up a little later in proceedings too, at the end of week one. It wasn’t long before ‘announcements’ (the lifeblood of COPs) began emerging, including one on ‘safe small modular nuclear reactors’ announced in tandem with the Ukrainian energy minister.
However, the biggest personality in the final days of COP27 is likely to be the Biosphere itself. And this is how it should be. Since the Earth was finally allowed a look-in with the international climate regime in Glasgow, by way of an Ocean day and a Nature plenary, announcements and compacts on nature-based solutions, and associated models like nature-based financing, have stolen the show. This is in addition to a separate biodiversity COP, COP15, that will take place in Montreal in December. It makes sense; from peat bogs to rainforests (and there is even temperate rainforest in Scotland being restored via funding from COP26) nature is a super carbon sucker and storer.
Covering 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface area, the ocean plays a particularly important role in regulating the global carbon budget. It used to be thought that the oceans sank around two billion tonnes of CO2 every year, but research by academics at Exeter University, published in Nature in 2020, suggested that this was short by nearly a billion tonnes. The increased appreciation of the ocean as a carbon sink has led to a greater emphasis on it by the international climate regime and the policy, funding, and R&D that tends to follow.
Three coral innovations spotted by Springwise
PROTECTING FLORIDA’S CORAL REEFS BY MAKING LEATHER OUT OF LIONFISH
RESEARCHERS USE ‘CORAL IVF’ TO REPOPULATE DAMAGED REEFS
BACTERIA COULD PROTECT CORAL FROM HEAT STRESS
But it’s complicated. Only healthy seas can play their regulating role properly and ours are under stress. Research published earlier this year warns that the oceans could switch from a net carbon sink to a net emitter, driving global heating. Meanwhile, as the seas absorb carbon dioxide, acidification occurs, threatening ocean biomass – including fish stocks that billions of humans rely on as a food and income source. The phrase ‘Blue Economy’ attempts to balance these competing concerns and is now heartily used in sustainable development. Given the need for sustainable development, ocean action lends itself to the blended finance models – using development capital as part of the effort to mobilise private capital for climate and nature – that are increasingly factored into the UN Climate regime.
Meanwhile, the UN’s 30 x 30 treaty aims to get 30 per cent of global seas into protected marine reserve status by 2030. This means venturing out from near-shore marine reserves, which are relatively easy, into the high seas where there’s more biodiversity to protect but more challenges to overcome. As the Blue Economy deepens (excuse the pun) to include everything from sustainable fishing to sustainable shipping, offshore wind power, and harvesting seaweed (kelponomics anybody?), investors are becoming more interested.
Clearly, innovation has a major part to play too in developing a Blue Economy that can observe planetary boundaries. But the next generation of ocean innovation will need to help ocean eco-systems to regenerate, not just try to be less bad. On that note, back to COP27 and Thursday, the 16th, which is designated Biodiversity Day, where I predict this will go even deeper.
By happenstance, Sharm El Sheikh boasts a spectacular coral reef, part of the Great Fringing Reef of the Red Sea. It is notable not just for providing a home to a cornucopia of sea life and being photogenic, but it is also identified as one of the most climate-tolerant reefs in the world by the 50 Reefs scientific study. While other reefs are ailing, the Great Fringing Reef is buzzing with life. Scientists believe that, as long as global temperature can be kept below two degrees Celsius, this reef has the potential to survive and could be the key to repopulating surrounding reefs, potentially pulling an entire ecosystem from the edge of near extinction.
This week the Egyptian Government will be asked by an international delegation to commit to protecting the remaining half of the reef; currently only 50 per cent of Egypt’s Great Fringing Reef is protected. Everyone is waiting for a big COP27 announcement later this week. Leaders and decision-makers in government as well as philanthropic organisations, financial institutions, and impact investors will be asked to prioritise funding for the protection of coral reefs too. Might that in turn unlock the next generation of innovation around protecting and regenerating coral? Watch this space!
Lucy Siegle is a climate-focused author, journalist and co-host of popular podcast So Hot Right Now. She is editorial director and ambassador at Springwise and will be in Sharm El-Sheik for COP27 this week.
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Carbon dioxide is not the only pollutant we need to worry about. Carbon emissions may harm our planet, but emissions of nitrogen oxides, ozone, and particulate matter harm our health. According to the World Health Organization, almost everyone on earth – 99 per cent of the global population to be precise – breathes air that contains high levels of pollutants. And the combined effects of air pollution, both outside and within the home, are associated with 7 million premature deaths each year.
Thankfully, the 2022 finalists of The Earthshot Prize are showing how innovation can help us to clean the air we breathe.
PROVIDING LOW-INCOME FAMILIES WITH CLEAN, SAFE, AND AFFORDABLE COOKSTOVES
Household air pollution is a major threat to public health – particularly in low- and middle-income countries. In total, the World Health Organization reports that one-third of the global population cooks using either open fires or inefficient stoves. This releases pollutants that cause a range of health issues from strokes and heart disease to lung cancer. Mukuru Clean Stoves designs and manufactures safer, cleaner cookstoves for low-income families in East Africa. Read more
REPLACING DIESEL GENERATORS ON CONSTRUCTION SITES
What powers all the cranes, hoists, and welders you see on a construction site? The answer is almost always diesel. Most sites run on noisy, polluting generators – one of the reasons why the construction sector is responsible for 11 per cent of global carbon emissions. These diesel generators also damage the health of local people – particularly in the tightly packed urban areas where most projects take place. Now, one startup has developed a battery energy system that reduces the noise, carbon emissions, and air pollution generated by building projects. Read more
ACCELERATING THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE TRANSITION IN EAST AFRICA
The International Energy Agency estimates that, globally, 13 per cent of new cars sold in 2022 will be electric. But in the transition to electric vehicles (EVs), sub-Saharan Africa faces challenges. These include an unreliable electricity supply, low vehicle affordability, and the dominance of used vehicles. At the same time, transport makes up 10 per cent of Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions, so there is a need for change. Now, one company is providing electric motorbikes and buses tailored to the needs of the African market. Read more
Written by: Matthew Hempstead
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Spotted: Healthcare is big business and getting bigger. Yet the basic model for the industry remains the same: a fee-for-service model that places a growing number of bureaucratic, technological, and economic barriers between patients and their physicians. But now, a group of doctors in Poland is working to create a new model of health.
Doctor.One is a healthcare service that connects patients with their regular practitioners daily, using a mobile-first approach. Doctors can subscribe to the service and use the virtual clinic to perform daily digital check-ups and visits. It allows them to reply to messages from their regular patients, check their treatment progress, and offer a video consultation. Patients can also use the service to schedule an in-person visit.
However, unlike most telemedicine platforms, Doctor.One is not centred around booking appointments. Instead, it is organised around daily ‘rounds’, where physicians respond directly to messages from patients and check on treatment progress. Doctors may also use the platform’s asynchronous chat feature, start a video call without revealing their private number, and issue prescriptions. By 2040, Doctor.One aims to provide the care of a private doctor to 100 million people around the world.
The global shortage of health workers has created opportunities for new approaches to medical care. Springwise has also recently spotted wearables that can monitor disease and the use of assistive robots.
Spotted: Every year, around 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted, including approximately 40 per cent of all food at retail or consumer level in industrialised countries. This constitutes a huge amount of wasted resources and acts as a substantial contribution to global warming. To help reduce this mountain of food waste, startup No Spoilers has developed an innovative inventory control solution aimed at hospitality businesses.
The company’s multi-platform application provides tools that allow businesses to conduct fast and precise inventory control. The system centres around a Bluetooth-enabled scale that can be used with a mobile phone. Inventory control data is automatically uploaded to the cloud so it can be analysed on a computer or mobile device and using the data, managers can then easily schedule tasks for employees and control the company’s workflow on the platform.
The system is also packed with helpful features such as the ability to quickly identify products using a built-in barcode reader or measure partial inventory using No Spoilers’ Smart Scale – giving managers an accurate idea of exactly how much food and drink they have left. The software also offers inventory management features including inventory control, inventory optimisation, purchasing, pricing management, mobile access, and analytics and reporting.
Businesses can alter No Spoilers’ system to set the optimum periodic automatic replenishment (PAR) levels and automatically generate inventory orders, control suppliers with incoming inventory control, gather and analyse business data for informed decision-making, and identify and report losses due to wastage.
Reducing food waste not only helps save resources, but it also helps hospitality companies save money. Some other innovations helping reduce food waste include AI that can check the freshness of fruit and a startup that uses computer vision to help commercial kitchens manage food waste.
