Spotted: Depending on what source you use, the total estimated output of global wave energy is somewhere between 20 and 90,000 terawatt-hours per year. Although this is a wide range, when you consider that the total global energy consumption is now over 25,000 terawatt-hours per year, even the low end of the range is enough to cover most of humanity’s energy needs. The main issue, however, is finding the best way to take advantage of this wave energy.
Moroccan startup Advanced Third Age Renewable Energies Company (ATAREC) is developing a system to exploit the wave energy close to shore, in the areas around breakwaters and other infrastructure exposed to the sea. The startup’s Wave Beat technology captures energy from the vertical variations in sea level using a free-floating buoy.
ATAREC has constructed a demonstrator in the Port of Tanger-Med, 45 kilometres north of Tangier, to take advantage of the 110 megawatts of wave energy in front of the port’s vertical breakwater. The energy produced by the Wave Beat is used directly at the huge port to help run operations.
The company has received more than €900,000 in funding, including equity, grants, and non-dilutive funding. ATAREC is currently applying for additional funding and plans to launch a fundraising campaign.
Wave energy is starting to take off, with other innovations spotted by Springwise including a design for generating energy from the movement of ships in the water and rolling wave generators to power sensors.
The world’s first full-scale timber wind turbine has started turning in Sweden, with a tower built by wood technology company Modvion.
The 105-metre-tall tower, located in the region of Skara, is Modvion‘s first commercial wind turbine tower, and follows on from a smaller 30-metre-high demonstration project the company completed in 2020.
While its rotor blades and generator hub are made of conventional materials, the tower is made of laminated veneer lumber (LVL), a type of engineered wood made of thin veneer strips glued together and often used for beams and load-bearing building structures.
The tower of a wind turbine in Skara is made of engineered wood
The company says that this type of wood is not only strong enough to withstand the forces of a turning turbine, it is much more environmentally sustainable to build with than the currently used steel.
While wind power plays an important role in providing the world with green renewable energy, there are still ample carbon emissions created during their construction — in part because of the steel towers.
Modvion describes its wood towers as reducing the carbon emissions from wind turbine construction by over 100 per cent, due to the combination of a less emissions-heavy production process and the carbon storage provided by trees.
“Our towers, just in the production of them, they emit 90 per cent less than a steel tower that will do carry the same work,” Modvion chief financial officer Maria-Lina Hedlund told Dezeen. “And then if you add the carbon sequestration, then you actually end up with a minus — so a carbon sink. This is great if we want to reach net zero energy production, and we need to.”
The type of wood used is laminated veneer lumber
Hedlund, who is also an engineer, describes LVL as having a construction “similar to carbon fibre”, with strips of veneer just three millimetres thick sandwiched and glued together, giving it a high strength-to-weight ratio.
This lightness is a benefit, reducing the amount of material needed overall. With a heavy material, there is a “bad design spiral”, says Hedlund, as the weight of the tower itself adds to the load that it needs to carry.
And while some LVL has all their veneer strips facing in the same direction, Modvion uses its “own recipe” specifying the directions of the fibres, improving the material’s performance even more.
The turbine tower is the tallest so far built by Swedish company Modvion. Photo by Paul Wennerholm
The production process involves timber boards being made to order in a standard LVL plant and then delivered to Modvion’s factory. There, they are glued together into larger modules and bent into a rounded form in a step called lamination, and then very precisely machined to fine-tune the shape.
“In the wood industry, you usually see centimetre tolerances, while we are in the sub-millimetre scale,” said Hedlund.
The modular nature of LVL construction addresses another problem Modvion has observed with steel: that with turbines getting ever bigger to give more power, it’s becoming impossible to transport steel towers to site.
They are built as essentially large cylinders and transported by truck, but the base diameter desired for the tallest towers is getting to be taller than some bridges and roads can allow.
The timber is laminated into modules at Modvion’s factory
“We’re now reaching a point where they will not get through anymore,” said Hedlund. “So we will see a transition in the wind power industry to modular construction, because this is the way to get them there. And one of the big advantages of building in the material we do is that it’s naturally built modular.”
While steel could also be built modular, it would require bolts rather than glue to join it together on site, which Hedlund says is a disadvantage.
“Bolts are not very nice when you have so much dynamic loading, because it will loosen over time,” she said. “So first of all, you have to have to put them in place which is a lot of work, and then you have to also service them over the lifetime.”
The modules were assembled and glued together on site
On the outside, the tower has a thick white coating that makes it look similar to steel, and it’s rotor blades and generator hub, which are not supplied by Modvion, are made of conventional materials like fibreglass. This may change in the future, however, with another company, Voodin Blades, working on the technology for wooden blades.
Modvion was founded in 2016 by university peers David Olivegren and Otto Lundman. While its current focus is wind turbines, it is dedicated to wooden technology more broadly, and Hedlund told Dezeen that the team believes it has “the world’s strongest joint for timber construction”, which could also be put to other uses.
Another recent milestone for wind power came in the form of a wind-powered cargo ship, which had been retrofitted with two 37.5-metre-tall sails.
Architecture studio Taller Capital has created a linear park in Mexico City that incorporates a walkway and made with materials optimised for water retention and dust mitigation.
Called Héroes de Tecamac Boulevard, the project was located in an urban area north of Mexico City.
Taller Capital has created a linear park in a Mexican boulevard
The project saw the renovation of 2.1 kilometres of a vacant median that runs through the city, passing through a social housing complex.
Twenty metres wide, the structure allows for easy pedestrian use and features recreation areas strewn about its length for use by the local community, and the studio estimates it will serve more than 20,000 individuals who live alongside it.
The project comprises an elevated walkway strewn with recreational areas
According to Taller Capital, the boulevard was constructed in the early 2000s to facilitate the growing population, and though the median was dug it was never completed. The excavated materials from the roadway sat there, creating small dust storms.
“It works as a retroactive infrastructure: it is a device to control dust storms, absorb rainwater, facilitate non-motorized mobility to connect with the Mexibus stop, and bring ports and recreational facilities to the nearby community,” said the studio.
It includes fitness areas and playgrounds
Taller Capital was commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Territory and Urban Development to create the recreational spaces, but the studio recognised that the project provided an opportunity to improve the infrastructure of the area, which has very few pedestrian corridors.
“We were commissioned to design public recreational and sports facilities along the median strip,” the studio told Dezeen.
“However, we realized that it could not become only that, but it should mainly work as an infrastructure, both in terms of pedestrian mobility and dust control,” it continued.
“We were able to redesign traffic lanes at the ground level, broadening sidewalks, designating specific areas for parking and allowing two car lanes at each side of the strip.”
It was filled with volcanic gravel to aid in water retention
To ensure the safety of the pedestrians, the structure was elevated, a move which also allowed for the soil conditions necessary to plant a series of trees for shade.
The studio included volcanic gravel along the elevation to allow for water absorption and to control dust. It also noted that the gravels consistency means that very little maintenance will be required during the lifecycle of the boulevard.
The route also connects the community with a transportation hub at its north end.
Opened in 2021, the park has already enjoyed use and areas have seen a number of fairs and concerts that go beyond its original program.
“If the place continues serving the purpose it has demonstrated to satisfy up till today, we can imagine that in the future it will become more lively and used, as the trees will have grown and shade will be provided during direct daylight hours,” said Taller Capital.
Trees were planted along its length in hopes that they will grow to provide shade
Héroes de Tecamac Boulevard has been shortlisted for the mixed-use project category in the 2023 Dezeen Awards.
Other projects that revamp infrastructure for pedestrian use include New York’s High Line, a former elevated train line that has been converted to pedestrian walkways and community space.
Infrastructure encompasses all the connections that hold the global economy together. Traditionally, these connections have come in the form of buildings, roads, and power supplies. But with the advent of the internet age, cables, wires, data centres, and satellites are increasingly integral to the economy’s nervous system. While many in the developed world take this infrastructure for granted, people in developing countries often lack both physical and digital connections.
Industry sits together with infrastructure as the bedrock of the economy. Today, 23 per cent of the world’s workforce is employed in industry according to the latest figures from the International Labour Organization. And industry has been key to the historic success of the developed world. Sustainable industrialisation is therefore an important priority for those in developing countries.
Global manufaturing took a hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent recovery has been uneven, with less developed countries showing signs of stagnation. At the same time, as the climate crisis becomes ever more urgent, it is important that the economic benefits of industry and infrastructure do not come at an environmental cost that is too high for the world to bear.
Investment in innovation is essential for industrialisation to be sustainable and broad-based in the future – especially in areas of industry that are currently difficult to decarbonise.
Electrification
Target 9.4 within SDG 9 calls for industrial processes and infrastructure to be upgraded or retrofitted for improved environmental sustainability. One of the challenges when it comes to de-carbonising industry is the need for extremely high temperatures for key processes. At present these temperatures can only be attained economically by burning fossil fuels. Electrification of industrial heating processes is an important goal – especially as most net-zero scenarios envisage electricity generation transitioning almost entirely to renewables.
Finnish engineering company Colbrook has developed ‘Roto Dynamic Heater’ (RDH) technology that uses electricity generated from renewable sources to reach process temperatures of 1700 degrees Celsius – hot enough to replace fossil fuels in a number of processes previously considered unsuitable for electrification. Elsewhere, Saudi Arabian mining company Ma’aden is planning to replace fossil fuels with solar ‘greenhouses’ to generate the steam needed for aluminium production.
Hi-tech manufacturing
In addition to electrification, hi-tech innovations can also lead to improved efficiency and sustainability. Approximately 45 per cent of electricity generated on earth is consumed by industrial electric motors. Current designs are energy-intensive with metal-to-metal contact between rotating and stationary parts acting as a major source of inefficiency. Finnish startup SpinDrive combats this inefficiency with active magnetic bearings (AMB) technology that levitates the rotating parts of a motor using electromagnetic forces.
Elsewhere, a new manufacturing process that combines elements of traditional casting with 3D printing produces complex metal parts that are lighter and up to 80 per cent cheaper than the current industry standard. Affordable, lighter components could lead to improved fuel efficiency in the automotive and aerospace sectors.
Transport infrastructure
Roads, railways, ports, and airports are crucial for both the movement of goods and ideas. But millions of people around the world live more than 2 kilometres from the nearest all-season road. Extending transport links in a sustainable way is therefore essential for economic development. German startup Ecopals has developed an asphalt additive made from non-recylable plastic. The enhanced asphalt improves road longevity and reduces the need for virgin materials and petroleum-based products such as bitumen.
Clean, accessible public transport is particularly important in less developed countries where many do not have the means to own a private vehicle. In Kenya, the Nairobi Metropolitan Area Transport Authority has recently announced that its new Bus Rapid Transit network will be exclusively operated by green vehicles.
Communications and connectivity
In today’s world, internet connectivity is as important as more traditional forms of infrastructure. Yet, to this day, over a third of the world’s population has never been online. Innovators are working to bring connectivity to even the most remote regions.
Satellite technology is coming on leaps and bounds with companies taking different approaches. Mangata is using a combination of ground-based hubs and high orbiting satellites to make the cloud accessible anywhere. Another company, Astranis, is using small satellites placed in geosynchronous orbit to provide faster broadband speeds. The company’s satellites are much smaller than other geosynchronous satellites on the market and are consequently much cheaper and faster to manufacture.
Even where the internet isn’t available at all, innovators are looking to provide connectivity. Bridgefy has developed technology that enables messaging and app access without data or Wi-Fi.
Re-purposing old infrastructure
As the world transitions to a new energy system, much of the infrastructure that powers today’s world will no longer be used. However, innovators are considering a number of ways in which existing fossil fuel infrastructure can be re-purposed to support a cleaner, more sustainable world in the future.
For example, the UK is exploring how coal mines could be used to provide geothermal energy. And sustainable aviation fuel has been successfully piped to New York’s LaGuardia airport using existing petroleum pipelines.
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Spotted: There are now a huge number of projects working to reduce or sequester carbon. However, there is not nearly enough funding available for all the projects that require it. This is proving to be a major stumbling block to developing innovative solutions to the crisis of global warming. Estonian DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation) Solid World is working to change this by using blockchain infrastructure to supply forward carbon credits.
To offset carbon use, organisations can either purchase verified carbon credits from an advanced and ongoing offset project (such as established renewable energy or methane capture, for example) or they can invest in new projects that will generate offsets over time (such as a tree-planting project that needs time for trees to mature). Forward crediting is a method of accounting that allows companies to support early-stage projects in return for future offsets. But for forward crediting to work, early-stage projects need sufficient investment.
This is where Solid World comes in. They are creating a blockchain-based tokenised infrastructure that adds liquidity to forward markets. This will be done using a variety of mechanisms, including maintaining ‘world-class’ due diligence and risk assessment of all projects; creating tokenised agreements backed by blockchain and off-chain options; forward commodity trading which guarantees there is always a buyer and a seller at market rates; and collaboration options such as a loan facility collateralised by specific carbon credits held by traders.
Solid World Chairman Stenver Jerkku explains that the DAO is entirely rethinking the mechanics of the forward carbon market. “The carbon markets are really untransparent and predatory towards new players right now. Our mission in Solid World DAO is to fix that. Using Blockchain and web3, we can realign the economic incentives for all the players in the space, bring capital efficiency to the institutions and make sure there is a liquid forward market for carbon credits.”
Blockchain is being used for an increasing number of investment vehicles – especially those involving decarbonisation projects. Recently, Springwise has covered a number of innovations in this space including a nature-backed financial instrument and a peer-to-peer renewable energy marketplace.
