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BT start-up plans to turn 60,000 street cabinets into EV charging points

BT’s start-up and innovation company Etc. has today announced it will begin pilots to transform decommissioned street cabinets into EV charging points in a bid to accelerate the UK’s journey to net zero. The first phase of the pilots will take place in Northern Ireland this autumn. If successful, it will be expanded to the public with more pilot locations added across the UK later in the year. A study from 2021 found that the installation of chargers needs to increase by five times the current rate if the plan to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030 is to be achieved. BT said the pilots will provide critical insight into the viability of scaling up EV charging to more locations across its estate. “With the ban on sales of internal combustion engine vehicles coming in…

E+T Magazine in Power Conversion
UK will fail to protect 30 per cent of English land and seas without action, peers say

A report from the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee said that an “urgent step change” is needed if the target is going to be delivered on time. It found that only around 6.5 per cent of natural habitats in England are effectively protected. An additional three million hectares (23.5 per cent) will need to be given protected status in order to achieve the ‘30 by 30’ target. This equates to an area roughly one and a half times the size of Wales. The report said that improving nature in England would bring a host of benefits, including improvements to public health and wellbeing as well as tackling climate change. Protected areas in England will also play an important role in restoring nature and meeting internationally agreed biodiversity targets. It concluded that…

E+T Magazine in Climate Change
EU Council adopts green fuel requirements for the maritime sector

The new EU law to decarbonise the maritime sector has cleared its final adoption stage, putting an end to two years of intense negotiations. The main objective of the initiative is to increase the demand for and consistent use of renewable and low-carbon fuels, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping sector. Under the new agreement, shipping will be covered by the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS) from 2024 and FuelEU Maritime from 2025. As part of this effort, the new regulation includes measures to ensure the greenhouse gas intensity of fuels used by the shipping sector decreases by 2 per cent in 2025 and by as much as 80 per cent by 2050. Additionally, there will be rules for the infrastructure of alternative fuels, including requirements for using shore power in selected…

E+T Magazine in Fossil Fuels
AI-equipped speeding camera test catches 500 driving offences

Hampshire and Thames Valley Police forces deployed the Sensor Test Vehicle, which is made by Aecom, on the A34 and A303 earlier this month. The van is equipped with two cameras, which capture suspected offences. One of them is set at a shallow angle to identify mobile phone use to the ear, and to see whether the seatbelt is going across the body or hanging down behind the driver. The second camera has a steep view, providing visibility of mobile phone use low down, to detect behaviour such as texting near the steering wheel or door. This second camera also gives further evidence of seatbelt use by checking the presence of the lap portion of the belt and confirming that the seatbelt is clipped into the buckle. All images of possible offences are automatically captured and sent to be checked…

E+T Magazine in Road transport systems
Researchers warn of collision dangers between drones and planes

Researchers at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida and Unmanned Robotic Systems Analysis (URSA) have developed a new way to accurately count and objectively analyse close encounters between drones and aeroplanes – without depending solely on pilot sightings. The team analysed over 1.8 million piloted aircraft operations and nearly 460,000 flights by small, uncrewed aerial systems (sUAS) around Dallas–Fort Worth airport. During a three-year period, the team identified 24 near-midair collisions (NMACs) between sUAS and aircraft, including two in 2018, one in 2019, 14 in 2020 and seven in 2021. The majority of close calls occurred within 1.5 miles of a runway approach or departure zone. To avoid collisions, the researchers recommended extending the runway exclusion zone for…

E+T Magazine in Aerospace
UK universities sign deal to help build Europe’s largest solar telescope

Launched in 2008, the European Solar Telescope (EST) project aims to provide valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Construction on the telescope, which will be capable of monitoring ‘space weather’ events, will be supported by the University of Sheffield, which signed the deal today with EST’s Canary Foundation on behalf of the United Kingdom Universities Consortium (UKUC). Leading the UKUC, the University of Sheffield has committed itself and the universities of Aberystwyth, Durham, Exeter, Glasgow and Queen’s University Belfast, along with a further six European countries, to the construction of the telescope at the El Roque de los Muchachos Observatory at La Palma in Spain. The project’s conceptual design study estimates €150m to…

E+T Magazine in Space
Solar energy could help purify water, researchers find

A team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have suggested that renewable solar energy could play a crucial role in purifying water. Currently, water purification processes rely on electrochemical separation processes that are able to separate different particles within a solution. Although energy-efficient, this technique relies on energy derived from nonrenewable sources, such as fossil fuels. Instead, the research team has made a breakthrough by integrating solar energy into the electrochemical separation process using a semiconductor, demonstrating that water remediation can be powered in part – and perhaps exclusively – by renewable energy sources. In this method, the chemists used a semiconductor to integrate solar energy into an electrochemical separation…

E+T Magazine in Renewable Energy
2030 petrol ban remains but heat pump transition could be relaxed, Gove admits

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “We’re committed to maintaining our policy of ensuring that by 2030 there are no new petrol and diesel cars being sold. “I’m sure there are some people who would like to change that policy, I understand. But that policy remains.” But in another interview with Times Radio today, the secretary of state for levelling up was ambivalent about efforts to shift the UK over to heat pumps from traditional gas boilers. “We’re living through a real cost-of-living challenge and what we don’t want to do is to force individuals to pay excessive sums at this stage – we need to take a proportionate approach,” he said. In January, the government’s net zero review concluded that no new homes should be built with a gas boiler from 2025. It also proposed…

E+T Magazine in Climate Change
TSMC to invest $2.9bn in Taiwanese advanced chip plant

Taiwanese chip maker TSMC plans to invest nearly T$90bn (£2.4bn) in an advanced packaging facility in the Tongluo Science Park in northern Taiwan. “To meet market needs, TSMC is planning to establish an advanced packaging fab,” the company said. The announcement follows last week’s comments from the company’s CEO, CC Wei, who told analysts that TSMC plans to roughly double its capacity for advanced packaging capacity in 2024 compared with 2023, in order to meet “strong demand” for AI chips from its customers. The packaging process for advanced semiconductors uses high-technology processes to place multiple chips into a single device, creating a more powerful computer chip. TSMC has said its chip on wafer on substrate (CoWoS) capacity is “very tight”, and the firm could struggle to…

E+T Magazine in Semiconductor Technology
Sizewell C receives £170m funding injection to speed up construction start

The facility is expected to cost at least £20bn and generate energy at a more expensive price when compared to renewables such as wind and solar. The project is planned to commence before 2024, with construction taking between nine and 12 years, depending on developments at the oft-delayed and over-budget Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. French energy giant EDF recently pushed back Hinkley Point’s first day of operation to September 2028. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said the £170m funding for Sizewell C would be used to prepare the site for future construction, procure key components from the project’s supply chain and expand its workforce. The plant is being positioned as providing reliable, low-carbon baseload power to the UK energy grid, with a lifespan of…

E+T Magazine in Nuclear Power
Virgin Media 02 to cut up to 2,000 jobs by December

Mobile operator Virgin Media O2 is to slash up to 2,000 UK jobs by the end of this year, in the first large-scale round of layoffs the company has overseen since its creation in 2021. The group said on Tuesday 25 July that it had briefed employee unions and representative groups on its proposals. The redundancies will include 800 role reductions that were already announced, the BBC has reported. “As we continue to integrate and transform as a company, we are currently consulting on proposals to simplify our operating model to better deliver for customers, which will see a reduction in some roles this year,” the company said. “While we know any period of change can be difficult, we are committed to supporting all of our people.” The firm added it was supporting its staff as it has …

E+T Magazine in Telecommunications
Sustainably grown barley trialled for whiskey-making in Scotland

Barley makes up 63 per cent of Scotland’s cereal crop and is used for malting and distilling, as well as animal feed. Its production depends heavily on nitrogen fertilisers made from fossil fuels. Using more sustainable fertilisers will help make barley ‘greener’, but farmers and the whisky industry want to ensure that their use won’t make the crop less suitable for whisky production. A team of researchers from Heriot-Watt University and University College Dublin have been testing three types of sustainable fertilisers or biostimulants. Dr Angela Feechan, a plant pathologist at Heriot-Watt, said: “The Irish BioCrop project is carrying out field trials at the moment, and we’ll be using their grain. “They are investigating how biostimulants made from algae, bacteria and yeast perform…

E+T Magazine in Sustainable Development
British Gas predicted to reach record profits – report

British Gas, the UK’s largest energy firm, is on course to report profits of £857m over the first six months of trading this year, according to Investec. UBS, however, has predicted a slightly lower figure of £687m. Centrica, the company’s owner, has already reported that the supplier’s interim profits will significantly exceed the previous record of £585m set in 2010, although it has not yet provided an exact figure. The surge in profits would represent a remarkable increase compared with the £98m earned during the same period in 2022. Centrica is also expected to sustain its own robust earnings, having recovered from pandemic-driven losses after posting a £135m loss in 2020. The company explained this as a result of Ofcom’s increase in the energy price cap , a measure that aimed to…

E+T Magazine in Fossil Fuels
Manufacturing exports to the EU decline in most regions in England

An analysis of official data shows that the UK’s overall share of manufacturing exports to the EU increased in 2022 to 52 per cent from 50 per cent in 2019. However, this was a result of sharp increases in the share of exports to the EU from Northern Ireland and Scotland over the same period, without which the overall UK share of goods exports would be on a downward trend. Northern Ireland currently enjoys a unique ‘dual access’ position retaining access to the Single Market for goods and being able to trade goods freely into the rest of Great Britain, while in Scotland the oil and gas sector and its supply chains boosted exports to the EU during the ongoing Ukraine crisis. The share of goods exports to both Asia & Oceania and North America has remained relatively stable, the report found…

E+T Magazine in Manufacturing
Elon Musk rebrands Twitter as ‘X’

On Sunday night, Twitter’s headquarters were lit up with the company's new ‘X’ logo, which has now replaced the company’s iconic bird on the website, and the profile badges of company employees. Elon Musk, the company’s owner, and Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s new CEO, have both discussed plans to transform the social media platform into an “ everything app ” that would eventually provide payments, banking and commerce services. Twitter’s official company name was changed to X Corp in April 2023, but the company had not yet rebranded on the platform. This changed on Sunday evening, when Musk announced the company’s plans to rebrand the following day, saying that “soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”. He added: “If a good enough X logo is posted…

E+T Magazine
Chinese driverless vehicles present spying risk, US transport chief warns

It followed a letter earlier in the week from a bipartisan group of Representatives urging the Administration to investigate and limit the operations of such firms in the US. “Whether we are talking about hardware or software, in the same way there are concerns around telecom or TikTok, there are concerns around transportation technologies,” Buttigieg said in an interview with Reuters. The letter, which was sent by Representatives Tim Walberg (R-MI), Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Bob Latta (R-OH), and Marc Veasy (D-TX), admitted that advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are the key to “reducing and even eliminating traffic fatalities”. “But Americans will not benefit from the future autonomous vehicles (AV) promise to bring if the United States continues its current trajectory of inaction…

E+T Magazine in Security in the Modern World
TSMC delays opening of Arizona chip plant

The company's chairman has revealed that TSMC has not been able to recruit enough skilled workers to install advanced equipment in the original timeline, and is now planing on sending Taiwanese technicians to train US workers. The Arizona factory, which has been under construction since April 2021, was originally scheduled to begin production of 4 -nanometre chips in 2024. A second fab that will produce smaller, more complex 3nm chips is scheduled to open in 2026. TSMC made the announcement during its second-quarter earnings call on Thursday, July 20th. The company's chairman Mark Liu stated that TSMC was “encountering certain challenges, as there is an insufficient amount of skilled workers with the specialised expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility…

E+T Magazine in Manufacturing
Google launches AI tool to help journalists write news articles

The paper reported that Google has held meetings with the NYT itself as well as the Washington Post and News Corp which owns the Wall Street Journal. The search giant reportedly said the tool, which has been dubbed Genesis, will help journalists to produce different writing styles and offer options for headlines rather than pitching it as a full-scale replacement. “These tools are not intended to, and cannot, replace the essential role journalists have in reporting, creating and fact-checking their articles,” Google said. But according to the NYT, some of the executives who were in the room while Google was pitching found the proposal “unsettling”. Earlier this month, the Associated Press signed a deal with OpenAI to explore the possibility of using generative AI to create news articles…

E+T Magazine
Flying taxi factory to be built in Brazil

On the 150th anniversary of the birth of Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos Dumont, Brazilian aeronautics firm Embraer and its subsidiary Eve Air Mobility have announced their plans to build a factory for "electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft" or eVTOL. The companies have already received orders for 2,850 eVTOLs worth about $1.5bn (£1.2bn), from 28 clients in several countries, including helicopter operators, airlines and flight-sharing platforms, according to AFP. Artist rending of flying taxi/ Eve Air Mobility Image credit: Eve Air Mobility The aircraft resembles small helicopters - according to designs - with enough space for up to six customers. The vehicles will be 100 per cent electric, allowing for emissions-free travel. Initially

E+T Magazine in Research and Innovation
India surpasses China in steel-making, but net zero clashes risk stranded assets

Global coal-based steelmaking capacity increased significantly last year, to 380 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) in 2022 from 350 mtpa in 2021. GEM’s Global Steel Plant Tracker warns that the sector risks as much as $554bn (£430bn) in stranded assets as countries build out coal-based capacity while simultaneously working towards their carbon neutrality commitments. Steel already accounts for 7 per cent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions and demand is set to rise as the material is fundamental to building the energy transition, from wind turbines to electric vehicles, and to infrastructure growth in developing economies. New iron- and steel-making technologies, centred around using low-carbon hydrogen to produce direct reduced iron, have been developed and offer a viable solution…

E+T Magazine in Sustainable Development
Lords amend Ofcom's powers to scan encrypted messages

The House of Lords has passed a series of amendments to the Online Safety Bill that aim to impose safeguards to Ofcom's powers to u se “accredited technology” to scan encrypted messages for child sexual abuse material. Companies that provide encrypted messaging services - including Signal, WhatsApp and Apple - have opposed these powers, with some of them stating they would rather leave the UK than provide a less-secure service to users. However, the government has maintained the powers are necessary to prevent the distribution of child pornography and protect children from being exposed to harmful content. Government minister Lord Parkinson told peers he acknowledged "the concerns which have been aired about how these powers work with encrypted services" but he said strong safeguards…

E+T Magazine in Ethical Aspects
National Grid to sell off 20 per cent of its gas network to Australian firm

The sale follows the decision last year to sell off a 60 per cent equity stake in its UK gas transmission and metering business to a consortium which included Macquarie and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation from Canada. The investment takes the Consortium’s total ownership in National Gas to 80 per cent and is on equivalent financial terms to the original 60 per cent acquisition, which was completed in January this year. Final completion of the new deal will not occur until regulatory approval is confirmed, although Macquarie said it anticipates that it will be completed before the end of the year. The Consortium has also entered into a new option agreement with National Grid for the potential acquisition of the remaining 20 per cent shareholding in National Gas. This…

E+T Magazine in Power Equipment
Rural bus services continue to decline as urban routes scoop up central funding

The County Councils Network (CCN), which represents England’s local authorities, has undertaken a comprehensive review of rural bus services. It found that more than one in four routes have vanished over the last decade with passenger numbers dropping to a "historic low". The study concludes that many services in rural areas were already in state of "managed decline" but this trend has accelerated since the pandemic. The Department for Transport introduced its National Bus Strategy in 2021 which included plans to introduce new routes and simplify fares. It also created a requirement for local transport authorities to adopt partnerships with private bus operators or establish a franchising scheme. But the CCN report said that the “much-vaunted” strategy has done little to address the decline…

E+T Magazine
UN officials call for AI regulation during Security Council meeting

The meeting of the Security Council saw representatives of the 15 member countries listen to AI experts discussing whether AI was a ‘catastrophic risk for humans’ or a ‘historic opportunity’. The meeting was held in London and chaired by foreign secretary James Cleverly, who said AI “knows no borders” and stressed the urgent “need to shape the global governance of transformative technologies”. "No country will be untouched by AI, so we must involve and engage the widest coalition of international actors from all sectors," Cleverly said. "Our shared goal will be to consider the risks of AI and decide how they can be reduced through coordinated action." During its session, the chamber heard from Jack Clark, co-founder of leading AI company Anthropic, and professor Zeng Yi, co-director…

E+T Magazine in Ethical Aspects

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