• Energy cap to fall below £2,000 from October

    The new energy price cap set by Ofgem, the British energy regulator, is below £2,000 for the first time in 18 months, but it remains significantly higher than during 2020 and 2021 before the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed up energy prices. The cap does not set the maximum a household will pay for their energy but establishes a maximum amount providers can charge per unit of gas or electricity. At its peak, the price cap reached £4,279.  In the period between July and October 2023 the price cap was set at £2,074.  The new cap has reached the lowest level since October 2021. According to the regulator, this reflects further falls in wholesale energy prices as the market stabilises and suppliers return to a healthier financial position. However, Ofgem has warned that, o ver the last…

  • Low-cost cube satellite offers solution to space junk problem

    Current estimates suggest there are over 100 million pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth, ranging from debris the size of a penny to an entire rocket booster. The number of satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) is also expected to increase dramatically over the next few years, which is raising concerns that involuntary collisions between operational payloads and space debris could occur in orbit. The student-made cube satellite was built on a shoestring budget using off-the-shelf supplies available at most hardware stores, including 48 Energizer AA batteries. Called SBUDNIC, the prototype was blasted into space on Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket last May as part of the Transporter 5 ridesharing mission and was designed to tackle the growing issue of space junk. For that purpose, the students…

  • UK risks £65m in exports without switch to heat pumps, energy analysts warn

    According to new analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), this could cost the UK a total of £1.3bn in lost exports between 2030 and 2050. 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 a 10-year plan to ensure heat pumps become more widespread throughout the UK. But Michael Gove, who is the secretary of state for levelling up, has expressed doubts that the UK will make the shift over to heat pumps anytime soon due to the ongoing cost of living crisis. Nevertheless, a previous ECIU analysis found that domestic gas use in the UK would have been significantly lower last winter if it had kept pace with Europe on heat pump installations. In 2022, the UK exported around £85m worth…

  • Europe's landmark rules for online platforms kick into effect

    The EU’s historic regulations, which aim to promote a safer experience of the online world, came into effect on Friday 25 August.  The DSA is the bloc's first step in creating  a “rulebook” for online platforms , with the goal of creating “a safer and more open digital space, grounded in respect for fundamental rights”.  The rules will regulate companies’ content moderation policies and advertising practices. They will also require platforms to share details of their algorithms with regulators and, in certain cases,  with independent researchers. In particular, the DSA bans targeted advertising that is aimed at children or based on sensitive data such as religion, gender, race or political opinions. It also forbids “dark patterns” – tactics that mislead people into giving personal data…

  • Carbon offset schemes ‘significantly’ overestimate forest preservation

    The global market for voluntary carbon offsets – the removal of emissions of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases in order to compensate for emissions made elsewhere – has grown rapidly in recent years. Countries established the REDD+ framework to protect forests as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement. REDD stands for ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries’. Many of these schemes generate carbon credits by investing in the protection of parts of the world’s most important forests – from the Congo to the Amazon. But an analysis of 18 major carbon offset projects matched with sites that offer a real-world benchmark for deforestation levels found that more than 60 million carbon credits came from projects that barely reduced deforestation, if…

  • Huawei could be building secret chip plants to bypass US sanctions, trade body warns

    Huawei has been accused of building a a series of secret chip-making facilities across China, under the names of other companies, to help the technology company bypass US sanctions, according to the Washington-based association.  The Chinese tech firm reportedly moved into chip production last year and was receiving an estimated $30bn (£23.7bn) in state funding from the government.  The association claims Huawei has acquired at least two chip plants and is overseeing the construction of three additional facilities.  By building the facilities under names of other companies, the company could be able to indirectly purchase American chip-making equipment, circumventing the sanctions, the report claimed. The US has restricted China’s access to semiconductor technology since at least 2019…

  • Scotland needs more pylons to support wind power expansion, experts urge

    Increasing the production of clean power from renewables such as wind and solar will be necessary for the UK to decarbonise its electricity system. But while the deployment of cheap renewable energy generation has quadrupled over the past 10 years, investments in Britain’s transmission grid have remained flat and have even decreased since 2017, Scottish Renewables said in a new report. Scotland is reliant on renewable energy more than other parts of the UK as its geography has allowed developers to build some of the biggest domestic wind farms. In the future, more homes and businesses will be connected to heat networks and industrial sites and factories will house large batteries. There will also be a need for more electric vehicle chargers, heat pumps and solar panels. To enable this…

  • Norway opens world’s largest floating wind farm to cut oil industry emissions

    Located in the North Sea, Hywind Tampen is considered the world’s largest floating wind farm project.  The project has been funded by Norwegian energy firm Equinor and other oil companies including OMV and Vår Energi, owned by ENI. Their goal is to use the green energy generated by the wind farm to supply the company’s nearby oil and gas platforms and cut their greenhouse gas emissions. The Hywind Tampen wind farm has a capacity of 88 megawatts. It is expected to reduce CO 2 emissions by 200,000 tonnes annually, or 0.4 per cent of Norway’s total CO 2 emissions in 2022. The farm’s 11 wind turbines are fixed to a floating base anchored to the sea floor, rather than the ocean bed, allowing them to  be installed in deeper waters and further from the coast where winds are more consistent and…

  • Jaguar Land Rover repurposes old car batteries for grid-scale energy storage

    The project, which is in collaboration with Wykes Engineering, could be used to store excess electricity generated by renewables such as solar and wind and help the National Grid deal with peaks in demand. JLR said that 30 second-hand batteries from its Jaguar I-PACE series can store around 2.5MWh of energy – enough to power 250 homes for a day, although it aims to ramp this up to a total of 7.5MWh of energy by the end of 2023. Reusing the batteries also helps the firm adopt circular economy principles and limit the use of virgin materials. The batteries supplied have initially been taken from prototype and engineering test vehicles, but more containers will be created to house additional second-hand batteries removed from used production vehicles in the future. The inconsistency of…

  • India celebrates Chandrayaan-3 ‘historic’ Moon landing

    India is the fourth nation to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon after its $75m (£59m) Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft touched ground in a previously unexplored region of the natural satellite. The achievement took place just days after Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft – designed to reach this location first – crashed into the Moon . The Indian feat underscores the nation’s efforts to become an international power in space exploration. “This is the heartbeat of 1.4 billion people,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a speech to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). “This is the new India, the new beginning, the new thinking of the new efforts. This is a historic moment, and for every Indian, we are all very proud.” Chandrayaan-3 touched down six weeks after launching on board a…

  • Barnacle shells could reveal the location of missing flight MH370, study finds

    Associate Professor Gregory Herbert, who led a team of researchers from University of South Florida (USF), says the geochemistry of barnacle shells attached to debris from the aircraft could provide clues to the crash location. Over the last two decades, Herbert refined a method to extract ocean temperatures stored in the chemistry of invertebrate shells. The method was previously used to determine the ages and extinction risk of giant horse conches and investigate the environmental circumstances of early US colonies. Barnacles and other shelled marine invertebrates grow their shells daily, producing internal layers similar to tree rings. The chemistry of each layer is determined by temperature of the surrounding water at the time the layer was formed. Herbert’s research team did a growth…

  • ‘Huge’ biomethane HGV refuelling station to be built in Kent

    The HGV refuelling station project is a collaboration between  ReFuels and John Lewis Partnership (JLP), with a view towards decarbonising heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). Currently HGVs account for 4.2 per cent of UK emissions. However, fuelling these vehicles with biomethane could cut their emissions by over 90 per cent and reduce costs by up to 40 per cent, the companies have said.  The new station will be built adjacent to Waitrose’s southeast distribution centre, from where it will serve JLP HGVs as well as local and passing fleets. It will feature 12 fuel pumps capable of delivering 19 million kilograms (kg) of Bio-CNG annually. As part of the agreement, JLP has pledged to ensure that all of its 520 heavy-duty trucks run on biomethane by 2028. ReFuels has announced its plans to open…

  • G20 countries spent more than £1.1tn on fossil fuel subsidies after Ukraine war

    At COP26 in 2021, member countries agreed to accelerate “the phase-out of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels” in a bid to slow climate change. But according to the think tank International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), subsidies the following year from G20 countries reached $1tn – over four times the amount provided in 2021. Much of the total support provided was for consumers, but around one-third ($440bn) was driving investment in new fossil fuel production. Many production facilities such as oil wells or coal mines are expected to operate for many decades – long after the current energy crisis is expected to be over. According to the report: “This support perpetuates the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, paving the way for yet more energy…

  • Turtle shells hold clues on nuclear contamination, researchers find

    Turtles and tortoises have been found to store decades-long records of exposure to radioactive contamination on their backs. A team of scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used a special mass spectrometer to detect uranium in the shells of four  chelonians (the order of reptiles that include turtles and tortoises) , that lived near radioactive sites in the past.  The researchers discovered that turtles exposed to radioactive material, such as fallout from nuclear weapons testing or accidental waste releases, accumulated uranium isotopes in their shell scales. Each layer of shell equates to one year of the turtle’s life. In one of the shells, the researchers traced varying levels of uranium in individual concentric layers that formed like tree rings and tracked the animal…

  • AI cannot generate copyrightable material, says US judges

    The ruling was the result of a lawsuit brought forth by Stephen Thaler, who was looking to copyright ‘ A Recent Entrance to Paradise’, an image he created using an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm he built and named the Creativity Machine. Thaler had tried multiple times to copyright the image “as a work-for-hire to the owner of the Creativity Machine,” listing the author as the creator of the work and Thaler as the artwork’s owner.  However, his request was rejected by the US Copyright Office on the grounds that “the nexus between the human mind and creative expression” is a crucial element of protection. Now a judge has upheld the decision, as first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.   In her decision, Judge Howell wrote that copyright has never been granted to work that was…

  • Japan to begin releasing wastewater from Fukushima power plant

    Over 12 years after a massive earthquake and resulting tsunami wrecked the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Japanese authorities have set a date to begin releasing the plant’s treated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.  Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has ordered operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) “to swiftly prepare for the water discharge”, which will take place on Thursday “weather and ocean conditions permitting”. The project has received the approval of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which stated the impact it would have on people and the environment was “ negligible ” . Every day, the plant produces 100m³ of contaminated water, which is a mixture of groundwater, seawater and water used to keep the reactors cool since the meltdown. Since March 2011, the plant…

  • AI system predicts lithium-ion battery failures to increase EV performance

    Lithium-ion batteries are commonly found in electric vehicles (EVs) and portable consumer electronics. They consist of two electrodes divided by a separator that allows charged particles to flow through a solvent from one to the other. But if materials degrade and the electrodes make direct contact with each other, the charged particles can explode. Accure’s new predictive platform uses AI, field data and modelling to detect irregular battery cell behaviour and provide an understanding of battery health in EVs. The firm said its technology could give operators of EV fleets – as well as energy storage providers – more lead time to address critical issues before major damage can occur. It has already led to the prevention of more than 50 battery incidents and increased the performance of…

  • Astronauts regain red blood cells and bone density lost during space travel – study

    “We found that astronauts had significantly less fat in their bone marrow about a month after returning to Earth,” said senior study author Dr Guy Trudel. “We think the body is using this fat to help replace red blood cells and rebuild bone that has been lost during space travel.” Previous research from the same team showed that in space astronauts’ bodies destroyed on average 54 per cent more red blood cells than they normally would on Earth, resulting in what is known as “space anaemia.” “Thankfully, anaemia isn’t a problem in space when your body is weightless, but when landing on Earth and potentially on other planets or moons with gravity, anaemia would affect energy, endurance and strength and could threaten mission objectives,” Trudel added. The new study involved MRI scans of…

  • Microsoft could sell Activision’s streaming rights to secure UK regulatory approval

    Microsoft has offered to sell Activision’s non-European streaming rights to Ubisoft Entertainment as a way to placate regulator concerns over the £55bn acquisition of the video game maker.  The proposal was announced on the same day that the CMA confirmed it is standing by its final decision to block the deal, claiming it  would  result in higher prices, fewer choices and less innovation for the video game market. “The CMA has today confirmed that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, as originally proposed, cannot proceed,” said Sarah Cardell, the CMA’s chief executive.  The regulator has now opened a phase 1 investigation into Microsoft's latest proposal, but stressed that the decision “ is not a green light ”. “We will carefully and objectively assess the details of the restructured…

  • ‘Superfast’ charging battery shows promise for EVs

    The new battery, named Shexing, is expected to be mass-produced from the end of the year and reach market in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Chinese firm. It currently supplies batteries for Tesla, Toyota and VW.  The company said the battery will “open a new era of electric vehicle (EV) superfast charging ” .  The lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery is reportedly capable of running 400km (248 miles) on a 10-minute charge. It is also said to have a range of over 700km (435 miles) on a single full charge.  This would allow EV users to go 60 per cent further than the average EV in 2023. “We hope through continuous efforts to improve technology and reduce costs, Shenxing will become a standard product available for every EV,” said Gao Huan, CTO of CATL’s China e-car business…

  • Final turbine installed on UK’s ‘most productive’ onshore wind farm

    Just over three years since breaking ground on the project and six months since turbine installation commenced, SSE Renewables confirmed last week that the installation of the wind farm’s 103rd and final 4.3MW wind turbine had been completed. The final turbine installation was completed well ahead of schedule, as the original installation programme had been due to be completed in autumn 2023. The project remains on track for completion in summer 2024, with commissioning works set to continue over the next year.  When fully operational, Viking’s 103 Vestas turbines will be capable of generating up to 1.8TWh of renewable electricity annually – enough to power almost half a million typical British homes. Ironically, windy conditions during construction proved to be one of the biggest challenges…

  • UK to invest £100m into chip production for AI tools

    The public funds, sourced through taxpayer money, will be used to build a national AI resource in Britain, and be ordered through major chipmaking companies such as Intel, AMD and Nvidia, according to reports.  The government is already in the advanced stages of an order of up to 5,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia, reported The Telegraph.  The GPUs, also known as graphics cards, play a crucial part in a chip’s capacity for processing and are vital for performing complex actions such as those required by AI tools. One of the most famous of these, ChatGPT-4,  was trained on as many as 25,000 Nvidia chips. However, the amount pledged might not be enough to meet the government’s ambitions to transform the UK into an AI leader, particularly in comparison with investments in…

  • Russia's first lunar mission of the century crashes into the Moon

    Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years has ended in failure, after an unmanned spacecraft crashed into the Moon’s surface.  The crash took place after Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, lost touch with Luna-25 on Saturday around 2.57pm Moscow time. The landing was scheduled to take place today, Monday August 21.  “Due to the deviation of the actual pulse parameters from the calculated ones, the automatic station switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface,” the agency said.  Roscosmos added it has formed a special interdepartmental commission to investigate the mission’s failure. Luna-25 was designed to become the first spacecraft to land on the Moon’s south pole, an area believed to hold frozen water as well as valuable elements…

  • Cargo ship fitted with massive sails in bid to cut emissions

    Mitsubishi’s Pyxis Ocean, chartered by Cargill, is the first vessel to be retrofitted with two WindWings – large wing sails measuring up to 37.5m in height that can be fitted to the deck of cargo ships to harness the power of the wind. The sails, which are developed by BAR Technologies, are expected to generate average fuel savings of up to 30 per cent on new build vessels. This could be even higher if used in combination with alternative fuels, Cargill said. As wind power is not only zero emissions but is also non-depleting and hugely predictable, it offers significant efficiency gains in vessel operating costs. On an average global route, WindWings can save 1.5 tonnes of fuel per WindWing per day – with the possibility of saving more on trans-ocean routes. This also translates into…

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