Tech is putting net zero within reach

What does this mean for us? How will it affect our lives? The assumption has always been that we will have to forgo some of life’s conveniences, but innovators are already coming up with the techniques that will, they hope, pave the way for a seamless road to a decarbonised future.

Computer power
Gas boilers, the mainstay of domestic heating since the 1970s, make up about a fifth of the UK’s carbon footprint. They are to be phased out by 2035 and ministers are trying to persuade householders to install millions of air-source heat pumps instead.

But a company in South Wales has an alternative solution. Thermify, a start-up run by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Travis Theune, has developed a system that harnesses the excess heat generated by computers. “Currently computers dump heat into the atmosphere,” Theune said. “We are harnessing that heat to keep people warm.”

Each heating unit — which would replace your household boiler and is roughly the same size — is packed with a bank of Raspberry Pi computer drives. Thermify sells this server power to businesses to run specific tasks, such as running a coffee chain’s loyalty programme, producing a supermarket firm’s quarterly report, or crunching data for an artificial intelligence system. These tasks — usually run by server banks in air-conditioned rooms — generate a lot of heat. Thermify harnesses this using a heat exchanger, which powers a household’s radiators and warms its water supply.

The company, based outside Bridgend, aims to sell 1,000 units to housing associations and new developments in the next 18 months, and within five years to produce 40,000 units a year.

“The key is that the electricity used will be green,” Theune said. The company will provide the electricity to run the system, bypassing the household electricity meter. The units will cost roughly £2,500 and homes will also pay a fee of roughly £50 a month, which includes servicing. “It’s affordable, green, and long-lasting,” he said.

Vegan meat
For years a limp veggie burger was the best vegetarians could hope for at a summer barbecue. But meat consumption in the UK has dropped 17 per cent in the past decade, and the market has responded with a boom in vegan and vegetarian foods.

Innovators in the US believe they have gone one step further. By studying the science of meat, they think they have created plant-based products that taste more like meat than meat itself.

Patrick Brown, chief executive of Impossible Foods, said: “You don’t just have to get the flavour right. You have to get the texture right. You have to get the juiciness right. You have to get the whole mouthfeel right. And how it cooks.”

The secret lies in a compound called heme, a crucial part of haemoglobin that binds oxygen in the bloodstream. In animals it is created by the liver and bone marrow. Impossible Foods creates it with genetically engineered yeast. The company, which is booming in the US and is hoping to launch in the UK, seems to have cracked it.

Blind tasting tests run by Impossible suggest 70 per cent of people prefer its “chicken” nuggets, which are made from soya protein, to the real thing. Seven in ten said the Impossible sausage sated their “sausage craving” more than those made from pork. And eight in ten said it produced a better sizzle. Similar results have been produced in independent tests.

Why is this important? Because cows and sheep produce huge volumes of methane — a powerful greenhouse gas. And if grazing land was used to grow trees it would create a huge carbon sink. “If we eliminate animal agriculture in the next 15 years it causes a pause in emissions that lasts 30 years,” Brown said. “Biomass recovery alone will remove from the atmosphere the equivalent of 22 years of fossil fuel emissions at the current rate.”

Persuading people to give up meat is contentious. George Eustice, the environment secretary, recently said he would back a form of meat tax. Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, has said he would not.

Brown said the row was irrelevant: “If we can make products from plant ingredients with a vastly lower greenhouse gas footprint and make it more delicious, better nutritionally, and cheaper than the animal product, I think that everything we know about market economics says the animal agriculture industry is not long for this world.”

Cars on subscription
Transport is the single biggest source of carbon emissions in the UK. Of the 32.7 million cars on the road last year, 31.6 million were powered by petrol or diesel. That is set to change. Electric is in, the internal combustion engine is out. By 2030 no new cars sold in the UK will be driven by fossil fuels.

Stuart Templar, director of global sustainability at Volvo, believes this does not go far enough. “Electrification is not the silver bullet to remove the climate impact of the automotive industry,” he said. “We need to reduce emissions across the full lifecycle of the vehicle.”

The carbon footprint of a car does not just come from the petrol it burns, but also its manufacture and disposal. At the moment a company makes a car, sells it, and it ceases to be their problem. At the end of its life, the car goes to the scrapyard.

Experts believe the only solution is to move to a subscription model, whereby a customer uses a car for a few months or years, then returns it to the firm. The firm then supplies it to a new customer and this pattern can continue until the vehicle is no longer suitable, at which point the company has responsibility for disposing of it in an eco-friendly way. This differs from a leasing model, in which cars are sold to the second-hand market as soon as the term is up.

Jonas Otterheim, head of climate action at Volvo, said: “If we are to be a fully circular business, we need to take responsibility for whatever we put out there.”

It is already proving to be popular. A subscription service launched by Volvo at the height of the pandemic last year attracted 2,500 transactions in 12 months, representing 15 per cent of new car sales in the UK.

Skiing on grass
As the Alps warm, glaciers shrink and snowfall becomes less reliable, ski resorts are struggling. Many are forced to use artificial snow, even in the depths of winter, and deploy protective blankets to reduce ice melt. Rachael Carver of Staffordshire University, writing in the Geography journal, said: “Glacier conservation, snow harvesting, the production of artificial snow and modifying the range of tourist experiences all illustrate the dilemmas involved in adapting to climate change in practice.”

Carver said that in some places resorts had even adapted by introducing grass skiing. This sport was established in Germany in the 1960s as a summer training tool for elite skiers. It developed a niche following, with the first world championship held in the US state of Virginia in 1979. The skis, which are shorter than normal skis, have rolling treads.

Ski resorts in Austria and Switzerland offer grass skiing in the summer for enthusiasts, but Carver said in some places, such as parts of the Czech Republic where there is only one month of reliable snow each year, this may soon become an option year-round.

“At the rate we’re losing glaciers, doing nothing is not an option for these industries,” she said. “Adaptation is key.”