By GreenerBuildings Staff
Published June 03, 2010
MILWAUKEE, WI — Energy efficiency investments around the world have remained strong despite the global recession, commercial building executives told Johnson Controls in the company's first international energy efficiency survey.
The company is releasing results today of its Energy Effiiciency Indicator, which surveyed 2,800 executives and managers around the world who are responsible for making investments and managing energy at commercial properties.
Fifty-six percent of respondents said they invested the same or more in energy efficiency over the last 12 months, according to the company.
Looking at responses from various regions, 60 percent of the building execs participating in the survey in China said they invested the same or more over the past year. In the U.S., 59 percent answered the same; in Europe, 55 percent, and India, 45 percent.
Not surprisingly, 97 percent of all respondents pointed to cost savings as the most important driver for the investments.
Johnson Controls has conducted its EEI survey -- which examines energy management priorities, practices and investment plans -- in North America for the past four years.
This year, the research also was conducted in China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The company released results of its North American research in April, which indicated that businesses there expect to spend more on energy efficiency in the next 12 months despite economic uncertainty.
Friday, 4 June 2010
An Illusion Called the Carbon Capture and Storage
June 3, 2010 By editors
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN
An Illusion Called the Carbon Capture and Storage Credit: noah.dk
By Brenda Sorensen
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
COPENHAGEN (IDN) – High expectations are being placed on a new technology that would capture and store carbon and help mitigate climate change. But a new report says that the technology known as ‘Carbon Capture and Storage’ (CCS) cannot work wonders and bring about required reductions in CO2 emissions that are known to contribute to global warming.
Repeatedly referred to as an important ‘bridging technology’ connecting a dirty fossil fuel present with a bright green future, CCS is designed to play a major role in future climate policies all over the world.
"But this is a false picture," says the report released on June 2 by NOAH / Friends of the Earth Denmark. "It will take a very long time before CCS would be able to deliver any significant reductions."
Countries such as China, the U.S., Germany, Spain, Australia and South Africa, among others, plan to use CCS to try to mitigate the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming.
The 27-nation European Union has set large sums aside to finance 12 demonstration plants over the next 10 years. The climate law proposed in the U.S. has similar provisions for CCS.
As far back as 2008, Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the EU Commission said: "We have to make CCS the norm for new power plants and establish 12 demonstration plants by 2015."
"The world will fail to halve emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2050 without the deployment of technology to capture and store the emissions spewed out from fossil-fuel burning power plants," maintained Stavros Dimas, EU Commissioner for the Environment, also in 2008.
The same year G8 + 3 (Britain, Canada, Italy, Japan, France, Germany, Russia, the United States + China, India and South Korea) said: "We strongly support the recommendation that 20 large-scale CCS demonstration projects need to be launched globally by 2010 … with a view to supporting technology development and cost reduction for the beginning of broad deployment of CCS by 2020."
In 2007, UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said: "The IPCC has identified carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) as the most promising technology for the rapid reduction of global emissions: up to 55% by 2100. As part of a portfolio of solutions, CCS is an important bridge to a more sustainable energy system, and therefore a key solution for combating climate change."
But the NOAH report cautions that if CCS is chosen as a major strategy to mitigate carbon emissions from coal power plants and coal fuelled industries, nearly 90% of emissions expected between 2010 and 2050 from the large coal fuelled plants would reach the atmosphere anyway,
Palle Bendsen, spokesperson for NOAH / Friends of the Earth Denmark that commissioned the report, said: "When CCS technology is observed over time and across the sectors where it is planned to be applied — when we watch the whole film as opposed to the single snapshot of one power plant or a single year in the far future — it is obvious that CCS cannot deliver. Institutions like the International Energy Agency and IPCC must take into consideration the whole picture and review their assessment of this dubious technology."
NOAH points out that the available global carbon budget is so small that worldwide emissions "must peak before 2015 if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change". That is a clear message from recent scientific studies.
The ‘carbon budget’ is a way to express the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that the world (or a country) can emit within a certain timeframe in order to stay within a certain limit of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
According to the report, from 2015 onward, emissions must decline rapidly. Any mitigation tool must be seen from this perspective. However, carbon capture and storage cannot fit into such a scenario because it is impossible to deploy early enough. "On top of that, CCS will be ineffective and extremely costly."
Palle Bendsen said: "Financing CCS is doomed to be a huge misuse of public funds. Our report shows why. EU and governments should direct their subsidies exclusively to energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewables, as well as finance development of sustainable energy supply systems in developing countries. That’s the way to secure decreasing emissions."
"CCS will lock in coal. Though far from being commercially ready, CCS is being used as an excuse to continue to build coal power plants that are ‘CCS-ready.’ But such plants will be preserved unchanged for many years to come. ‘CCS-ready’ is a meaningless term," he added.
"It is obvious that CCS is competing with renewables for R&D resources and capital, thus preventing the rapid development of sustainable energy supply systems. What we need is a fossil free future. We must reduce energy demands in rich countries with high emissions, and we must increase energy efficiency," Palle Bendsen added.
The Stockholm Environment Institute in partnership with Friends of the Earth Europe has developed an alternative scenario without CCS. The joint study titled ‘Europe’s Share of the Climate Challenge: Domestic Actions and International Obligations to Protect the Planet’ says that emission reductions of at least 40% below 1990 levels within Europe by 2020, and cuts of 90% by 2050, are possible without CCS, nuclear, agrofuels and offsetting.
The NOAH report points out that more than 350 billion tonnes CO2 will be emitted from coal plants to the atmosphere despite a fast deployment of CCS in a scenario with CO2-emissions decreasing to 50% by 2050.
Emitting 350 billion tonnes of CO2 will make demand on 90% of the remaining budget for CO2 from all fossil fuels 2010-2050. (Coal represents only 42% of emissions from all fossil fuels).
Only 46 billion tonnes of CO2 or 11% of CO2 emissions will be avoided between 2010 and 2050. Until 2030 only 7 billion tonnes of CO2 will be avoided despite a fast deployment of CCS. (IDN-InDepthNews/02.06.2010)
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN
An Illusion Called the Carbon Capture and Storage Credit: noah.dk
By Brenda Sorensen
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
COPENHAGEN (IDN) – High expectations are being placed on a new technology that would capture and store carbon and help mitigate climate change. But a new report says that the technology known as ‘Carbon Capture and Storage’ (CCS) cannot work wonders and bring about required reductions in CO2 emissions that are known to contribute to global warming.
Repeatedly referred to as an important ‘bridging technology’ connecting a dirty fossil fuel present with a bright green future, CCS is designed to play a major role in future climate policies all over the world.
"But this is a false picture," says the report released on June 2 by NOAH / Friends of the Earth Denmark. "It will take a very long time before CCS would be able to deliver any significant reductions."
Countries such as China, the U.S., Germany, Spain, Australia and South Africa, among others, plan to use CCS to try to mitigate the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming.
The 27-nation European Union has set large sums aside to finance 12 demonstration plants over the next 10 years. The climate law proposed in the U.S. has similar provisions for CCS.
As far back as 2008, Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the EU Commission said: "We have to make CCS the norm for new power plants and establish 12 demonstration plants by 2015."
"The world will fail to halve emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2050 without the deployment of technology to capture and store the emissions spewed out from fossil-fuel burning power plants," maintained Stavros Dimas, EU Commissioner for the Environment, also in 2008.
The same year G8 + 3 (Britain, Canada, Italy, Japan, France, Germany, Russia, the United States + China, India and South Korea) said: "We strongly support the recommendation that 20 large-scale CCS demonstration projects need to be launched globally by 2010 … with a view to supporting technology development and cost reduction for the beginning of broad deployment of CCS by 2020."
In 2007, UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said: "The IPCC has identified carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) as the most promising technology for the rapid reduction of global emissions: up to 55% by 2100. As part of a portfolio of solutions, CCS is an important bridge to a more sustainable energy system, and therefore a key solution for combating climate change."
But the NOAH report cautions that if CCS is chosen as a major strategy to mitigate carbon emissions from coal power plants and coal fuelled industries, nearly 90% of emissions expected between 2010 and 2050 from the large coal fuelled plants would reach the atmosphere anyway,
Palle Bendsen, spokesperson for NOAH / Friends of the Earth Denmark that commissioned the report, said: "When CCS technology is observed over time and across the sectors where it is planned to be applied — when we watch the whole film as opposed to the single snapshot of one power plant or a single year in the far future — it is obvious that CCS cannot deliver. Institutions like the International Energy Agency and IPCC must take into consideration the whole picture and review their assessment of this dubious technology."
NOAH points out that the available global carbon budget is so small that worldwide emissions "must peak before 2015 if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change". That is a clear message from recent scientific studies.
The ‘carbon budget’ is a way to express the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that the world (or a country) can emit within a certain timeframe in order to stay within a certain limit of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
According to the report, from 2015 onward, emissions must decline rapidly. Any mitigation tool must be seen from this perspective. However, carbon capture and storage cannot fit into such a scenario because it is impossible to deploy early enough. "On top of that, CCS will be ineffective and extremely costly."
Palle Bendsen said: "Financing CCS is doomed to be a huge misuse of public funds. Our report shows why. EU and governments should direct their subsidies exclusively to energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewables, as well as finance development of sustainable energy supply systems in developing countries. That’s the way to secure decreasing emissions."
"CCS will lock in coal. Though far from being commercially ready, CCS is being used as an excuse to continue to build coal power plants that are ‘CCS-ready.’ But such plants will be preserved unchanged for many years to come. ‘CCS-ready’ is a meaningless term," he added.
"It is obvious that CCS is competing with renewables for R&D resources and capital, thus preventing the rapid development of sustainable energy supply systems. What we need is a fossil free future. We must reduce energy demands in rich countries with high emissions, and we must increase energy efficiency," Palle Bendsen added.
The Stockholm Environment Institute in partnership with Friends of the Earth Europe has developed an alternative scenario without CCS. The joint study titled ‘Europe’s Share of the Climate Challenge: Domestic Actions and International Obligations to Protect the Planet’ says that emission reductions of at least 40% below 1990 levels within Europe by 2020, and cuts of 90% by 2050, are possible without CCS, nuclear, agrofuels and offsetting.
The NOAH report points out that more than 350 billion tonnes CO2 will be emitted from coal plants to the atmosphere despite a fast deployment of CCS in a scenario with CO2-emissions decreasing to 50% by 2050.
Emitting 350 billion tonnes of CO2 will make demand on 90% of the remaining budget for CO2 from all fossil fuels 2010-2050. (Coal represents only 42% of emissions from all fossil fuels).
Only 46 billion tonnes of CO2 or 11% of CO2 emissions will be avoided between 2010 and 2050. Until 2030 only 7 billion tonnes of CO2 will be avoided despite a fast deployment of CCS. (IDN-InDepthNews/02.06.2010)
Thames water now drinkable
Millions of people will soon be able to drink clean water from the River Thames after a desalination plant opened yesterday.
Published: 8:00AM BST 03 Jun 2010
The £270m plant is the first of its kind in Britain and will turn a mixture of sea and river water into safe drinking water.
Thames Water insists that drinkers will not be able to taste the difference between it and existing tap water.
The group said the plant was built because London did not get enough rainfall and there were risks of future shortages.
The plant is situated in Beckton and is intended to act as a back-up suppy when water shortages run low during dry summers.
The plant will be powered by biodiesel largely made from cooking oil discarded by the capital’s restaurants.
Martin Baggs, Thames Water’s chief executive, said: “People may wonder why we’re equipping rainy’ London with a desalination plant. But the fact is, London isn’t as rainy as you might think — it gets about half as much rain as Sydney, and less than Dallas or Istanbul. Our existing resources — from non-tidal rivers and groundwater — simply aren’t enough to match predicted demand in London.”
There are concerns that global warming could cause severe shortages in England within 20 years.
However, environmentalists claim it is a short-sighted solution which will not provide a sustainable solution to any future water shortages.
Thames Water said it hoped it would not have to use the plant until 2012.
Yesterday, the chairman of VisitScotland said that Scotland had so much water it could export it to England if global warming caused severe droughts south of the border.
Published: 8:00AM BST 03 Jun 2010
The £270m plant is the first of its kind in Britain and will turn a mixture of sea and river water into safe drinking water.
Thames Water insists that drinkers will not be able to taste the difference between it and existing tap water.
The group said the plant was built because London did not get enough rainfall and there were risks of future shortages.
The plant is situated in Beckton and is intended to act as a back-up suppy when water shortages run low during dry summers.
The plant will be powered by biodiesel largely made from cooking oil discarded by the capital’s restaurants.
Martin Baggs, Thames Water’s chief executive, said: “People may wonder why we’re equipping rainy’ London with a desalination plant. But the fact is, London isn’t as rainy as you might think — it gets about half as much rain as Sydney, and less than Dallas or Istanbul. Our existing resources — from non-tidal rivers and groundwater — simply aren’t enough to match predicted demand in London.”
There are concerns that global warming could cause severe shortages in England within 20 years.
However, environmentalists claim it is a short-sighted solution which will not provide a sustainable solution to any future water shortages.
Thames Water said it hoped it would not have to use the plant until 2012.
Yesterday, the chairman of VisitScotland said that Scotland had so much water it could export it to England if global warming caused severe droughts south of the border.
Blue Sky Thinking
Profiles of five innovative thinkers working in the transport industry today.By ESTHER SPAARWATER
Sunseeker II was the first solar powered plane to fly over the Alps
.From James Starley's penny-farthing bicycle to Sir Frank Whittle's jet engine – the challenge of getting from A to B as quickly, safely and cheaply as possible has exercised some of mankind's most inventive minds.
Whether they are eking out a few extra horsepower, or developing safer equipment; creating green alternative technologies, or more energy-efficient adaptations of older ideas; working on vehicles, or infrastructure and logistics, there are now more transport inventors filing more patents than ever before.
■Invention:Solar-powered aircraft
■Inventor: Eric Raymond
■Age:53
■Based:Radovljica, Slovenia
Eric Raymond, Sunseeker's inventor
.From hang gliders to solar-powered planes, Eric Raymond has spent most of the past 30 years either in the air or designing the means to get back up there.
In the 1980s, the American, who studied aeronautical engineering and photography, was asked to fly a pedal-powered racing plane designed by German inventor Gunther Rochelt. "The revelation that a fast, streamlined aircraft could be built with incredibly low weight, if the correct materials and engineering were used, gave me the idea to build one with solar panels for power," says Mr Raymond.
His first plane, called Sunseeker, took to the skies in 1989, crossing the U.S. the following year. In April 2009, Sunseeker II set an altitude record when it became the first manned solar-powered aircraft to reach 20,387 feet. Days before, Mr Raymond had braved a snowstorm to become the first person to fly over the Alps powered by the sun.
Sunseeker is an ultra-light sailplane with an electric motor that uses a combination of solar and battery power to take-off and climb to around 2,000 meters. Then the plane can recharge its batteries while gliding.
Sunseeker III – a two-person craft – is already in testing and Mr Raymond aims to fly the plane to Japan in the next two years.
He has identified two potential manufacturers – one in his adopted home country of Slovenia and another in China – and is confident that his dream of commercialization will be reality within the next 10 years. "Someday soon most transportation will be electrically powered," says Mr. Raymond.
Aeroscraft inventor: Igor Pasternak
.■Invention:Cargo-bearing airship
■Inventor: Igor Pasternak
■Age:45
■Based:Los Angeles
The logistics of cargo transportation in the modern, globalized economy are almost impossibly complicated. Moving goods from one country to another often involves several forms of transport travelling through a variety of different infrastructure hubs.
Igor Pasternak, a civil engineer from the Ukraine who emigrated to the U.S. in 1993, believes he has a solution to float – literally – above this supply chain chaos, collecting goods where they are produced and delivering them straight to the point of sale.
This is the promise held by an airship called the Aeroscraft. It is still a prototype and not yet ready for commercial use.
The Aeroscraft cargo-bearing airship could float above supply chain chaos.
.But Mr Pasternak – whose company has produced 30 airships and blimps, ranging from military observation vehicles to leisure craft and advertising aerostats since he moved to the U.S. – believes that his design will "change the way business is done – much like the internet revolutionized the way information is exchanged".
The Aeroscraft is no ordinary blimp. It is heavier than air, has a rigid hull and variable buoyancy, which means it doesn't need to replace unloaded cargo with ballast. It can take off and land vertically and therefore doesn't need a runway: It could, according to Mr. Pasternak, collect strawberries in a field in California and deliver them straight to supermarkets in Tokyo.
"With the Aeroscraft you are not restricted by the limitations of logistics because you can move large quantities of goods from A to B at significantly lower cost in one vehicle," says Mr. Pasternak. "In a way the airship becomes a kind of a warehouse, because you can already start to sort the cargo in-flight."
■Invention:Collapsible plastic shipping containers
■Invention: René Giesbers
■Age:47
■Based:Rotterdam, Netherlands
For years René Giesbers watched the shipping containers being trucked in and out of his home city of Rotterdam, the biggest port in Europe. But it was only in 2008 that the heating engineer started questioning the level of pollution generated by the harbor's 24-hour operations.
Mr. Giesbers says: "I woke up one night, thinking about all the empty containers in the harbor standing around doing nothing. The last big innovation in shipping goods came with the invention of the steel container in the 1950s. I thought: 'Why can't they be made from plastic?'"
The Cargoshell shipping container can be folded when empty
.The result of that sleepless night is Cargoshell, a container made from plastic composite that can fold down to a quarter of its original size and is over 18% lighter than a standard 2,200-kilogram steel container.
Unlike metal containers, whose steel interferes with radio signals, the Cargoshell incorporates a GPS systems so the unit can be tracked.
Although his invention is not yet in production, Mr Giesbers is enthusiastic about the green credentials of his prototype.
He claims that manufacture of the Cargoshell generates 75% fewer emissions than the steel version, while its lightness reduces the fuel consumption of the trucks that transport it. And because the Cargoshell can be folded, it takes up less space when transported empty reducing the amount of shipping traffic and its resultant pollution.
At $4,000 per unit, production cost is double that of the steel version. But Mr Giesbers believes energy savings and reduced transport costs will make up the difference.
■Invention:Motorcycle crash helmet
■Inventor: Ken Phillips
■Age:82
■Based:London
Motorcycle helmets are very good at protecting heads against direct impact. The trouble is, the vast majority of crashes result in tangential rather than direct impact as the helmet glances obliquely off the road or another vehicle.
Dr. Ken Phillips, a family doctor turned consultant psychotherapist, became an inventor after being asked by his son, a motorcycle journalist, whether there was a way of reducing brain damage caused by this kind of rotational impact.
"The 'eureka' moment was when I realized that the head is very well protected because the scalp prevents rotation by sliding over the skull on impact," he says. "The obvious question was: 'Is it possible to put a scalp on a helmet?'"
Dr. Phillips asked the Transport Research Laboratory, a U.K. consultancy, to conduct a drop test with a helmet sheathed in foam and covered with lubricant.
The results were so encouraging that Dr. Phillips has spent the last 16 years, and plenty of his own and private investors' money, experimenting with specialized plastics, lubricants and paint.
The resulting helmet – the Phillips Head Protection System – reduces rotation of the head on impact by 60%, according to Dr. Phillips.
■Invention:DynaMIT, a real-time traffic management simulator
■Inventor: Moshe Ben-Akiva
■Age:65
■Based:Cambridge, Massachusetts
Traffic may be second only to the weather in the fascination it engenders in humans.
But unlike the weather, traffic is not something that happens to us but something we affect – by the volume of cars we put on the road and through the decisions we make when driving like the reactions we have to queues.
Moshe Ben-Akiva, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been working on DynaMIT, a computer system that analyses the way drivers behave, since the mid-1990s.
The new software uses information captured using video cameras, road sensors and police and driver reports, to predict future traffic flow.
There are plenty of other traffic systems in use already but all draw on statistical – as opposed to DynaMIT's behavioral – data to predict traffic conditions. Prof. Ben-Akiva says: "Ours is a very complicated behavioral model. Nobody else has been crazy enough to attempt something similar.
"DynaMIT can highlight the consequences of an incident caused by unusual occurrences such as accidents and lane closures, how it can be cleared faster and what the desirable diversions are."
The system is still in the research phase and is not yet commercially available. However, it is being tested on a stretch of road leading into Lisbon that is plagued with rush-hour traffic jams as well as Los Angeles, Beijing and Singapore.
Esther Spaarwater is a writer based in London. She can be reached at reports@wsj.com
Sunseeker II was the first solar powered plane to fly over the Alps
.From James Starley's penny-farthing bicycle to Sir Frank Whittle's jet engine – the challenge of getting from A to B as quickly, safely and cheaply as possible has exercised some of mankind's most inventive minds.
Whether they are eking out a few extra horsepower, or developing safer equipment; creating green alternative technologies, or more energy-efficient adaptations of older ideas; working on vehicles, or infrastructure and logistics, there are now more transport inventors filing more patents than ever before.
■Invention:Solar-powered aircraft
■Inventor: Eric Raymond
■Age:53
■Based:Radovljica, Slovenia
Eric Raymond, Sunseeker's inventor
.From hang gliders to solar-powered planes, Eric Raymond has spent most of the past 30 years either in the air or designing the means to get back up there.
In the 1980s, the American, who studied aeronautical engineering and photography, was asked to fly a pedal-powered racing plane designed by German inventor Gunther Rochelt. "The revelation that a fast, streamlined aircraft could be built with incredibly low weight, if the correct materials and engineering were used, gave me the idea to build one with solar panels for power," says Mr Raymond.
His first plane, called Sunseeker, took to the skies in 1989, crossing the U.S. the following year. In April 2009, Sunseeker II set an altitude record when it became the first manned solar-powered aircraft to reach 20,387 feet. Days before, Mr Raymond had braved a snowstorm to become the first person to fly over the Alps powered by the sun.
Sunseeker is an ultra-light sailplane with an electric motor that uses a combination of solar and battery power to take-off and climb to around 2,000 meters. Then the plane can recharge its batteries while gliding.
Sunseeker III – a two-person craft – is already in testing and Mr Raymond aims to fly the plane to Japan in the next two years.
He has identified two potential manufacturers – one in his adopted home country of Slovenia and another in China – and is confident that his dream of commercialization will be reality within the next 10 years. "Someday soon most transportation will be electrically powered," says Mr. Raymond.
Aeroscraft inventor: Igor Pasternak
.■Invention:Cargo-bearing airship
■Inventor: Igor Pasternak
■Age:45
■Based:Los Angeles
The logistics of cargo transportation in the modern, globalized economy are almost impossibly complicated. Moving goods from one country to another often involves several forms of transport travelling through a variety of different infrastructure hubs.
Igor Pasternak, a civil engineer from the Ukraine who emigrated to the U.S. in 1993, believes he has a solution to float – literally – above this supply chain chaos, collecting goods where they are produced and delivering them straight to the point of sale.
This is the promise held by an airship called the Aeroscraft. It is still a prototype and not yet ready for commercial use.
The Aeroscraft cargo-bearing airship could float above supply chain chaos.
.But Mr Pasternak – whose company has produced 30 airships and blimps, ranging from military observation vehicles to leisure craft and advertising aerostats since he moved to the U.S. – believes that his design will "change the way business is done – much like the internet revolutionized the way information is exchanged".
The Aeroscraft is no ordinary blimp. It is heavier than air, has a rigid hull and variable buoyancy, which means it doesn't need to replace unloaded cargo with ballast. It can take off and land vertically and therefore doesn't need a runway: It could, according to Mr. Pasternak, collect strawberries in a field in California and deliver them straight to supermarkets in Tokyo.
"With the Aeroscraft you are not restricted by the limitations of logistics because you can move large quantities of goods from A to B at significantly lower cost in one vehicle," says Mr. Pasternak. "In a way the airship becomes a kind of a warehouse, because you can already start to sort the cargo in-flight."
■Invention:Collapsible plastic shipping containers
■Invention: René Giesbers
■Age:47
■Based:Rotterdam, Netherlands
For years René Giesbers watched the shipping containers being trucked in and out of his home city of Rotterdam, the biggest port in Europe. But it was only in 2008 that the heating engineer started questioning the level of pollution generated by the harbor's 24-hour operations.
Mr. Giesbers says: "I woke up one night, thinking about all the empty containers in the harbor standing around doing nothing. The last big innovation in shipping goods came with the invention of the steel container in the 1950s. I thought: 'Why can't they be made from plastic?'"
The Cargoshell shipping container can be folded when empty
.The result of that sleepless night is Cargoshell, a container made from plastic composite that can fold down to a quarter of its original size and is over 18% lighter than a standard 2,200-kilogram steel container.
Unlike metal containers, whose steel interferes with radio signals, the Cargoshell incorporates a GPS systems so the unit can be tracked.
Although his invention is not yet in production, Mr Giesbers is enthusiastic about the green credentials of his prototype.
He claims that manufacture of the Cargoshell generates 75% fewer emissions than the steel version, while its lightness reduces the fuel consumption of the trucks that transport it. And because the Cargoshell can be folded, it takes up less space when transported empty reducing the amount of shipping traffic and its resultant pollution.
At $4,000 per unit, production cost is double that of the steel version. But Mr Giesbers believes energy savings and reduced transport costs will make up the difference.
■Invention:Motorcycle crash helmet
■Inventor: Ken Phillips
■Age:82
■Based:London
Motorcycle helmets are very good at protecting heads against direct impact. The trouble is, the vast majority of crashes result in tangential rather than direct impact as the helmet glances obliquely off the road or another vehicle.
Dr. Ken Phillips, a family doctor turned consultant psychotherapist, became an inventor after being asked by his son, a motorcycle journalist, whether there was a way of reducing brain damage caused by this kind of rotational impact.
"The 'eureka' moment was when I realized that the head is very well protected because the scalp prevents rotation by sliding over the skull on impact," he says. "The obvious question was: 'Is it possible to put a scalp on a helmet?'"
Dr. Phillips asked the Transport Research Laboratory, a U.K. consultancy, to conduct a drop test with a helmet sheathed in foam and covered with lubricant.
The results were so encouraging that Dr. Phillips has spent the last 16 years, and plenty of his own and private investors' money, experimenting with specialized plastics, lubricants and paint.
The resulting helmet – the Phillips Head Protection System – reduces rotation of the head on impact by 60%, according to Dr. Phillips.
■Invention:DynaMIT, a real-time traffic management simulator
■Inventor: Moshe Ben-Akiva
■Age:65
■Based:Cambridge, Massachusetts
Traffic may be second only to the weather in the fascination it engenders in humans.
But unlike the weather, traffic is not something that happens to us but something we affect – by the volume of cars we put on the road and through the decisions we make when driving like the reactions we have to queues.
Moshe Ben-Akiva, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been working on DynaMIT, a computer system that analyses the way drivers behave, since the mid-1990s.
The new software uses information captured using video cameras, road sensors and police and driver reports, to predict future traffic flow.
There are plenty of other traffic systems in use already but all draw on statistical – as opposed to DynaMIT's behavioral – data to predict traffic conditions. Prof. Ben-Akiva says: "Ours is a very complicated behavioral model. Nobody else has been crazy enough to attempt something similar.
"DynaMIT can highlight the consequences of an incident caused by unusual occurrences such as accidents and lane closures, how it can be cleared faster and what the desirable diversions are."
The system is still in the research phase and is not yet commercially available. However, it is being tested on a stretch of road leading into Lisbon that is plagued with rush-hour traffic jams as well as Los Angeles, Beijing and Singapore.
Esther Spaarwater is a writer based in London. She can be reached at reports@wsj.com
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