Zap-Map, a UK – based multi-platform map showing charging points for electric vehicles (EV), has launched 2 new peer–to–peer charging networks. Zap-Home allows people who own an EV charge point to share their charge point with other EV users, possibly for a fee, which the owner determines. Similarly, Zap-Work is targeted at businesses with charging points who can choose to share […]
This week’s Big Issue (issue 1303) has an interesting piece entitled ‘Vertical farms won’t save us…yet’. While several small-scale vertical farms are achieving modest success, larger scale production is still proving difficult despite significant technological advances in recent years. The problem for producers is the cost; set-up and production costs are high, but salad and vegetables are […]
Emma Cassar is currently attending the Transport Research Arena Conference in Vienna which is being co-organised by the European Commission. SILCI is funded by the European Research Council and was invited to present at the event. Emma gave a short talk on Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) as one of the potential disruptive low carbon innovations being covered […]
Residents of Dallas, Dubai and Los Angeles are to possibly experience Ubers first flying taxi service in 2020. Uber Elevate uses vertical takeoff and landing aircraft and is said to already started evaluating the barriers to overcome and make this a reality. Preparing for the arrival of air taxis is developer Dan Kodsi in Miami at Paramount Miami Worldcenter. The developer is modifying the rooftop’s […]
Charlie Wilson participated via tele-robot in the X-CAC workshop taking place in Stockholm on Exponential Climate Action for Cities. Sitting with a cup of tea in his kitchen, Charlie logged in via the internet to listen, see, talk, interact and move around at the workshop using the tele-robot controls. The experience was fascinating, particularly as […]
This interesting article in Fresh Produce Journal discusses the current situation regarding food waste in the UK. Despite a lot of media and public attention to this issue in recent years, the UK still only rescues less than 10% of its surplus food. A lot of food is sent to anaerobic digesters to produce energy, which is of course better than sending it to landfill. However, food […]
Smart ride by Citymapper and Chariot by Ford are ride hailing services currently running in London. This article discusses how private companies such as Uber and Citymapper are challenging or taking over mass transit. The Transport sector is moving towards public private partnerships and mobility as a service is one of them. To convince people to give up their cars […]
3.5 million people in the UK now eat a plant-based diet, according to a poll by Professor Carolyn Roberts and comparethemarket.com. This is around 7% of the population, which is a surprisingly high proportion and a significant increase in numbers compared to research conducted by The Vegan Society in 2016. The desire to combat climate change appears to be an important motivation in changing consumer behaviour.
Can you imagine buying your electricity directly from the neighbour using their solar PV panels? Or from the local farmer with wind turbines in their fields? The Dutch start–up Vandebron (meaning ‘from the source’) enables consumers to do just that. By paying a monthly fee to Vandebron, the 100,000 current consumers can view the profiles of local renewable electricity producers with excess capacity and […]