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 […]
An online survey of over 3,000 people living in Denmark reveals self-driving vehicles have most appeal to young, highly educated men living in cities. This study published in Transport Policy identifies a small cluster of people who are excited and fascinated about self-driving cars. For the full analysis and segmentation see the article here.
‘Cultured meat’ may be coming to a supermarket near you within the next few years! In an effort to de-couple meat production from its negative environmental impacts, a number of US companies are attempting to produce beef and chicken in bioreactors. If that isn’t sci-fi enough for you, the Dutch company ByFlow already has a 3D food printer on the market. But, as this BBC […]
The team of MaaSLab at UCL Energy Institute compiled a report for the Transport for London (TfL), providing insights about Londoner’s attitudes towards car-ownership, shared mobility services and Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). In conjunction to this, a seminar talk in March was given by Dr. Maria Kamargianni focusing on Londoner’s travel behaviour, attitudes and perception towards owning a car and participating in shared-mobility schemes. This talk can be watched here.
The World Resources Institute estimates that global food waste represents more greenhouse gas emissions than any country in the world except for China and the U.S.! This BBC article introduces four interesting U.K.-based projects which aim to reduce food waste. For instance, you can pick up last minute bargains from cafes or restaurants using the Too Good To Go app. This saves you money and avoids food going in the bin!
The Boston Consulting Group has examined whether car-sharing poses a disruptive threat to car manufacturers. They find that by 2021, over 35 million people worldwide will use shared vehicles for around 25 million hours of driving time. However, they don’t think there will be a big impact on new car sales as most sharers will […]
SILCI researcher Emma Cassar has recently wrote a newspaper article for the Sunday Times of Malta. The article was published on the 18th February 2018 and she writes about one of the innovative technologies in the transport sector, that is set to change the way we pay, plan and travel to our destination. These technologies are […]
A blog by SILCI researcher Mark Wilson, who recently attended the Oxford Real Farming Conference. He discusses some of the consumer-facing innovations that were presented at this year’s conference. Read the full blog here.
Peer–to–peer energy trading networks, across which people can trade self–produced renewable energy, are generating much excitement and have been described as ‘game–changers’ to incumbent energy markets. Among the numerous benefits for the so-called ‘prosumers’, actively trading energy in real time reduces the uncertainty associated with renewable energy generation and contributes to a sustainable balance of production and consumption […]
ACES stands for Autonomous, Connected, Electric and Shared. Autonomous and connected vehicles are to revolutionise the urban landscape while electric vehicles are helping to decarbonise the transport sector. Moreover, shared use mobility mechanisms can help establish a culture for using mobility resources on a demand basis. Having an ACES transport system provides a socially inclusive, environmentally friendly, safe, cost-effective, integrated and […]