Here is what we covered:
- We looked at the pros and cons of pico-hydro generation, see picture of the installation. Even with a flow of over 10 L/s it is difficult to extract much power without a significant head. At 3m head, this would theoretically generate ~300 W, but only 150 W once all the losses and inefficiencies are considered. Still a continuous 150 W is 3.6 kWh per day, worth a lot in winter when the sun isn’t shining as much.
Then there is the cost of purchasing equipment, plumbing, electrics and the groundworks needed. Even when labour and machinery is free, the payback period will almost always be longer than the expected life, especially at this low scale of generation. - As everyone awaits the new building regulations, there have been a number of comprehensive industry building standard announced in the past year, we discussed the one on embodied emissions at our last meeting. These attempt to standardise the methodology needed to calculate building performance and associated emissions. The pilot version of the UK Net-Zero building standard has been published, it is backed by key UK institutions.
In the meantime some pre-fabricated building suppliers are promoting BAU as an alternative to PassivHaus. We thought this was more a marketing ploy than a real alternative. If PassivHaus is too expensive/onerous a standard, then AECB still offers the best alternative for the UK. - Data for Devon’s territorial Carbon Budget and Footprint have been published. Unfortunately, this shows that our emissions up to 2022 have been higher than budgeted to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. This means we now need to reduce emissions even faster!
- We agreed to respond to the Transport consultation for Devon, if you are interested in helping out with this, please contact me.
- The use of ammonia as a fuel has been discussed a number of times. It is an obvious alternative to using green/white hydrogen as described in our Net Zero Technologies, especially for certain types of transport. Here is a link to data outlining the full lifecycle efficiencies expected for different applications.
- Is it true that “In the United States, conservative estimates suggest that healthcare pollution is responsible for a health burden similar to that caused by preventable medical errors”?
An interesting report which highlights the difficulties we face in making our lifestyles more sustainable. Although this report covered the US, the UK is probably not far behind on a per-capita basis.
While there are many types of pollution, as the report indicates, the one of particular interest to us is ghg emissions. On that basis the report estimates that the ‘health damage’ equates to ~405k Disability Adjusted life years (DALYs) which is comparable to the deaths from medical errors (~71k deaths). One death equates to ~DALYs.
Obviously tragic and preventable, in a population of 330 million the relative impact is small at 0.02%. The ghg emissions account for 10% of this pollution which represents 0.002% of the US healthcare’s impact on poor health outcomes.
Overall ghg emissions from healthcare are likely to be much higher as a percentage of total emissions in the US. In the UK the CFT includes all public sector ghg emissions, including our national healthcare. These are allocated per-capita and typically account for ~10% of total emissions. Private healthcare is not included in these figures as this varies significantly, so users have to enter their expenditure to calculate personal emissions for this. - There were a couple of submissions in relation to loss of a bus route and identifying unusually high electricity consumption in a public building. Hopefully we’ll pick this up in November’s meeting. Also some good news on secure cycle parking near transport hubs (the subject of a comment on the last meeting notes).
Written by Fuad
Energy group coordinatorfuad@actionclimateteignbridge.org