25 minute read
Green Technology 8
Forty per cent of carbon is generated by our buildings, meaning that innovation in technology holds unique potential to drive down carbon dependence in this area. Thankfully, these technologies already exist, but we need to implement them in the right ways to get the most out of our buildings.
Where are we now?
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Businesses across the UK are implementing smart solutions, just not at the pace required to see real change. Our recent research shows that only 34% of UK buildings are fitted with smart technology yet, when asked how important this technology is to performing their role, almost every respondent (99%) saw its value. When looking at these figures, the disconnect between awareness and action becomes clear.
When the pandemic disrupted the world of work, the focus for smart tech turned to health and safety. Businesses across the country implemented point solutions such as thermal cameras, contactless access controls, air purification systems and remote management into buildings to make it safe for employees to return to work. At the time, it was what we needed for our buildings. But as sustainability and efficiency conversations continue to take precedence; a new era is on the horizon. It may seem like a daunting goal, but in fact it isn’t. Businesses can meet net zero targets while remaining on track with employee safety and comfort. But this lies in holistically bringing smart solutions together and ceasing to rely on siloed approaches.
Tomorrow’s smart building
If we get the technology right in our buildings now, we can transform the way we use them in the years to come. But first we need to move away from solutions and concentrate on our desired outcomes. This means changing the way we operate: our buildings need to deliver ROIs and achieve net zero carbon and energy efficiency targets, all while ensuring occupant comfort and safety throughout. The smart building of the future will need to tick all these boxes.
The challenge is that we need to manage the combination of operating tech, bringing together multiple data sources and different systems to drive value. Digital twins, for example, can turn the physical world into computable objects. Computable objects provide a consistent way for software to manage and represent entities from the physical world. These can then be used to predict the future state of physical objects, and to simulate or test future processes. If a product is having any issues, or is nearing the end of its lifecycle, a digital twin can notify and send out an engineer with the right part to fix it first time. The building can remain energy-efficient while bringing down costs to the business.
The future is automated
With new technologies such as digital twins, IoT, ML, AI and Automation, smart buildings can operate without much human interference at all. Building management systems can maintain and optimise buildings on their own, and only need human intervention when they are notified. Businesses now have the opportunity to create an environment that’s sustainable, efficient, and healthy. Covid-19 has woken us up to the issues of our health, and the climate crisis can no longer be ignored. If we create truly smart buildings, we’ll be in good stead to achieve the goals of shareholders, employees, customers, and regulators for the future.
JAMIE CAMERON
Director of Digital Solutions Johnson Controls UK&I
johnsoncontrols.com/en_gb
A TLAD in a Nepal village showing (A) cow dung and food waste inlet, (B) toilet (C) animal holding and digester, and (D) underground digester dome.
THE LOO TABOO: STUDY EXPLORES UPTAKE OF CONTROVERSIAL TECHNOLOGIES
Researchers have provided an important insight into the cultural taboo surrounding an innovative ‘green’ technology that enables users to transform their domestic toilet waste into biogas.
The team at the University of Stirling believe that their findings will help decision-makers understand and overcome the barriers preventing uptake of new technologies designed to reduce impact on the natural environment. One pioneering process enables home toilets to be connected to an anaerobic digester – airless units in which bacteria breaks down organic matter – which converts the waste into biogas for use as a clean cooking fuel, and fertiliser to improve soils. However, despite its efficiency, recycling human waste in this way is uncommon because most cultures consider it unsavoury. Multidisciplinary researchers from Stirling conducted in-depth interviews in Nepal, where uptake of toilet-linked anaerobic digesters (TLAD)
is high, to understand how people overcame their cultural aversion. Those who adopted TLAD improved their home sanitation, indoor air quality and use of resources, the study found. Natalie Boyd Williams, a PhD researcher in the division of Biological and Environmental Sciences, said: “I believe we have all the technology and the means to solve the world’s problems, but whether we are using it or not often depends on social factors.
“Particularly in the West, decision-makers often make assumptions about what people will or won’t accept – meaning that they don’t properly explore how certain technologies can be adopted. There has been community resistance to wind farms and biogas plants, for example, that has been dismissed and overlooked by developers, when engagement with these communities can in fact lead to acceptance. “We wanted to challenge the assumption by exploring how an initially unacceptable technology – in this case, toilet-linked anaerobic digesters in Nepal – can become widely adopted. This is understood in Nepal but less so outside it.”
The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with rural householders about how they overcame their cultural and religious objections around purity and pollution. Ms Boyd Williams said: “We found that uptake was high where there was one risk taker who led the way. For example, in one village, one former policeman, who said he didn’t care what people thought, adopted the unit – and within a year most of the villagers had their own. “This also happened because people could go into his house to see how it worked. Demonstration was another important pathway to adoption, so people could see and understand how it functioned.
“Being able to see and understand the benefits was also very important. People were worried it would make their home smell, or be unhygienic, but they were able to see that wasn’t the case. The benefits began to outweigh their opposition.” Explaining the benefits of uptake of TLAD, she continued: “Biogas is a clean cooking fuel compared to traditional wood fuel, which blackens utensils and causes indoor air pollution and related illnesses. Liquefied petroleum gas, another common fuel, relies on fossil fuels. The closed, circular system of TLAD improved sanitation and provided fertiliser for crops. “Lastly, adoption can take time – some had to wait for the older generation to die to adopt it. Policymakers and organisations should be prepared to demonstrate the technology, show the benefits, and be prepared for people taking time to get used to new technologies that they find challenging.” In the UK, sewage and food waste is converted into biogas and agricultural fertiliser using anaerobic digestion on an industrial scale – but smaller scale biogas units remain futuristic, despite their potential contribution to the circular economy. “I’ve seen potential plans for blocks of flats that have underground shared biogas units,” said Ms Boyd Williams. “And smaller scale biogas units could be used locally across the UK, for instance for community energy projects, like those which the UK government had greater support for in the past. But, at the moment, there are policy barriers to digesters here. “In the Global South, governments are looking at domestic digester units because they offer good sanitation and indoor air pollution reduction opportunities. If we, in the West, are serious about developing the circular economy, and adopting sustainable technologies, we need to understand what matters to people, how they interpret messages about science, and how and why they change their views and behaviour.” The research was carried out with Durham University as part of an IAPETUS Doctoral Training Partnership, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. The paper ‘Taboos, toilets
and biogas: Socio-technical pathways to acceptance of a sustainable household
technology’ is published in Energy Research and Social Science.
Further research will compare TLAD adoption in Nepal and India, and acceptance of and resistance to products made from sewage in the UK.
NATALIE BOYD WILLIAMS
Member of Research Team University of Stirling
stir.ac.uk
ADDRESSING THE DATA CENTRE ENERGY DRAIN
In our digitalised world, technologies like data centres are essential. However, they also take centre-stage in energy consumption. Matthew Margetts, of Smarter Technologies, examines how companies can reduce the drain on resources while retaining crucial data.
Inside vast factories bigger than aircraft carriers, tens of thousands of circuit boards are racked row upon row. They stretch down windowless halls so long that staff ride through the corridors on scooters. In an increasingly digitalised world, data centres are the information backbone, with demand continuing to grow along with dataintensive technologies. Estimated to account for as much as 1% of worldwide electricity use, data centres are energy-intensive enterprises.
In Ireland, data centres could account for about 25% of the country’s electricity usage by 2030, potentially leading to electricity supply challenges. Fearing the pressure data centres place on the national grid, countries such as the Netherlands and Singapore have gone so far as to stop issuing building permits to data centres.
Why do data centres require so much energy?
To provide constant power supply with minimum disruptions
Electricity used by IT devices such as servers, storage drives and network devices is converted into heat, which must be removed from the data centre by cooling equipment that also runs on electricity
Facilities must be kept at the appropriate temperature
Additional equipment such as humidifiers and monitors are also required The energy impact of data centres is undeniable, but so is the need for these facilities to handle the world’s ever-increasing data demands. What can’t be ignored is the energy efficiency trends that have developed in parallel. The IEA reports that although workloads and internet traffic have nearly tripled, data centre energy consumption has flatlined for the past three years.
Here’s what can be done to improve data centre energy efficiency and sustainability:
High-efficiency equipment The use of server virtualisation and ARMbased processors can help reduce the energy consumption of IT devices. This new technology is designed to perform fewer types of computer instructions, allowing them to operate at a higher speed and resulting in better performance at a fraction of the power. The servers of today are more powerful and efficient than ever before, and the technology continues to improve. Renewable energy One of the best ways to match the rise in ICT workload energy is to ensure a corresponding increase in the usage of renewable energy sources. By moving part of their high-intensity computing hardware to alternative locations using renewable energy, companies can benefit from a more sustainable energy source while taking energy off the national grid. A location like Iceland boasts reliable, low-cost renewable energy.
By moving part of their high-intensity computing hardware to alternative locations using renewable energy, companies can benefit from a more sustainable energy source while taking energy off the national grid. A location like Iceland boasts reliable, low-cost renewable energy. Big data centre operators such as Google are establishing solar generation plants to offset their data centre usage on the grid, using small panels coupled with battery storage to reduce non-critical functions such as engine heaters, office airconditioning, fuel polishing and lighting. Intelligent power distribution management The key to better energy efficiency in data centres is managing power load and distribution. For example, reducing the number of servers needed during low traffic hours. Rather than leaving all servers idle, some servers can be turned off when not needed while others run at full throttle. Matching the server capacity to real-time demands is made possible through smart monitoring and management tools. It’s also important to remove “zombie servers”, which are servers that have become redundant and are no longer in use, yet are still powered on and consuming energy. Research shows that 25% of physical servers are zombies, along with 30% of virtual servers. In general, these servers haven’t been shut down because operators don’t know what they contain or what they are used for. To deal with this problem proactively, every server and function must be documented and monitored appropriately using asset management software.
Optimised cooling
In conventional data centres, standard air conditioning uses a significant proportion of the centre’s energy bill. All IT equipment must remain at safe temperatures, which is why proper ventilation and cooling is so important. Measures managers can take to optimise cooling include the following:
Proper insulation can help maintain temperatures within the room.
Strategic equipment layout and streamlined airflow can also improve cooling efficiencies.
A popular solution is to locate data centres in cool climates and use the outside air to cool the inside. This is known as “free cooling”.
Piped water is a good conductor of heat. Warm water can be used as a less energy-intensive way to cool data centres.
Cleaning up workloads and eliminating unnecessary equipment.
Replace older cooling systems with new technology to improve efficiencies. Machine learning and automation in data centres can also be used to optimise cooling system setpoints for variable outside conditions, which provides a number of marginal energy gains.
Heat transfer technology
Using the heat coming off the servers is like taking advantage of a free resource. For example, an IBM data centre in Switzerland warms a nearby swimming pool with its waste heat.
However, because heat doesn’t travel well, the use of waste heat is generally limited to data centres that can supply nearby customers or cities that already use piped hot water to heat homes.
Energy offsets
The information age is making buildings smarter and more energy efficient. With fairly simple automations such as occupancy sensors that turn off lights and HVAC when no one is in a room, along with informed decision-making as a result of access to real-time utility consumption data, building managers can use smart technology and building management systems to reduce their carbon footprints. This infrastructure is facilitated by data centres, so one could argue that some of the energy being used by data centres is offset by the lower consumption of the smart buildings they service.
Policy making and planning
Decision-makers need to be able to confidently and accurately evaluate future efficiency and mitigation options. Policymakers and energy planners need to be able to:
Monitor future data centre energy use trends
Understand key energy use drivers
Assess the effectiveness of various policy interventions
In order to do this, data analysts need access to reliable data sources on the energy consumption characteristics of IT devices and cooling/power systems.
Smart metering technology is just the start—along with the data from smart meters, energy managers need a platform with data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in order to make the most of the data they are presented with.
Data centre operations require a safe, efficient and dependable power supply. There’s no doubt that sustainability is going to be the overriding trend that will remain front and centre within the data centre industry for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, the very same smart technology that is necessitating the growth of data centres is also helping to make them more energy efficient and future-fit.
MATTHEW MARGETTS
Director of Sales and Marketing Smarter Technologies Group
smartertechnologies.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matthew Margetts is Director of Sales and Marketing at Smarter Technologies. His background includes working for blue-chip companies such as AppNexus, AOL/ Verizon, and Microsoft in the UK, Far East and Australia.
Wyre Forest District Council and Worcestershire technology accelerator BetaDen have launched an industry-first Cleantech bootcamp to help businesses develop and commercialise solutions to some of the biggest environmental challenges facing industries around the world.
BetaDen North Cleantech Bootcamp is funded by the UK Government through the UK Community Renewal Fund and will see leading figures from the Cleantech world bringing their expertise to Worcestershire, helping Cleantech entrepreneurs and established businesses alike develop the technologies required to lead industry supply chains to a Net Zero future.
The programme, which is delivered by Carbon Limiting Technologies (CLT), brings to life the real issues and opportunities for businesses arising out of the push towards Net Zero. The significance was brought even more sharply into focus at COP26, where over 40 governments signed up to ‘the Glasgow Breakthroughs’ - a series of commitments to speed up the development of clean technologies to help achieve key climate targets by 2030. Ostap Paparega, head of North Worcestershire Economic Development and Regeneration, said: “BetaDen North Cleantech Bootcamp is a fantastic opportunity for start-up, scale-up and established businesses to access specialist support to develop their Cleantech ideas.
“Promoting low- and zero-carbon technologies is a key part of the county’s industrial strategy and we have a wealth of innovative companies here that have the potential to make a real difference.”
The pilot programme will begin on 24 February with a series of four workshops, delivered by some of the industry’s leading lights and illustrating issues and challenges facing business as well as highlighting significant opportunities for Cleantech innovators. Eight companies will then be chosen to join a specialist Cleantech bootcamp, with participants receiving professional mentoring, commercialisation support and access to marketing funds to develop their ideas, before taking part in Dragon’s Den-style pitch to potential customers, partners and investors. Linda Smith, founder and CEO of technology accelerator BetaDen, said: “The BetaDen North Cleantech Bootcamp is a pioneering programme that paves the way for a nationally significant Centre of Excellence for carbon reducing technologies to develop in the region. “Participants will have access to advice and support from innovators who have truly been there and done it in this emerging field, helping them shape their ideas to provide real world solutions for real world problems.” Companies and individuals interesting in joining the programme should register their interest at betaden-north.co.uk.Workshops will take place at Wyre Forest House in Worcestershire from 24 February, with applications for the bootcamp programme closing on 25 March. The bootcamp runs for eight weeks from 25 April, culminating in a live pitch event in June.
BETADEN
betaden-north.co.uk
MAKE YOUR “GREEN” BUSINESS MORE FINANCIALLY SUSTAINABLE IN 2022 BY TALKING TO AN EXPERT ABOUT AN R&D TAX CREDITS CLAIM?
At Cooden – R&D Tax Specialists, we were in somewhat celebratory mood as 2021 drew to a close. On 16 December we received the last payout of the year into our client account, it was for one of our newly acquired clients in 2021, a specialist veterinary care business based in Wales. This claim was momentous for Cooden as it saw our clients’ Research and Development tax savings top £5 million in a calendar year for the first time.
2021 has been a year of steady growth with a number of new significant businesses becoming clients. We’ve even taken on a Blue Chip Cyber Security business, with a number of claims for their UK-based entities. Our goal was to obtain 4 new clients who would have claims of over £75k, in the end we took on 6.
We don’t have a vast number of businesses in the green/sustainability space, which I suppose is one of the reasons we are writing these articles for the Green Business Journal. Our leader in the space has to be Tensei, they are in the process of developing high quality papers from straw. Another business with Green credentials at its heart are a Vegan Cheese company we’ve been working with in Kent, we’re on the verge of completing their first two years’ of claims. We’ve also just been engaged by a company developing Vegan Burgers and Sausages for high end restaurants, we haven’t started on their claim yet, but this could be a very interesting one.
Actually, the more I look through our client list, the more businesses I seem to find. There’s the feminine hygiene brand that are working on reusable products, organic cotton-based products and developing alternatives to plastic applicators at the same time as offering a subscription based model that is as flexible as the feminine body. Then there is the Electric Trials bike company, OSET Bikes who have been designing and developing a range of Electric Trials Bikes for the last 15 years and have recently finished a Knowledge Transfer partnership with the University of Brighton, home of Clean Growth UK, one of the leading bodies for sustainability in the UK. Finally there is the engineering business looking to harness the power of the sun to power our railways, they’ve been involved in a number of funded projects from both Innovate UK and the Rail Safety and Standards Board.
At the end of it. they are all just our clients, I reckon if I spent another 20 minutes going through everyone on our client list, there would probably be another 2 or 3 that would definitely be described as “Sustainable” or “Green”. Ooh, yes, there’s the International Hop Processing business that were experimenting with the fines from processed hops as a beer stabilizer rather than using fish products, but they also have a patent for a product that is used by some beer manufacturers to prevent excess foam formation during fermentation on that was manufactured from a waste product from another part of hop processing.
COODEN TAX CONSULTING
coodentaxconsulting.co.uk You might think, I ‘ve done this deliberately, but I swear, the more I looked, the more I found, because we didn’t necessarily class them as “green” or “sustainable”, but they are all undertaking projects that have an element of this to them. It’s funny how the mind plays tricks on you. It can be the same for you as a business owner when you are considering whether you have been performing research and development within your company. The default answer tends to be, it’s not research and development, we are just doing what we have always done, solved problems, overcome some technical issues with a new product or a product update, engineered out a design flaw in one of our established products, looked to fundamentally redesign the manufacturing process so that we generate less waste. It’s just what we do. We’ve never filed an R&D Tax Relief Claim, because we don’t think that we are performing any R&D and no one has really told us any different and challenged our way of thinking. Well, if you always do what you have always done, don’t be surprised if you keep getting the same results. Stop! Take some time, consider what you have been doing, ask yourself: • Could anyone else have done this without spending a lot of time and effort doing it? • Would someone like to steal it or copy it? • Would someone have paid us a lot of money for you to do it for them? • Did we go through a lot of heart ache trying to get to the end of this? • Have we suffered a scientific or technological failure that has prevented us from completing the project? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ve probably been doing some R&D and it might be worth getting in touch, just like all of our new clients in 2021 who have discovered that claiming for R&D Tax Relief wasn’t quite so taxing as they might have thought and ultimately for many of them was very rewarding, so why not see if you have the same feelings at the end of your journey.
It would appear as though our stress-free service offering has gone down very well with our customers. It consists of a no-obligation discovery session to determine your eligibility prior to starting the claim; a low-hassle data collection process for both the financial element and the technical element of claims; and the use of our client account to receive funds and for visibility to chase HMRC when they haven’t been forthcoming. So, there really are few reasons left for you not to at least have an initial discussion with our Director, Simon Bulteel, but just in case you have any others: If you are worried that it might not be worth it, our average claim value was just under £75,000; If you are worried that we can’t handle large claims, our largest claim was for We’ve never filed an just under £700,000 R&D Tax Relief Claim, for a scaling up Cyber-Security because we don’t think business and our next largest claim that we are performing was over £575,000 for a technology any R&D and no one company delivering banking solutions for has really told us any Instant Payments. different and challenged If you are worried, you’ll be wasting our way of thinking. Well, our time, you won’t, if you always do what you our smallest claim was for just under have always done, don’t £1,500 for a start-up skincare business. be surprised if you keep If you are worried getting the same results. that HMRC are going to punish you for making a claim, we’ve had one enquiry in 2021 into a Patent Box claim, where HMRC couldn’t find a patent in the name of the company. There really are no reasons left to stop you. We are here to guide you, just like we have over a 150 businesses before you, to a successful and rewarding R&D Tax Credits claim. With new changes coming in 2023, there has never been a better time to start claiming for your new product developments or improvements and with the ability to claim for two prior years, you could see a significant boost to your 2022 cashflow. You can book your no-obligation discovery session at a time that suits you by visiting https://calendly.com/
simon-bulteel/discovery-gbj
OXWASH: PUTTING A GREEN SPIN ON LAUNDRY
An Oxford eco-cleaning company is putting the traditional laundry industry in a spin.
Using space-age technology, green tech start-up Oxwash has set its sights on decarbonising the toxic washing and dry cleaning sector. The Oxford-based firm also cleaned up in a June 2021 funding round, raising £2.08 million in seed expansion investment. Total investment to date has reached over £5 million.
Oxwash was founded in 2018 by ex-NASA scientist and Forbes’ Europe’s 30 under 30 alumni, Dr Kyle Grant, and Oxford engineer Tom de Wilton. Kyle was still at Oxford University, finishing his Synthetic Biology PhD, when he and Tom launched a cleaning service for students, having been frustrated with constant washing machine breakdowns on campus.
Together, the pair re-engineered the cleaning process using technology more typically seen in space and hospital sterilisation, before setting up washing facilities (known as lagoons) in London, Oxford and Cambridge. The UK’s industrial laundry sector currently processes over 743,000 tonnes of laundry every year, and the nation’s households use a collective 360 billion litres of water (equivalent to Lake Windermere’s volume) just by sticking a wash on at home.
So it’s no surprise that Oxwash’s focus is on sustainability. Kyle explained: “Our team is not only developing chemistry that works at 20˚C better than at 40˚C or higher, but we have integrated water reclamation and reduction technology into our process that saves up to 60% of the water consumption versus you washing at home or any other typical commercial washing service.”
An Oxwash lagoon.
Their cleaning process uses ozone (generated by renewable electricity) and biodegradable disinfectants to sterilise fabrics at lower temperatures, achieving higher than medicalgrade disinfection. Cold water is used during wash cycles to cut down on energy bills, while water from a rinse cycle is put into the next wash cycle, saving up to 60% in traditional consumption. Heavily stained clothes are blasted with compressed air and water, negating the need for heavy chemicals, and micro-plastics and fibres are filtered, capturing 95% of shed materials before they disappear down the drain as pollutants.
The team also use dissolvable laundry bags, and electric cargo bikes for ‘hyper local’ pickups and deliveries. Oxwash’s responsible business model – online bookings, collection, washing and drop-off – has proved so successful that growth has been 15% month on month since “We’re confident that the start of the pandemic. And their on-demand Oxwash can clean up service offering is attracting eco-conscious and deliver substantial investors such as Twitter returns.” co-founder Biz Stone, and angel investors like Magnus Rausing of Tetra Park and Kal Patel, exCEO of Best Buy. Speaking after a crowdfunder last winter raised £500,000 in 15 hours, Dr Grant said he was totally blown away by the level of interest. “Our goal was to build a wide network of shareholders
