CEP Newsletter

Nuclear gamechanger, ideas for councils and springs outperform batteries for storage

In this issue:

While power generation from nuclear fusion is making major research strides, a practical deployment is still some way off. Meanwhile, China is aiming to commission the world’s first thorium reactor next year. Thorium is more plentiful than uranium, is safer and less environmentally damaging. The process uses liquid salt or carbon dioxide instead of water for cooling and operates at normal air pressure. Norway has been running trials with the fuel for over 10 years and Copenhagen Atomic is now manufacturing reactors but the proposed Chinese plant will be the first commercial generator. If you’re not familiar with the potential for thorium based power, the link below will take you to a – rather informally presented but interesting – summary video from Thomas Jam Pedersen of Copenhagen Atomic.

thorium ball

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A new labelling system for investment funds went live this week in the UK in an effort to eliminate greenwashing. Asset managers who wish to market their funds as carrying sustainability credentials are no longer allowed to use self-styled claims or terminology but are required to categorise their funds under one of four labels: ‘Sustainability Focus’, ‘Sustainability Improvers’, ‘Sustainability Impact’ and ‘Sustainability Mixed Goals’. A minimum of 70% of the fund’s assets need to demonstrate actions supporting the selected label and statements and summaries supporting the label need to be third party verified. It will be interesting to see if the system works.

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This week saw closer alignment between the Taskforce on Nature Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) with the publication of a guidance document on mapping between TNFD’s Recommendations and GRI’s Biodiversity Standard. The document is intended to make compliant reporting easier and drive uptake of both protocols.

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The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has just published an interesting briefing note on local government actions to address social inequity through the use of clean energy or energy efficiency policies. While its analysis is, obviously, US centric, it also includes some interesting examples of actions such as community engagement programmes, accessible, low emissions transport and home electrification. Subsidised transport is the most employed initiative, although procurement policies are also widely used with over half the authorities looking at how they acquire products and services. There are several ideas that could be taken up by progressive NZ councils.

council action chart

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Waste aluminium cans + waste coffee grounds + sea water = hydrogen gas. That’s the finding of MIT scientists who discovered dropping pre-treated aluminium into sea water produced hydrogen, albeit very slowly. For a lark, they threw in some coffee grounds, which accelerated the process substantially. They are now working on a propulsion system for ships based on the discovery.

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Well, they do if they are twisted carbon nanotubes (graphene). That’s the discovery of a team of Japanese and US scientists. Coiled springs have been used for energy storage for centuries but the graphene variants store 15,000 times the energy per unit mass. More significantly, they store 3 times the energy of lithium-ion batteries.

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