24th Apr 2020
The British Standards Institute, sponsored by Innovate UK, has recently published a free to download PAS 440:2020 Responsible Innovation – Guide. The guide aims to provide comprehensive direction for companies on best practice for innovators. It helps those companies consider the wider implications of their innovation, capture the outcomes of that consideration, and communicate those outcomes to stakeholders.
23rd Apr 2020
26 April 2020 is World Intellectual Property Day. World Intellectual Property Day is an event established by the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) to inspire the public to “learn about the role that intellectual property rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity”. Each annual event has a theme and this year’s theme, focussing on climate change, is “Innovate for a Green Future”.
12th Mar 2020
British Science Week is here, a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics for children in the UK. This year children are being introduced to the world of training artificial intelligence data sets. 2020’s eagerly anticipated Citizen Science “Zooniverse” partnership ramps up the “zoo” and shrinks the “universe” to a few chunks of South America. The public are being asked to help save spider monkeys, a lovable group of primates under threat from our insatiable appetite for palm oil.
25th Feb 2020
As countries around the world strive to curb climate change, it becomes increasingly clear that radical innovative energy solutions are needed if we are to stand any chance of achieving net zero emissions. A team of engineers at the University of Queensland may have provided one such solution in the field of quantum dot solar cell technology, achieving a near 25% improvement, and a world record, for the conversion of solar energy into electricity using quantum dots. Inventor, and Australian Research Council laureate, Lianzhou Wang, explains that the improvement “is effectively the difference between quantum dot solar cell technology being an exciting prospect and being commercially viable”.
3rd Feb 2020
Last month global leaders of politics, industry, and economics gathered for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. The event brought 3,000 stakeholders from around the world to the exclusive Swiss ski resort of Davos to discuss sustainability and the climate crisis. As always, the town was covered in a beautiful blanket of snow. But this may not be the case for much longer. The climate crisis discussed in Davos is wreaking slow havoc in mountain resorts around the world. The Alpine setting for the conference about climate change couldn’t have been more apposite. Rising global temperatures has shortened the average ski season by 38 days since 1960.
27th Jan 2020
Driven by a variety of concerns about the environmental impact of meat consumption, animal welfare, and/or health considerations, large numbers of people are moving towards vegetarian, vegan, or “flexitarian” diets. In the last 2 years alone, demand for meat substitutes has grown by 37% in America, and by 30% in western Europe, and Euromonitor expects the market for meat alternatives in both Europe and the US to double by 2022. And with growing public awareness of the impact of intensive animal farming on global warming, this trend is forecast to go only one way.
21st Jan 2020
Whether you like it or not, the UK is a windy place. It is therefore not surprising that wind accounted for more than 50% of the electricity generated from renewable energy sources in 2019[1]. Modern energy generation wind turbines can come in many forms, in this blog I will discuss vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) which are becoming a larger part of the wind renewable energy market.
23rd Oct 2019
Brewing giant Carlsberg recently unveiled two prototypes for a “paper beer bottle”, as part of the firm’s Together Towards Zero environmental initiative.