Institute for the Environment Blog

by Dr. Andy Russell

I was putting together some slides for a talk today, which included a little background about our namesake, and I happened to notice that it was IKB’s birthday today.

Happy 207^th birthday IKB!

But, by the way, I’m also going to blame you for climate change.

Don’t get me wrong, Brunel was a brilliant engineer and innovator. He changed the world. Just not 100% for the better.

So look at these two graphs, Gross World Product (GWP) since 1750 (note the non-linear x-axis) and atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1750:

Need I say more?

I suppose I should.

I’m proposing that Brunel (and his fellow 19^th Century industrialists) kickstarted the Industrial Revolution and, simultaneously, started us on a course towards fossil fuel emission driven climate change.

Of course, this is a silly thing to say as it would be another 100 years or so until we understood the implications of our industrialisation.

Which begs the question: what are we going to do about it now? Now we do know what we’re doing to the climate and yet the CO2 levels keep on rising.

But neither do I want to live in a world where development and innovation is stifled.

Well, what we’re doing about it starting a new MSc course that will allow students to be entrepreneurial and innovative and yet understand and align their vision with the principles of sustainability. It’s not an easy job and we’ve had to collaborate with our School of Engineering and Design and the Brunel Business School to be able to cover everything that students will need to know and be able to do but it looks like a great opportunity for the students who are willing to take on the challenge!

It's called MSc in Sustainability, Entrepreneurship and Design (with Work Placement)

by Andy Russell

We had a staff meeting earlier this week and, for one reason or another, we started discussing how to get to work.

Someone mentioned that they were thinking about cycling but it might be too far to do regularly. Then the discussion turned to e-bikes...

I'd read an article in The Guardian recently about e-bikes, which also has a little video, and they look quite cool! They are basically a bike with a little electric motor on them. It sounds like you can get somewhere between 20-50 miles out of a full change depending on the bike and the route.

But how do they stack up from a sustainability point of view?

A recent study from MIT looking at Life Cycle Assessments of commuter options suggests that they are around 18 times more energy efficient than an SUV and about equal to a conventional bike, which I don't quite understand (I guess I'll have to read the detail!)

There's also the resources used in, and the safe disposal of, the battery to consider but this would be much smaller than the battery in an electric car so less of a concern in that respect.

Thinking about emissions, I guess it all comes down to how you generate the energy to charge the battery. With a small battery, it could quite easily use solar panels to charge so, as long the bike was used regularly to make it an efficient use of resources, then it looks like a good option.

And this is the key to sustainable development: taking a complete view of the system that you're looking at. For example, whilst you'd generally assume cycling was always a good commuting option, Mike Berners-Lee points out in "How bad are bananas?" that if you get all your cycling energy by eating air-freighted asparagus then, with emissions in mind, you'd may as well have jumped in the 4x4! (Of course, this is again a rather limited view as we should also take into account the impacts on health, the local environment/society and the economy from the different transport options.)

So, just to summarise, I don't really know if e-bikes are a good option. Has anyone else seen any other research on this (or read the MIT study properly ;) )?

One of the nice things about being based in London is all the science events that are organised in the capital. I recently compiled a list of upcoming events that looked interesting so I thought I'd put them here. If you go along to any of these then please feel free to use the comments section here to discuss anything that came up at any of these events.

Communicating Climate Science
Date: Wednesday 7 November 2012
Time: 14:00
Location: Lecture Theatre 220,  Mechanical Engineering Building, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London London SW7 2AZ
http://www.rmets.org/events/national-meeting-communicating-climate-science

Sustainable materials: with both eyes open
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30
Date: Monday 12 November 2012
Location: The Royal Society, London
http://royalsociety.org/events/2012/sustainable-materials/

Revisiting Rachel: The Legacy Of Silent Spring Fifty Years On
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Date: Thursday, November 22, 2012 -
Location: St. Ermin's Hotel, 2 Caxton St, London
http://www.ies-uk.org.uk/events/burntwood_lecture_2012
Further info: the webpage says it's for IES members only but it might be worth an email if you're really interested.

Nature's glass: half-full or half-empty?
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30
Date: Monday 10 December 2012
Location: The Royal Society, London
http://royalsociety.org/events/2012/natures-glass/

Quantifying uncertainties in climate science.
Date: Wednesday 12 December 2012
Time: 14:00
Location: Blacketts Lecture Theatre, Imperial College, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2BW
http://www.rmets.org/events/quantifying-uncertainies-climate-science

Climate and environments from the Cretaceous to the Anthropocene.
Date: Wednesday 13 February 2013
Time: 14:00 - 17:30
Location: Lecture theatre TBC, Imperial College, London, SW7 2BW
http://www.rmets.org/events/climate-and-environments-cretaceous-anthropocene-0