Category: Green Friendly

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Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

French Rail Company Orders 12 Hydrogen Trains

Alstom France head Jean-Baptiste Eymeoud said the trains are designed to run up to 600 kilometres (375 miles) on each hydrogen charge, and should begin service in 2025.  

French national railway SNCF said Thursday it has ordered 12 hydrogen-powered trains to begin tests in four regions in 2023 as it eyes a zero-emissions future with the nascent technology.

The trains are to be built by the French industrial group Alstom and operate on either hydrogen or electricity when overhead catenary wires are available, a joint statement said.

They are designed to run up to 600 kilometres (375 miles) on each hydrogen charge, and “should begin service in 2025,” Alstom France head Jean-Baptiste Eymeoud was quoted as saying.

The contract is worth 190 million euros ($225 million) for the 12 first trains, which are to seat 218 passengers and be divided evenly among the four regions in eastern and southern France.

Alstom first tested prototypes in Germany three years ago and has now begun a commercial phase with 41 orders for the 72-metre-long (yards) trains.

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Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

THE WORLD’S FIRST HYDROGEN-POWERED CARGO VESSEL IS ABOUT TO SET SAIL

“THE DEMAND FOR MORE SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGIES IN INLAND WATERWAY TRANSPORT IS ON THE RISE.”

by VICTOR TANGERMANN

A French company is developing the world’s first hydrogen-powered cargo transport vessel, which is scheduled to make its debut some time later this year, Renewable Energy Magazine reports.

The boat, built by Compagnie Fluvial de Transport (CFT), is set to be deployed on the river Seine in Paris and will use compressed hydrogen produced from electrolysis as its sole power source. The vessel is designed for inland water routes only and is not designed to sail the oceans.

“The demand for more sustainable technologies in inland waterway transport is on the rise,” Matthieu Blanc, director of CFT, told the magazine. “As part of the Flagships project, we are happy to be leading the way on reducing emissions from transport and demonstrating the superior features of hydrogen fuel cells in waterborne applications.”

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Green Friendly, Science & Technology News, Transportation

DEUTSCHE BAHN TO INTRODUCE HYDROGEN TRAIN BY 2024, CUTTING 330 TONS OF CO2 A YEAR

Helen Coffey

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Deutsche Bahn is launching a hydrogen train

‘This is the only way for DB to be climate neutral in 2050,’ says board member

Deutsche Bahn (DB) has announced it will launch a hydrogen train and accompanying gas station by 2024, in a system set to save 330 tons of carbon emissions in one year.

The German rail company has said it will run a comprehensive year-long trial of the new system, which will replace a diesel engine running between Tübingen, Horb and Pforzheim in the southwest state of Baden-Württemberg.

DB is converting one of its maintenance workshops so that the hydrogen train can be serviced there, alongside developing a new type of filling station that means it will be just as quick to refuel as a diesel train, taking just 15 minutes.

Siemens Mobility is responsible for building the new train, while the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) is providing the funding.

The hydrogen train should initially be able to run for 600km before needing to be refuelled, roughly equivalent to the distance between London and Edinburgh. Its top speed will be 160km/h.

Continue reading… “DEUTSCHE BAHN TO INTRODUCE HYDROGEN TRAIN BY 2024, CUTTING 330 TONS OF CO2 A YEAR”
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Future, Green Friendly, Housing, new technology, Science & Technology News

Web Summit 2019: This is what the house of 2025 could look like

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The way we sleep, eat and retreat from the world around us is poised for significant transformation, David Eun, Samsung’s Chief Innovation Officer, told this week at Web Summit.

Eun presented a sketch of Samsung’s vision for the house of the future. The aim is to foster experiences on a foundation of technology and innovation, he said, “the likes of which we have never seen before.”

With the advent of 5G, the percentage of connected devices in the home will continue to grow, “and in the near future, the question won’t be how many devices are connected. The question will actually be, how many devices are not connected.”

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Aviation, Electric Vehicles, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News, Travel

Arriving soon: Electric aviation for passengers

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Drone pilots don’t need to be told about the wonders of electric flight. But Scientific American believes electric aviation for passengers may be here sooner than we think as the industry struggles to decarbonize.

It’s one of the top ten emerging technologies the magazine highlights in its most recent issue.

In an article co-written by Katherine Hamilton and Tammy Ma, the authors point out that air travel accounted for 2.5 percent of global carbon emissions in 2019. And that number could triple by 2050. Electric airplanes could be one solution.

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Farming, Food, Great New Product, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

This coffee table’s sliding indoor garden is the ultimate millennial-friendly plant parenting hack

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Home gardening is difficult enough as it is, but it gets even trickier when you live in small city quarters. With city living’s and home gardening’s popularity rising in recent years, those of us who live in apartment complexes might feel discouraged from starting home garden projects – they’re messy and time-consuming, not to mention that a lot of space is usually a prerequisite. That’s why SOLE was created. SOLE, a home gardening system, poses first as a small coffee table only to reveal a hidden, self-maintained, miniature garden for city dwellers who want to fill their homes up with some natural greens, but not the fuss that typically comes with them.

More people are moving into cities, which means that access to home gardening is decreasing since natural light is harder to come by and smaller apartment spaces, like efficiency studios, are preferred. Thankfully, SOLE’s coffee table was designed to take up as little space as possible in order to fit into even the smallest of studios. Indoor urban gardening is usually practiced by using grow box containers that require a lot of window ledge space and natural sunlight – both of which can be hard to come by in city apartment searches. In order to make home gardening possible in any city-living space, SOLE maintains the perfect climate, temperature, and nutrients for you and your chosen plants so long as they fit inside the coffee table’s extensive body. While researching the influence of temperature, exposure time, intensity, color from visible light, along with the distance and angle of light distribution, the designers behind SOLE decided to incorporate a lighting system that would enhance plant growth by imitating the effect the sun’s rays have on indoor plants.

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Big Problems, Environment, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

These researchers have found a way to turn a common plastic into high-value molecules

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More than 8.3 billion metric tonnes of plastic has been produced in the last six decades.

However, recycling plastic can be difficult as the most common process involves melting and reworking the material.

A new process developed by the University of California can turn polyethylene into useful smaller molecules.

If you thought those flimsy disposable plastic grocery bags represented most of our plastic waste problem, think again. The volume of plastic the world throws away every year could rebuild the Ming Dynasty’s Great Wall of China – about 3,700 miles long.

Continue reading… “These researchers have found a way to turn a common plastic into high-value molecules”

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Automobiles, Electric Vehicles, Environment, government, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Getting a country from moderate/high EV purchase rate to 100% EV market share – some ideas

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 Norway just hit 82% plugin vehicle new car sales in September 2020. This raises the question: “Why are 18% of the purchases non-plugin vehicles?” That got me dreaming up ideas for how to get a country from moderate EV market share (5–10%, for example) to 100% EV market share. Perhaps some of those ideas could be effective in Norway now, and other countries later as they get closer and closer to a high percentage of plugin vehicles.

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Engineering, Green Friendly, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Fehmarnbelt Tunnel will be the world’s longest immersed tunnel

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(CNN) — After more than a decade of planning, work has begun on the world’s longest immersed tunnel. Descending up to 40 meters beneath the Baltic Sea, Fehmarnbelt Tunnel will link Denmark and Germany, slashing journey times when it opens in 2029.

The tunnel, which will be 18 kilometers (11.1 miles) long, is one of Europe’s largest infrastructure projects, with a construction budget of over €7 billion ($8.2 billion).

By way of comparison, the 50-kilometer (31-mile) Channel Tunnel linking England and France, completed in 1993, cost the equivalent of £12 billion ($15.5 billion) in today’s money. Although longer than the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel, the Channel Tunnel, was made using a boring machine, rather than by immersing pre-built tunnel sections.

It will be built across the Fehmarn Belt, a strait between the German island of Fehmarn and the Danish island of Lolland, and is designed as an alternative to the current ferry service from Rødby and Puttgarden, which carries millions of passengers every year. Where the crossing now takes 45 minutes by ferry, it will take just seven minutes by train and 10 minutes by car.

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Automobiles, Energy, Global Warming, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Hyundai delivers first fuel cell trucks to Switzerland

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LUCERNE, Switzerland (Reuters) – South Korean carmaker Hyundai on Wednesday presented the first seven hydrogen-powered trucks to customers in Switzerland, out of 50 such vehicles scheduled this year to bring zero-emission commercial vehicles to European roads.

For long haul, proponents say hydrogen-powered trucks have an advantage over electric rivals as they have a greater range and require less charging times but their uptake and mass production has been slow because they are expensive.

However, a McKinsey study in January said that once relative efficiencies of the power sources and lifetime costs of a truck are factored in, green hydrogen could reach cost parity with diesel by 2030.

Hyundai has been partnering with Swiss companies to build a value chain covering the production of green hydrogen from hydropower, hydrogen charging stations and the service and maintenance of the trucks.

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Fashion, Great New Product, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

This vegan leather made from cactus is a genuinely green alternative

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This is Desserto by Adriano Di Marti, a vegan leather made from cactus that is an eco and animal-friendly alternative to animal leather or synthetic leather. Like the aforementioned leathers, Desserto has competitive features, such as elasticity and it’s also customizable and breathable. It’s also biodegradable, flexible, non-toxic, and doesn’t stain.

Continue reading… “This vegan leather made from cactus is a genuinely green alternative”

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