The great climate change challenge

THE planned development of a £15m science centre at Oldham Sixth-Form College sees the town bucking the national trend by having more students than ever taking science courses.

In the latest of our Friday features, Dr Paul Elliott, lecturer in the School of Applied Science at the University of Huddersfield. looks at climate change and its potential consequences

Tackling climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing mankind.

So-called ‘greenhouse’ gases, like carbon dioxide, emitted by the burning of petrol in our car engines and coal in our power stations, act as a blanket around our planet, trapping warmth and causing the global temperature to rise.

The potential consequences range from increased occurrence of extreme weather conditions, such as devastating hurricanes, to the expansion of deserts, mass crop failures and resulting starvation.

Last week, the winner of the Climate Change Challenge was announced. The competition, held by the Financial Times and Forum for the Future, aimed to find the most innovative potential solutions to climate change. With a judging panel of business leaders and climate change experts, five inventions were shortlisted and the judges’ votes combined with a public vote to decide the winner.

In fifth place came the Black Phantom, designed by Carbonscape. This machine is essentially a much larger version of your household microwave oven. Rather than cook food, however, it takes biomass (plant matter such as agricultural crop waste and wood chippings) and turns it into charcoal, a stable form of carbon that doesn’t rot and so resists emitting carbon into the atmosphere.

Since plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, locking it up in the form of charcoal has the overall effect of reducing levels of carbon dioxide and hence its global warming effect.

While the Black Phantom does use electricity, it traps more carbon as charcoal than is emitted to generate the electricity it uses.

In fourth place came The Deflektor. This is a simple device that acts as a lightweight hub cap for the wheels of lorries. Its effect is to reduce the air turbulence, and therefore drag, of a lorry as it travels at speed.

The reduction in drag then increases fuel efficiency and reduces carbon dioxide emissions.

Its inventor estimates that 460 million gallons of diesel could be saved in the US each year if the device were fitted to all American lorries.

In joint second place was an invention from the University of Loughborough, a room-cooling hollow ceiling panel.

Rather than pumping cool air into a room, as with conventional and energy-hungry air conditioning, these ceiling panels draw hot air out of the room by evaporation of water held in the panel.

Alongside Loughborough’s cooling ceiling panels came Mootral, a garlic-based animal food supplement that reduces the quantities of methane, another very potent greenhouse gas, emitted by cows, sheep and other livestock.

So what was the overall winner? It was a cardboard box, but not just any cardboard box.

The Kyoto Box, invented by Jon Bøhmer, is a solar-powered oven. It is an extremely simple design consisting of two cardboard boxes, one inside the other, with a clear plastic top.

The inner box is painted black with the outer box covered in foil.

Left in sunlight, the black surface of the inner box absorbs heat from the sun while the outer silvered box prevents it from escaping, concentrating the heat inside and acting like an oven.

It is also very cheap to make. The box has already been put into production in a factory in Nairobi, Kenya, which is capable of producing over two million of the ovens a month.

A more robust model is being developed, made from recycled plastic.

The extremely simple device has the potential to transform the lives of millions around the globe.

An estimated 2 billion people use firewood as their primary source of fuel for cooking. This reliance on firewood has many problems.

The resultant deforestation leads to increases in emission of greenhouse gases, loss of habitat for many animal species and can result in the expansion of deserts.

The use of firewood also has detrimental effects on health and well-being as those reliant on firewood have to walk greater and greater distances to collect ever scarcer wood and also suffer from daily prolonged inhalation of wood smoke which can cause respiratory diseases.

The Kyoto Box could therefore have a significant impact on the health of millions worldwide and the environment.

But climate change cannot be solved by any one invention or quick fix but by a combination of many technologies and inter-governmental policies.

And we also have our part to play with our collective responsibility to use energy more efficiently and reduce our individual carbon footprint.

Only by working together can we meet the challenge of climate change and ensure a better world, not only for our own sake but also for those future generations who will inherit it.