Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 20

This week’s articles, links, and a game

Sponge cities, developed in China, are a really creative form of urban climate adaptation, and so it’s nice to see discussion around London using the approach.

Coldplay are playing in Luton tonight, and I mentioned the BMW i3 this week. This reminds me that the band’s ground-breaking sustainability initiatives include a stage show run off retired i3 electric car batteries.

In another bit of green event management, Luton carnival takes place this weekend with a twist on the usual parade: ...

Three visions of a circular economy for cars

The circular economy is a vital part of the transition to a sustainable future. It’s how we make manufactured items sustainable, moving from a system of use and disposal to a model of reuse and repair. That’s easy enough to imagine with small items, but what does it look like for cars?

In order to make a car fit for the circular economy, we’d need to start with reducing the amount of materials used. We’d need to choose those materials carefully, and we’d need a plan for reusing everything at...

The Climate Action Countdown

There’s a lot of energy around climate action in UK schools at the moment. The school strikes for the climate showed that students expected more, and long-running campaigns were able to take that point to the authorities. The government published a new sustainability strategy for schools at COP26, and the infrastructure is now emerging to serve that strategy.

I’m part of that myself, with my new role as a Climate Action Advisor with the Let’s Go Zero team. By the autumn there will be a netwo...

Book review: How to Spend a Trillion Dollars, by Rowan Hooper

You can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it, and funding things wisely is always complicated. But what if you had a trillion dollars to change the world – what could you do with it? How much change could it buy?

That’s the premise of Rowan Hooper’s entertaining thought experiment How to Spend a Trillion Dollars. By giving himself permission to play with a very large budget, Hooper finds a new perspective on some of the world’s biggest problems and how they could be solved.

Which...

What we learned this week

Lychees are one of my favourite things in the world, so it is disappointing to see the results of this research into climate change and lychee crop yields: a drop of 12-35% by the end of the century. I mention this not because I expect you to go and read academic studies into lychee harvests, but because it’s a good reminder that fixing the climate is about protecting the things we love.

Teacher friends, next week is Outdoor Classroom Day. It doesn’t have to be forest school or wildlife them...

We can do better than recycling

The ‘three Rs’ are well lodged in people’s brains when it comes to waste. As public messaging goes, reduce, reuse, recycle been rather successful in its reach – so it’s unfortunate that it isn’t actually understood. That’s according to research by Keep Britain Tidy and partners.

“Recycling is firmly engrained in people’s minds as the best thing they can do to reduce the environmental impact of the things they buy,” they say, and that is certainly borne out by the conversations I have on the ...

Not everything that’s clever is useful

A friend recently asked me to speak at a student event on AI and sustainability at the University of Hertfordshire. I couldn’t make it in person, so I recorded a ten minute talk as a conversation starter. It’s a bit of a provocation, something to get people talking and raise some questions that wouldn’t normally get asked in a tech-focused setting.

I did this in one take and without scripting it the way I usually do with my talks, so it could definitely be slicker. But I thought I’d share it...

Why carers need electric cars

Sales of electric cars in the UK have so far focused on the luxury end of the market, with fewer options for affordable smaller cars. That’s meant that high income middle-class families have been able to benefit from electric cars sooner than those who might need them most. The savings from smaller electric cars would be much more meaningful for those on lower incomes, and so far that demographic hasn’t been well served by the car companies.

The charity Possible make this point with their re...

What we learned this week

Last week the British government’s climate plans were judged to be inadequate, and in June they face another legal case that challenges restrictions on housing efficiency. Some good work going on from those using the law to push for stronger climate policies.

Reporters Without Borders have released the 2024 edition of the Press Freedom Index. Press freedom is declining, they warn, in a year with a record number of elections around the world.

The first all-electric container ship has been ...

The irresistible rise of clean energy

There’s a ready supply of bad news in climate circles. The bad news writes itself onto the landscape as the climate destabilises. There’s good news out there too though, and the Global Electricity Review from Ember Climate is a case in point. The main takeaway is that the clean energy transition is well underway globally, with renewable energy making huge strides.

Global solar capacity increased by 23% in 2023, and wind power by 10%.

The ‘what about China’ brigade should note that half o...