Sustainable Technologies

In light of the most recent IPCC report and the effects of the escalating climate crisis seen around the world, the urgency to invest in sustainable technologies and practices has never been higher. The positive shift in demand for more environmentally conscious products and services has seen many industries move to accommodate these new economies but transparency is becoming an increasingly key issue in these sectors as market value gives rise to greenwashing culture. In this regard, I am interested to hear from engineers, entrepreneurs and people within industry about their experience in trying to make products and services more sustainable. How accessible are the alternatives in industry? What frameworks exist to help make the change? What technologies have enabled any progress? How do you design supply chains to be sustainable? What are the challenges you have faced with implementation and how could it be better? Has it actually made a difference?

The price of energy is set to keep rising around the world as demand for fuel surges in the wake of lockdown and in the interest of fast economic recovery. It has been fascinating to observe the response of each nation as they attempt to manage the subsequent backlog and supply chain issues that has shown the level of weakness in the global energy market when access to fossil fuels is cut short. These observations, while somewhat concerning, have reignited an interest in sustainable technologies from friends and family which include air-source heat-pumps, solar and wind as well as off-grid storage. The latter has been of particular interest, given the low-cost of high capacity, deep-cycle batteries, especially where they could be used to avoid high energy rates over the winter by going off-grid. This raises the question of whether it would be possible to build a standalone off-grid storage system that operates alongside, but independently of the mains electrical supply which could save households a lot of money while helping the planet by recharging through local renewable sources. My question is, has anyone ever built, or considered building a hybrid on/off-grid domestic electrical system, what factors are there to consider and is it feasible?