Archive for category: Latest News

Home internet in the UK is getting an upgrade. Two new regulations will now require most new housing construction projects to include gigabit internet, while pre-existing tenants will also have easier access to a high-speed connection.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media, & Sport announced the new laws earlier this week, with ministers having amended Building Regulations 2010 to include the first of two new laws—that new housing developers in England must future-proof new construction by including a gigabit internet connection.

Connection costs will be capped at £2,000, and approximately 98% of properties fall under this new amendment. The department says that gigabit broadband is now available in 72% of the UK, and this new law will allow people moving into new homes an immediate connection to the Internet.

Scotland and Northern Ireland set their own building regulations so it’s uncertain whether those regions will follow along with the new requirements.

“Nothing should stop people from seizing the benefits of better broadband, whether it is an unresponsive landlord or a property developer’s failure to act,” said Digital Infrastructure Minister Julia Lopez in a press release. “Thanks to our new laws, millions of renters will no longer be prevented from getting a broadband upgrade due to the silence of their landlord, and those moving into newly built homes can be confident they’ll have access to the fastest speeds available from the day they move in.”

Likewise, the department says that the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act of 2021 (TILPA) will help tenants in rental homes get access to faster internet more easily. This law allows a telecommunications firm to obtain a court order to enter a property if a landlord is unresponsive.

Previously, tenants were required to wait for the landlord’s approval before a new internet connection could be installed, and the department says that telecommunication companies would receive no response from a landlord 40% of the time.

TILPA is now being enforced in England and the Building Regulations amendments went into effect on December 26, 2022.

Source: Gizmodo

Brighton and Hove City Council has given an update on the housing schemes due to start, currently being developed and nearing completion as part of its “ambitious” New Homes for Neighbourhoods building programme, which will provide housing for families on the council’s housing register.

Work is expected to start in the spring on three new three-bedroom council homes on the site of former garages in Rotherfield Crescent in Hollingbury.

Plans for the site were drawn up following a design competition run by the council and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the new homes are designed to be “highly sustainable”.

Plans are being progressed to provide up to 30 council homes for rent on a council-owned former garage site in Eastergate Road, Moulsecoomb.

While the project is still in its early stages, the aim is to provide “transitional” move-on housing for young people with low level support needs.

The council said modular construction, where the flats are built off site, before being transported to site, is preferred.

Using these modern methods of construction, it said, reduces the amount of embedded carbon, compared to a traditional build, by up to 45 per cent.

It added that sustainable technologies and materials will be built into the design specification, and it is intended that the scheme will include air source heat pumps and solar panels.

The council said modular buildings are designed so they can be easily dismantled and re-used or recycled, which is “in line with the council’s circular economy principles”.

At the November meeting of the housing committee, councillors gave approval to progress the project to end of the pre-construction phase, to include design work and clearance of the site.

Work is also due to start early in the new year on four new council homes in Frederick Street in the city centre.

The site was previously used for parking and will be transformed to provide two two-bedroom flats and two studio flats.

Families will start moving into a major development of 42 new council homes in Victoria Road, Portslade in the new year.

The council said the development is its “most sustainable” new council housing scheme to date and will be the first new council housing project in the city with a ground source heat pump system.

“Living” walls will be planted on the exterior of the two blocks of flats and watered with recycle rainwater.

The homes are due to be completed in January and are being let to people on the council’s housing register.

Construction is “progressing well” on 104 low-cost homes in Wellington Road, Portslade and 242 in Coldean Lane, Coldean.

The flats are being developed by Homes for Brighton and Hove, a partnership of Brighton and Hove City Council and housing association the Hyde Group.

More than half of the new homes will be available as council homes on low rents, and the rest will be available to buy through a shared ownership scheme from Hyde.

The Wellington Road homes are due to be completed in the spring and the Coldean Lane homes in the summer.

Councillor David Gibson, who co-chairs the housing committee, said: “We’re proud to have one of the most ambitious programmes of building new council homes in the country, and we are making the most of council-owned sites around the city to provide extra housing.

“It will be great to see work starting on sites on Rotherfield Crescent and Frederick Street in 2023. It has taken a lot of work to get both projects to this stage and, although they are small scale developments, it all adds to the supply of affordable homes.

“Including homes bought back through our Home Purchase Policy, we’re on schedule to deliver 164 additional council homes this financial year. These include the Victoria Road development nearing completion, which will be our most sustainable new council housing scheme to date.

“We also have two Homes for Brighton and Hove developments due to deliver the bulk of 176 truly affordable rented council homes next year, and very exciting plans in the pipeline for more than 200 homes and a new community hub in Moulsecoomb.

“We’re also pleased to be progressing plans to use modular buildings to provide homes for young people in Eastergate Road, a low carbon scheme which also ties in with our circular economy principles.”

Source: The Argos

The signing in late October of a framework agreement between Tokamak Energy, the Oxford-based global commercial fusion company and the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to develop commercial fusion energy has the potential be groundbreaking. The five-year agreement will take the form of joint technology solutions as well as shared utilisation of equipment and facilities.

The ‘tokamak’ device, after which Tokamak Energy is named, is based on Russian technology dating back to the 1950s, and uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma in the shape of a torus.

So after years of uncertainty, the UK Government is now desperate to move the dial forward on nuclear energy, an industry in which it was once a world leader. It is backing nuclear fusion technology through $244m (£220m) in first phase funding for its STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) initiative.

In October, the UK picked the Midlands as the site to host its STEP fusion demonstration plant, a $23.9bn fusion power station at the West Burton power station, currently the site of a coal-fired power plant in Nottinghamshire. The question remains, then, as to whether this project can revitalise nuclear power in the UK.

Rebuilding an industry

Nuclear fusion, rather than nuclear fission, is seen as the key to revamping the UK’s moribund nuclear power industry, and the differences between the two nuclear technologies are profound.

Nuclear fission creates power by splitting atoms of radioactive elements like uranium with neutrons releasing an enormous amount of energy. Nuclear reactors use this energy to create steam, which in turn powers a turbine to produce electricity. But while nuclear fission may be less damaging to the environment than fossil fuels, pollution in the form of radioactive waste is a major drawback.

By contrast, nuclear fusion happens when light atoms are smashed together to create heavier atoms creating a huge burst of energy. The hydrogen isotopes most used in fusion are deuterium and tritium. Deuterium is widely available as it can be found in seawater, while tritium can be extracted from lithium.

The interaction between the two is similar to the process that powers the stars in the universe. Melanie Windridge, a plasma physicist who runs the consultancy Fusion Energy Insights told the Financial Times that roughly 1kg of fusion fuel has, “the potential to produce as much energy as ten million kilogrammes of fossil fuels.”

Chris Kelsall, CEO of Tokamak Energy, adds: “We are in a race against time to phase out the world’s reliance on fossil fuels and aim to deliver fusion as a clean, sustainable, low cost and globally available energy source. With over twenty fusion start-ups globally and increasing collaboration between the private and public sectors, investors are awakening to this opportunity.”

In the 12 months to the end of June, the Fusion Industry Association estimates that private fusion companies raised $2.83bn in investment, mainly in the US but also in the UK. Its most recent report states that 93% of companies surveyed in 2022 believe that fusion electricity will be on the grid in the 2030s. This is up from 83% a year previously.

The US is also well on the way towards developing a commercial nuclear fusion facility. Indeed, an executive at the Japanese start-up Kyoto Fusioneering told The Telegraph newspaper that both the US and UK are locked into a two-horse race to crack nuclear fusion and either of them could yet be the first to develop commercial reactors.

Private competition

However, it is the activity in the private sector in both the US and the UK that has provoked the most excitement. The Financial Times reported that a series of scientific breakthroughs and a rush of private investment are raising hopes that it could yet play a meaningful role in cutting global emissions before 2050. The need is urgent because, as Kelsall notes, “There’s no point this technology arriving in 2048 because it’s too late.”

Tokamak Energy’s ST80-HTS, the world’s first high field spherical tokamak combined with high temperature superconductor (HTS) magnets, will be the cornerstone of Tokamak’s new nuclear facility. It will be commissioned in 2026 with the aim of being brought online in the 2030s.

In a statement the company said, “This announcement is a critical springboard for achieving commercial fusion and integrating fusion into future energy systems.” It follows the news in March that Tokamak had achieved, “a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius” in its ST40 spherical tokamak. This is the threshold required for commercial fusion energy and is, “by far the highest temperature ever achieved in a spherical tokamak,” the company said.

“A pellet generating the energy of a barrel of oil”

Several UK companies are developing commercial fusion reactors, hoping to make the final breakthrough. Credit: Tokamak Energy.

Although both the UKAEA and Tokamak have operational spherical tokamak devices and several government laboratories have also reported plasma temperatures above 100 million degrees in conventional tokamaks, Tokamak Energy’s March milestone was achieved in just five years. Importantly, it was done for a cost of less than $70m, in a much more compact fusion device.

Tokamak said the ST80-HTS, “will demonstrate multiple advanced technologies required for the delivery of commercial fusion energy and will demonstrate the capability to deliver electricity into the grid in the early 2030s, producing up to 200MW of net electrical power.”

Meanwhile, Oxford-based First Light Fusion has been developing another approach called projectile fusion, which involves firing a projectile at a deuterium-tritium fuel pellet to force the isotopes to fuse. Instead of using complex and expensive lasers or magnets to generate or maintain the conditions for fusion, First Light’s approach compresses the fuel inside a target using a projectile travelling at tremendous speed.

The company claims the energy density of the fuel “is so great that a pellet one centimetre wide should be able to generate the same amount of energy as a barrel of oil.” It recently achieved a world fusion first with this approach, and the result has been validated by UKAEA.

The company claims that it “offers a simpler pathway to low-cost fusion energy using existing plant technology,” than the traditional fusion method. Importantly, it has also managed to achieve fusion at a cost of less than $53.8m. “With this simpler approach that reuses existing technology projectile fusion offers a pathway to a very competitive levelised cost of energy of under $50/MWh, directly competing on cost with renewables. This would make it the most cost competitive source of baseload power,” the company says.

The next step, according to Nick Hawker, co-founder and CEO of First Light Fusion, is to partner with existing power producers to develop a pilot plant using its unique fusion approach. It is working towards a pilot plant producing around 150MW of electricity and costing less than $1bn in the 2030s.

Environmental impacts

One of the added benefits of fusion is that unlike fission, nuclear fusion is self-sustaining without creating harmful waste. For that reason, the UK Government in June confirmed that future fusion facilities will be regulated by the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive, rather than the Office for Nuclear Regulation, in a boon for the British fusion industry.

Tokamak’s state-of-the-art project is groundbreaking and Ian Chapman, CEO of the UKAEA, predicts it could be a “really big part” of the UK’s plan to tackle climate change. However he also warned that because it had, “never been done before there is no guarantee that this will work. We’ve never done it at the scale where it produces electricity and actually powers your home.”

With global power demand expected to double by 2040 and increase fivefold by 2060, the need for nuclear fusion is paramount. First Light commissioned research concluded that 19,900TWh per year could be generated from wind and solar globally by 2040.

But although this is a welcome eight-fold increase on today it is still less than half of the projected requirement. “In several parts of the world wind and solar power alone will not be able to meet projected energy demand,” said First Light.

To mitigate the impact of climate change a large global market for baseload clean power will need to open up. This market will complement renewables and that is where fusion energy will play a key role.

Source: Power Technology

Earth Friendly Concrete has already saved the equivalent of 29 return flights from London to Melbourne in CO2 emissions on the HS2 construction project

The revolutionary ultra-low carbon concrete called Earth Friendly Concrete (EFC) has supplied more than 2,000m3 to the UK’s flagship High Speed 2 rail project – a total reduction of nearly 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide compared to if traditional Portland Cement-based concrete had been used. This is the equivalent to an individual taking 29 return flights from London to Melbourne. EFC is being poured for HS2’s construction conveyors which will be in place for the next decade at least on the eastern and central London sections of HS2 from Euston to Acton.

With the built environment accounting for 25% of the UK’s carbon emissions, HS2 is mitigating its carbon footprint by using EFC because it typically emits 75% fewer carbon emissions than traditional concrete. If Earth Friendly Concrete was used for the whole of HS2, it would reduce its carbon footprint by 2.5m tonnes of CO2 – the same in weight as 38 of the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers.

At the heart of the HS2 works is EFC’s collaborative business dynamic. The only way to secure the UK’s net zero future is by industry members working alongside each other to achieve goals that are in everybody’s interests. To provide our ultra-low carbon concrete to HS2 we have worked closely with SCS Railways at Acton, John F Hunt at Euston and Keltbray at Maria Fidelis, where EFC has been used for various applications including conveyor foundations, crane mats, piling mats and deep raft foundation slabs.

The core of EFC ultra-low carbon technology is the EFC Activator Solution; a geopolymer system that binds industrial waste to make zero-cement concrete. EFC is the only zero-cement concrete technology that has been proven at scale on real life commercial projects globally. Every cubic metre of Earth Friendly Concrete recycles around 400kg of waste materials and is, therefore, a major contributor to the circular economy. This contrasts with traditional concrete, which uses mainly Portland cement and water.

Concrete is the most widely used resource on the planet after water and contributes 8% of total world emissions. According to Chatham House, if the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide after the United States and China. With current housing targets and other infrastructure planned, such as HS2, over the next decades, EFC will be a key component to the UK achieving its net zero goal by 2050.

Andy Izod, UK Regional Manager for EFC said:

“EFC could drastically reduce the UK’s carbon footprint and accelerate the drive to net zero by

2050 – HS2 is a great example of a project that wants to build using high structural performance concrete, but needs it to be as environmentally friendly as possible. We are very grateful to our EFC delivery partner, Capital Concrete, and to the Integrated Project Team at Skanska-Costain-Strabag for their support.”

Kiro Tamer, Head of Environmental Sustainability at Keltbray said:

“Keltbray has been using EFC for temporary works elements since 2019 with great success and we have been leading the way in supporting EFC becoming a ‘go to’ construction product in the future for customers demanding more sustainable delivery. Together, materials and construction processes account for 11% of all carbon emissions globally. To decarbonise the sector we must eliminate both operational and embodied carbon emissions. EFC is particularly suited for permanent works use within piled foundations and this is a brilliant milestone to have reached at Maria Fidelis and for construction in the UK in general.”

Daniel Sweeny, Group Sustainability Manager for John F Hunt said:

“We have made significant progress in lowering our operational carbon within the Group; however, our greatest challenge now is working with our supply chain to reduce our embodied carbon. Collaborating with Capital Concrete to pour Earth Friendly Concrete at our HS2 Euston project, allowed us to save over 30t CO2e as a direct result. The consequence of this saving is being applied throughout John F Hunt, and we will increase our use of EFC, viewing it as a necessary product to help the construction industry achieve net zero.”