SteamyTea

Don't, go and buy a proper set of spanners, and spend more than a £ on them.

Both my neighbours had roof work done (unnecessarily) over the last couple of years. I seem to remember that roofs are not covered by the party wall agreement, and on terraces they are allowed to lift some of the other tiles. https://www.desmondeassociates.co.uk/news/serving-a-party-wall-act-1996-notice-cornwall-uk#:~:text=Re-roofing Party Wall Act,any upcoming works as courtesy.

Going to rain then. Thanks

@craig Your advice is probably needed here, I can't see the details too well on my phone.

There are standard torque settings for bolts, does depend on what grade they are. A skilled fitter will know the Nm off by heart.

You need to add the mass of 7 pints of strong ale to that, then you can fall over easier.

Is that why the Rover K series engine was so reliable, the head bolts were torqued to yield. "Tighten it till it goes loose, then back half a turn" Why not a blob of weld?

Depends how dense they are. The lateral re4sistance of the wall is a function of the mass and gravity. The one problem with block is that the catastrophic failure point is often lower than a timber stud wall.

Isn't that what caravans are made from? To answer the question, you need to know the intrinsic λ value of the materials.

If it is a non structural wall i.e. not holding up a roof or ceiling, then it does not really matter. Sound transmission is a different issue. While density does help, it stops air movement via a damping effect, shape makes a difference as well, shape scatters, diffuses and causes interference to the returning pressure wave.

It will be fine as long as it is set up to UK standards.

Welcome. You need to chat to @Onoff, he can explain all about building gate pillars, for years. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/6101-gate-pillars/

The panel amps will be under standard testing condutions, so they may well produce more when colder and solar power is higher. "Standard test conditions (STC) is commonly used and assumes 1000 W/m2 solar irradiance, AM1.5 spectrum, and a cell temperature of 77°F(25°C). AM1.5 spectrum refers to a 1.5-atmosphere thickness (air mass or AM) corresponding to a solar zenith angle of around 48°." https://eepower.com/technical-articles/understanding-pv-system-standards-ratings-and-test-conditions/

Not worth the effort, open a shaded window.

Cleaner ship emissions may warm the planet far faster than expected A 2020 rule that slashed air pollution from ships may have boosted global temperatures sooner than thought, helping to explain why 2023 was so hot By James Dinneen 30 May 2024 A 2020 rule put limits on harmful sulphur dioxide pollution in shipping emissions Robert McGouey / Industry / Alamy A sharp drop in sulphur dioxide emissions from ships since 2020 may warm the planet more than expected this decade, although researchers disagree on the magnitude of this change in temperature. “If our calculation is right, that would suggest this decade will be really warm,” says Tianle Yuan at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Combined with background warming due to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the added heat could mean 2023’s record-breaking temperatures will be the “norm” in coming years, he says. Yuan compared the sudden rise in temperature to the “termination shock” that might occur if a solar geoengineering project to curb warming were to suddenly end without a corresponding decline in greenhouse gas emissions. However, other climate researchers say there are issues with the new numbers. “This is a timely study, but it makes very bold statements about temperature changes and geoengineering which seem difficult to justify on the basis of the evidence,” says Laura Wilcox at the University of Reading in the UK. The study adds to an ongoing debate among climate scientists about the consequences of an International Maritime Organization (IMO) rule that slashed the amount of sulphur dioxide pollution in shipping emissions after 2020. That added air pollution from burning heavy marine fuel was linked to tens of thousands of deaths each year. However, those aerosols also had a cooling effect on the climate by reflecting solar radiation directly as well as through their brightening influence on clouds over the ocean. Researchers expected that slashing those emissions would result in some warming due to the loss of sulphur dioxide’s cooling effects. But the magnitude of anticipated warming ranged widely. Yuan and his colleagues have now estimated the warming effect of the 2020 rule using satellite observations of cloud conditions, along with mathematical models of how clouds might change in response to the expected reduction in sulphur aerosols. The researchers calculate the drop increased the amount of solar energy heating the oceans by between 0.1 and 0.3 watts per square metre, around double that of some earlier estimates. This effect was more acute in areas of the ocean with lots of shipping activity: the North Atlantic, which has been anomalously hot since last year, experienced a warming influence more than triple the average, according to the study. The researchers then calculated how this warming influence, known as “radiative forcing”, would change global temperatures, using a simplified climate model that leaves out the influence of the deep ocean. They found the 2020 change translated to an additional rise of about 0.16°C in global average temperatures in the seven years after emissions dropped, effectively doubling the rate of warming during that period compared with previous decades. “This forcing is not a greenhouse gas forcing. It’s a shock,” says Yuan. “So it’s going to be a blip in the temperature record for this decade.” The new numbers are on the high end, but are in line with estimates using other methods, says Michael Diamond at Florida State University. The modelled results match those from a study that directly measured the change in clouds after 2020 in one region of the Atlantic Ocean, for instance. However, other researchers dispute how the team calculated the resulting change in global temperatures. Zeke Hausfather at Berkeley Earth, a climate think tank, says the researchers conflated warming influence over the oceans with warming over the entire planet, and that their simplified climate model found a more rapid temperature rise than would occur in reality. “It’s really hard to justify more than 0.1°C warming in the near term using modern climate models,” says Hausfather. If the new estimates prove accurate, however, it could help explain some of the huge jump in temperatures seen over the past year. Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and a shift to El Niño conditions were responsible for most of the heat, but a still unexplained gap has fuelled discussion about whether climate change may be accelerating. “[The change in shipping emissions] goes some way towards closing the gap that we perceive,” says Gavin Schmidt at NASA. But “it’s not the whole story”. Journal reference Communications Earth and Environment DOI: 10.1038/s43247-024-01442-3 ESA's EarthCARE studies cloud physics to improve climate models By David Stock Sent into orbit aboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the European Space Agency has successfully launched EarthCARE or Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer, an advanced cloud-research satellite. Designed to study cloud dynamics, it will soon be providing climate scientists and meteorologists with accurate data about the complex interactions between clouds, aerosols and radiation, helping them devise better climate models, predict extreme weather events and provide more accurate assessments of future warming, helping guide climate science and policy. “Clouds are the largest source of uncertainty in climate prediction, “says Robin Hogan, principal scientist at the European centre for medium-range weather forecasts (ECMWF). “EarthCARE is going to give us much, much more detail about the actual properties of clouds, so enable us to understand them, to hopefully narrow this range of uncertainty”, Says Hogan. EarthCARE deploys a suite of instruments including radar, lidar, and a broadband radiometer which provide insight into cloud dynamics, the role of aerosols and how different formations contribute to planetary warming or cooling depending on whether they reflect the sun’s radiation or absorb it. The onboard radar penetrates deep into clouds, measuring the speed of particles in the atmosphere. This enables researchers to better understand precipitation and how air rises inside clouds, a driver of thunderstorms. The lidar instrument uses ultraviolet light to detect ice and aerosols in clouds, and, for the first time discern differences in sizes and types of particles from soot to sea salt, sand or other pollutants, giving detailed information on the impact they have on atmospheric heating and cooling, which is measured by the broadband radiometer. The satellite will now undergo a calibration phase to test the validity of the onboard instruments before scientific data collection can begin, a process expected towards the end of the year. “We’ve got lots of scientific work to do, of course,” says Hogan, “but we’ve got every reason to believe that this is going to be a step change in our understanding of how we should represent clouds in our climate models to make better predictions of climate in the future.”

Would need some data about it. Size, U-value, temperature ranges and frequencies.

Greenbelt was never ment to be zero development, unfortunately it is thought of as such by way too many people. The schools/hospitals/roads/public services arguement is so bogus that it should be discounted at the very beginning. If those public services are needed, then they will be built. Staffing is a totally different problem.

Or just build more stock. I wish I could stop selling meals to people with pets, children, an Audi, and unfamiliar accents. As it is, I just order more stuff in, then thrown a quarter of it in the bin after it has been left by the customers.

Wee Love maybe.

Welcome. Are you saying you are not happy with the work done?

Because we measure and systematically log data. It is one thing that most scientists (real) understand. The alternative is making assumptions based on nothing more than limited observation and bias.

I would happily work nights at that rate.

Why we can't afford to ignore the world's smallest freshwater bodies Ponds have long been neglected by science, but we can't overlook these diverse and important nature hotspots any more, say Jeremy Biggs and Penny Williams By Jeremy Biggs and Penny Williams 29 May 2024 Elaine Knox Considering they are the world’s most numerous patches of water, it is surprising that ponds are poorly understood. There are millions – possibly billions – of them. Yet for a century or so, scientists have paid them very little attention. This neglect might not have mattered were it not for increasing evidence that ponds are extremely important habitats for wildlife. Across many landscapes, they are being shown to support more freshwater plant and animal species than rivers or lakes. From microscopic algae to water beetles, aquatic plants, amphibians and water birds, ponds have rich, diverse and distinctive communities with a disproportionate number of rare and endangered species. Intriguingly, this biodiversity seems to be partly due to the small size of ponds, which allows them to have a wide range of conditions. The community in a shaded pond with clear, tannin-rich water will be very different to that in a nearby seasonal pond made cloudy by grazing animals. Ponds show far greater variation than rivers and streams, as flowing water tends to homogenise water chemistry. So why have we overlooked such a vital part of the natural world? A key reason appears to be what freshwater scientist John Downing has called “a saliency error”: the cognitive bias we humans have where we tacitly assume that if something is small, it can’t be all that important. Rather than study ponds, biologists in the past typically headed for the largest lake or river they could find. Most of us also devalue ponds because we assume they are artificial habitats: we look at the human-made examples around us and don’t realise that these waters have a deeply ancient origin. In our new book Ponds, Pools and Puddles, we debunk this idea. Ponds have clearly existed on Earth as long as there has been land and water and the geological record shows they have been a constant presence. The best-preserved evidence of pond-like freshwater communities anywhere in the world is in the Rhynie chert rocks in Scotland, which has traces of Devonian fairy shrimps swimming among stonewort plants 400 million years ago, just as they do today. The neglect of ponds within freshwater science has had a big impact on our ability to protect their wildlife. It has created a world view in which policy-makers can simply ignore the vast networks of ponds that make up so much of the global water environment. In Europe, for example, the Water Framework Directive – the main legislation to protect freshwater features – mostly excludes any bodies of water smaller than 50 hectares (about 120 acres). Fortunately, perceptions are changing. Last year, the Ramsar Convention xiv.15_small_wetlands_e.pdf, an international treaty, introduced a resolution on small wetlands, including ponds, giving crucial recognition to them. And the European Union-funded PONDERFUL project is gathering data on Europe’s ponds. There remains much to do, however, particularly if we want to harness the biodiversity power that such environments offer. As the effects of climate change deepen, plants and animals will increasingly need to move across the landscape to survive. Our work at Freshwater Habitats Trust in the UK has added to growing evidence of the importance of ponds for biodiversity. They are one of the few habitats that we can create in considerable numbers to help freshwater species adapt over short timescales. They are easy to make and they colonise rapidly. In a world where fresh water faces big challenges, creating and protecting ponds provides a ray of hope: a piece of natural ecological engineering we can easily achieve to help support one of the most threatened bits of the biosphere. Jeremy Biggs and Penny Williams are at Freshwater Habitats Trust, a UK conservation charity

The behavioural science that can help us choose more sustainable foods Sophie Attwood is working with the food industry to promote some surprising psychological tricks designed to make environmentally friendly choices more desirable By Graham Lawton 28 May 2024 Natalie Foss What we eat has a huge impact not just on our health, but also on that of the planet. This is common knowledge. Yet despite a smorgasbord of studies telling us which foods we should and shouldn’t consume, many of us find it hard to do the right thing. Sophie Attwood’s research takes a different approach: rather than presenting the bare facts on diet and its contribution to climate change, she uses behavioural science to persuade people to choose greener options. In May, she and her colleagues at global sustainability think tank the World Resources Institute released a major report on how the food industry can nudge people towards more sustainable fare. The aim isn’t to browbeat consumers, but to increase the appeal of plant-based options and reduce our desire to choose meat. Graham Lawton: How much of a problem are unsustainable diets for the climate? Sophie Attwood: Massive. The type of food people eat is the biggest cause of climate change related to diet. A lot of people think it’s stuff like food miles and pesticides. It’s actually not. It’s beef, for multiple reasons, the main one being that cattle often get fed on soya. Soya is usually from deforested areas, so you have to cut down the rainforest. And then you need around 20 kilograms of soya to produce 1 kilogram of beef. It’s a highly inefficient way to produce calories. Aside from that, the cattle themselves emit a lot of methane from gut fermentation and nitrogen from manure. There are greenhouse gases along the entire chain. We simply cannot continue to eat the way we do, be able to feed everybody and keep the natural environment. We’re at the point where we need to do everything very quickly. So what is a sustainable diet? It’s not necessarily a meat-free diet. It’s just a radically reduced amount of meat – especially beef. The average level of beef an individual eats in high-consuming regions, such as Europe and America, is somewhere around [the equivalent of] three burgers a week. We need to get that down to about one and a half. How can your research help? We work with lots of companies in the food service sector – restaurants, takeaways, canteens and catering companies. They are a really strong entry point into influencing people. We find all the different behavioural science techniques that can be done, everything from marketing and product placement to nudging. We work with the companies to implement these and see if we get a change in consumer choices. And then we conduct a lot of experiments so we’ve got evidence that it works. What are the most effective tools to encourage consumers to shift their diets? In 2018, we published a huge review looking at everything that had been done in behavioural science to try to shift diets. We found 57 behaviour change techniques. Using indulgent, taste-focused language came out as the big one. So don’t talk about plant-based food being vegetarian or vegan because it really puts people off. Ignore the fact that it doesn’t contain meat, just talk up the positive attributes. I haven’t seen a study where it doesn’t work. Have things moved on since 2018? We’ve just redone the exercise, and this time around we found 90 techniques. Language still comes out quite strongly. Another is menu engineering. The way you structure a menu and the content and the design have a massive influence on what people choose. The classic one is that things at the top left of the menu get chosen more. People’s food choices are quite easily influenced. Where food is placed on a menu influences how often it is chosen, which can help people to reduce their meat consumption FGTrade Latin/Getty Images What other techniques are there? Take any images of meat off the menu because they prompt people to choose meat. And put the plant-rich dishes into the main body of the menu, as meat-eaters will tend to ignore a veggie section. One that works all the time is taking meat off the menu. Restaurants present a plant-based-only menu and you have to ask the server for meat, a bit like what we did for cigarettes when we put them behind the counter. That one works a tonne, but for businesses trying to sell food and stay in business, it’s seen as not that feasible. Or you do things like a pre-order form for events, so when you go to an event, you have a default plant-based menu unless you opt in to meat. Menu language and menu engineering have worked really well. It’s about a 10 per cent shift in choices, which is pretty substantial. Does health messaging also work? This is quite interesting. Something like 80 studies in our review look at health messaging. Researchers have spent years looking at it. Just don’t bother. It doesn’t work. What’s the most surprising nudge? Natural sounds like birdsong calm people down, and people make more considered choices when they are in a calmer rather than an emotionally aroused state. What about making plant-based meals cheaper? Yeah, people are sensitive to price. We know incentives work, but industry needs to find a way to implement them that doesn’t dent their business. There’s also a point at which you need to ensure that you’re not signalling it’s a worse-quality product. If you want people to change, you have to offer good-quality, really tasty plant-based options. Restaurants need to get on board with doing a lot more product redevelopment and offer chefs training in plant-based foods because, at the moment, they don’t get trained in that. A sustainable diet isn’t necessarily vegetarian, but we should radically reduce the amount of meat we eat, especially beef Susan E. Degginger/Alamy How receptive are food service companies to this kind of approach? It usually lands very positively. Chefs are creatives. It’s basically saying to chefs, please be creative. And they really would like to be the conduit for healthier and more sustainable choices. How do you respond to a business that says, what’s in it for us? A lot of the Gen Z cohort [born from around the mid-1990s to early 2010s] – and probably a lot of everybody else – are now becoming much more aware of the link between diet and climate, so demand for more and better-quality plant-based foods is really growing. It does make good sense for businesses to be ahead of that curve. They also have the benefit of being able to sell environmental credentials. One thing you’re fighting against here is the meat industry, which has been lobbying hard to rebrand itself as sustainable. How do you push back against corporate might? I’m not sure we can. You can’t push back against massive budgets. To be honest, the industry is not pro-environmental and it never will be. They can make positive changes, like trying to get cows to emit less methane, which is welcome. But the big thing people need to do is cut some meat out of their diet. Can individual choices really shift the dial? That’s a good point. But think about the accumulated impact: 8 billion people are eating three meals a day. So if you can get even a slight change, it scales up. It’s actually one of the most substantially important things you can do, and it’s not a big thing, it’s not costly, it’s not a huge time investment. It’s basically impossible to get where we need to go without it. El Niño is ending after a year of driving extreme weather The warm El Niño pattern in the Pacific Ocean combined with global warming and other factors to create the hottest year on record – and this year may not be any cooler By James Dinneen 23 May 2024 Bolivia’s second-largest lake, Lake Poopo, has largely disappeared Aizar Raldes/AFP via Getty Images The El Niño climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean is coming to an end after boosting record temperatures and extreme weather across the planet over the past year. But it is uncertain how soon a transition to a cooler La Niña will bring respite from the heat. “La Niña should stop that streak of record-breaking temperatures,” says Pedro Dinezio at the University of Colorado Boulder. “If it doesn’t, are our models wrong? Are we underestimating global warming?” El Niño conditions are characterised by above-average sea surface temperatures in parts of the tropical Pacific. These waters usually oscillate between a warm El Niño temperature pattern, neutral conditions and a cool La Niña every two to seven years, a cycle that is one of the strongest factors influencing the global climate. El Niño is associated with hotter average temperatures and a distinctive pattern of weather conditions in much of the world. The current El Niño first appeared in June 2023, following a rare three-year-long La Niña. Temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are now expected to return to neutral conditions within the next month, according to the latest forecast from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Cool La Niña conditions are then very likely to appear between June and September. “You can already see [La Niña] emerging,” says Dinezio. “You can see it there in the Pacific right now.” Early last year, researchers were alarmed that the developing El Niño might reach historic strength, comparable to the powerful ones of 2015-2016 or 1997-1998. A very strong event could have an outsized influence on weather around the world. What emerged was a strong El Niño – the temperature anomaly in the Pacific reached 2°C above average at its peak – but not a record-breaking one. However, combined with background global warming from human-caused climate change and other factors, the outcomes of this year’s El Niño were unprecedented. The heat pouring out of the Pacific helped make global average temperatures in 2023 the hottest on record, with shocking heat anomalies on land and in the oceans. Each of the past 11 months since El Niño emerged has also been the hottest of that month on record, according to NOAA. Many of the regions that normally see weather influenced by El Niño also saw those effects amplified by background warming. For instance, drought and heat drove intense fire seasons in South America and Indonesia. In Central America, low water levels linked to El Niño created a traffic jam in the Panama Canal, disrupting global trade. Heavy precipitation caused flooding from California to Afghanistan. Is climate change accelerating and is it worse than we expected? With temperature records tumbling, it is only natural to worry about cascading tipping points, but the reality is far more nuanced Not all these effects were entirely negative. In the Horn of Africa, for instance, the rain helped ease a drought that has contributed to near-famine conditions in the region. But the overall damages of this El Niño will probably be significant and last for years, says Christopher Callahan at Stanford University in California. Past El Niño periods have been linked to trillions of dollars in damages and persistent economic losses, especially in poor countries in the tropics. “This was an El Niño superimposed on global warming in a way we have never seen before,” says Callahan. “A lot of the global impacts we saw, it’s still hard to disentangle.” Even as a usual pattern of El Niño’s influence emerged, other places saw extreme weather that fell outside the norm. For instance, the Mediterranean isn’t sensitive to El Niño, but last September, it saw torrential rain that led to a catastrophic dam collapse in Libya. And ocean temperatures in the Atlantic reached record high temperatures even before El Niño developed. Dinezio says this suggests the impact of background warming on the climate may be growing to match the influence of the El Niño cycle for the first time. “Last year, those two had equivalent influence,” they say. There is some evidence these forces were actually working against each other in certain locations. The rapid shift to La Niña conditions, which is not unusual following a strong El Niño event, could help moderate global average temperatures – although this won’t happen immediately. “There’s still going to be a lag in the climate system, and certainly in the global oceans,” says Karin Gleason at NOAA. Historically, the year after El Niño develops is hotter, and 2024 is still expected to break 2023’s heat record. But the end of El Niño will help researchers understand how much of the past year’s heat can be attributed to its influence, as opposed to background global warming or factors such as the 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai. This could help resolve an ongoing debate among researchers about whether 2023’s off-the-charts temperatures suggest climate change is accelerating faster than models projected. “A clear answer from La Niña should help us tease that out,” says Dinezio. “Is there something off or not?”

Don't be fooled by El Niño's end – net zero is more urgent than ever The El Niño climate pattern has contributed to a year of record-breaking temperatures. We must bend the curve of carbon emissions before the next one arrives 29 May 2024 md zakirul mazed konok/Alamy The past few years have seen a significant rise in inflation in many countries, driven by a range of factors from pandemic-fuelled shortages to the war in Ukraine. But even now, as inflation is falling, prices are still rising, albeit more slowly. This subtlety is often missed, intentionally or otherwise, by politicians seeking to claim victory over inflation. Don’t worry, you haven’t accidentally started reading The Economist. The point is that we may soon see a similar effect in the global climate. As we report in “El Niño is ending after a year of driving extreme weather“, the El Niño climate pattern is about to come to an end. Just like the recent inflationary period, El Niño has seen graphs soar, with a nearly year-long streak of record-breaking temperatures. The trouble is, just as prices continue to rise when inflation falls, the carbon dioxide we have pumped into the atmosphere will keep pushing up temperatures, even without the influence of El Niño. While coming years may be cooler, overall, the planet is still warming at an alarming rate. Precisely how close we are to exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, a key limit to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, is hard to assess. Traditionally, climate scientists look at this over decades, meaning we would only confirm a breach in retrospect. There is some good news here at least, as a new analysis shows that we can simply count the number of years in which average global temperatures exceed 1.5°C (see “Three years of high temperatures will mean we have breached 1.5°C“). It found that just three years above 1.5°C is enough to confirm a breach. The bad news is that 2024 may be the first. As we have said many time before, despair isn’t the answer. Unlike inflation, climate spikes are somewhat predictable. The next El Niño is likely to occur between two and seven years from now, so almost certainly within this decade. Before it comes, bringing yet more heat, the world should use this period to finally bend the curve on carbon emissions with a proper push for net zero by 2050. We will all benefit – and politicians might have something real to celebrate. Zero-carbon cement process could slash emissions from construction Cement production is a huge source of carbon emissions with no green alternative, but a new process that uses waste from demolished buildings could dramatically reduce its climate impact By Madeleine Cuff 22 May 2024 Cement being produced in an electric arc furnace at the Materials Processing Institute, UK, for the first time Materials Processing Institute A new technique can produce cement using waste from demolished buildings, which researchers say could save billions of tonnes of carbon by 2050. “We have definitely proved that cement can be recycled into cement,” says Julian Allwood at the University of Cambridge. “We are on course for making cement with zero emissions, which is amazing.” Producing cement is highly polluting – responsible for 7.5 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions – but until now there was no known way to produce it at scale without impacts on the climate. Making cement requires “clinker”, which is made by heating a mix of raw materials, including limestone and clay, to 1450°C (2650°F). Both the heat requirements and the chemical reactions involved in making clinker result in carbon emissions, and clinker production accounts for 90 per cent of cement’s total carbon footprint. Allwood and his colleagues have developed an alternative process to make clinker, which involves reusing cement paste from demolished buildings. This paste has an identical chemical composition to lime flux, a substance used to remove impurities from recycled steel. As the steel melts, the flux made from old cement forms a slag that floats on the top of the recycled steel. Once ground into a powder, the slag is identical to clinker. It can then be used to make Portland cement, the most common form of cement. If the recycled steel and cement are produced using an electric furnace, powered by renewable or nuclear energy, the process is almost entirely free of emissions. “The idea is really simple,” says Allwood. Laboratory trials have proved the process works. It offers a “drop in” solution that could be used with conventional equipment, and a global switch to this process could save up to 3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the team calculates. The research team is now working on industrial trials via a spin-out company, Cambridge Electric Cement, with partners such as construction firms Balfour Beatty and Tarmac. “Within the next few weeks, we are starting a set of trials which will be producing batches of 30 tonnes per hour,” says Allwood. Scaling up the new cement-making process depends in part on the growth of recycled steel-making, which currently accounts for about 40 per cent of global steel production. Allwood says production rates will at least double over the next 30 years, and most likely treble, as the industry decarbonises. Yet some challenges lie ahead. The recycled cement process requires furnace temperatures of 1600 to 1750°C (2900 to 3200°F), slightly hotter than traditional cement production. This will increase power costs, says Leon Black at the University of Leeds, UK. Other hurdles include establishing supply chains for waste cement, attracting the necessary capital investment and convincing a notoriously cautious industry to adopt a new process on a large scale. “They have overcome one barrier in as much as they have made a material that has the same composition as Portland cement,” says Black. “The devil is in the details: the energy requirements, the logistics, the scaling up.” Journal reference: Nature DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07338-8