Abu Dhabi to London: Bloomberg’s HQ and sustainable impact
29 NOV 2017
Bloomberg’s new European headquarters in London was described as the world’s most sustainable building when it was unveiled last month.
The 3.2 acre site in London’s financial district, designed by architects Foster + Partners, cost an estimated £1bn according to some media reports. The building will use about 70% less water and one third less energy and associated carbon emissions, than an average office building, said Bloomberg, a news and information provider.
The building generates its own power from gas and re-uses “waste heat” to heat the building in the winter and cool it by circulating chilled water in the summer. It captures rainwater on the roof and re-uses it in the building, while its airplane-style “vacuum flush” toilets minimise water use.
“Flaps” on the outside of the building open and close, letting it breathe while reducing noise from outside.
According to Bloomberg, the building scored 98.5% when judged by BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method), a widely-used assessment method for sustainability in buildings.
The new Bloomberg building isn’t an isolated development, of course. It’s the natural progression of an iterative process of learning and incorporating new techniques and materials.
Foster & Partners was also the architect of the first phase of Masdar City – home to one of the world’s largest clusters of high performance buildings. Masdar City has become a “greenprint” for sustainable design, drawing on both passive and active design techniques to minimise water and energy use. While technology has advanced since the project was designed, its capacity to demonstrate the potential of sustainable design remains constant.
10 years later, sustainable urban design is now mainstream and part of business as usual among developed nations. In arid climates such as the Middle East, the impact of sustainability measures can be dramatic. Up to 80% of energy in Middle East countries is consumed by buildings alone – this can be cut by 30% with “quick win”, low cost measures.
It is little wonder that sustainable design is at the heart of ambitious development plans across the region, including Saudi Arabia, which last month announced plans to build a $500 billion city, known as NEOM (short for “new future”), which will get all its power from renewable energy.
Sustainable design can also provide solutions to challenges and natural disasters associated with climate change. In China, for instance, a pilot “sponge cities” project is seeking to minimise the threat of floods through measures such as covering rooftops with plants and permeable pavements that store excess water, as well as the creation of wetland reservoirs. Such ideas could be adopted by flood-prone cities across the world.
Collaboration, partnership and knowledge sharing is vital to ensure that sustainable design (including new technology, approaches to design and engineering) continues to spread. Brick by brick.
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06 JAN 2018
AI, IoT, and Smart Storage: Disruptors in the energy industry
During the past 30 years, companies have sought to improve operational efficiencies and cut costs in all manner of ways, but one of the potentially biggest savings and “quick wins” for businesses – energy efficiency – has yet to be fully exploited.
Energy is one the largest operating expenses for business of all sizes and in all industries. Reducing its cost can help a company’s bottom line and reduce the strain on electricity networks.
Technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence (AI) and energy storage are helping companies improve their energy efficiency and save money.
Energy efficiency is becoming a high priority for business, particularly heavy energy users. In 2016, in the US alone, 190 of America’s largest “Fortune 500” companies saved a total of about US $3.7 billion through energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.
Internet of Things and “Demand Side Response”
Demand side technologies are transforming how businesses use and deliver energy. The technology works by automatically adjusting the power consumption of equipment on a second-by-second basis to help manage fluctuations in electricity supply and demand. These adjustments have zero impact on a company’s operations but help to build a smarter, more responsive system which supports renewables and the wider energy transition.
Businesses on a Demand Side Response (DSR) scheme commit to reducing or shifting their energy consumption when electricity demand from the Grid threatens to exceed supply. Businesses which can be flexible with their consumption are rewarded for shifting or reducing demand, or by making capacity available through onsite generation, when needed.
United Utilities, one of the UK’s main water companies, is using a “smart box” from Open Energi, a DSR technology company, which allows its equipment to ‘talk’ to the UK’s electricity grid, National Grid.
The company’s motors and pumps automatically adjust their energy consumption in seconds, in response to variations in power frequency. By 2020 United Utilities aims to provide the National Grid with 50MW of energy capacity − allowing the company to reduce its energy consumption while getting additional revenue from the grid.
In the United Arab Emirates, Dubai is considering demand side management technology to support its goal of reducing its energy consumption by 30% by 2030.
Artificial Intelligence and automation
AI is poised to revolutionize the way we produce, transmit and consume energy, by becoming the brain of this future smart grid.
The technology could continuously collect and synthesize data from millions of sensors across a city or country to make decisions on how to best allocate energy resources. As AI is more widely adopted, it will become even smarter by spotting patterns and anomalies in large data sets, which further revolutionise both the demand and supply side of the energy economy.
DeepMind, the world leading AI research company, has been working with Google to improve the energy efficiencies of its data centres. By applying its machine learning technology, DeepMind has been able to achieve a 40 percent reduction in the amount of energy used for cooling.
At present data centres consume around 3 per cent of the global electricity supply – with this figure expected to treble in the next decade, putting an enormous strain on energy supplies. By applying AI to data centres alone to make them more efficient could have a major impact on our electricity networks.
Energy Storage
Business are using new energy storage systems to improve energy security and generate new revenue streams. They do this by storing low cost energy when demand is low and selling it back to the grid at peak times, when costs are higher.
Alternatively, a business can use its stored energy at its own peak times or to cope with changes in seasonal demand.
When storage is combined with renewable generation, such as solar and wind, business and industry have the potential to be self-sufficient and work off the grid.
At a grid level, energy storage has a number of applications beyond time-shifting energy, which are key for making the grid smarter and more efficient.
Improving energy efficiency is a quick win for business. It allows them to reduce costs, improve energy security and potentially generate new revenue streams. To stay ahead of the curve, businesses and industrial players must begin to invest in technologies and processes for managing energy − a resource which is now a key factor in business success.
06 JAN 2018
Desalination 2.0: the solution to water scarcity?
Water scarcity is a global challenge. A growing population, which is expected to increase from around 7.5 billion today to nearly 10 billion by 2050, according to a forecast by the United Nations (UN), is putting growing pressure on a finite supply of water. Global demand for water is expected to increase by 55% by 2050. Within the next decade, two thirds of the world’s population could be living in “water stressed” countries.
Regions affected won’t be limited to arid regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and the Gulf States in the Middle East. The strain on the water supply will be particularly acute in cities. The number of people living in cities is expected to rise from about 55% in 2016 to 66% by 2050, according to the UN. This population increase could cause major disruption to cities if suitable water technologies are not in place to serve demand. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE) − one of the most arid parts of the world with little rainfall − groundwater levels are low and in steady decline. What groundwater there is, is typically very salty (saline). For the UAE and about 150 other countries on or near the coastline, with minimal rainfall and little freshwater, there is currently little choice but to rely on desalination technology. Desalination involves pumping and processing sea water to remove excess salt and other minerals to obtain fresh water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. The technology is already widely used, with more than 300 million people relying on desalinated water for some or all their daily needs, according to the International Desalination Association.
Desalination has been vital for the UAE’s rapid growth and development. The country gets 96% of its domestic water through desalination. Two of the big disadvantages of desalination technology are closely linked to each other – firstly, desalination is energy intensive, and secondly these energy needs have historically been met by fossil fuels. In the UAE, seawater desalination needs about 10 times more energy than surface, freshwater production. In the Gulf region alone, desalination plants account for 0.2% of the entire world’s electricity consumption. However, these challenges are now being addressed and desalination technology is expected to play a key role in serving growing demand for fresh water. Energy accounts for around 70% of the cost of desalination and is typically derived from fossil fuels. By reducing energy intensity and running desalination plants on renewable energy, operators could both reduce their operating costs and minimise their carbon footprint.
In the UAE, Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) has piloted five energy-efficient seawater desalination projects at a testing facility on the Ghantoot coast. The long-term goal is to implement renewable energy-powered desalination plants in the United Arab Emirates, as well as the wider region, and to have a commercial scale facility operating by 2020. Once rolled out, this project is likely to have implications well beyond the Middle East. Elsewhere, island countries including Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have been using variations of desalination technology, which involve sucking up seawater through long pipes running hundreds of metres out to sea so that they gather water from deep under the ocean’s surface. Water from more than 300 metres deep is purer and has more nutrients, making desalination simpler and cheaper because less energy is required to process the seawater.
Desalination technology has played a key role in helping the UAE and other countries in water scarce regions grow their cities and industries. Over the next decades, desalination will also be vital in helping emerging economies develop, although how these countries power their plants will be different. Desalination, when combined with renewable energy and potentially energy storage, will significantly improve the economic viability of processing sea water and make it more environmentally sustainable. This will play a critical role in responding to the growing global challenge of water scarcity.