Meet the biggest heat pumps in the world

 

MVV Energie is building the world's most powerful heat pump systems

From the BBC

The pipe that will supply the heat pump, drawing water from the River Rhine in Germany, is so big that you could walk through it, fully upright, I'm told.

"We plan to take 10,000 litres per second," says Felix Hack, project manager at MVV Environment, an energy company, as he describes the 2m diameter pipes that will suck up river water in Mannheim, and then return it once heat from the water has been harvested.

In October, parent firm MVV Energie announced its plan to build what could be the most powerful heat pump modules ever. Two units, each with a capacity of 82.5 megawatts.

That's enough to supply around 40,000 homes, in total, via a district heating system. MVV Energie aims to build the system on the site of a coal power plant that is converting to cleaner technologies.

The scale of the heat pumps was determined partly by limits on the size of machinery that could be transported through the streets of Mannheim, or potentially via barges along the Rhine. "We're not sure about that yet," says Mr Hack. "It might come via the river."

One person well aware of the project is Alexandre de Rougemont, at Everllence (formerly MAN Energy Solutions), another German company that also makes extremely large heat pumps. "It is a competition, yeah," he says. "We're open about it."

Heat pumps soak up heat from the air, ground or, in these cases, bodies of water. Refrigerants inside the heat pumps evaporate when they are warmed even slightly.

By compressing the refrigerant, you boost that heat further. This same process occurs in heat pumps designed to supply single homes, it just happens on a much larger scale in giant heat pumps that serve entire city districts.

As towns and cities around the world seek to decarbonise, many are deciding to purchase large heat pumps, which can attach to district heating networks.

These networks allow hot water or steam to reach multiple buildings, all connected up with many kilometres of pipe. Ever bigger models of heat pump are emerging to meet demand.

"There was a lot of pressure on us to change the heat generation to new sources, especially renewable sources," explains Mr Hack as he discusses the decommissioning of coal-fired units at the Mannheim plant. The site is right by the Rhine, already has a hefty electricity grid connection, and is plugged in to the district heating network, so it makes sense to install the heat pumps here, he says.

He notes that the technology is possible partly thanks to the availability of very large compressors in the oil and gas industry – where they are used to compress fossil fuels for storage or transportation, for example.

Work on the Mannheim project is due to start next year. The heat pumps – with a combined capacity of 162MW – are set to become fully operational in the winter of 2028-29. Mr Hack adds that a multi-step filter system will prevent the heat pumps sucking up fish from the river, and that modelling suggests the system will affect the average temperature of the river by less than 0.1C.

Installations such as this are not cheap. The Mannheim heat pump setup will cost €200m ($235m; £176m). Mr de Rougemont at Everllence says that, at his company, heat-pump equipment costs roughly €500,000 per megawatt of installed capacity – this does not include the additional cost of buildings, associated infrastructure and so on.

Everllence is currently working on a project in Aalborg, Denmark that will be even more powerful than the system in Mannheim, with a total capacity of 176MW. It will use smaller modules, however – four 44MW units – and is due to become operational in 2027, when it will supply nearly one third of all heating demand in the town.

Those 44MW machines are actually the same ones used in a previous project, now fully operational, to the south of Aalborg in Esbjerg. There, they don't run at maximum capacity but rather supply 35MW each.

Large hot water storage tanks, each able to hold 200,000 cubic metres of liquid, will give the system added flexibility, adds Mr de Rougemont: "When the electricity price is high, you stop your heat pump and only provide heat from the storage."

Veronika Wilk at the Austrian Institute of Technology says, "Heat pumps and district heating systems are a great fit." Such systems can harvest heat from bodies of water or even wastewater from sewage treatment plants.

Dr Wilk notes that, when you use multiple large heat pumps on a district heating network, you gain flexibility and efficiency. You could run two out of four heat pumps in the autumn, say, when less heat is required than during the depths of winter.

All the systems mentioned so far harvest energy from water sources but, less commonly, very large heat pumps can use the air as a heat source, too. Even in a relatively cold city such as Helsinki.

"The sea in front of Helsinki is too shallow," explains Timo Aaltonen, senior vice president of heating and cooling at Helen Oy, an energy firm. "We calculated that we would need to build a tunnel more than 20km long to the ocean, to get enough water [with a] temperature high enough."

Helsinki is in the process of radically overhauling its district heating system. The city has added heat pumps, biomass burners and electric boilers to a 1,400km network that links up nearly 90% of buildings in the Finnish capital, adds Mr Aaltonen.

Heat pumps convert single kilowatt hours of electricity into multiple kilowatt hours of heat but electric boilers can't do this and are therefore considered less efficient.

I ask why Helen Oy decided to install hundreds of megawatts of these boilers and Mr Aaltonen says that they are cheaper to install than heat pumps and having them also means he and colleagues don't have to rely entirely on the air, which is limited in terms of how much heat it can provide at scale. Plus, the electric boilers can help to soak up surplus renewables and provide an electricity grid-balancing function, he says.

Forever chemicals in my blood

 

From the BBC

As I walked into the medical clinic for my blood test, all I could think about was how to avoid looking like a wimp on camera. I didn't really contemplate what the test would reveal.

I am not great with needles - but as part of a BBC Panorama investigation into so-called forever chemicals, I was being tested to see what level of them I had in my blood. As a mum with two small children, I also wanted to know whether they may be having an impact on my family.

Forever chemicals, or PFAS (per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances), are a group of about 10,000 chemicals. They have been used for decades, in anything from waterproof clothes, to cookware, electronics and medical equipment.

They are persistent pollutants, meaning they don't degrade easily and instead build up in the environment.

They exist in our homes, our water and in our food.

Scientists have linked a small number of them to serious harms, such as infertility and cancer.

Any level of PFAS above 2ng (nanograms) per millilitre of blood is considered to bring health risks, according to Dr Sabine Donnai, a specialist in preventative healthcare. She has never met anyone without at least some PFAS in their bloodstream.

My result was 9.8ng per millilitre.

Dr Donnai delivered the news very gently - but it still hit me hard.

The forever chemicals in my blood would "most likely" have an impact on my health, she told me.

I also learned that, sadly, my body would have rid itself of some of these chemicals during pregnancy, by passing it on to my babies.

That was the moment this investigation stopped being just work and felt very personal.

"They [PFAS levels] would have been even higher before your pregnancies," Dr Donnai told me.

"You will have passed on to your children for sure."

I was worried, but I also felt angry about how this could have happened without me having any knowledge, and very little control.

I wanted to know more about these substances and the health issues they have been linked to.

PFAS chemicals "don't break down", said Stephanie Metzger from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

"Once they get into our bodies, they stick around and build up little-by-little until they start to interfere with our systems.

"Some PFAS have been linked to thyroid problems, some to kidney and liver cancer, and some have been shown to affect fertility."

As for me, it is "unlikely" I will be able to bring my levels to zero, said Dr Donnai.

"But you can reduce it over the next two or three years with a strategy."

She suggested I increase my fibre intake - either by eating more oats, barley, beans, nuts and seeds, or by taking supplements of gel-forming fibre. Increased fibre in our diet is "the strongest evidence to date that might help", she said.

If I did these things, menstruation would also help reduce my current PFAS levels over time, she added.

She also told me to identify the biggest sources of exposure in my home - replace my non-stick cookware with ceramic, stainless steel or cast iron alternatives, use a water filter and switch to eco-friendly cleaning products which are transparent about being PFAS-free.

Look for PFAS-free make-up and hair products and avoid ingredients with "fluoro" or "PTFE" in the name, she added.

Similar advice was given to mum-to-be Pam Kavanagh, who we visited at home in Berkshire with Dr Federica Amati of Imperial College London.

Pam was eager to know how to reduce the possible household risks of PFAS to her baby - and Dr Amati has studied how babies and children can be affected by forever chemicals.

"When we drink tap water, we are, depending on where you live, at varying levels of exposure to PFAS," Dr Amati said.

Just buying a water filter can help to reduce exposure, she said - whether that is a jug with a filter in it, or a filter installed into the actual sink.

Any non-stick frying pans with scratches on them should be thrown out, Dr Amati advised.

Stainless steel or ceramic pans "are far safer", she said.

Carpets can be treated with PFAS to make them more stain resistant, she added, suggesting that people vacuum their carpets every day.

"Making sure you ventilate the room by opening the windows every single day is a good idea [because] it really collects as house dust," she added

Dr Amati then turned to children's clothing. Pam was left "speechless" to discover that waterproof or stain-resistant clothing can contain PFAS. Manufacturers are under no obligation to disclose this information.

Some children's products are not PFAS-free, despite claiming to be, the BBC learned.

We found PFAS in a children's coat we bought from the Mountain Warehouse website a few months ago, even though the site says that none of its children's products are made with forever chemicals.

If fabrics containing PFAS come into "prolonged contact with human skin" there's the potential the chemicals can be absorbed across the skin, explained Prof Stuart Harrad at the University of Birmingham, who tested the coat for us.

To reduce the risk, opt for untreated fabrics and avoid "waterproof" or "stain-repellent" labels unless they have a PFAS-free certification, said Dr Donnai.

This piece on Wikipedia shows how ubiquitous and how dangerous PFAs are. 

Why don't we ban their manufacture?  Why do you think?  Because of money.  Because of "donations" from companies to politicians.  Because lobbyists stop action.  It's the same with microplastics or nanoplastics.  We know they are deadly.  But we go on producing them.  We know burning fossil fuels is leading to climate catastrophe.  But we allow oil and gas companies to pervert our political system, and even invite their representatives and lobbyists to the COP conferences.  We know that pesticides are leading to insectageddon, yet still we do not act.  Ask yourself why.

Source: Wikipedia

Britain to get its first SMR

 

From the BBC

A first-of-its-kind nuclear power station is to be built on Anglesey, bringing up to 3,000 jobs and billions of pounds of investment.

The plant at Wylfa, on the Welsh island's northern coast, will have the UK's first three small modular reactors (SMR), although the site could potentially hold up to eight.

Work is due to start next year with the aim of generating power by the mid 2030s.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Britain was once a world leader in nuclear power but "years of neglect and inertia has meant places like Anglesey have been let down and left behind. Today, that changes."

The project, which could power about three million homes, will be built by publicly owned Great British Energy-Nuclear and is backed by a £2.5bn investment from the UK government.

SMRs work similarly to large reactors, using a nuclear reaction to generate heat that produces electricity - but are a fraction of the size, with about a third of the generating output.

Prof Simon Middleburgh, director of the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University, said the SMRs would be "built in a modular manner in factories and shipped to the site to be put together a bit like an Ikea chair".

There were "a few more hurdles to go through", he cautioned - from securing regulatory approval, building the factories required to construct the SMRs and training the workforce that will run them.

Opponents of the project point to the fact that a long-term storage facility for the UK's nuclear waste is yet to be agreed upon and say investment in renewable energy schemes - wind, wave and tidal - is what Anglesey needs.

The government sees them as a secure, reliable, affordable and low carbon energy system and is convinced that, with investment, SMRs will create thousands of jobs and boost manufacturing.

Wylfa beat competition from a site at Oldbury in Gloucestershire, with the reactors designed by Rolls-Royce, subject to final contracts, which are expected later this year.

The argument for SMRs, as opposed to the giant nuclear reactors that have been built so far, is that if they can be produced on an assembly line, they will be much cheaper, because they will avoid the cost overruns (and the lengthy delays) associated with big project bloat.  After all, wind and solar farms tend not to have huge cost overruns, because almost everything is "off the shelf".   But SMRs' success also depends on mass production, which requires (just like solar panels and wind turbines) volume.   Except solar panels and wind turbines are already high volume, and buyers can take advantage of that fact.  I suspect SMRs will only be a thing when China starts to produce them at volume.   Which isn't happening because wind + solar + batteries is so cheap.

 Notice how no indication of cost is given,   Notice also that the new SMRs will only start producing power in 10 years' time--and that's the optimistic scenario.  I remain sceptical.  Still, Hungary has signed an order for 10 SMRs, and they are also planned for Czechia.

Half of homes will need heat pumps by 2040

This analysis is about the UK, but the logic applies everywhere.  Globally, heating and cooling buildings produces 17.5% of global emissions.   Every government everywhere should be aggressively promoting heat pumps, because even if the electricity grid has a high percentage of fossil fuels, heat pumps are far more efficient than other kinds of heating, and so, will produce fewer emissions.

From The BBC

Four in five cars should be electric and half of homes should have heat pumps within 15 years, say the government's independent climate advisers.

By law the UK must reach "net zero" - no longer adding to the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere - by 2050.

UK greenhouse gas emissions have more than halved since 1990, largely thanks to less electricity coming from fossil fuels and more from renewables. But the Climate Change Committee (CCC) says that to reach the 2050 target we will also need to change how we drive and heat our homes.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the government would consider the advice and respond in due course.

"We owe it to current generations to seize the opportunities for energy security and lower bills, and we owe it to future generations to tackle the existential climate crisis," he said.

Under UK law, the CCC provides independent advice on how much the UK should emit over five-year periods, known as "carbon budgets", and how it might get there.

Each carbon budget is a stepping stone to net zero by 2050. The latest advice is that by 2040, emissions should be 13% of their 1990 levels, for the UK to stay on track.

The CCC advice is not policy, but the government has historically accepted it. If it does, the target will become legally binding, but government will still decide how to achieve it.

Meeting these long-term goals will mean significant changes in the years ahead. One-third of emissions cuts between now and 2040 need to come from households making low-carbon choices, the CCC says.

This will mainly be through switching from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles and from fossil fuel boilers to heat pumps, making use of growing supplies of clean electricity. Smaller contributions will come from other choices, such as eating less meat and dairy.

As the graph below shows, these changes are ambitious. But they are deliverable, argues the CCC, without people having to scrap their existing boiler or car early.

Other emerging technologies, like mobile phones and internet connections, have achieved similar rates of increases previously.

"For electric vehicles, the market is already pretty much at parity with internal combustion engine vehicles, so we think just naturally that will start to be a choice people make," Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of the CCC, told the BBC's Today programme.

"For heat pumps, we're saying it's different, the costs are still higher than a fossil fuel boiler and the government will need to act to help people get those technologies.

"But the rollout rate that we've looked at is similar to what happened to our neighbours in Ireland but also to much colder countries in Europe."

Emissions cuts will be needed in other areas too, such as farming and flying, two of the hardest sectors to decarbonise.

The CCC no longer directly advises against net airport expansion, which it has previously. But it warns the costs of decarbonising aviation will need to be picked up by airlines, which will probably drive up ticket prices.

It says we will need to eat less meat and dairy too. In the CCC's pathway, sheep and cattle numbers fall by 27% by 2040, and the area covered by woodland rises from 13% to 16%.

Cost of net zero

The costs of tackling climate change have become highly politicised in recent years.

The CCC estimates most of the expense will be borne by the private sector and calculates the savings from moving to more efficient technologies should outweigh costs by the early 2040s.

"We are crystal clear in this analysis, in this carbon budget, for the first time we start to see the economy making savings from this investment, and they make savings over and above what we would do if we stay dependent on fossil fuels," Ms Pinchbeck told BBC News.

This should improve energy security and filter down to lower bills in the long term, the CCC argues, provided the government acts to make electricity cheaper.

It advises removing policy costs – funding for social and environmental schemes – from electricity bills. That would cut them by about 19% based on expected 2025 prices, the CCC says, making it more cost-effective for people to switch to electric vehicles or heat pumps.

These costs could instead sit on gas bills or general taxation.

"Regardless of what you think about climate change, what we are laying out today is a massive industrial revolution," said Ms Pinchbeck.

"It will save the economy money by 2040, it saves people money on their energy bills, it saves people money on their driving costs, but all of that is underpinned by a cheaper electricity price."

See also:  Heat pumps: myths and benefits

Uncharted territory: a record hot March

From the BBC

Climate change could move "into uncharted territory" if temperatures don't fall by the end of the year, a leading scientist has told the BBC.

The warning came as data showed last month was the world's warmest March on record, extending the run of monthly temperature records to 10 in a row.

It's fuelled concerns among some that the world could be tipping into a new phase of even faster climate change.

A weather system called El Niño is behind some of the recent heat.

Temperatures should temporarily come down after El Niño peters out in coming months, but some scientists are worried they might not.

"By the end of the summer, if we're still looking at record breaking temperatures in the North Atlantic or elsewhere, then we really have kind of moved into uncharted territory," Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told BBC News.

March 2024 was 1.68C warmer than "pre-industrial" times - before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels - according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service.

For now, longer term warming trends are still pretty much consistent with expectations, and most researchers don't yet believe that the climate has entered a new phase.

But scientists are struggling to explain exactly why the end of 2023 was so warm.

The March record was expected. El Niño, which began last June and peaked in December, has been adding heat to the warmth put into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, the main driver of high temperatures.

But temperatures began breaking records by a particularly large margin around last September, and back then, El Niño was still developing, so can't explain all of the extra warmth.

Dr Schmidt is concerned about what this means for predictions going forward.

"Our predictions failed quite dramatically for the specifics of 2023, and if previous statistics don't work, then it becomes much harder to say what's going to happen in the future," he said.

"We're still trying to understand why the situation changed so dramatically in the middle of last year, and how long this situation will continue, whether it is a phase shift or whether it's a blip in long-term climate trends," agrees Dr Samantha Burgess from Copernicus.

The current El Niño is now waning, and will likely end in the next couple of months.

While scientists aren't sure exactly how conditions in the Pacific will evolve, current predictions suggest it could be replaced by a full La Niña cool phase later this year.

That cooling of the sea surface would normally see a temporary drop in global air temperatures, but it remains to be seen exactly how this will evolve.

"We're definitely seeing a weakening of El Niño, but the question is, where will we end up?" says Michelle L'Heureux, a scientist with the NOAA climate prediction centre.

But scientists are certain about one thing: the way to stop the world warming is to rapidly cut emissions of planet-warming gases.

"We have this window in the coming years to try and mitigate the impacts of climate change, by cutting emissions," says Dr Angélique Melet from Mercator Ocean International.

"I do understand the challenges but it's also true that if we don't act, we are committing ourselves towards a future where 2023 will be the new normal."

"How fast will that happen? It depends on us."

World temperatures breach the 1.5C red line

 From The BBC

For the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire year, according to the EU's climate service.

World leaders promised in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C, which is seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging impacts.

This first year-long breach doesn't break that landmark Paris agreement, but it does bring the world closer to doing so in the long-term.

Urgent action to cut carbon emissions can still slow warming, scientists say.

"This far exceeds anything that is acceptable," Prof Sir Bob Watson, a former chair of the UN's climate body, told the BBC Radio 4's Today Programme.

"Look what's happened this year with only 1.5C - we've seen floods, we've seen droughts, we've seen heatwaves and wildfires all over the world."

The period from February 2023 to January 2024 reached 1.52C of warming, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service. The following graph shows how that compares with previous years.

 

The world's sea surface is also at its highest ever recorded average temperature - yet another sign of the widespread nature of climate records. As the chart below shows, it's particularly notable given that ocean temperatures don't normally peak for another month or so.

 

Science groups differ slightly on precisely how much temperatures have increased, but all agree that the world is in by far its warmest period since modern records began - and likely for much longer.

Limiting long-term warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels - before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels - has become a key symbol of international efforts to tackle climate change.

A landmark UN report in 2018 said that the risks from climate change - such as intense heatwaves, rising sea-levels and loss of wildlife - were much higher at 2C of warming than at 1.5C.

The long-term warming trend is unquestionably being driven by human activities - mainly from burning fossil fuels, which releases planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide. This is also responsible for the vast majority of the warmth over the past year.

In recent months, a natural climate-warming phenomenon known as El Niño has also given air temperatures an extra boost, although it would typically only do so by about 0.2C.

Global average air temperatures began exceeding 1.5C of warming on an almost daily basis in the second half of 2023, when El Niño began kicking in, and this has continued into 2024. This is shown where the red line is above the dashed line in the graph below.

An end to El Niño conditions is expected in a few months, which could allow global temperatures to temporarily stabilise, and then fall slightly, probably back below the 1.5C threshold.

But while human activities keep adding to the levels of warming gases in the atmosphere, temperatures will ultimately continue rising in the decades ahead.

 A climate catasrophe awaits us, and we still dither and delay, instead of slashing emissions drastically.

Amazon's record drought driven by climate change

From The BBC

One of our planet's most vital defences against global warming is itself being ravaged by climate change.

It was the main driver of the Amazon rainforest's worst drought in at least half a century, according to a new study.

Often described as the "lungs of the planet", the Amazon plays a key role in removing warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

But rapid deforestation has left it more vulnerable to weather extremes.

While droughts in the Amazon are not uncommon, last year's event was "exceptional", the researchers say.

In October, the Rio Negro - one of the world's largest rivers - reached its lowest recorded level near Manaus in Brazil, surpassing marks going back over 100 years.

As well as being a buffer against climate change, the Amazon is a rich source of biodiversity, containing around 10% of the world's species - with many more yet to be discovered.

The drought has disrupted ecosystems and has directly impacted millions of people who rely on rivers for transport, food and income, with the most vulnerable hit hardest.

One trigger for these dry conditions is El Niño - a natural weather system where sea surface temperatures increase in the East Pacific Ocean. This affects global rainfall patterns, particularly in South America.

But human-caused climate change was the main driver of the extreme drought, according to the World Weather Attribution group, reducing the amount of water in the soil in two main ways.

Firstly, the Amazon is typically receiving less rainfall than it used to between June and November - the drier part of the year - as the climate warms.

Secondly, hotter temperatures mean there's more evaporation from the plants and soils, so they lose more water.

The researchers used weather data and computer simulations to compare drought conditions in two scenarios: one with human-caused warming, and one without.

In a world where humans hadn't heated up the planet by around 1.2C, such an intense 'agricultural drought' - where a lack of rainfall and high evaporation dry out the soils - may only have happened around once every 1,500 years, the study suggests.

Climate change has made a drought of this severity around 30 times more likely, according to the researchers, and one is now expected to happen every 50 years under current conditions.

"This really is something quite exceptional," says Dr Ben Clarke, a researcher with the World Weather Attribution group.

And if warming continues, such extreme droughts could become even more common.  "If we continue burning oil, gas and coal, very soon, we'll reach 2C of warming and we'll see similar Amazon droughts about once every 13 years," says Dr Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London.

More frequent and intense droughts test the Amazon's resilience. That has already been stretched by deforestation - around one-fifth of the rainforest has been lost over the last 50 years.

Trees help the area retain and release moisture, fuelling their own clouds, and they also help to cool temperatures.

While the effect of deforestation was not directly tested in this latest study, previous research has shown it increases the vulnerability of the rainforest to drought.

The world's largest rainforest is seen as crucial in the battle to limit global warming.

"The Amazon could make or break our fight against climate change," says Regina Rodrigues, a professor of physical oceanography and climate at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil.

In a healthy state, it takes up more carbon dioxide (CO2) than it releases.

This limits CO2 increases in the atmosphere from human activities, keeping a lid on temperatures.

But there is evidence that this may be changing, as trees die back due to drought, wildfires and deliberate clearance to make room for agriculture.

There is concern that if climate change and deforestation continue at their current pace, the Amazon could soon reach a "tipping point".

If crossed, this could lead to the rapid and irreversible dieback of the whole rainforest - potentially leading to the region becoming a significant source of CO2 emissions.

It's not known exactly where such a threshold might sit.

"I don't think that [tipping point] is what we are seeing [yet], at least in all but the driest part of the Amazon forest," says Yadvinder Malhi, a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the latest study.

This - alongside urgent action to slash the greenhouse gas emissions that are fuelling global warming - can still help to protect what's left of the Amazon, researchers say.

"The loss of the Amazon forest is far from inevitable in the short-term," as long as fire and deforestation can be controlled, Prof Malhi told BBC News.

"But we do need to get to grips with stabilising global climate, as the risk increases with every fraction of a degree the planet warms."

Kenya's push to make boda-boda taxis electric

Source: BBC/PAA KWESI ASARE

From The BBC

Moses Lugalia has joined Kenya's budding electric vehicle revolution - by exchanging the noisy roar of his petrol motorbike for the gentle hum of an electric one.

The biggest incentive to go electric for the 27-year-old rider of a motorbike taxi - known locally as a "boda-boda" - was the promise of saving money at a time when fuel prices keep rising.

Motorbike taxis are everywhere in Kenya, as in many African countries, because they are cheaper than cars, and can be better for navigating the notorious traffic jams in the capital, Nairobi.

Mr Lugalia has been in the motorbike taxi business for five years, transporting people and goods around Nairobi.

He would spend about 1,000 Kenyan shillings a day - just over $6 (£5) - on fuel when he used a petrol bike.

Nairobi drivers earn on average about $10-15 a day, according to the country's Boda-Boda Association.

Since going electric, Mr Lugalia says he spends no more than $1.42 a day - so his profits are now up and that makes him very happy.

"Because of the cost of petrol, I am able to save a lot more using my electric bike," says Mr Lugalia with a smile.

Instead of filling up with petrol, Mr Lugalia now swaps the bike's electric battery once, sometimes twice, a day at one of the growing number of swap stations in Nairobi. A fully charged battery will allow him to drive for about 80km (50 miles), almost a whole day's work.

"Electric is the future in Kenya," Mr Lugalia tells the BBC.

The Kenyan government thinks so too. President William Ruto launched a national "e-mobility" programme on 1 September 2023.

Motorbikes and three-wheeled tuk-tuks, or auto rickshaws, are the centrepiece of a move to make transport green and reduce air pollution.

The government hopes the prospect of cheaper running costs will create a gearshift in the minds of other drivers of the ubiquitous boda-bodas, most of whom still use petrol or diesel.

There are about three million boda-boda riders in Kenya, according to the transport minister, and the UN estimates some five million people benefit from their incomes.

Taking a boda-boda is a convenient, fast and cheap way to get around.

But many of the motorcycles are old, poorly maintained and big polluters. Although they produce less carbon dioxide than cars, they release more nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons - which affect air quality and the climate.

Nairobi is one of the world's most heavily congested cities. Its population swells from about 4.5 million to more than six million people during rush-hours.

The daily gridlock can be a choking nightmare for commuters - transport accounts for about 40% of Nairobi's air pollution, and globally for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Clean Air Fund.

Other major climate change culprits are deforestation, agriculture, manufacturing, and the open burning of waste.

Africa contributes only 2% to 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but it suffers disproportionately from climate change, according to the UN Environment Programme.

Nevertheless, Kenya's government sees a shift to green transport as vital to help meet its climate goals. It wants more than 200,000 electric bikes on the road by the end of 2024.

On average e-bikes emit 75% less total greenhouse gases.

So far only about 2,000 boda-boda drivers have switched from petrol to electric.

Will hotter heat pumps win converts?

 From The BBC

The first heat pumps Graham Hendra sold, about 15 years ago, weren't very hot.

"To get 50C - that was quite hard," says the former wholesaler, referring to the temperature of the water that these devices sent to radiators, known as the flow temperature.

Today's gas combi boilers are typically designed for flow temperatures of around 50-60C.

The older heat pumps might have struggled to heat some homes adequately unless the homeowner decided to install larger radiators, for example. The increased surface area of such radiators helps transfer heat into the room.

But a new breed of heat pumps is emerging. Engineers have gradually improved the technology, meaning that heat pumps are now able to supply much higher temperatures, sometimes in excess of 70C.

A major change has been the rise of new refrigerants, including R290, or propane. This is the fluid that circulates inside a heat pump. In an air source device, the refrigerant captures warmth from the outside air, even on cold days. By compressing the slightly warmed refrigerant, the heat pump is able to increase the temperature and then transfer that heat into a property.

R290 is more environmentally friendly than older refrigerants so leaks are not as potentially damaging in climate change terms. Plus, it is up to 34% more efficient, which helps heat pumps supply higher temperatures without incurring severe efficiency losses.

Mr Hendra is now technical director at Genous, a firm that gives advice to homeowners on how to make their properties more energy efficient.

"We have a thing in our industry that I call 'temperature anxiety'," he says, likening it to the "range anxiety" that some consumers have about electric cars.

But the advent of hotter heat pumps means that such concerns are increasingly becoming irrelevant, he suggests.

It might take time to convince some, however. Paul Ciniglio, head of whole home retrofit at National Energy Foundation, a charity, is currently working on a project in Bicester covering more than 500 homes.

"We're trying to get as many as a quarter of them to sign up to heat pumps but it's proving really hard going," he says. "There has been so much negative press."

Some residents are sceptical the heat pumps will be hot enough, he explains, adding, "With the advent of this new refrigerant, it could be a game-changer."

Among the firms offering R290-based heat pumps are Octopus Energy, a renewable energy company. It recently announced a heat pump called Cosy 6, which can heat water up to a maximum of 80C. In principle, homeowners could change their heating system over with little fuss, says Alex Schoch, head of flexibility. "Combi boiler out, heat pump in," as he puts it. This could make heat pumps viable in a broader range of UK homes, which are notoriously poorly insulated in comparison with much of Europe.

Vaillant's aroTHERM plus heat pump works in outdoor temperatures as low as -20C and can supply hot water at up to 75C, though to remain efficient it is best not to exceed 55C, according to the manufacturer.

Another company, Vattenfall, makes a heat pump that uses a different refrigerant, R744, or CO2. It can supply even higher temperatures, up to 85C. The company expects to install 300 in Europe this winter, mostly for housing associations.

And a spokesman for Daikin says that its Altherma heat pump, which uses R32 as a refrigerant, can reach 70C. The firm plans to launch a range of R290-based heat pumps in 2024.

Heating contributes about 18% to global greenhouse gas emissions, and heat pumps are much more efficient than old-fashioned gas boilers.  If we replace all the old fossil-fuel boilers and power the heat pumps with green electricity, we could substantially reduce emissions.  C'mon governments:  get your act together!

Source: Our World in Data

How tea saved lives

From the BBC

Tea has been many things in its time – a global commodity, a comforting beverage, and even, in the eyes of some Bostonians 250 years ago this week, a symbol of oppressive politics. But one role you might not have attributed to tea is that of a life-saving health intervention.

In a recent paper in the Review of Statistics and Economics, economist Francisca Antman of the University of Colorado, Boulder, makes a convincing case that the explosion of tea as an everyman's drink in late 1700s England saved many lives. This would not have been because of any antioxidants or other substances inherent to the lauded leaf.

Instead, the simple practice of boiling water for tea, in an era before people understood that illness could be caused by water-borne pathogens, may have been enough to keep many from an early grave.

English demographics from this era have long contained a puzzle for historians. Between 1761 and 1834, the annual death rate declined substantially, from 28 to 25 per 1,000 people. But at the same time, wages do not seem to have risen much and standards of living arguably did not increase. In fact, with the rise of the industrial revolution, more and more people were crowding into towns whose sanitation left much to be desired. "I would say it's not a settled debate," says Antman.

The idea that tea might be the missing link here, thanks to the need to boil water for a proper brew, had been floated by historians in the past. Boiling water kills bacteria that cause diarrheal diseases like dysentery, which was often called "flux" or "bloody flux" in death records.

"With people coming into cities to work, you would expect, given the level of sanitation they have, that the big killer is water," says Antman. But it remained a somewhat fuzzy idea, interesting in theory but difficult to prove.

Antman developed a way to test it, using detailed geographical information about more than 400 parishes across England. There is a simple assumption at the heart of her study: more water sources in an area likely means cleaner water. If one source was contaminated, the inhabitants of a parish could go to another. What's more, if people were closer to the sources of rivers – something Antman infers from parishes' elevation – that water was likely safer than in parishes further downstream.

By assigning parishes an inferred level of water quality, Antman could see whether areas with worse water quality saw a bigger decline in mortality than those with good water.

In terms of testing this hypothesis, the key date is 1785, the moment when tea suddenly became affordable for the vast majority of Britons. There were many things already to recommend tea as a drink of the masses: you could make a satisfying brew with just a small amount of leaves, the leaves could be reused for multiple pots, and tea was potentially cheaper than beer, which was rendered expensive both by the complex process required to make it and by a tax on malt.

But when 1784's Tea and Windows Act went into effect, the tax on tea went from 119% to just 12.5% and tea consumption exploded. By the end of the 18th Century, even very poor peasants were having tea twice a day, tea historian Alan Macfarlane writes.

To see if this change correlated with decreased mortality, Antman compared death rates before and after this watershed moment. For this she drew on the remarkable work of demographers E A Wrigley and R S Schofield, who in the mid-20th Century collected parish records from all over England spanning 1541 to 1871, including deaths.

As expected, Antman found that death rates declined in both parishes with good water and those with bad – but there was a significant difference in the size of the decline. Parishes with bad water saw death rates drop 18% more than those with good water.

What's more, she looked to see whether deaths in London from waterborne diseases like "bloody flux", and deaths from airborne pathogens like tuberculosis, or "consumption", were linked to levels of tea imports. Indeed, flux deaths declined when tea imports went up, while TB deaths remained about the time.

She also checked to see whether deaths in children – not known, in this age or any other, for being major consumers of tea – changed in London with tea imports, and found that there did not seem to be a decline in deaths of those ages two to five.

Interestingly, there was a slight decline in infant deaths, perhaps reflecting the fact that if tea-drinking parents had less diarrheal disease, their very young children might have been protected a bit as well – though Antman points out there is no way to know for sure.

For Antman, who primarily works on issues related to developing nations, this natural experiment in England all those years ago reflects a fundamental truth: sometimes people's existing behaviours can make more of a difference to their health than an explicit intervention might.

Building more privies, developing better plumbing and sewage systems, and teaching people to keep drinking water and wastewater scrupulously separate all might have extended people's lives, had such interventions been widely understood and available.

But with relatively little change to their habits, merely an increase in a behavior they already enjoyed, people seem to have protected themselves. All part of the pleasure of a simple cup of tea.

Source:  BBC, Getty Images

2023 to be hottest year on record

 From The BBC

It is now "virtually certain" that 2023 - a year of deadly heatwaves, floods and fires - will be the warmest on record, new data suggests.

The prediction follows "exceptional" high October temperatures.

Global average air temperatures were 0.4C warmer than the previous high of October 2019, according to the EU's climate change service.

Driven by carbon emissions and an El Niño weather event, this was the fifth month in a row of record warmth.

Extreme global temperatures will likely continue into 2024, researchers say.

That this year will be the warmest ever recorded is now pretty much unavoidable: the last two months of 2023 are extremely unlikely to reverse the trend and high temperatures around the world have continued into November.

October's temperature mark adds to this year's list of tumbling global heat records.

The number of days breaking through the politically significant 1.5C warming threshold has already reached a new high, well before the end of the year.

July was so warm that it may have been the hottest month in 120,000 years, while average September temperatures smashed the previous record by a "gobsmacking" 0.5C.

October was not quite as unusually hot as September but still breaks the record for the month by an "exceptional" margin, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

The month was 1.7C warmer than the pre-industrial average - meaning compared with the period before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels.

The warmth experienced throughout the year so far means that 2023 is "virtually certain" to become the world's warmest year on record, beating 2016.

That's the view of a number of science bodies, including Copernicus and US groups NOAA and Berkeley Earth.

"We really see no sign that this year's string of exceptional record-setting months is going away anytime soon," said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth.

"And at this point, it makes it virtually certain in all the datasets that 2023 will be the warmest year on record. That's a greater than 99% chance," he told BBC News.

1.7 degrees above the pre-industrial level!  1.7.  Already.  

We were repeatedly warned.  And we responded too late and too little.  And now we face catastrophe.

We're going to miss 1.5 degrees

From The BBC

A leading British climate scientist has told the BBC he believes the target to limit global warming to 1.5C will be missed.  Professor Sir Bob Watson, former head of the UN climate body, told the BBC's Today programme he was "pessimistic".  His warning comes amidst a summer of extreme heat for Europe, China and the US.

The UN says passing the limit will expose millions more people to potentially devastating climate events.

The world agreed to try to limit the temperature increase due to climate change to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels at a UN conference in Paris in 2015. That target has become the centrepiece of global efforts to tackle climate change.

Climate scientists have been warning governments for years that they are not cutting their countries' emissions quickly enough to keep within this target.

But it is surprising for someone as senior and well respected as the former head of the UN climate science body the IPCC to be so frank that he believes it will be missed.

Professor Sir Bob Watson is currently Emeritus Professor of the UK's Tyndall Centre for Climate Research - having previously worked at the UN, Nasa, UK's Department of Environment and the US White House - and is perhaps one of the foremost climate scientists in the world.

In the interview aired on Thursday he said: "I think most people fear that if we give up on the 1.5 [Celsius limit] which I do not believe we will achieve, in fact I'm very pessimistic about achieving even 2C, that if we allow the target to become looser and looser, higher and higher, governments will do even less in the future."

His comments although candid were supported by Lord Stern, Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, later on Thursday during an interview with BBC's WATO programme.

He said: "I think 1.5 is probably out of reach even if we accelerate quickly now, but we could bring it back if we start to bring down the cost of negative emissions and get better at negative emissions. Negative emissions means direct air capture of carbon dioxide."  [Except that direct air capture (DAC) is very expensive]

Based on current government commitments to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Climate Action Tracker predicts that global temperatures will rise to 2.7C.

The figure is not a direct measure of the world's temperature but an indicator of how much or how little the Earth has warmed or cooled compared to the long-term global average - and even slight changes can have significant impacts.

The UN climate body, the IPCC, has said keeping temperature rises below 1.5C, rather than 2C, would mean:

• 10 million fewer people would lose their homes to rising sea levels
• a 50% reduction in the number of people experiencing water insecurity
• a reduction in coral reef loss from 99% to 70%

Prof Sir Bob Watson said that the world was struggling to prevent temperature rises as we are not reducing emissions fast enough.

"The big issue is we need to reduce greenhouse gases now to even be on the pathway to be close to 1.5C or 2C. We need to reduce current emissions by at least 50% by 2030. The trouble is the emissions are still going up, they are not going down," he said.

He told the Today programme that setting targets was not enough and countries needed to back these up with action: "We need to try and hold governments to start to act sensibly now and reduce emissions, but even governments with a really good target like the United Kingdom don't have the policies in place, don't have the financing in place to reach those goals."

In March the UK's watchdog on climate change, the UKCCC, said the UK had lost its leadership on climate issues. It said the government's backing of new oil and coal projects, airport expansion plans and slow progress on heat pumps showed a lack of urgency.

Note how the 1.5 degrees pathway requires carbon capture after 2070 to reach that goal.
Given its cost, that seems unlikely,
 since people today object to paying a few cents more for electricity

 

The exploding demand for giant heat pumps

Industrial-sized heat pumps are a thousand times more powerful than domestic versions

From The BBC

There are 2.5 million litres of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

If for some reason you wanted to bring it from a pleasant 20C to boiling point, German firm MAN Energy Solutions (MAN ES) has a heat pump that could do it. And it would take less time than Kenneth Branagh's film version of Hamlet.

"We can do this in less than four hours," explains Raymond Decorvet, who works in business development at MAN ES. "Or we could freeze the whole thing in about 11 hours."

Theirs is among the largest heat pump units in the world. Heat pumps work by compressing gently warmed refrigerants to raise the temperature of these fluids. That heat can then be passed on to homes or industrial machinery.

Heat pumps require electricity to work but can produce around three or four kilowatt hours of heat for every kilowatt hour of power they consume. [I don't understand how this is actually posssible, with my non-expert understanding of physics, but it doesn't sound right.  However.]

Heat pumps are increasingly popular with some home owners but domestic devices are relatively small and tend to have outputs of several kilowatts or so. MAN ES's biggest commercial heat pump is thousands of times more powerful - with a total heating capacity of 48 megawatts (MW).

It can produce temperatures of up to 150C and heat thousands of homes, not just one. The company recently installed two of these machines in the port city of Esbjerg, in Denmark.

In this installation, the heat pumps' CO2 refrigerant will absorb a small amount of heat from seawater. Compressors boost the temperature of the CO2 and the system can then transfer this heat, providing water of up to 90C to a district heating system serving 27,000 households.

"The demand for district heating is exploding," says Mr Decorvet. An urgency to move away from fossil fuels is leading to a rush - particularly in Europe - for bigger and beefier heat pump systems that can power entire towns. But who has the biggest, megawatts-wise?

It might seem like a relatively straightforward question but it is actually quite tricky to answer definitively. Not least because heat pumps don't tend to work at maximum capacity all the time. In Esbjerg, MAN ES's heat pumps will run at about half their potential output, for instance.

And trying to compare the world's largest heat pump systems is difficult because, often, they are made up of multiple smaller heat pumps chained together. Take the district heating system in Stockholm, Sweden, often referred to as the largest heat pump set-up in the world.

This is probably true, it has a maximum capacity of 215MW - but that total is the sum of seven heat pumps, two 40MW and five 27MW devices, a spokesman for energy provider Stockholm Exergi explains.

Elsewhere in Sweden, Gothenburg has a 160MW heat pump system that consists of four units. Two of them are actually bigger than those in Stockholm, with capacities of 50MW each.

They have been in operation since 1986 and probably hold the title of the most powerful individual heat pumps currently in use, though they are clearly rivalled by newer devices such as those made by MAN ES.

Size isn't necessarily everything, notes Dave Pearson, group sustainable development director at Star Refrigeration. Efficiency matters and he argues that ammonia - his firm's choice of refrigerant - helps to make heat pumps particularly efficient.

Veronika Wilk at the Austrian Institute of Technology and colleagues have studied the use of heat pumps for industrial applications, to provide heat in pharmaceutical, food or paper factories, for example.

So long as they don't require very high temperatures beyond 200C, companies are increasingly turning to heat pumps, Dr Wilk argues, because it allows them to move away from natural gas, which has become extremely expensive following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

But industrial heat pumps tend to be merely several MW in capacity or so. You are more likely to spot truly giant heat pumps in a district heating system, such as those mentioned above, says Dr Wilk.

"The beauty of district heating is that you can decarbonise a lot of households at once," she adds.

There are many other examples of heat pump-powered district heating systems springing up. In Vienna, a 55MW system using three heat pumps is due to go live this autumn.

The machines will harvest heat, around 6C, from treated wastewater, explains Linda Kirchberger, division manager asset decarbonisation and new technologies at Wien Energie.

The treated water used to go straight into a river. "Now it does a detour and we take it through the heat pump system," she says.

The system will lift temperatures from 6C to 90C and the heat will go on to supply 56,000 households. In 2027, Wien Energie plans to double the system's capacity with three more heat pumps, reaching 110MW in total.

While still impressive, and weighing more than 200 tonnes each, these individual units have a capacity of less than 20MW. The manufacturer, Johnson Controls, confirmed to the BBC that its largest heat pumps have a maximum output of 28MW.

Accelerated melt of ice sheets now unmistakable

From The BBC

If you could shape an ice cube out of all the ice losses from Greenland and Antarctica over the past three decades, it would stand 20km high.

An international group of scientists who work with satellite data say the acceleration in the melting of Earth's ice sheets is now unmistakable.

They calculate the planet's frozen poles lost 7,560 billion tonnes in mass between 1992 and 2022.

Seven of the worst melting years have occurred in the past decade.

Mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica is now responsible for a quarter of all sea-level rise.

This contribution is five times what it was 30 years ago.

The latest assessment comes from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise, or Imbie.

This project, which is supported by the US and European space agencies, issues regular reviews of the state of the planet's ice sheets.

This is the third such report, and like the previous studies, it has collated and reviewed all available satellite measurements.

It includes the observations from orbit of some 50 spacecraft missions from 1992. That particular year was when orbiting instruments best suited to studying the elevation and velocity of ice started overflying the poles routinely.

The 7,560 billion tonnes of ice lost from Greenland and Antarctica during the study period pushed up sea-levels by 21mm.

Almost two-thirds (13.5mm) of this was due to melting in Greenland; one-third (7.4mm) was the result of melting in Antarctica.

"All this has profound implications for coastal communities around the world and their risk of being exposed to flooding and erosion," said Dr Inès Otosaka from the UK's Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM), who led the latest assessment.

"It's really important that we have robust estimates for the future contribution to sea-level rise from the ice sheets so that we can go to these communities and say, 'Yes, we understand what is happening and we can now start to plan mitigations'," she told BBC News.

Warmer air is melting the top of the Greenland Ice Sheet (NASA/GODDARD/MARIA-JOSÉ VIÑAS)

India experiences hottest February ever

From The BBC

India is likely to face a blistering summer after recording its hottest February since 1901, its weather department has said.  Average maximum temperature was 29.5C in February, the highest since India started keeping proper weather records.  The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has also forecast "enhanced probability" of heatwaves between March and May.  Prolonged heat could affect wheat production and push up power demand.

"Above normal maximum temperatures are likely over most parts of northeast India, east and central India and some parts of northwest India" from March to May, the IMD said in a statement on Tuesday.

The forecast comes days after the weather department issued and later withdrew its first heatwave alert for the year in parts of western India after conditions improved.

Hot summers and heatwaves are common in India, especially in May and June. But like last year, summer seems set to begin earlier this year - last March was India's hottest since 1901.  Experts have also said that India is now experiencing more intense, frequent heatwaves that are longer in duration.

Last year, India was forced to ban wheat exports after unseasonably hot weather affected the crop, sending local prices soaring.  In February, the federal government set up a committee to monitor the impact of high temperatures on this year's harvest. Reuters had cited an unnamed government official as saying at the time that "the current crop condition looks good".  India is the world's second biggest wheat producer.

The unusually high temperatures had also triggered a spike in power demand last year, leading to outages in many states.  This year too, demand for electricity has already reached near-record levels in recent weeks, Bloomberg reported.

Many experts have also been raising concerns about the effect of extreme heat on poor people, who often have to work outside and less access to resources to help them stay cool. 

"Heatwaves can have serious health consequences. If temperatures are high even at night, the body doesn't get a chance to recuperate, increasing the possibility of illnesses and higher medical bills," Dr Chandni Singh, an environmental scientist, told the BBC last year.

India saw a 55% rise in deaths due to extreme heat between 2000-2004 and 2017-2021, according to a study published last year in the medical journal, The Lancet.

Will Starship lift off soon?

There has been little news about SpaceX's Starship for a more than a year now.  Partly, this was because SpaceX had to get government approval to launch Starship (something which it had inexplicably omitted to do); and partly because its new update of its Raptor engine seemed to have teething problems.  However, it has just successfully tested the booster with a full static fire, the last step before a launch.  In other words, it's just possible that in the next few weeks, the full stack Starship will be launched.  

From The BBC

Elon Musk's SpaceX company has performed a key test on its huge new rocket system, Starship.

Engineers conducted what's called a "static fire", simultaneously igniting 31 out of 33 of the engines at the base of the vehicle's lower-segment.

The firing lasted only a few seconds, with everything clamped in place to prevent any movement.

Starship will become the most powerful operational rocket system in history when it makes its maiden flight.

This could occur in the coming weeks, assuming SpaceX is satisfied with the outcome of Thursday's test.

The static fire took place at SpaceX's R&D facility in Boca Chica on the Texas/Mexico border.

On Twitter Elon Musk said that the team had turned off one engine before the test and that another engine stopped itself, leaving 31 engines firing overall.

But, he added, it was "still enough engines to reach orbit".

Even though this was not the full contingent of engines, it was still notable for the number of engines working in concert. The closest parallel is probably the N1 rocket that the Soviets developed in the late 1960s to take cosmonauts to the Moon.

It had 30 engines arranged in two rings. But the N1 failed on all four of its flights and was eventually cancelled.

The SpaceX Super Heavy booster, with all 33 modern power units, should produce roughly 70% more thrust off the launch pad than the N1. Even the US space agency Nasa's new mega-rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), which flew for the first time back in November, is dwarfed by the capability being built into Starship.

Mr Musk has high hopes for the vehicle. The entrepreneur wants to use it to send satellites and people into Earth orbit and beyond.

Nasa has already contracted SpaceX to develop a version that can play a role in its Artemis programme, to once again land astronauts on the Moon.

Mr Musk himself is focused on Mars. He's long held the ambition to get to the Red Planet, to establish settlements and, as he puts it, to make humans "a multi-planet species". He's also talked about point-to-point travel, taking passengers from one side of our world to the other in rapid time.

If Starship can be made to work it will be a game-changer, not just because of the mass it will be able to lift into space.

The concept is designed to be fully reusable, with both parts - the Super Heavy booster and the ship on top - coming back to Earth to fly, time and time again.

This means it could operate much like an airliner. The long-term cost savings compared with conventional, one-time-use rockets would be immense.

SpaceX will now review its data to understand why it couldn't fire all 33 engines on this occasion. It will also inspect the launch pad to see what, if any, damage occurred during the short firing. Previous, smaller-scale engine tests had fractured the concrete under the launch mount, requiring repairs.

Mr Musk has talked about an orbital attempt of the full Starship system in late February or March.

The ship, or upper-stage of the rocket, was removed for Thursday's test in case there was a catastrophic failure of the booster.

2022 was Scotland and the UK's hottest year

From the BBC

The Met Office has confirmed that 2022 was Scotland's hottest year on record.

The average temperature was 8.5C, beating the previous record of 8.43C in 2014.

Across the UK, the average annual temperature last year passed 10C for the first time at 10.03C - topping the previous high of 9.88C in 2014.

A study by Met Office scientists has concluded that human-induced climate change has made record annual temperatures 160 times more likely.

All four nations set records for heat in 2022, with England seeing the highest average temperature at 10.94C, followed by Wales (10.23C), Northern Ireland (9.85C) and then Scotland (8.50C).

The year also saw Scotland set its highest ever daily temperature, when it hit 34.8C (94.6F) at Charterhall in the Borders on 19 July.

Dr Mark McCarthy, head of the Met Office National Climate Information Centre, said: "Although an arbitrary number, the UK surpassing an annual average temperature of 10C is a notable moment in our climatological history.

"This moment comes as no surprise, since 1884 all the 10 years recording the highest annual temperature have occurred from 2003.

"It is clear from the observational record that human-induced global warming is already impacting the UK's climate."

The latest data shows that 15 of the UK's top 20 warmest years on record have all occurred this century - with the entire top 10 within the past two decades.

The Met Office said that a UK mean temperature of 10C would have been expected once in 500 years in a natural climate - before humans started producing the emissions that are responsible for climate change through activities such as burning fossil fuels.

But it said this was now likely to occur every three to four years.

[Read more here]