Adam Clare

One Way Maritimers can Drastically Reduce their Energy Consumption

Canada’s Maritime provinces are blustery, cold, and powered by coal. The weather is fine for most people (and lovely in the summer), but they know they need to transition to renewable energy quickly or risk losing more land to the seas and worsening storms due to climate change. The work to get the power grid to be a green one is underway.

Researchers and policy makers are looking into ways to make their power grid more robust by incorporating modern battery technology. The technology varies from smart water heaters to store heat to phase-change energy storage which is gaining popularity around the world.

Several companies in the Maritimes are investigating the possibility of integrating phase-change materials into heat sources to allow more integration of renewables.

One is Fredericton-based Stash Energy. Dan Curwin, director of business development, said they’ve developed heat pumps with phase-change material storage built in, to store energy from renewable sources like hydro when it’s plentiful, such as overnight, and discharge it in the morning when demand is high, to be stored up again from renewables like solar during the day.

This can help with the integration of renewables and with greater adoption of electric heat pumps, which are the most efficient heating option but risk overburdening the grid.

Curwin said the company has partnerships with efficiency agencies across Atlantic Canada and New England, as well as housing authorities such as Housing Nova Scotia that recognize the particular burden posed by heating costs.

Thanks to Mike!

Buying Time Provides More Than Buying Objects

Start 2022 with a new mindset of buying time instead of material objects. Researchers continue to find more evidence that for a fulfilling life one should eschew material gains for temporal gains. In practice this means that, when given the choice between spending your money on a consumer good or a an opportunity to spend more time doing something you enjoy, you should prioritize the activity instead of the object.

The key to buying time is to consciously decide how you will use the time your money freed up. Buying time will make you happier only if it feels intentional and purposeful–not because you don’t have the time, but because you want to use the time you have differently.

Instead of cutting the grass, you might decide (again, to make this work you have to decide) to spend the time with family or friends. Or working on that side project you can’t seem to get to. Or reading. Or working out.

In short, doing something you enjoy–doing something you want to do–with the time you bought.

Paris, the City of Bike Lights

When I visited Paris long ago it was a traffic clogged mess, with lovely architecture. Parisians have had enough of bad traffic and decided to solve their mobility challenges by adding more ways to get around the city. Thy’ve already returned urban space to pedestrians and started to build more infrastructure for bicycles.

The excellent YouTube channel Not Just Bikes took a good look at what’s happening in Paris, and things are looking good.

The French capital is investing €250 million into significant upgrades to cycling infrastructure and maintenance within the next four years. Thousands of new bicycle stands and an increased number of protected cycleways will be introduced as part of ‘Plan Velo: Act 2’.

As of this year, Paris already has more than 1,000km of safe cycle paths including around 52km of “coronapistes” that were temporarily introduced during the pandemic. It now plans to make these permanent and add another 130km of safe paths to encourage people to cycle in the city.

Affordable Ethical Shopping

It’s that time of year when people buy consumer goods to express their appreciation that other people exist. Yet, the world around us in suffering from consumerism-led climate change, what is a person to do? The simple solution is to not buy physical gifts, but that’s not always practical.

Tanja Hester has solutions for us in her book Wallet Activism that provides guidance on how to think about buying and shopping ethically. It’s an easy to understand guide for these complicated times.

I like that you consider price points on either end of the spectrum. A lot of people assume that shopping ethically is too expensive, but you’re pointing out that it needs to be affordable to be widely effective.

Of course, if you want to buy something expensive and high quality under the “buy less, keep it longer” philosophy, then that’s fine. But it’s not realistic to promote that as something everyone can do. And the best ways to make meaningful change involve actions that are accessible and have a low barrier to entry.

Also, most of the stuff that ends up being good for other people or good for the climate crisis is also good for your own finances. It’s not a choice of, “Do I buy this shirt or that shirt?” There’s also the choice of, “Could I buy a secondhand shirt, or could I buy no shirt and use what I have?” There’s nothing better for your personal finances than buying less or buying less new stuff.

Growing Coffee Sustainably in Finland

Climate change changes everything and coffee is no exception. Traditional growing locales are suffering from unpredictable weather and more incidences of extreme weather making it difficult for the coffee plants to survive. A Finnish company has been researching how to grow coffee in a a lab so that coffee plants and their delicious beans can continue despite the pressures of climate change. They are using sustainable energy to grow and cultivate coffee so perhaps your next cup of coffee will come from a lab in Finland.

The work was started by initiating coffee cell cultures, establishing respective cell lines in the laboratory and transferring them to bioreactors to begin producing biomass. After analyses of the biomass, a roasting process was developed, and the new coffee was finally evaluated by VTT’s trained sensory panel.

The whole procedure required input from several disciplines and experts in the fields of plant biotechnology, chemistry, and food science.
“In terms of smell and taste, our trained sensory panel and analytical examination found the profile of the brew to bear similarity to ordinary coffee. However, coffee making is an art and involves iterative optimization under the supervision of specialists with dedicated equipment. Our work marks the basis for such work,” says Rischer.