Octopus's electric car surprise: The Reengineer Monitor #30

Irish coal is over, shipping CCS - and more!

Photo by Octopus Energy.

This week, the UK’s Climate Change Committee released a new report this week detailing how UK emissions fell 2.5% in 2024. While electric vehicle (EV) and heat pump adoption is rising, this needs to go faster, the body says.

Heating and cooling

New proposals from the UK government detailed this week involve ramping up the use of heat pumps for industrial heat applications.

Buildings and infrastructure

The terrible floods in Valencia, Spain last year claimed nearly 230 lives. It was the worst flood disaster in Europe in more than 50 years. A BBC documentary broadcast this week detailed how the floods unfolded rapidly, and terrifyingly, and also discusses the role of climate change in flooding – including how we might better predict disasters like this one in the future.

Buildings in the UK are poorly prepared for the effects of global heating, says a new report from the UK Green Building Council, an industry body: “The roadmap modelling warns that six million houses and flats in London and the south-east will face three weeks above 28C a year in the same low-warming scenario, causing economic damage from reduced productivity of employees, and health threats to vulnerable and older people,” explains The Guardian.