Month: April 2021

Modern civilisation is quite literally built on steel. Our cities, our homes, our cars are unthinkable without it. But steel-making is the biggest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide so the search is on for a clean, green method of turning iron ore into steel.

Tom Heap meets the Swedes who are ahead of the pack. Three local companies- Vattenfall, LKAB and SSAB- have come together to deconstruct the whole process and develop ways to remove fossil-fuels from each stage of steel-making. From the enormous iron ore mines of Arctic Sweden to the smelters and furnaces that produce the steel, carbon dioxide emissions are being radically reduced, but how close can they get to a truly green steel?

Tom and Dr Tamsin Edwards discuss the Swedish plans and calculate just how much of this industry's emissions could be wiped out in a generation.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Chris McDonald of the Materials Processing Institute.

Photo courtesy of: Åsa Bäcklin and HYBRIT

There's a lot of carbon locked up in the peatlands of Britain and Ireland but many of them have been drained for agriculture and dug for fuel or garden compost. The loss of water resulted in the massive loss of carbon to the atmosphere. Rewetting the bogs can not only stop that leaching of carbon but potentially help the bogs sequester carbon once more. Could these once forboding 'creepy' habitats be something of an underrated super solution? Tom Heap speaks to peat expert, Florence Renou-Wilson of University College Dublin, and takes a virtual tour of a new carbon farm - designed to harvest carbon back from the atmosphere. Dr Tamsin Edwards from Kings College London assesses the potential of this solution.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Christopher Evans of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Mike Peacock of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

When the cod disappeared from the Grand Banks of his Newfoundland home, fisherman Bren Smith saw the light. He realised that we need a new relationship with the oceans- the age of the hunter-gatherers was over and the time of the ocean farmers had begun. After many years of trial and error he developed a new farming system that produces thousands of tonnes of shellfish and edible seaweed, cleans the oceans and absorbs our carbon emissions.

Tom Heap meets Bren and takes a trip to the seaweed farm of the Scottish Association for Marine Science to see if the new techniques in ocean farming can be replicated around the islands and sea lochs of the west coast of Scotland.

Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London, joins Tom to calculate just how much of our carbon emissions might be swallowed by farming the oceans.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Jennifer Smith of the University of California San Diego and Professor Michael Graham of San José State University.

There's a dirty secret around the back of your fridge. The world's freezers, fridges and air conditioning units are chilled by gases that have planet-warming properties that are hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Disposed of properly they're not a problem but in much of the developing world these gases- legal ones and even more dangerous illegal gases- are simply vented to the atmosphere when the cooling units are dumped or recycled.

In the first of ten more programmes highlighting the world's best carbon-busting ideas, Tom Heap meets the fridge detectives hunting the planet for the worst offenders and safely disposing of their dangerous gases.

Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London, armed with statistics gathered by the Royal Geographical Society, joins Tom to add up the numbers and calculate the carbon impact of the fridge detectives.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Dr Luke Western and Dr Daniel Say of the University of Bristol and to Professor John Pyle of the University of Cambridge.