Save the planet: how the technology can work on the climate

The technological revolution was the bigger reason of smog and wastes. From the coal factories, to the combustion engines, until the mass production of the plastic objects, we might think that the technological discoveries aren’t a help. Now is considered normal that during the night there is the light, which altered the vegetable and animals’ cycles. But the recent turnaround of the common thought and the new researches want to let us believe that yes, the technology can save the planet.

Because if we think about it, maybe, it was the overuse of it to make damages. In the last ten years giant’s steps, though, have been made: substantially decreased the costs of the wind and sun technologies, as well as the lighting systems become much more efficient. But we still need to improve ourselves to reduce (or set at zero) the greenhouse gases’ emissions.

How the technology can save the planet by becoming for everyone

Today it seems that only the most wealthy can be ecologic and sustainable. If you think about the bio plastics, the hybrid cars, the solar panels, or the possibility to buy sustainable clothes and objects isn’t for everyone.

It is here that the technology can act, it might be for the society and a common advantage, it must become for everyone and to finally create a turnaround in the emissions’ production. The companies, firslty, must deal with the changing to reduce the emissions. But the parameters saw to avoid environmental catastrophes are surely contradictory with the status quo.

Fortunatelly the research never stops and there are always new discoveries which, if we use them, can be a benefit for all. Let’s see some examples.

Make much more efficient the houses

A problem maybe underestimated is surely the houses’ heating, from which the energy certification has been introduced they didn’t do a lot unless understand that our own home doesn’t have a good score. The technology can save the planet even starting from the improvement of the leakage of the home heating. Brain realized by Tree Solutions, a company that is part of the PoliHub (the incubator of the polytechnic of Milano) and it is able to let us save between the 20% and the 40% of the consumption.

Brain collects the datas of the building by calculating the temperature, the heat dispersion, the timing of warming and cooling. Thanks to a system of AI, with this datas it is able to calculate which are the improvements that we need to do. Then, with an automatized management of the heating implant it is able to regulate the temperature much more efficiently.

The systems that installed it were able to reduce the consumptions of gases, fuel and lpg for a total of 270 tonns of petrol, and this only in the 2018. In this way it avoids emissions for 648 thousand kilos of foxil carbon dioxide and 1337 kilos of nitrogen oxides.

In Italy the marketplace will include 800 thousand buildings with a centralized air conditioning systems. Making them more efficient will be possible without to make the implant again from zero with a huge saving of money.

A solution for the concrete

The technology can save the planet by improving the realizion of an element that all of us daily use, the concrete. This material, infact, keeps the daily heat by realising it during the night, instead to absorbe the light like the soil and the plants do (they us it for their metabolism). Therefore it is water proof, and it creates the one that is the hydrogeological risk in case of strong storms.

The Worcester Polytechnic Institute of the Massachussetts is working to make the road surface an energetic resource. Their project is the one to insert a network of water conductor under the concrete, so that it can warm up and warm the closest houses and even, through thermoelectric generators, produce electricity.

With only 4 hours of daily light every panel can give so 7,6 kWh of energy. The costs are about 4 times a normal concrete, but an integrated led system can let us save on the road signs. On those panels, infact, it is possible to write directions, according to the needs, directly on the road surface.

This post is also available in: Italiano