Green energy
The most important thing humanity needs to do to limit climate change is stop using fossil fuels. Unfortunately some of the renewable energy technologies we're transitioning to today are not sustainable.
For example, to meet its 2050 energy storage goals requirements projected by the National Grid, the UK would need to use 14 times the weight of The Shard in lithium with lithium-ion batteries alone. Lithium mining has negative environmental and social impacts – it is not sustainable.
One of the real privileges of my job at Queen Mary University of London is to work with engineers who have dedicated their whole lives to coming up with innovative, genuinely sustainable solutions.
When I started most of them had not done any work with the media. I led a campaign combining media relations and social media to raise their visibility, help them build valuable new connections, and train them as spokespeople.
Now I'm regularly getting messages from them about media work they just did, from interviews in Chemistry World, the Energyst and DW Planet A to forthcoming mainstream TV things and TikTok science influencer Big Manny demo-ing their work.
@big.manny1 I made a battery at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. You can go too, it’s free and open until 7 July: royalsociety.org/summer #ad #science #experiment
♬ original sound - Big Manny