Looking Back: The technology that’s tackling the climate crisis

A special New Year listen back. Here on The Third Angle, we’ve highlighted stories from all over the globe about how companies have used PTC technology to design a greener future. From the architects using clever design to create low-energy use homes to the engineers revolutionising electric transport in Africa, we’ve heard from some inspiring people.

In this episode, we’re taking a listen back to some of those stories.

If this has left you wanting to know more, you can listen back to all of our episodes on the PTC website or wherever you get your podcasts.

Previous episodes of The Third Angle are available here.

Listen to the full Warehome episode here, and find out more about the company here.

Listen to the full Volvo episode here, and find out more about the company here. 

Listen to the full EVBox episode here, and find out more about the company here.

Listen to the full Roam episode here, and find out more about the company here.

Your host is Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC.

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates.

Third Angle is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Clarissa Maycock. And music by Rowan Bishop.

Transcript

Welcome to The Third Angle, where we’re looking back at 2023 to revisit the designers and engineers leading the charge to combat climate change with technology.

I’m your host, Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. In this podcast, we share the moments where digital transforms physical and meet the brilliant minds behind some of the most innovative products around the world, each powered by PTC technology. 

From extreme weather events to rising sea levels, there is no doubt that we’ve had a huge impact on the environment around us. If human beings are going to continue to thrive on planet Earth, we need smart thinking to drastically change the way we do things. Here at The Third Angle, we love innovation, especially when positive impact is baked into the design. So in this special New Year episode, we’re taking a look back on a few of the most inspiring stories of sustainability and action we featured on The Third Angle. 

The last 30 episodes have taken us all around the globe. Today, we are starting in the UK in a sustainably designed home from London-based architects Warehome. Did you know that our homes are a huge contributor to our carbon footprints, from the energy used in central heating to the materials used in their construction, and buildings more generally accounted for 39% of all global energy-related carbon emissions? In May 2023, Warehome founder Joe Stewart took us on a tour of his own house and explained how building materials such as timber could be the key to drastically reduced energy consumption.

So we’re here outside our house in East London, which is the first home we built as Warehome. We’re in the first house that we designed and built as Warehome. This is the genesis of the company as it is now. It started out as the fact that I couldn’t afford a place to live in London, couldn’t find anything that had anywhere near the level of comfort that, as someone who works quite hard, I felt like I deserved. So I was looking to find an opportunity. I stumbled upon this site, stumbled upon the opportunity to design something. I’ve always been in design and engineering and tinkering, and I’ve always had a love for architecture. The key here is, we’re building homes. We’ve got people building for themselves, so they care. It has to be a sustainable development. And it has to be interesting. If it’s something that’s just a standard two up, two down, we’re not the best people to do that project for you because we’ll get too into the detail and we will probably cost too much because the amount of time we spend to get the design just right. But when it comes to creating a home, we’re not just facilitating a utilitarian approach to building a building, we’re creating future memories for people. 

So we’ve just entered the building, we’re in our vestibule entrance hall, we’ve got the glazing on the north side, which sort of brings a lot of light into this space, which is only a few square metres. On this level, we’ve got our sort of main bathroom, which is accessible for anyone visiting. On some of the surfaces, like the floors and the walls of the bathrooms where we’re seeing the potential for a lot more abrasion from people coming in and using their shoes or chemicals and water, we’ve used a material here which is a seamless surface, which is a water-based polymer that is a concrete sort of finish. So it’s got that grey kind of patinaed, almost cloudy look, but has not quite as much embodied energy as a concrete finish would be. As an architectural practice, we specialise in Passivhaus, which is a German approach to analysing how your design works, both looking at how it works thermally, but also holistically. So when you think of how much energy you need to heat the house, how much energy you need to cool the house, where you need to put the windows, it’s a very thorough typically German approach to assessing the design, rather than just building what looks pretty and then going, “I hope this works.” So in the case of this house, the application of Passivhaus was key to essentially leaving us with a home that doesn’t have a heating system. So we’re currently sitting in maybe 21-22 degrees and it’s only being heated by our body heat, the appliances that are in here – your fridge in your freezer – and then the sun from the outside. So in the summer months, it’s key to make sure that we’re shading the house correctly, and in the winter months, we’re essentially just heating it ourselves. 

I think there is a huge amount of Swedish influence, not only because my wife is Swedish and her family is Swedish, but also because I think the way the Swedes, the Japanese and areas of Europe work with smaller spaces, tighter spaces, the functionality of rooms, the separation between rooms. I think that all feeds in really well. But we see a lot of the Lagom principle coming into how we work – lagom meaning ‘just enough’ or ‘just so’. It’s essentially a not too much, not too little kind of like Goldilocks position. 

We’re now half a floor down where we’ve got our spare bedroom and wet room space. This is where, when we have guests staying, it’s almost like their own little space, because they’ve come in the entrance and down, whereas the rest of the house is up and out of the way. We also use it in the summertime. Because we use the sun to heat the house, it means that the lower down the space we are, naturally it’s slightly cooler. So when we had the 40-degree-plus temperatures last year, this was a nice, cool space that we could retreat to. In layman’s terms, embodied energy is the amount of energy it takes to create something. So when you think of steel, it has to be created in a forge, there’s a lot of heat that goes into there, there’s a lot of energy going into bending, fabricating, drawing these materials out. When you think of a tree, the tree grows itself and we cut it down. And yes, there’s energy in cutting it and transporting it, but it’s far less than having to dig something out of the ground, and apply heat and pressure to make it a usable material. So timber is obviously the one that we’re drawn to as a low-embodied-energy material. But on top of that, it has the potential to offset the energy. It’s called carbon sequestering. And it’s the fact that, in the right conditions, under managed forests where they’re replanting appropriately, you’re actually able to capture some of the carbon, it gets stored in the building. The by-product of managing these trees helps to manage more carbon dioxide in the environment. And it’s this lovely cycle of once you’ve used it in the building, it can then almost go down a peg and downcycle to the next appropriate material, right the way through to being pelleted and burnt, and that carbon gets released back into the environment and then starts the whole cycle all over again.

That was Joe Stewart from Warehome. Now, can you imagine a busy construction site working in near silence? Volvo Construction Equipment is leading the charge in electrifying construction and making the industry cleaner and greener. Given the carbon footprint of the industry, transitioning away from diesel power has the potential to make a big impact. But the other benefit is a much quieter construction site. We met Dave Vandersleen, Ray Gallant and Lars Arnold at Volvo Construction Equipment’s North American customer centre and got up close to the new electric machines giving their predecessors a run for their money.

So this is the ECR25 6000-lb-rated compact excavator. The first mini excavator we will be coming out with in North America. This machine is very similar to the diesel machines. We have the same boom arm structure, undercarriage, cabin – 80% of the parts are the same. The main difference is that the diesel engine and fuel tank has been replaced by a set of lithium-ion batteries, feeding an electric motor driving the hydraulic pump. To start up the machine, master switch on, climbing into the machine, turning on the ignition, as the machine is getting ready putting on the seatbelt because the machine has a very loud seatbelt warning. And now I push a button and the machine is up and running. It’s very quiet. That’s the noise we have on this machine. And it’s so good because it enables a quiet machine, enables to talk with bystanders. With a diesel machine I would need to idle down or turn off the engine. So in this machine, you can hear me now. It’s very easy to communicate with people. And with the diesel machine, the same size machine, the ECR25 diesel, I need to turn on the master switch crank, and it’s a little bit different. When comparing the diesel machine versus the electric machine, operators are telling us that the electric machines feel better. It’s more reactive. And of course, this makes sense. Because in the diesel engine, to get more flow, the RPM needs to go up and this has some kind of lag. Electric motors are on instantly, providing instant torque, and the machine feels more active. Actually, some customers tell us that the machines feel stronger than the diesel equivalent machine. So they feel great, actually. It’s amazing how comfortable the machines are by taking vibration and noise away. 

One of the unique applications that we ran into early on in our demo in electric equipment was with Toronto Zoo in Canada, where they brought the electric equipment inside the pens where the animals were free-ranging. One of the things that they found was, because of the low noise, low emissions, and low vibrations, the animals didn’t get agitated nearly as quickly as they did with the diesel equipment. They were able to work with diesel equipment for about half an hour, 45 minutes before the animals would start getting agitated. With the electric equipment, they were able to work much longer periods of time, close by the animals, and the animals weren’t bothered at all by it. So it was unique to see our equipment working around bison and giraffes and other animals in a zoo environment, which is not an application that we would have picked out or designed for, but which happened to be an application that the electric machines were perfect for.

We’re also looking more and more at doing things in a virtual world. So, instead of building prototypes, physical machines, out of steel, we can build them in a virtual world and even do virtual assembly prototyping. With a virtual factory, operators can put a headset on and see how the machines go together in a virtual world well before we have anything in steel, as it’s a lot easier to make changes. To make a change in a virtual environment takes minutes, depending on how big the change is, compared to days or weeks to make a change on a real machine. I don’t know if we’re going to the metaverse yet, but it’s definitely more virtual, and we can even give customers access to virtual machines so they can not only see what the machines look like but also sit in a machine and operate it in a virtual world before we ever sell them. 

Keeping on the theme of electrification, we move from North America to the Netherlands and a visit to EVBox to find out more about their award-winning electric vehicle chargers. If you’re an electric car owner, range anxiety – the fear of running out of juice – can be very real. But with that innovation in charging technology, EVBox wants to make charging your car as easy as charging your phone. Back in April 2023, product manager Chris van de Stadt and Steven Whittaker told us how the electric future is bright.

We’re on a mission to reduce carbon emissions from transportation all over the world. And indeed, you can see that in everything we do here. You can look around you and everything is green. And that’s not just because we like it, but it’s really what we stand for as a company.

EVBox was founded around 2010 after one of its founders had driven a Tesla Roadster. He became very inspired by that and then decided to start his own company to manufacture charging stations. He saw the big opportunity ahead. In the last 13 years, they’ve grown quite steadily, but now it’s really accelerating as the adoption of electric vehicles expands. They were one of the very first to market, especially in the Netherlands – you see their charging stations all over. “We’re on a mission to reduce carbon emissions from transportation all over the world,” says programme manager Steven Whittaker. 

At their testing facility, they also test the chargers in a variety of different conditions in their climate chamber, through the whole range of temperatures down to -25 Celsius and up to 60 degrees to ensure they work in a wide variety of conditions, and with different power options. Range anxiety is a big concern. That’s where you’re worried that you won’t be able to arrive at your destination or that you may become stuck somewhere because you can’t charge. However, now, charging stations are becoming much more common. You can find them on Google Maps, especially driving in the Netherlands, it’s almost as easy as finding a gas station. Also with having an EV, if you own an EV and you have your own EV charger or charging network, it’s quite nice because you never have to go to the gas station. You can charge on your own time and your own terms.

LIVO, their residential charger, has two versions, one with a cable attached if you want to keep the cable at the station all the time, but also one with a socket where you can plug in your own cable. It has an intuitive LED strip, where the colour of the LEDs combined with the icons shows the state of the charger. So it’s very intuitive and easy for people to understand what is happening inside the station. It’s a nice sleek design and is made from Makrolon RE, which is a plastic made from biomaterial which reduces the overall foot carbon footprint of the product by up to 70%. EVBox are the first charging company, or EV charging manufacturer, that uses this material. The material is not a regular plastic, but it’s a plastic made from biomaterial as an input material, which reduces the overall carbon footprint of the product by up to 70%. Innovation in the usability of the product is key. Previously, the charging industry was technology-driven, but now people want a charging solution that is super easy to use, and that they don’t need to think about. As one of their customers said, “I want charging my electric car to be as easy as charging my laptop.” With this new generation of products, they’ve done a lot of user testing, UX design, and spent a lot of time thinking about how the app should work together with the station to provide an intuitive way of using the product. That’s the first part of innovation. Secondly, your charging station, or your EV in general, becomes part of your energy system at home. People are getting electric appliances into their homes like heat pumps, solar panels and batteries to store energy at home, so your charging station is becoming an essential part of that. Recent developments in energy prices and energy availability have made this even more important.  

Finally, we’re shifting across the globe to Kenya. If you’ve been to East Africa, you may be familiar with boda bodas. If not, they’re small taxi motorcycles commonly used by couriers or to transport people. Roam was founded in 2017 with the aim of creating an electric future for Africa by producing easy-to-use, affordable electric motorcycles. We went to Roam’s HQ in Nairobi to meet product owner Masa Kituyi. He took us for a spin on a Roam Air and told us about the positive impact that the company is having locally from replacing traditional boda bodas to employing a workforce which is 39% female.

My name is Masa Kituyi. I’m a product owner here at Roam for the electric bikes, the Roam Air. I work a lot on building an electric bike that can fit a boda boda user case. Boda boda is a general term that we use here in Kenya to explain motorcycle riders of a specific type of motorcycle. They’re generally used as motorcycle taxis or last-mile delivery for many sorts of things in Nairobi. This could be from food deliveries to courier services, to taxis for general people to move from bus stop to their final destination, and so on. Roam Electric is a sustainability company that has been operating for the last six years. It’s a Swedish-born company that operates out of Nairobi, Kenya. We started by converting safari vehicles. Being a proof of concept of how we could electrify Africa one vehicle at a time started with safari vehicles, where we pulled out the diesel engines and made them electric. Over time, we then diversified our product market and moved into electric motorcycles, where today we sell the Roam Air. We also have energy and charging systems and electric buses. 

We have an electric motorbike called the Roam Air. This is my baby. I’ve been designing it for the last four years. We developed this motorbike right from the ground up. We designed it on our own frame for it. A lot of society rely on the motorcycle as a last part of the journey, so we tried to make it robust, simple to use. And it works. We’re not aiming to be lights and glitter. We want a workhorse. We want durable motorbikes that are reliable, it can get you from point A to point B, no matter what the circumstances are, no matter what you’re carrying. And we don’t want to change that ethos.

The best way is to just give you a demonstrationand for you to see it and experience it yourself in person. As I get onto the bike, I’m putting on my helmet. As you turn the ignition on, the screen comes on. It has a bright display showing me my battery percentage. Right now I’m at 28%, which is about 30 kilometres of range, I have my different driving modes, my speed, and my power reading. I can then press P and I remove it from the parking gear into the drive gear. So right now the bike is active, it is live, it can move. So remove it from the centre stand and let’s ride. 

There is definitely a shift of the market of electric vehicles getting more popular both in general for all vehicles, but mainly in electric motorbikes. We see a lot of parties coming into Africa trying to build and convert as much as this, and we are all for it because it is a mission to electrify Africa and make as many vehicles as possible. So all competitors are embraced. It’s a big world challenge that we’re trying to commit to and trying to develop towards. And it’s a win across the world. So we have seen big uptake of this and many people are driving towards going electric. So yes, we’re happy to see that happening and we hope for most success through it. 

A lot of our engineers are locally based. We’re strong believers that the Kenyan market has fantastic, brilliant engineers, and they’re all very passionate about this. Being an engineer myself, I found out about Roam and was booked from the first second I found out about it and wanted to work here. There are a lot of people who have built on that and have a lot of passion for what they’re doing. We specialise in specific areas of development that might not be too common. This is, anywhere in the world, a challenge to find and to recruit for. So being in Kenya isn’t specifically a disadvantage. It’s being in a new field that requires us to step out and recruit for specific talent and certain skill sets. But yes, it’s a great balance of people. I don’t know how much you’ve taken note of as we were walking around, but about 39% of our staff are female. And you’ll see that on our production line, you’ll see it with our engineers, you’ll see it in our after-sales. Yes, just giving the ability for people to do a lot of technical stuff, that generally doesn’t happen too often in Kenya. And the ability to dive into deep engineering and deep research and development is something unique to this company. And it’s one of the reasons why I found it and loved it. 

That’s all for this New Year special. Continued thanks to all the pioneering people and companies we feature on The Third Angle. I hope you found this episode inspiring and that you’re energised about the future of design. If you haven’t already, why not listen back to our catalogue of previous episodes, available on ptc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.