There are many industries where directly replacing existing fossil fuel technologies such as diesel and petrol engines is far from simple. However, this does not necessarily mean that those industries cannot benefit from greener technologies such as wind turbines, solar panels, fuel cells and electrolysers, or greener fuel types such as hydrogen and biofuels.
An example of this was recently demonstrated by Colas Rail UK within their Freight Business. Colas Rail collaborated with G-Volution Ltd, plus various other companies (see the article below for a longer list), to utilise a 35kW solid oxide fuel cell system, along with a biofuel - in this case Bio Liquefied Petroleum Gas, or Bio-LPG, to generate electrical power for powering the exterior and interior lighting on their 37254 locomotive. Even though the train's main driving fuel remained diesel, the supply of green power for auxiliary loading such as lighting, all helped to partially decarbonise their locomotive operations. In this example, it was calculated that the use of this kind of technology could reduce the carbon dioxide emissions by 12%, and can even reduce the fuel costs by 8%!
These numbers are surprising and go to show that even partial changes to our fuel usage to low or near net zero carbon emission technologies can create significant environmental benefits, along with potential financial ones. If deployed across all the many transport and industrial sectors, similar modifications could have huge beneficial effects!
If you are looking to incorporate more environmentally responsible technologies into your industry, remember that you could be creating something with both environmental and financial benefits. As a result, these changes could be something valuable both to you and your competitors. Therefore, do remember to protect these innovations with patents so that you can either work with a degree of comfort that you can act to prevent third parties from stealing your ideas, or so that you can alternatively licence the innovations to third parties, thus expanding the reach of your investment and the opportunity for incoming revenue.
#transport #netzero #fuel cells #patents #licencingopportunities
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