February is Innovation month at EnerScope and I’m well pleased. There are several cool innovations happening throughout the globe and we want to take a closer look at some of them.

Back in September 2016 we told you about the Silk Pavilion and other innovative building materials coming out of MIT. You won’t be surprised to know that they are at it again and this time they developed the lightest material on earth to date and it is 10 times the strength of steel (Read here: 10 X Steel). Think of if you got this material into the body of a car or boat, replacing conventional steel with this would translate to a huge fuel saving. Now multiply that fuel saving by the estimated One Billion cars that we have on earth and the estimated 24 million boats. Think of the same in aircraft and I’ll pause while you do the math. We could be using half of all current fossil fuel consumption by 2025!

The next innovation that came across my desk recently is Carbon Neutral Plastic. Bioplastic is usually made from organic sources like vegetable fat, starch or oils.

It can be made using plastic bottles compared to conventional plastic which is made from petroleum, petroleum or Natural Gas. This usually produces more GHGs than bio-based polymers and are not always designed to degrade. Bioplastics degrade in most environments whether aerobic or anaerobic and utilize refuse that would otherwise be dumped.

Marcus