We have been putting the wind to good use for centuries; sailors have harnessed it to drive boats, farmers use it to grind grains for bread and, today, we use it to produce carbon free renewable energy.
Heat pumps will play a big part in the UK government’s commitments towards a net zero future. Within their 2020 Energy White Paper: Powering our Net Zero Future, the government has set the ambitious target of installing 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028. Though it is predicted that annual global sales of heat pumps will double by 2030 to 20.8m units, currently less than 1% of UK homes have them. But what are heat pumps?
While lockdown may have caused many of us to grind to a halt, the world has continued to turn. More wildfires have burned through California than in 2019 and this year’s Arctic fires released the same amount of carbon as Belgium does in a year. Despite human activity slowing down, the climate has carried on regardless.
Over 500 North Korean fishing boats have been found washed up on the shores of Japan, often containing dead fisherman, over the last 5 years. These washed up vessels have been labelled “Ghost Boats”. The dead bodies aboard these ships were often decomposed beyond recognition, but it was expected that they died of starvation, hypothermia or dehydration. North Korean fishing vessels are relatively small. With a distance of 600 miles (965km) between North Korea and Japan, it raises the question of why these fishermen would risk travelling so far from their own shores.