Eddy's Good News: Mammoth carbon suction machines and new use for old BT phone boxes

Virgin Radio

14 May 2024, 13:15

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio Anthems, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!

Be sure to listen each day between 2pm and 6pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:

Tuesday 14th May 2024

You might remember a massive CO2 vacuum in Iceland that started pulling carbon out of their air in 2021 and storing it in rock where it mineralises and stays for millions of years.

The collaboration between Icelandic and Swiss companies said they can pull 4,000 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere every year, the equivalent of taking 870 cars off the road. They’ve now, just three years later built a new plant that can do ten times that. 

The newly opened mammoth carbon suction machines can collectively pull 36,000 tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere and mineralisation deep underground may actually be able to lock it away for billions of years. Even better, the whole plant is powered by geothermal energy, making it carbon positive. 

Scientists are saying that we need to double down on CO2 removal, it’s not just about releasing less, we’ve got to take it out as well. With that in mind other large operations are being planned or built, all over the world, including a gargantuan one in Wyoming USA that aims to capture 5,000,000 tons annually.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org

Now all the old red BT phone boxes are miniature espresso bars or trust libraries, what to do with the fast becoming obsolete curbside cable boxes?

Now almost everyone is wireless, the old cabinets are becoming redundant eyesores but with little to no infrastructure work they can and are being converted to electric car charging points. They don’t need to be dug up, they need no extra power to be routed to them, simply using the lines that charged the last generation phone box, they can fully charge an electric vehicle in around 6 hours. 

They trialled it with the first conversion done in East Lothian. BT will use phone payment and contactless payment software and with 60,000 of these so-called DSLAM boxes across the U.K., this could potentially more than double the 54,000 charging points in the U.K. 

BT are currently retrofitting 600 of these this year.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org