Do you know just what the air quality’s like at the end of your street right now? Or what the pollution levels are outside your kids’ school? Or at your kitchen table, come to that? Unless you’re armed with a hefty monitoring kit, the answer’s almost certainly no.
But that could be about to change, if tech entrepreneur and former science minister Paul Drayson has his way. His company, Drayson Technologies, is launching an app-base device which enables individuals to monitor the air around them. CleanSpace, as it’s called, takes the form of a small slim phone-sized tag which acts as a carbon monoxide (CO) sensor. CO was chosen on the advice of environmental experts at King’s College, who said it was a good indicator pollutant for poor air quality.
Data from the sensor is uploaded to the mobile, which not only displays it to the user, but shares it via the CleanSpace app. So as the number of users spread, CleanSpace will provide an increasingly detailed map of real-time air quality updates. And, Drayson hopes, that will alert people to the often dismal state of the air around them, and encourage them to push for action.
With the Paris climate talks well underway, initiatives like this are increasingly gaining prominence, as people impatient with the slow grind of climate diplomacy look for practical actions they can take on the ground. Among the most striking of these is the We Got Power campaign, launched by the Collectively movement, which has succeeded in encouraging companies and individuals to commit to 100% renewable energy supplies.
Drayson, himself a fan of Collectively, thinks that putting power into people’s hands directly can be an inspiring thing. But he’s not just relying on altruism: the app will also offer rewards, in the form of discounts on purchases from partners, including Halfords and Abel & Cole, for users who make green travel choices. These aren’t restricted to people who buy the sensor tag either – anyone who downloads the app can qualify.
And it doesn’t rely on people disclosing their modes of transport: CleanSpace works it out for itself. How? The answer, as it so often is these days, is an algorithm. The app uses your phone’s GPS to work out how fast you’re going, and whether your movements are consistent with walking, cycling, riding in a bus, train or sitting in a car. It’s not foolproof, Drayson admits. “One of the things we’re learning is that there are some people who cycle pretty fast out there!”
A self-described “car nut” and amateur racing driver, Drayson was an early proponent of government incentives for diesel cars, on the grounds of their lower-than-petrol carbon emissions. But he has since admitted that policy was a mistake, telling the BBC: “We have a much better understanding than we did just a few years ago of the health effects of the products of diesel, and they are literally killing people.” He has recently become a convert to the electric car, and set an electric land speed record (of a cool 204 mph) back in 2013.
Car drivers often imagine they are insulated from the pollution they create. But as some pilot CleanSpace users have discovered, the readings can be as high – or higher – inside a car as outside. And there’s nothing wrong with their sensors. “We’ve had people tell us, ‘It says the air quality in my car is awful!’”, says Drayson. “And we say, ‘yes, well it’s right, you’ve got to remember the air you’re breathing is at exhaust pipe level.” (And for anyone out there who thinks the air filter will deal with that, it’s wise to remember that the filter’s for the engine, not you.)
The sensor’s powered by Freevolt, another Drayson invention, which harvests so-called “wireless waste” electricity: from the radio frequency signals emitted by wifi and GSM networks which litter the air around us. As a theoretical concept, such harvesting has been around for a while, but practical applications have proved elusive. Freevolt is one of the first, and Drayson believes it has huge potential. “We’ve improved the efficiency to the point where we can harness enough energy to be able to power small sensors and wearable devices. And as they themselves get more efficient and their energy requirements come down, it means there’s potentially a nice long list of things we can power!”
The Cleanspace sensor is the first, but he’s convinced others will follow. “There are huge advantages to having something which never needs to be plugged in or have the battery changed… You can just put it somewhere and forget it; you can even embed a sensor into the wall and just leave it there if you like.”
So would Drayson-the-science-minister be convinced to act by the likes of CleanSpace? He thinks so. “At the moment, if the Mayor of London said, ‘I’m going to ban all internal combustion engines from the city centre”, people would just say it’s impractical. But it’s a bit like passive smoking. The more people are aware of the dangers, the more there’s the political space to act.”
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