Single Point Total Installed Costs (per installation data), historic and forecast. Credit: Applied Energy (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.124014
The high cost of installing heat pumps for home heating could slow down people widely adopting the technology and leave government targets missed, research suggests. There has been a little to no reduction in the average installation cost of the green heating systems over the past decade in the UK, a study shows. The study is published in the journal Applied Energy.
Although projections suggest a reduction of 20 to 25% in installation costs by 2030, this falls significantly short of the targets set by UK policymakers, researchers say. Domestic heat pumps currently play a marginal role in heating UK homes, experts say. The number of installations is growing, but remains low compared with traditional, fossil fuel-based heating systems.
Researchers say the findings highlight the need for policy aspirations to be based on realistic assessments of likely cost reductions, and to develop incentives that can address the relatively high upfront costs of some low carbon technologies.
As well as decarbonizing home heating, advocates for heat pumps say they offer energy security and efficiency benefits, and can offer lower and more stable energy bills.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh and Imperial College London used systematic evidence review techniques to analyze historical and forecast data for the installation costs of domestic heat pumps. They included the different factors that can affect heat pump cost data such as the type of home, technology design and the wider heating system. They also assessed equipment and non-equipment costs, and the factors affecting them such as international manufacturing supply chains and local labor markets.
They found there has been no significant reduction in the average installed cost of heat pumps over the past decade in the UK, while modest cost reductions were seen internationally. However, there are prospects for reduced installed costs in the UK, they said.
Dr. Mark Winskel, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science, said, “While there is a growing policy consensus that heat pumps will pay a key role in decarbonizing home heating, there are some stubborn economic challenges. Our research suggests the need for realistic expectations about heat pump installed cost reductions, and also, introducing targeted support measures to reflect their competitive running costs and wider benefits.”
More information:
Mark Winskel et al, Reducing heat pump installed costs: Reviewing historic trends and assessing future prospects, Applied Energy (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.124014
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High costs slow widespread use of heat pumps in UK, study shows (2024, October 1)
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Visiting heliconias: left, a Purple-throated carib (Eulampis jugularis) and right, a Bananaquit (Coereba flaveola). Credit: Ethan Temeles/Amherst College
Most flowering plants depend on animals for pollination. In warm wet tropical regions, more than 90% of plant species are pollinated by animals. In Dominica, a Caribbean island country, researchers have identified a mutualistic relationship between two species of heliconia plant (Heliconia bihai and H. caribaea) and their hummingbird pollinator, the Purple-throated carib (Eulampis jugularis). The association is so specific that it has often been cited as an example in the scientific literature.
For this reason, when Hurricane Maria (category 5, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds of more than 250 kph) struck the region in 2017 and killed 75% of the entire E. jugularis population, these two species of heliconia were expected to become extinct.
However, a paper recently published in New Phytologist shows that other birds have become pollinators of the plants in question. The authors are based in Brazil, Denmark, Switzerland, United States and United Kingdom, with a contribution by the Center for Research on Biodiversity Dynamics and Climate Change (CBioClima), a Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center (RIDC) in Rio Claro, Brazil.
“In 2022 we studied the region in great detail, analyzing bird-heliconia visitation types and rates, as well as pollen deposition and transportation patterns. Our findings pointed to drastic changes: other hummingbird species and also the Bananaquit (Coereba flaveola) had begun to visit and pollinate heliconia flowers at similar rates to E. jugularis or even higher,” said Fernando Gonçalves, a member of CBioClima and currently a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with Jordi Bascompte’s laboratory at the University of Zurich (UZH) in Switzerland.
“Our analysis suggested that the decline in the population of E. jugularis resulted in a breakdown of the competitive exclusion of other species and allowed other birds to become effective pollinators. We concluded that specialized pollination systems can become generalized after natural disturbances such as hurricanes, showing that the ecosystem was resilient,” he said.
Birds were captured near heliconia plants using mist nets (made of nylon or polyester mesh suspended between two poles, resembling a volleyball net), and pollen stuck to their beaks and feathers was sampled using a special jelly. Cameras enabled the researchers to identify the birds as they visited the plants, and pollen deposition was measured by flower stigma inspection after visitation.
“E. jugularis is highly territorial and aggressive. When the population was large, no other bird species could get near the heliconias, but once the population had been reduced to only a quarter of its original size, there weren’t enough individuals to keep other hummingbird species and the Bananaquit away from the plants. These new pollinators are generalists. They collect pollen from several plant species. And the Bananaquit feeds on fruit,” Gonçalves said.
This discovery was significant for two reasons. First, it was thought that only E. jugularis could pollinate H. bihai and H. caribaea because the shape of their flowers matches the size and curvature of this hummingbird’s beak. Females of E. jugularis have long curved beaks and are the main pollinators of H. bihai, while H. caribaea is pollinated by both females and males, even though the latter’s beaks are shorter and straighter.
The second and even more important reason for the importance of the discovery is that it showed species extinction to be a far more complex process than is often thought. The devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Maria interrupted the co-adaptation and co-dependency of plants and hummingbirds, letting other birds take their place.
Evolutionary paths may meander instead of being highly linear. This is particularly relevant in the context of the ongoing climate crisis, in which extreme events such as severe drought, torrential rain, floods, hurricanes, etc. are more frequent and species are becoming extinct in a comparatively short time.
“If no other mass destructions occur on Dominica, we believe the two species of heliconia and E. jugularis may reestablish their exclusive mutualism in 15 to 20 years or so. The population of E. jugularis will have grown again, and there will be plenty of individuals defending their territory,” Gonçalves said, adding that his team is conducting more research in the area to test the hypothesis. They also plan to assess the impact of natural phenomena on the evolutionary behavior of other species.
“We’re on the lookout for hurricanes in the region so we can go back there and investigate the consequences.”
More information:
Taia S. O. Schrøder et al, Hurricane‐induced pollinator shifts in a tightly coadapted plant–hummingbird mutualism, New Phytologist (2024). DOI: 10.1111/nph.19938
Citation:
Pollination shifts in Caribbean after Hurricane Maria demonstrate ecological resilience (2024, October 1)
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Seven years after actor Alyssa Milano’s tweet launched the #MeToo movement into the global consciousness, attitudes towards sexual harassment and assault have shifted in many countries. A new study shows that the movement’s impact doesn’t stop there. The findings are published in the journal Management Science.
INSEAD professors Frédéric Godart and David Dubois, alongside Clément Bellet of Erasmus University Rotterdam, found that #MeToo triggered far-reaching changes in consumer behavior. Sales of stereotypically feminine shoes like high heels dropped significantly weeks after the #MeToo movement swept the media in October 2017.
The researchers analyzed data from a leading fashion retailer across 32 OECD countries, focusing on women’s footwear purchases between January 2017 and December 2018. They observed a 14.4% decrease in stockouts for stereotypically feminine shoes, such as pink high-heeled pumps or red platforms, compared to more neutral styles.
This average effect is driven by markets more exposed to the #MeToo movement—in particular the Nordic countries and France—where stockouts of such products fell by 25%.
That’s not all. The team also found consistent declines in stockouts for pink or red items for three women’s product categories: lingerie, dresses and handbags.
To explore the underlying reasons for this shift in preferences, the researchers surveyed approximately 1,000 women in the United States. Their results indicate that exposure to #MeToo-related content led to a significant decrease in demand for high-heeled shoes. This finding suggests a rebellion against traditional gender stereotypes, rather than a response to feelings of threat or empowerment, that turned women off starkly feminine products.
Marketing in the post-MeToo world
The study’s implications extend far beyond the fashion industry, highlighting the potential for social movements to impact consumer markets in unexpected ways.
The researchers recommend that brands that rely heavily on gender-based marketing strategies—”pink it or shrink it” in industry speak—reassess their approach. Brands need to be more attuned to shifts in social norms and values, as these can quickly influence consumer preferences.
The authors also recommend that companies conduct brand audits to assess how their products intersect with consumer identities and stereotypes, and how social movements may affect their brand value.
The research provides valuable insights for businesses operating in an era where consumer identity is a major driver of purchasing decisions. As social movements continue to shape public discourse and consumer preferences, firms that adapt quickly to these changes may find themselves better positioned for long-term success.
More information:
Clément S. Bellet et al, Do Consumers Respond to Social Movements? Evidence from Gender-Stereotypical Purchases After #MeToo, Management Science (2024). DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2022.02352
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Seven years on, study reveals #MeToo’s unexpected impact on consumer behavior (2024, October 1)
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Symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi have been described as a kind of economic market, with plants trading carbon for nutrients—but that analogy is flawed according to new research that suggests we need to rethink how these environmentally important systems work. Credit: Rebecca Bunn
Every year, plants move 3.58 gigatons of carbon to mycorrhizal fungi, their underground partners—enough, in fact, that if it were ice, it would cover 112 million NHL hockey rinks. However, a dominant scientific theory explaining that huge transfer as an economic market of sorts is likely incorrect, according to a new paper by a group of experts including a University of Alberta researcher.
According to the market perspective, carbon is traded for nutrients delivered by the fungi—an exchange of resources between partners, governed by economic principles.
However, the new research suggests rethinking how these environmentally important systems work.
“There’s an assumption among many researchers that the exchange of carbon for nutrients is directly coupled, and that the amounts transferred are based on market economics. Markets are human constructs that don’t seem to apply here,” says Justine Karst, associate professor in the U of A’s Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences and a co-author on the paper. “We found no evidence of trade.”
The work is published in the journal New Phytologist.
Misapplying economic models hampers understanding of mycorrhizas—mutual relationships between plants and underground fungi—which in turn can lessen our ability to fully understand how the fungi function, including their roles in plant growth and carbon sequestration, she warns.
“This economic analogy may have closed our eyes to other possibilities for the function of mycorrhizas,” says Karst.
In mycorrhizas, resources travel in opposite directions; mycorrhizal fungi receive carbon, in the form of lipids and sugars, while plants receive nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen.
This flow of resources has commonly been framed through what are known as biological market models, as a way to understand how mycorrhizas maintain this mutual relationship over eons, Karst says.
At the other extreme is a recent alternative theory, called the “Surplus C” hypothesis, that suggests plants often produce more sugars than can be used for growth and that mycorrhizal fungi are a sink that receives this surplus carbon.
“This means that how much carbon is transferred to a fungus is independent of nutrient delivery to the plant,” Karst explains.
After reviewing and analyzing evidence from an extensive range of scientific studies, Karst and her co-authors did not find strong support for biological market models.
“We found no empirical evidence of direct regulation, and reject the idea that ‘prices’— the number of units of carbon per unit of nutrient—regulate carbon transfer to fungi. Instead, we found more support for the theory that carbon is drawn to the strongest sink—namely mycorrhizal fungi,” she says.
Along with that, their review indicated that mycorrhizal plant growth was linked to nutrient uptake rather than carbon transfer, meaning that it is not the amount of carbon transferred to mycorrhizal fungi that reduces plant growth, but it is the amount of nutrients delivered—or not delivered—by the fungus. In this sense, the carbon transferred to mycorrhizal fungi is not costly to the plant.
Collectively, the findings are more consistent with the Surplus C theory than with market models, the researchers conclude.
The observations highlight the importance of looking past the limitations of economic models to learn more about key interactions between plants and mycorrhizal fungi that could, for example, potentially benefit the environment, Karst adds. “A substantial amount of carbon flows from plants to fungi and fungi are a large pool of soil carbon, so there’s a need to understand how this flow works to leverage it in sequestering that carbon.”
Their review revealed a need for further research to more closely explore foundational questions about what determines the transfer of carbon from plants to mycorrhizal fungi, and how to fully measure its carbon sink strength, Karst notes.
And while a mechanism that directly links carbon and nutrient transfer could one day be uncovered, until then, the researchers “urge caution” in characterizing the relationship in economic terms, she adds.
“The idea of markets is familiar to us, but the inner workings of mycorrhizas are not, so we need to stay open to other ways of understanding how these systems work.”
More information:
Rebecca A. Bunn et al, What determines transfer of carbon from plants to mycorrhizal fungi?, New Phytologist (2024). DOI: 10.1111/nph.20145
Citation:
Are plants and fungi trading carbon for nutrients? Not likely, say researchers (2024, October 1)
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U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who sponsored the bill in the Senate, described free AM radio as “an essential tool in emergencies, a crucial part of our diverse media ecosystem, and an irreplaceable source for news, weather, sports, and entertainment for tens of millions of listeners.”
As a media historian, I welcome hearing AM radio described as a public utility, particularly after decades of free-market orthodoxy dominating discussions of its fate.
The story of a new medium
When AM—short for “amplitude modulation“—arrived at the turn of the 20th century, it was championed as a revolutionary technology that could bring a nation together in time and space. Over the next decade, engineers developed new technologies such as uniwave arc transmitters to send the signal and vacuum tubes to help amplify it upon reception, so that first voices and then music could be heard over AM broadcasts.
While early radio amateurs harnessed its potential to connect and inform, the era of unlicensed amateur broadcasting ended during World War I due to fears that the new medium might be misused to spread foreign propaganda or divisive content.
After KDKA went on the air in Pittsburgh as the first licensed commercial station in November 1920, AM radio stations popped up across the nation, serving local audiences a wide variety of formats. Houses were now filled with the sounds of news, baseball games, radio dramas or crooners singing popular music. Radios flew off the shelves to meet the demand.
Because listening stokes the imagination in unique ways, broadcasters—and the advertisers that paid to access audiences—found new ways of using radio to capture listeners’ attention.
By the 1930s, AM radio was a dominant form of mass media in America, served by networks of stations—NBC, CBS and Mutual—with both local and syndicated programming. While commercial interests saw radio as a means to generate profit, a growing chorus of advocates viewed radio as a public utility that should be made to serve the public interest.
That public conversation inspired the Communications Act of 1934 and the creation of the Federal Communications Commission, which was charged with ensuring that licensed stations abide by certain standards.
These standards flowed from an ongoing debate at the FCC about the public interest obligations of radio broadcasters. In the late 1930s, the agency started requiring licensed stations to remain neutral in matters of news and politics. The “no-editorializing spirit” of the Mayflower decision compelled the FCC in 1949 to establish its fairness doctrine later that year.
The emerging regulatory oversight helped check America’s first radio demagogue, Father Coughlin, whose conspiratorial tirades were heard by some 30 million listeners. Over the course of several years, Coughlin’s refusal to comply with regulatory guidelines—combined with fear of sponsor backlash—caused him to be dropped by radio networks.
Radio comes along for the ride
The sounds of AM radio started accompanying drivers in their cars in the late 1920s.
The vehicles of that era featured closed cabins that protected drivers and passengers from weather and noise. People who listened to music on their home radios embraced the idea of listening while driving. Companies such as the Automobile Radio Corporation promoted expensive Transitone radios that ran on a 6-volt battery with the tagline, “You’re never alone with a Transitone.”
In 1930, General Motors began installing radios in its new Cadillacs. Chrysler advertised luxury cars factory-wired for owners to install Transitones. Now, drivers traveling on America’s vast and growing national highway systems could do so while listening to the radio.
As the decade progressed, factory-installed radios—mounted on the floor, with controls on the dash and speakers above the windshield—were touted as a way to enhance the driving experience. As a Philco radio commercial from 1934 put it, “You wouldn’t be without a radio at home—why be without one in your car?”
But now, drivers had a different technology they could tune into: FM radio.
Short for “frequency modulation,” this spectrum—though it required more power—was less prone to static and offered better sound quality. The early days of FM were characterized by innovation and vibrant local programming. But that gradually ceded to commercial pressures as big media companies consolidated their power. Slowly but surely, music programming shifted away from AM to FM.
By the mid-1980s, the once robust conversation about radio serving the public interest was muted by lobbyists and politicians who pushed for deregulation that would boost profits. One by one, rules requiring broadcasters to devote set amounts of time to public affairs programming, rules that limited the number of stations in a media market that a company could own to seven, and news and public affairs programming guidelines such as the fairness doctrine all fell like pawns to an industry fixated on profit.
The FCC and Federal Trade Commission shrugged as big corporations bought up and consolidated radio stations, reducing local programming and replacing it with syndicated content beamed in by satellite.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 gave it all away, effectively ceding decisions about the future of AM and FM radio to corporate interests and asking almost nothing in return.
Over the next two decades, America’s radio stations would be gobbled up by a handful of conglomerates such as Clear Channel, now known as iHeartMedia. The majority of AM stations, especially those in rural areas, where people spend a lot of time listening in their cars, prioritized right-wing talk shows.
And though radio demagogues such as Rush Limbaugh and his many imitators salvaged the profitability of AM radio, there are huge swaths of rural America where the captured spectrum serves as a delivery system for monotone partisan programming that sounds a lot like Father Coughlin in the 1930s. Instead of providing farm reports, emergency information and local news to cultivate an informed citizenry, now most corporate-owned AM stations air divisive, grievance-filled infotainment that serves the needs of ownership.
On the road, again
It doesn’t have to be that way.
The FCC once asked stations to serve the public interest in exchange for their licenses, a regulatory quid pro quo that generated a broader range of programming that better served communities.
It’s possible to take that road again. Just look at Low Power FM community radio, which emerged as a nonprofit answer to industry homogenization designed to serve the public interest.
Freed from corporate control, homegrown Low Power FM community radio boosts local democracy by offering a microphone to local musicians and a diverse range of commentators, voices often denied access to commercial radio. Stations can apply for Low Power FM community radio licenses; though the reception range is very limited, the number of stations serving communities ranging from Iuka, Mississippi, to the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, has doubled in the past decade to over 1,500.
AM radio could be used similarly.
If Congress and the FCC are going to frame AM radio as an essential public service, I believe it should once again push for public interest standards in exchange for a license. Only then will AM radio live up to the spirit animating the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act.
In other words, if the U.S. government is going to tell automakers to install AM radios as a matter of public interest, shouldn’t they also ask broadcasters to demonstrate they are worthy of the public’s trust?
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Congress is trying to force carmakers to keep AM radio—how this could be an opportunity to correct past mistakes (2024, October 1)
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