Renewable sources of energy briefly met 50.7 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs, reported the National Grid – the organisation responsible for power supply management around the UK – at lunchtime on Wednesday.

Clear skies and strong winds had created ideal weather conditions for solar and wind energy production. Backed up by other renewable sources including wood pellet burning and hydropower, renewable output reached a record 19.3GW at midday, enough to meet more than half of the 35.4GW power demand.

For the first time ever wind nuclear and solar were all generating more than gas and coal combined

Adding nuclear into the equation, low-carbon power sources were generating 73.9 per cent of the country’s electricity.

“For the first time ever this lunchtime wind, nuclear and solar were all generating more than both gas and coal combined,” tweeted the National Grid.

The news comes three weeks after Britain had its first coal-free day since fossil fuel use began during the Industrial Revolution.

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Researchers at Binghamton University in New York have developed the battery at a proof of concept level and are hoping it could be on the market for doctors and medics within three years.

The battery is made from standard office paper with a nickel-based cathode on one side and carbon paint anode on the other. The team used the ancient Japanese art of origami, or paper-folding, to fold the battery down to the size of a matchbox.

Bacteria from a single drop of dirty water are fed into the battery where their respiration could potentially generate microwatts of energy – enough to power a paper-based biosensor used for diagnosing diseases.

Professor Seokheun Choi, an expert in bioelectronics at Binghamton University who led the research, told Newsweek: “I want my paper-based biobatteries to be used in resource-limited regions. Dirty water can be a source to derive [energy for] my battery to power other types of electronics, like paper-based biosensors.”

The use of paper-based tools for disease diagnosis are growing in popularity due to their extremely cheap production costs and transportable nature. However, existing paper biosensors generally need external power sources or to be paired with sophisticated electronic devices.

“I want my paper-based biobatteries to be used in resource-limited regions.”

Researchers at Florida Atlantic and Stanford universities recently developed paper and plastic strips costing less than $1 (63p), which could test for HIV. However, a smartphone camera was needed to capture the results and send them off for diagnosis.

Choi’s ambition is to develop a fully paper-based biosensing system, which is powered by the paper battery and uses paper substrates to test for and detect diseases, without the need for smartphones or other tools. He has received a $300,000 (€190,000) grant from the US government’s National Science Foundation to pursue his research.

He hopes this development could revolutionise healthcare in developing countries, providing quick and cheap disease diagnosis and potentially saving thousands of lives. Diagnosis can be prohibitively expensive at present. Tests for the Ebola virus, which killed more than 10,000 people in west Africa in a recent outbreak, can cost up to $100 (£63) and take hours to produce a result.

The use of origami was a novel idea proposed by Choi, who says the ancient folding techniques allows several batteries to be linked together efficiently and a greater power output to be generated. The battery is unfolded when in use, increasing its surface area exponentially and thereby increasing the energy produced by the respiring bacteria.

“One individual battery is not enough to power the external applications, so we needed to connect several batteries in series or in parallel to increase power. Stacking several batteries is not efficient, so I brought these origami technologies to [the research]. By folding the papers, we can stack them very efficiently,” he says.

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Though the batteries cost the equivalent of five US cents (3p) to produce, Choi says he is working to reduce the costs further in order to make the batteries more widely available. He is also attempting to boost the energy produced by the batteries, which is currently at the nanowatt level.

Paper batteries have been around for several years, but the benefits of such batteries, which are cheap, easy to produce and biodegradable, means they could provide a more sustainable alternative to conventional batteries.

First published by Newsweek

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About ten years ago I joined around 50 others to help design a new kind of collaborative workspace. We drew chalk lines on the floor of a drafty, empty warehouse in London, imagining what configuration of people and furniture would best brew-up creativity and community.

We had no idea that the seed being planted at Hub Islington, would cascade into a global phenomenon. Today there are 35 workspaces in the Hub network on five continents, incubating 7,000 social entrepreneurs, collaborating to create businesses that have a positive impact on society.

I work in the newest London Hub, in Westminster – which looks more like a Google office than the wooden beamed space in Islington – but returned to the original Hub on Tuesday night for the launch of Hub Eco Series, a series of events aiming to create a positive debate around key environmental issues.

It was good to be back – seventy renewable energy enthusiasts turned up for the sold-out event to find out why six international corporations control 99% of the UK’s energy supply and what can be done about it.

Up front in the hot seats: Clare Hierons, CEO of Carbon Leapforg; Nigel Farren of Energise Barnet; Agamemnon Otero of Brixton Energy, and Howard Johns, managing director of Southern Solar. The panel was tasked with discussing whether community-owned, green energy cooperatives can be part of the solution to the UK’s energy challenge.

“Local energy co-ops may seem radical and niche, but this movement could be about to explode into the mainstream”

It wasn’t much of a debate but we were hearing fascinating tales from the front line. These battle-hardened veterans had gone head-to-head with energy mega corps and the labyrinthine regulatory regimes that surround them, emerging from the other side invigorated and keen to tell their stories.

Right now, local energy co-ops may seem radical and niche, but there are three reasons that this movement could be about to explode into the mainstream.

Firstly, it works well in other countries. Secondly, the benefits go way beyond the limitless clean energy they provide. Thirdly, because the success of the initiatives like the Hub network blaze a trail: the change we need to see in the world is not corporate or government led, it is going to be you and me.

Many of our European neighbours generate electricity very differently. Not only is the energy mix of Scandinavia and Germany more renewable, citizens own a significant proportion of the windmills, solar panels and other infrastructure that generate it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, these countries score better on national wellbeing scales and are more equal, showing less income disparity. They show that there is a range of benefits to dispersed energy generation beyond the simple fact that renewables won’t run out.

Agamemnon Otero quoted a recent study that conservatively estimates that the total community energy market for Great Britain is estimated to be around 3.5GW – the equivalent of about seven small nuclear power stations – but he pointed out, “what we are really after is wellbeing for communities.”

When he successfully transformed unused space on south London council estate roofs into a local power station, it wasn’t the flow of electrons or pounds that got him excited, it was the opportunity that the project provided the residents. Kids on the estate were trained up to understand the IT, technology and finance to keep the business functioning.

The knowledge and skills learned can lead to work, but it’s more than that; the project creates value locally. Otero was keen to point out that the kids don’t want a ticket out, they just want to be empowered. These projects generate electricity and cash to invest locally but they energise residents keen to “up-skill, re-skill and power down,” he explained.

“These projects generate electricity and cash to invest locally, and they also energise residents”

The current public dialogue around energy supply in the UK disturbs Howard Johns. The media presents two options: nuclear and fracking, or renewables. It completely misses the more interesting debate about who owns and controls what, he believes.

Howard reeled off ingenious case studies from around the world including district heating by solar thermal in Sweden, the hero who took a Bavarian village off-grid who is now tasked with doing the same with Berlin, and a Canadian development that pumps solar thermal heat into a borehole in the summer sufficient to heat whole neighborhoods for the entire winter.

Howard sees the shift to decentralised energy generation as the unravelling of the business model of the big six. He wants the speed of local generation to accelerate so that literal and metaphorical power comes back to citizens from corporations.

He asks how to engage people to move their money from lacklustre financial mega-corps to energy co-ops. No surprise that leaders from the renewable energy crowdfunding platforms designed to do just that, such as Abundance and Trillion Fund, were in the audience nodding their approval.

But challenges abound. Government changes to the Feed-in Tariff have left communities wanting to develop local renewable energy projects vulnerable to a dip in the price of the electricity they sell back to the grid. Attempting to generate electricity as a community, rather than paying inflated prices to fossil fuel burning corporations is rebellious and risky. It requires what Clare Hierons describes as wilful individuals to pull together community groups and cash, and stir in grit and determination.

The odds seem stacked against these groups until we start to see the benefits reaped by the communities that succeed: not just clean, limitless energy and a revenue stream, but opportunity, independence, creativity, resilience and the realisation of fundamental needs not satisfied by centralised economies.

The question for discussion was can local co-operatives respond to the energy challenge, but I left seeing it the other way around. The energy challenge we all face of rising fuel bills, climate change and lack of self-determination can become the catalyst for neighbours to start talking again.

When we realise that by pooling our money and working together we can get cheaper electricity, the fun is only just beginning. The real magic is breaking free from economic systems that lock us into to a lifetime of servitude to pay off debt we didn’t create. By having our own local energy generation we achieve traction towards more empowered lives and regain our dignity. We are Brits goddamit… let’s power ourselves!

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