another day of anti—government progress has forgotten valerie‘s gimmicks after disputed election victory. security forces have ordered the guards there to disperse. in india the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has now has three million and the country has three million and the country has the worlds highest rate of new infections of the third—highest caseload after the united states and brazil. us house of representatives has approved an emergency bill to inject $25 billion into the postal service and to put operational changes in place. democrats say the trump administration may try to disenfranchise voters. and mr trump has approved the california request to declare the huge wild are scorching parts of the state was a major disaster. it means federal funds can now be available to help victims of the fires.

now on bbc news, from a battery mount into sucking carbon out of the air, this week click looks at some of our favourite sustainable tech from the recent past. this week — a mountain of energy, a solar sea, and some rather unusual food. hey, welcome to click. i hope you're doing 0k. i don't know about you but this year has felt really quite long so far. we live in a world which is unrecognisable from even six

months ago and it's clear that we still have big problems to face. but let's not forget the global issues we were talking about even before the pandemic, particularly climate change. possibly one silver lining from all of this is the reminder that tech can and does solve some of our biggest problems. on click, we've been lucky enough to see some amazing tech, tech that can change the world and even revolutionise it. we thought we'd share with you some of our favourites from the past couple of years. we start, where else but in wales? the beautiful welsh countryside, home to valleys, lakes, the odd feral goat, and... electric mountain!

hidden inside this mountain is the dinorwig pumped storage power station, and it is basically a monster battery. it stores energy by pumping water from the lake to a lake at the top of the mountain, and then letting it flow back downhill, releasing that energy at times of peak demand. see, when you pop the kettle on during breaks in championship matches of that sport they call football, this bad boy springs into action to supplement our national grid, delivering power to our homes in under 12 seconds. it's an incredible view. it's one of the fastest responding power stations on the planet, and we'll have a nosy inside the thing later in the programme. dinorwig offers a semi—renewable energy solution at a time when our natural resources are being used up. as solar, wind and tidal power

alternatives advance, we are craving a method of using their generated energy 21w, despite the weather or time of day. this is where batteries come in. now, this isn't your stereotypical battery. admittedly, when i say battery, you probably think of the ones in these — these are rechargeable lithium ion batteries. we really can't live without these. lithium ion batteries have truly revolutionised electronics — they power the mobile miracles that we use every day. they have a high density, meaning that they can store a lot of electricity relative to their small size, so we can easily carry them around and recharge them hundreds of times. inside cells are layers of sheets stacked together, a positive cathode, a negative anode, with a separator in between filled with a liquid electrolyte. when a cell is charged, the movement of ions from one side

to another facilitates the flow of electrons, which then generates current to power devices. during charging, this process is reversed. but the search is on for cleaner, greener forms of energy. for that, lara sailed to a very special island just off norway. we have travelled west now to norway. it is so calm here, it's absolutely beautiful, but not far from here the waves can reach up to three metres, and that's where we are heading, because we are going to take a look at an island which is made up of solar panels, and the idea is that they need to fare 0k whatever the weather.

oh, thank you! i made it! wow, we're walking on water! these certainly are not the first floating solar panels, but the innovation being tested here is the fabric itself, creating a cost—effective, weather—resistant material that could easily be scaled. there is talk of a set up near the equator the size of a football pitch. this has been designed to withstand wind, rain and ice. around the edges, these barriers prevent any sea waterfrom getting in. so whilst you can see i'm standing in a pretty large puddle right now, that's from last night's rain. what i'm actually standing on is less than one millimetre thick, it's quite hard to stay balanced. it's made from polyester coated in a polymer. what makes this polymer special is how lightweight yet strong it is, meaning it's ideal for this type of installation.

in the not—too—distant future, we think we can build systems that are comparable with the so—called ground mounds installations on land. that will be a big breakthrough for floatable sites, because then you suddenly have large surface areas where you can build cheap renewable energy are very close to large consumer groups. and making use ofjust a fraction of the sea's vast surface area, as well as taking advantage of the water's ability to keep the panels cool means that the scaling of this does seem plausible. the solar power being harnessed is being used here on this fish farm. the island has been developed to be the exact right size to harness the right amount of power in the summertime, assuming that the weather is good. the rest of the year it's running on diesel, so obviously you can see the environmental benefits of this.

but the suggestion is, that an island this size, if anchored in the london area could power 20 average uk homes. make the island the size of a football pitch, and that could rise to 200. but of course the investment needed is huge, so moving forward on this could prove more complicated than the proof of concept. back at dinorwig, i'm heading deeper underground. the water comes from the lake, which is about 600 metres above us, down this pipe, hits this valve, and stops. this is the biggest tap you will ever see, and there are actually six of them all in a row down there.

when they need the power, this yellow arm swings up, the valve opens, and we get the maximum flow of water through the turbines there in about six seconds. when all six are open, that's 92,000 gallons per second, or as it says here, 1.5 million cups of tea. i'm not sure if that earl grey or english breakfast, mind. do we have flow? we have flow. and there it is — turbine number two spinning at about 500 rpm. when all six of these turbines are all spinning, this place produces enough electricity to power the whole of wales for five and a half hours. now, dinorwig runs at about 75% efficiency because it pumps its water uphill at night using cheap electricity it buys from the national grid, and charges a premium for the energy it generates during the day.

if we were to move completely away from fossil fuel power stations, would that mean this sort of power station would not be able to run? in reality, if we need to pump that water up the hill, we have got to go and buy the electricity from the market somewhere, whether that is a thermal power station, a set of windmills, gas power station, whatever it might be. why are there not more of these around? i suppose the greatest challenge is finding a suitable place in the uk to build them. you have seen yourself that you have got to have them in a specific area, it has got to have two lakes, ideally, reasonably close together, good vertical separation. they are not the kind of things that you can easily build on the back of a wagon and wheel in somewhere. the lakes need to exist or you need to create them so it comes at a cost. i think it's just a limited amount of options for locations.

does it get a bit lonely down here? sometimes! hello, and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that president donald trump joined tiktok‘s rival app, new york—based triller, gaining 11,000 followers and his first few days. a decision to award a—level students' final grades on the basis of an algorithm was reversed by the uk government following protests. apple became the most successful us company ever, with over $2 trillion. it was also the week that scientists at the university of delaware said that they developed a coding that can ease the interface between humans and ai. the new material is a type of polymer known as pedot. it could help create future cyborgs by more easily connecting electronics to human tissue. a team of researchers at the university of michigan has revealed a new rechargeable zinc battery that could provide energy to robots in a similar way to a human‘s fat cells. the new design will help build capacity in robots as they become

smaller and will help in applications like drones. an autonomous boat has completed a 22—day mission mapping a part of the sea floor of the atlantic 0cean. the i2—metre long uncrewed surface vessel was skippered from a base in eastern england and the mission was part funded by the european space agency. finally, how handy would it be to have a chameleon tongue—like snatcher to reach all those far away objects? this robot has been developed by a team at seoultech to help collect items without getting too close. the tongue works fast and can snatch up to 30g from 80cm away in under 600 milliseconds. i want to share with you a fact that i hadn't fully understood until i met climate scientist ed hawkins last year. now i'd known our weather was getting worse and our sea levels were rising and i'd known that

global warming was happening because we are emitting carbon dioxide and methane into the air at a runaway rate. what i hadn't fully understood is this. simply reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not bring global warming under control. in order to stop global warming, we need to do something very drastic indeed. if we end up in a world where our emissions are net zero, we're not increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere any more — that will stabilise global temperatures at the point at which we do that. it's not realistic? to reduce global temperatures, we would need to somehow remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. there are already ways of capturing c02 at source, on its way out of power stations for example. this doesn't get it all by any means.

what you need is something to pull c02 back out of the air. what you need is something like this. it's called the artificial tree. the air passes through these filters, which are made of a very special material because c02 actually clings to this material as the air passes over it. once these filters are saturated with carbon dioxide, this whole thing moves down into a container of water where this particular material releases the c02 into a sealed container and then, congratulations, you captured yourself some c02 from the air. this is the brainchild of klaus lackner, here at the negative emissions centre at arizona state university. we realised this was a waste management problem. we are dumping c02 into

the atmosphere and it stays there. it was very clear to me in the early—90s that sometime in the 21st century we will have to stop emitting. klaus was the first scientist back in 1999 to publish a scientific paper suggesting carbon capture from the air was a feasible way of combating climate change. the problem was, no—one seemed to be listening. if you look at the climate change problem, in the ‘90s, we had models that told us it was happening. you couldn't really see it out in the real world, except with a microscope. in the 2000s, you could measure it — it was happening. in the teens, now, you can see it happen, even as a non—expert. climate has changed. in the next decade, as it grows out of the noise it becomes loud and clear and starts to hurt. once it hurts, people will say, "now what do we do about it?"

klaus argues since we're facing to meet our targets for lowering co2 emissions, carbon capture from the air is now unavoidable. now people are listening. his technology has recently received commercial investment. we have put so much c02 in the air, we actually have to come back, so we call ourselves the centre for negative carbon emissions because we actually are thinking about having a period in this century in which we will have to take 100 ppm back. now that's more c02 than the world emitted in the 20th century. how many of these do you think we would need? a lot. now, these are very small, but go to the size of a shipping container. if you wanted to actually match current emissions, you would need 100 million of them. now, these are bigger than that. 100 million sounds like a horribly large number, until you start deconstructing it. we build 80 million cars.

shangai harbour is sending out about 30 million full shipping containers. i would argue, as far as industrial scale goes, this is large but not outrageously large. making that piece was fascinating. it helped me to think about the different approaches we can take in tackling the different aspects of climate change. as well as removing our emissions from the air and using greener energy techniques, we can of course reduce the energy that we use and reduce the emissions produced by certain industries. one of the big ones is agriculture and meat production and over the past few months, both kate and lara had been looking at alternatives to the food that we eat. at beyond meat, in la, they have designed the next

generation of meat substitute by analysing it at a cellular level. they then went hunting through the plant kingdom for enzymes, fats and proteins that behave in the same way as the elements of the meat. in this case, extracted from peas, potatoes and with beetroot for blood. i know it's not meat, i'm going to taste it soon butjust from thejuice, it feels like a burger. as well as the visual appeal, scientists here use an e—nose to examine the components of an aroma, so they can be mimicked in the lab. going to do it the way you do a burger, straight on in. it is oozing my fingers. it's dripping down my hands and oozing in a very burger—like way. look at the amount of water we use. we use 99% less water.

if you look at the energy we use, we use half the energy. if you look at the emissions that we provide, about 90% fewer emissions. lastly, on land, an important one for the farmer, we use 93% less land. so if you're a farmer with 100 acres, you can now grow on seven acres what you used to use all 100 for. there is still one major drawback for your average meat loving family. where a pack of fresh beef burgers might be priced around £11.40 per kilogram, the beyond meat alternative is currently around £24 for the same weight. this burger substitute is 100% vegan, but while vegetable substitutes struggle to recreate the effect of meat, there is one company who has just decided to do grow it in a lab. aleph farms are creating what's known as cultured meat,

grown using animal cells. this meat does not fill any agricultural land with gas emitting livestock and no animals need to be slaughtered. we use less resources, less input feed the cells than nneded to feed the animal. but also addressing the issues of animal welfare, the use of antibiotics, one of the key drivers for developing the superbugs, resisance to antibiotics. the potential for creating a more sustainable way to feed the planet is huge, but again the price, at around £2000 per kilogram right now, puts this away outside regular household food budgets. there is also the not so little matter of getting approval from food safety authorities before you even think about selling it, which could take years. for many, switching to a meat—free diet is partly about sustainability and partly about better health. but beyond the marketing hype, are these heavily—processed foods

actually achieving either goal? with cultured meat, you are in many cases trading off reduction of methane for potentially substantial increases in the c02 emission. there's a lot of debate and uncertainty around if highly processed food is intrinsically bad for you or not. actually look at what is done to that food on the way to you, and how much energy is added to it in the course of processing, and how many pollutants are produced, that's an essential thing. there is still a long way to go to produce an effective meat substitute that is both delicious and affordable. but with a third of britons already stating they lead a mainly vegetarian life, it's a booming market attracting a lot of investment to design the perfect meat replacement.

to make the whole food industry more sustainable, we're also going to need to broaden our diets. i've come here to copenhagen to visit ikea's research and development lab, space 10, to see what they have in mind. what we are exploring is not necessarily going to end up in ikea restaurants any day soon. 0ur starting point is, really, how do we feed 10 billion people in a sustainable matter and without compromising deliciousness. what am i having? today you are having our dogless hot dog. a dogless hot dog! we use carrots instead of sausages. 0k. which we have poached in a mixture of apple juice and carrotjuice. then we have dried them in the oven for about one and a half hours, so there is shrinking and they get a chewy texture to them, kind of like meat in a way. a lot of what we have come up with is plant—based because we know

turning to a vegan diet is simply the most sustainable thing you can do as an individual. besides that, we need some protein. there we have explored everything from insects, not only because they are environmentally friendly but also because they are delicious. we have explored microality, orspirulina. the only challenge with spirulina is that it tastes like algae. so we're really trying to find ways of we can actually make this taste good. we are going to start off by putting this puree, or paste of pumpkin seeds. we're just going to put that in the bottom of the hot dog and we are going to add the carrot and our beetroot ketchup. time for a taste. you like it?

it doesn't taste like a normal hot dog but it tastes a lot better. i would never be eating a normal hot dog. the flavour of all the sauces — there are so many different tastes in there and are all quite intense. 0k. it's a bit messy eating on camera but beyond the ingredients, ikea is also hoping to reduce its carbon footprint. introducing hydroponic farming in all stores. this method creates the perfect environment for growing plants using their food waste as fertiliser. but we can all be getting a bit more creative with our waste, it seems. ta ke leftover grou nd coffee for a start. because you only use 1% of the nutrients in the coffee grounds when you make a cup of coffee, we use some of our coffee grounds for shortbreads and others for growing oyster mushrooms. any caffeine in them? will they keep you awake? i actually don't know. i don't believe so.

that's it from us and a look back at our sustainable favourites, and a reminder that tech really can change the world. next week we'll give you another chance to look at some of our other recent adventures. in the meantime, you can catch us on social media and youtube, facebook, instagram and twitter @bbc click. thanks for watching and we'll see you soon. hello there. slightly quieter second half of the weekend. we have lost the gale—force gusts of wind. it is still the case of sunny spells and scattered showers and blustery out there from time to time. but, most of the shower should

organise themselves into a line through northern ireland, northern england, parts of north wales, eventually into the north midlands and east anglia. south of that, showers should be fairly isolated and for much of scotland today, it could be a better day, one or two isolated showers, but mostly fine, dry with some sunny spells coming through. but a cool northerly wind impacting the feel of the weather, we have lost the gale—force gusts, but still a blustery, west wind driving those showers on and in terms of the feel of things, 22 degrees the high in the south—east, but only 11—16 for much of scotland. as we move into the start of the new working week, sunny spells and scattered showers continue, but into tuesday, there is another spell of very wet and very windy weather expected, with gales returning on exposed coasts. take care.

sunny spells and scattered showers continue, but into tuesday,

good afternoon. children are more likely to be harmed by not returning to school than if they catch coronavirus — that's according to the uk's chief medical adviser. in a joint statement, the chief medical officers from all four uk nations are cautioning that there are "no risk—free options". it comes as millions of pupils in england, wales and northern ireland are preparing to return to classes — scotland's schools have already reopened. caroline davies reports. empty playgrounds and deserted classrooms.