this week, is it a boat or a plane? i am on board the ferry that can fly! why has nobody made an electric hydrofoil, flying ferry before? i think the main reason is it is freaking hard! we are in india where solar dryers are battling food waste. and an eye in the sky on energy use. nice outfit by the way. thank you. i'm taking the world temperature to assess climate action.

stockholm, capital of sweden and the city of islands, 1a of them to be precise which makes water transport a big thing around these parts. so today i have decided to take the ferry. but this is no ordinary ferry. because this ferry can fly! this is the candela p—12, the prototype of a ferry which should go into service injuly 2024 and its cruising speed

of 25 knots and wings called hydrofoils provide huge amounts of lift in the same way that aircraft wings can get a plane off the ground, these wings can raise the whole hull above the surface. i've started to notice more and more boats and even windsurfing and kite surfing having these foils underneath the board so the entire thing can lift out of the water. because hardly any of the boat is having to push through the water, it does not need as powerful a motorcar. that means there is something else that is very special about this craft. it is electric. these small propellers are all that are needed to get the ferry up to speed and its on—board batteries give it a range of 50 nautical miles, all of which promises to make waterborne transport a whole lot cleaner and a whole lot greener. normal boats consume

an awful lot of fuel and are extremely inefficient compared to land—based transport. because the boat is trying to push its wake through the water and much resistance? a lot of resistance and you can use batteries on ferries if they are done very slowly but if you want to go a bit faster in a big longer, the whole thing collapses because you could of course put in more batteries but at the end you are putting in so many batteries the boat will think. it will sink. you have a fiscal limit that you can't get around. he says that one hour of charging will allow this ferry to run for three hours, meaning a good service during the morning rush and one charge to be ready for the afternoon peak after being recharged at lunchtime. another advantage to being almost entirely out of the water as well, it does not bounce about on the waves! it is pretty steady. i can't really tell i am out of the

water but i can tell i can feel the waves around but actually it is using the same hydrofoil technologies that you can see it is out of the water which means... and look at him — he's having the time of life out there! but whereas the speedboat is built for pleasure, leisure and basically showing off, the ferry is being pitched as a way of making waterborne public transport competitive in fuel costs and environmental costs as well because, as well as not feeling the waves, it does not make them, either, meaning it's good for everything that lives here. traditional ferries create big wakes and when it drives in our sensitive archipelago it is a sensitive ecosystem with marine life and the birds and the fish, it causes erosion from the shorelines. that is a really big challenge for us. we need to reduce

the wakes to be able to drive in a more sustainable way in our sensitive environment. the principle of hydrofoiling is not that new but it has only been recently possible to do in this way. the first reason is that we now have materials that are up to thejob. you need thin blades, made super strong but very thin to not create too much drag. typically they use carbon fibre, a perfect material and you can build them in fairly small volumes otherwise you would have to rely on steel, it becomes heavy and costly to manufacture. the second reason is the high—end computation going on below deck. this is the science bit. when you raise a boat almost entirely out of the water, it becomes unstable because you have all the weight up here above the wings that it is balancing on in the water,

a bit like trying to balance a pencil on yourfinger. in order to keep it upright you have to do a lot of this and that is what this boat is having to do. having to adjust its position hundreds of times a second to keep it perfectly balanced. you could not do that manually so this thing is covered in sensors that monitor exactly what the orientation is in the computers are doing the compensation and they do that by adjusting the angle of the wings in the water. again, hundreds of a second, to keep a perfectly balanced. it is the same reason why drones are able to stay stable in the air and on these early test flights, christian is able to tweak and experiment with the boat behaviour by changing the settings live on his laptop. we are turning... one of the things you can do when you are precisely controlling the orientation of the boat all the time is you can artificially bank like this when you are turning which is more comfortable for the passengers.

because if the boat was to remain level, everybody would be pushed to one side so the banking is artificial. there is a limit to the size of the swell this type of craft can cope with but in inland waterways this technology may very well soon be making waves, by not making waves...! although like a lot of modern life, the smooth ride will depend on the computers and sensors doing theirjobs at all times, which is no mean feat. why has nobody made an electric hydrofoil flying ferry before? i think the main reason is it is very hard! over 70 countries have commitments to net—zero targets.

some are enshrined in law, others are goals laid out in policy. large companies have also made net zero pledges but how do we know that they are being met? there is one company that might have the answer. satellites have been capturing images from space, for decades. this is a radar one here and you also have optical images like these, any cloud cover around you will not see what is going on beneath and you need daylight for most of these. but satellite vu has a different plan, for them, it is about thermal imaging. its first satellite was launched injune on the spacex rocket flying out of california. it started sending back high—resolution images to earth, its thermal sensors

enabling it to chase hot and cold features down to 3.5 metre accuracy. that cycle, there is a lot more than four kilometres. it is the culmination of years of work. we have satellite vu, the world's thermometer and these are literally the raw images the rawer the better. here, the first image we took was of rome and you can see the hot areas in brighter colours and the blue areas are the cooler areas in the city. this one is taken at night and what you can seize the vatican is very, very hot. this summer, there were big heatwaves, that building absorbed a lot of energy

and at night it is radiating. the heat which are still images in short images and videos could have wide application but particularly useful in climate related matters. we think every city would want this, i knew city managers called chief heat offices, seven appointed around the world and one is in athens for example. and they are wanting this data so they can go and help people keep the city cooler to keep the stress on people less and save energy. but the bigger picture is to help monitor how companies are meeting their net zero commitments. you can look at oil storage, for example and see how much fossilfuels are being burnt and how much are being pumped. when people are declaring net zero or reducing their oil consumption, we can come and verify that that is actually occurring. 60 organisations are currently playing around with these early heat map images to see if they can improve their existing

climate models. hot sat i was assembled by satellite technology in guildford. we get one shot at launching something like this, how stressful is the process? pretty stressful! i think it is a high intensity business. especially projects like this that are very short schedule but it is very exciting when it does launch. seven more satellites will be joining hot sati over the next few months. the aim is to increase the amount of data being collected, identifying temperature profiles of individual buildings, offices and factories. if we're striving to help the planet, if we're striving to get to net zero, you need this transparency of information. and we've done it. time for a look at this week's tech news. openai co—founder sam altman is returning to the company

days after he was ousted. mr altman's sacking astonished many and led to staff threatening mass resignations until he was reinstated. the battle at the top of openai began when the original board decided to remove mr altman, saying they had lost confidence in his leadership. binance chief executive changpeng zhao has resigned after pleading guilty to money laundering violations. the usjustice department said the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange had helped users bypass sanctions. it's ordered the firm to pay for your $5 billion in penalties and forfeitures. mr zhao said he made mistakes and stepping down was the best move for the company. scientists in scotland are using robotic sub—sea gliders to check a system of ocean currents for signs of climate change. they're monitoring the conveyor belt which regulates global temperatures by carrying warm and cool air around the world.

there is some concern the system is weakening. these gliders really help us go to places we would not really get to in the winter and they can stay out for months at a time whereas on a ship you're kind of time—limited. food wastage is a huge problem across the globe and in india this is compounded by the fact that cold storage facilities can be few and far between. but one of this year's earthshot prize winners is a start—up working on a solution. nikhil inander went to find out more. here's a shocking statistic. more than one third of all fruit and vegetables grown in india end up in landfill like these. but across some 400 villages in the

western part of the country, these solar powered dryers, all operated by women, are now tackling the challenge head—on. these are built by sas technologies, a start—up that won the prestigious earthshot prize for climate impact this year. this isn't exactly a high—tech device at all with any complex technology, electronics or chips but these dryers expand the life—cycle of basic perishables like onions for instance or tomatoes that would otherwise have rotted. it's a frugal, low cost, climate friendly solution to preserving second rate produce that normally does not find a market. they're also a cheap alternative to expensive cold storage facilities, which are few and far between in these rural areas. solar drying is known since ages as the open sun drying. shital somani is one of the cofounders of the start—up that makes these dryers. shital, can you explain

exactly how this works? in the solar drier, basically we use the solar energy to convert in the heat form and give that heat to the product. when we say about the heat, the heat is from this surface, which is a full grade insulator black metallic surface, it is giving the heat from the bottom to the product and at the same time, when the air enters from this aspect, we close the drier, the air also carries the moisture from the driver and carries the solar radiation which is falling from this top surface on the product. and all three forms of heat transfer helps to remove the moisture from the product. keeping the tech simple and low cost has allowed sas to on—board thousands of women entrepreneurs to do thisjob. it's been a game changer for the localfarmers. at the crack of dawn, shivagi is sorting his onion harvest to be sent to the drying facility.

translation: onion prices are very volatile. _ when the cost of transport is more than the cost of production, i used to just throw away the crop. many times, the lower grade crop would not get sold, nearly half of what i had grown wood rot. now, all of it gets picked up at the farm gate and my income has gone up substantially. once dried, the produce comes to this factory, which processes it further into packaged food that is sold to big companies and restaurants. the farm—to—factory chain gives growers an assured market and helps cut middle men. can you talk a little bit about about the various levels you are creating impact? we are creating impact at the three main levels. first is the food wastage where we are reducing the food wastage by converting this b or c grade material into the value added products — that is the first claim. we are giving these dryers, most of the dryers

is 100% are used by the women entrepreneurs, the women farmers. and the third is the carbon emissions as this is the solar best technology so we are reducing on the carbon emissions also. right now, we are 2000 women farmers, three years�* time we could teach 10,000 women farmers. the farmers network that we are building, which is a direct or indirect farmers network, we can see clearly i million farmers�* lives we can impact. india is vast and diverse. identifying the right produce in the right geography and creating a market for it is a challenge. but solutions like these, if scaled up, can help millions of india's poorest farmers reduce waste and grow their incomes. in the race to reduce emissions, plans to build wind farms are skyrocketing. but while the electricity

that they generate is clean, the green industry has a waste problem, and now, the race is on to try and solve that, as adrian murray has been finding out. these towering machines are getting ever more powerful. nowhere is that more on show than at this test centre in northern denmark. it is the latest and biggest turbines that they have, the prototypes. this is like seeing them testing the future right here. the largest a staggering 208 metres high has broken world records for the most power. and experts say they're only getting bigger. this race towards bigger and bigger turbines will continue for a while more. we are looking into the possibility of creating a new test centre in denmark and the design turbine we are designing for is a50 metres from ground to highest tip.

by 2030, wind power could supply a fifth of the world's electricity. we need clean energy, but this green industry has a growing headache when it comes to waste. turbines are built to withstand the forces of nature, they're flexible, light and superstring. but that's also where the problem lies. when they reach the end of life, they're really hard to recycle. while the steel in the towers can be reused, the massive blades are almost indestructible. and as older models are replaced, many get dumped in landfill. by 2050, there could be 43 million tons of redundant blades globally that need to be dealt with. it is problematic because we want the renewable energy to be truly sustainable, and if you have a waste material

that goes to land filling, it's not truly sustainable. it's a problem players have been scrambling to figure out. and we might now have some answers. there have been creative ways of reusing wind turbine blades, like this bike shed. they've even been repurposed for playgrounds, bridges and building cladding. but this won't really tackle the growing volumes. one immediate solution is to chop up and finely shred them. it's burned as fuel and used as an ingredient for cement production. this us plant has already handled more than 3,500 unwanted blades. now, turbine makers siemens gamesa have had a breakthrough of its own. it manufactures some of the world's biggest blades at its site here.

and while this one looks like any other, it can be recycled. it all comes down to a resin called epoxy, which acts like a strong superglue binding together the fibreglass. usually this is incredibly tough to break down. but not here. we change something in the backbone of the chemistry. this has actually gone through our recycling process. we just turn it around. here, you can see all the different glass hairs placed through in the production of the blade and how they are separating from the blade. to do that, it needs to be soaked in a big bath of mild acetic acid. after a few hours at 80 celsius, then you get the result you see here. so it's just like vinegar in a supermarket? exactly — just like you would make pickles or descale your coffee pot. i can actually smell that. there is a scent of vinegar coming from the blade. this won't tackle

today's waste, but when these blades retire, the materials could go into making other things. we could be furniture, suitcases, you can use it for surfboard manufacture, so general consumer goods. but not. . . new turbines? not as it is right now, but i'm never going to say never. so far, only a small number have been installed, but they'll soon be used for bigger offshore projects here in europe. at this research lab, scientists are taking a different approach. this was a part of a winter turbine that was decommissioned. basically, put the tip in there and you add a catalyst. they have discovered a chemical process that gently breaks apart the components. precise details are still under wraps, but it turns out it's relatively simple. these are the glass fibres which have kind of

come apart a little bit. yes, i can see those. because they are not bound to get anymore. you can see it's very clearly separated into its different components. that means the fibres and even that type epoxy resin could be recovered and potentially reused. this has been quite remarkable. we thought that these materials were extremely strong and indestructible. now, we've found the chemical processing that can chew its way through the epoxy. and, in theory, it could work on all kinds of turbine blades already out there. what we find exciting is we are sort of the first to be able to do that. there are potentials in recycling such tough materials, not only confined to the wind turbine industry, there is the aeronautic industry, space industry, cars. this technology still needs to make the leap from a test tube to the real world. but with new solutions on the table, perhaps this growing waste problem could be headed off

before it gets too big. and that's it for our round—up of some of the latest sustainability stories. hope you've enjoyed them. from sweden and from me and my electric ferry, thanks for watching. and...i wonder what this does? hello there. saturday brought with it drier weather, some sunshine as well, but still around 200 flood warnings because all the rain that we have seen so far to start 2024 is still making its way through the river systems. there are numerous flood warnings in force, you can find more detail on the website. because of course the first three or four days of 2024, january, have brought almost a month's worth of rain in some areas.

but that has all started to change and, as i say, it started on saturday with that drier weather for many under high pressure, and that high pressure effectively is stopping the passage of these atlantic weather fronts, keeping the rain at bay and keeping it dry across most parts for the next four or five days. but we are flipping the coin from the wet and the windy and the mild to the much colder with some frost and fog and on saturday we saw that fog lingering in cumbria and the fog will once again linger during the day on sunday, as well of course, icy because we start with frost and there is so much moisture around, even a few wintry showers across southern and eastern areas, coming into eastern parts of northern england as well. but for many, there is a lot of dry and settled weather around, but rather chilly weather once again on sunday. temperatures will be a notch down on those on saturday because it starts with a lower temperature. and then again, sunday night into monday, the frost and the fog return with some icy patches around and the fog slow to clear on monday.

it does mean it could be quite hazardous on the roads first thing monday for the return to work for many, with freezing fog, icy patches as well. some of that fog, as we have seen in recent days, slow to clear away, but where it does so, it looks like a good deal of dry and bright weather for scotland, northern ireland, the west of england and wales. a bit more cloud milling around across northern and eastern areas, but temperatures very similar, as you can see. they are a bit below average now, fours or fives, and it will feel colder as well when you add on that breeze coming in off a chilly north sea. and the breeze is because we have got more tightly packed isobars across the southern half of the uk, which on tuesday should help to bring in some drier air and break that cloud up a bit. so, hopefully, we will see a bit more sunshine across central eastern areas. instead, we might have that fog or low cloud lingering further north. but again, it is a frosty start, a fine and dry day for most part but just the issue of where the fog and low cloud will be. it looks as if because we have that breeze from the south on wednesday as well, clearer skies here, but perhaps more of that breeze coming in off the north sea willjust bring

more cloudy skies into central and eastern parts of both scotland and england, and temperatures might, therefore, not quite be as low, but still cold and feeling cold of course because of the wind. a similar story really on thursday, again, we keep the high pressure centred to the north of the uk so it keeps things fine and dry and settled. temperatures just lifting a little, as you can see, later this week. but, really, that high pressure is the reason for the dry weather. there's just the chance, though, into the weekend, that we might see some rain or snow coming in from the west and, indeed, from the north, so there's a lot of uncertainty towards next weekend but it looks like a transient spell, then followed by wintry showers. yes, temperatures mayjust lift a little later in the week, and then we get some potential rain or even some snow in and then it's another blast of, ifanything, colderair coming in by the end of the weekend. so some uncertainty as we approach the latter part of the week and the weekend but until then, it is looking drier and colderfor most.

live from london, this is bbc news. voting is under way in bangladesh. most opposition parties are boycotting the election,

in which the current prime minister is expected to win a fourth consecutive term. the us secretary of state meets the leaders ofjordan and qatar as fighting continues in gaza, where the israeli military says it's broken hamas�*s military command structure in the north. the head of the us transport safety board says no passengers were seated next to where part of a plane fell off mid—flight. a warning that more properties will flood in the coming days because of increased river levels in some parts of england. and, a week into january, have you kept to your new year's resolutions? we'll be finding out what the residents of one care home have promised to do this year. hello, i'm lewis vaughanjones. polls have opened in bangladesh after a day of violence on the eve of the country's general election.