Clean Air Now!

Energy Garden is shaping air to protect our lungs

The problem: urban air quality generates health inequalities

The health consequences of vehicle-generated air pollution are serious and fall most severely on lower-income urban residents. This contributes to health and social inequalities, the risks of which are borne disproportionately by children. Energy Garden has teamed up with Dr Tilly Collins’s team at Imperial College London’s Centre for Environmental Policy to determine what action can be taken now.   

Walls along roads reduce the spread of pollutants but, in real-world conditions, vortices can create areas of high concentration behind these. Open spaces between walls and set-back buildings, including schools, become areas of high toxicity. Pavements too are areas of particular vulnerability, additionally so when tree canopies constrain air-mixing. Here again, children are the most vulnerable to inhalation risk of heavier fractions of particulate matter. 

Air Quality Research with Imperial College London

The result of our research is an immediately accessible and innovative solution. Airflow modelling suggests that baffles can deflect pollution and decrease dangerous particulate spread from the road. Baffles can be retrofit to high walls or installed on pavement edges adjacent to busy roads. These shaped structures can also become scaffolds for urban plantings and, in tandem, deliver many of the benefits provided by green infrastructures. 

Building a prototype curved wall- the baffle is born!

To test this hypothesis, we built a prototype! Our Pimlico office is located on the busy Ebury Bridge Road, and we have mounted a curved wall known as a baffle here above a green wall. The plants will soak up harmful pollutants and the baffle will return them to the road. We’ll use this site to test different shapes and collect data from air quality monitors to make a case for installing these in more public spaces. We’ll publish the data regularly via our website, social media and newsletters. 

Let’s work together to clean up our air

We are seeking Local Authority partnerships to pilot our baffled pollution deflection system on 3 x 100m stretches of fairly straight road with a high volume of slowly moving (<40mph) traffic.