'Sustainability': that word is rising up the engineering agenda even faster than 'environmental' did before it. The latest development was last month's release of the Engineering Council's new guidelines on sustainability. Others, however, have included revised thinking on the use of renewables in all sorts of applications and new efficiency initiatives around several plant types – all suddenly in the name of 'sustainability'. It may be good and worthy stuff, but perversely, an issue for us, as practicing engineers, is to separate the wheat from the chaff.

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