Some of Ann Arbor's streetlights can be distractingly bright. New LED lighting is helping with the city’s A2Zero Climate Action plan, but some worry over increased light pollution. WEMU's David Fair talked with Ann Arbor City Council member Dharma Akmon about how the city can move forward while addressing sustainability and accommodating public concern.

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev spoke about the threat of climate change at the COP29 climate summit in Baku on Tuesday, where he backed a net zero target, admitting that just 10 years ago, he would have thought the goal was incompatible with competitiveness. The UN summit in Baku runs from 11 to…

The ways buildings are constructed has to change. It has become something else instead, something more sustainable, something newer. And it doesn't get much more modern than buildings that can actually move and adapt at will.[...]

Sotheby's is an iconic name in auctions, a decades-old seller of fine goods. Some of the world's most expensive jewels and rarest works of art have been sold here. Now, Sotheby's has put an entire island for sale. It's carbon neutral and already has some incredible buildings standing on it.[...]

It sits on a flat stretch of green, surrounded by the rolling hills and pretty palm trees of Southern California. It's an amazing little oasis, a quiet getaway. And it's the first building in California to receive Zero Carbon Certification from the International Living Future Institute. It's only the fourth building in the entire world to reach this status. This home is called Zero One by MariSol Malibu and it's the first of its kind.[...]

Outwardly, gardens look like sustainable spaces that help absorb excess carbon from the atmosphere. While this might be true, not all gardens help reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. Some gardens contribute to carbon pollution. Unfortunately, most gardeners are not even aware that their gardens are a source of carbon and other greenhouse gas pollutants. Even so, it is possible to attain a net-zero garden and in some cases, create a carbon sink in your garden. [...]

There is a 50% chance that global warming will consistently exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next six years, according to a new report.

A new report led by Emily Carter and Elizabeth Zeitler *14 offers research and policy ideas, including carbon fiber replacements for rebar in construction and titanium in high-tech applications.

Countries at the UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan will attempt to agree to rules for a global system for trading carbon offset credits.

Why burning biomass is not zero-carbon Explainer Video NCapeling 17 October 2022

Short animation explaining why burning biomass produces more carbon dioxide per unit of energy generated than almost all fossil fuels.

The climate emergency requires countries to transition away from fossil fuels, but it is important to be careful about the alternative energy sources chosen.

In particular, concern is growing over the use of biomass for energy, which is generated when wood or other plant material is burnt to generate heat and electricity. Many governments treat biomass energy as zero-carbon at the point of combustion, and subsidize it in the same way as renewables such as solar or wind, resulting in a large increase in the use of biomass for energy in the UK and the European Union (EU) over the past 15 years.

The treatment of biomass as zero-carbon in policy frameworks rests on the argument that biomass emissions will be reabsorbed by forest growth, particularly from trees planted to replace those cut down to burn.

But growing trees to maturity takes many years and, depending on the feedstock used, biomass burning increases global warming for decades to centuries. This is called the ‘carbon payback period’ – the time it takes for carbon dioxide levels to return to what they would have been if biomass had not been used.

New research from Chatham House and the Woodwell Climate Research Center calculated the real climate impact of burning US wood pellets in the UK and EU. In 2019, according to this analysis, US-sourced pellets burned for energy in the UK were responsible for between 13 million and 16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 6-7 million passenger vehicles.

But because biomass is treated as zero-carbon, almost none of these emissions were included in the UK’s national greenhouse gas reports. And the removal of forest carbon from US forests is not included accurately in US reports, either.

How modular renewables can reduce the costs of relying on carbon capture Expert comment LToremark 10 October 2024

COP29 must raise countries’ ambitions to deploy vastly more low-cost modular renewable technologies to help meet the tripling of renewables target set at COP28 and reduce our reliance on expensive carbon capture systems.

The most important international climate conference is around the corner. COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan will be especially important because next year countries will submit their five-yearly national climate plans – or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – as set out under the Paris Agreement.

At COP28 in Dubai last year, the final text was heralded as a last-minute success as – somewhat surprisingly – it was the first ever COP to commit to ‘transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner’. To support this, over 200 countries also committed to triple renewable capacity by 2030.

Under current NDCs, even if all countries achieve their most ambitious decarbonization plans, the world would still fall 30 per cent short of tripling renewable capacity by 2030. 

At COP29 in November, hosted by a petrostate, additional agreement is needed to operationalize the removal of fossil fuels from the global energy system and set the ambition for those crucial NDCs in 2025. Failing to do so means the opportunity to triple renewables by 2030 will slip away. But the actions of oil producing nations, international oil companies, their associated supply chains and networks of lobbyists have in recent years done their best to disrupt and slow down the energy transition and water down key negotiations during COPs and elsewhere. 

During the final days of COP28, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) sent private letters to its 13 members – including COP28 host the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – urging them to ‘proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy, i.e. fossil fuels, rather than emissions’. OPEC members own 80 per cent of global oil reserves.

Due to the startling decline in the cost of renewables and electric vehicles, fossil fuel producers are increasingly concerned. To fight back they are turning to carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies and carbon removal options, which would enable the continued burning of fossil fuels – and protect their assets and business models.

A key battle ground for oil and gas producers is the difference between abated and unabated fossil fuels.

Abatement is the process of capturing CO₂ as fossil fuels are burnt to prevent a proportion of those CO₂ emissions from entering the atmosphere, either by using that CO₂ in products or storing it in geological formations deep underground in near perpetuity, commonly referred to as CCS.

After COP28 there was optimism that the final agreement was significant and covered all fossil fuels without ambiguity around whether they are unabated or abated. 

But the definition of unabated has not actually been agreed within the COP process. During the 2021 COP26 summit, the Glasgow Climate Pact mentioned unabated in reference to coal. Could a gas power station capturing 51 per cent of the emitted CO₂ be considered abated?

And what about the so-called downstream emissions? Downstream emissions from cars, planes, tanker ships and diesel generators etc make up 50–80 per cent of the total emissions from oil – and there are no plans to attach mini-CCS systems to cars.

CCS and engineered carbon removals are also likely to be expensive. Analysis by the Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment has shown that high CCS pathways to net zero emissions in 2050 would cost at least $30 trillion more than a low CCS pathway with more renewables – roughly $1 trillion more per year.

The costs of CCS have also remained the same for the past 40 years, while the costs of renewables like solar, wind and lithium-ion batteries have dropped radically. Solar costs have declined by 90 per cent in the last decade. 

The rapid cost reductions of solar, wind and batteries are due to their modular nature. Around 70 billion solar cells will be manufactured this year, the majority in China. It is the repetitive modular manufacturing process that has led to rapid efficiency improvements and cost reductions. Each Tesla has around 7,000 lithium-ion battery cells, and the price of these modular batteries fell 14 per cent between 2022 and 2023 alone. 

The modular criteria can help define the technology winners of the future, technologies we should selectively support and accelerate over the coming years. 

While huge industrial power stations, oil rigs and refineries have their benefits, they are not modular in the same way. Their economy of scale is in the large size of each asset. CCS is bolted on to fossil fuel infrastructure but there are less than 50,000 fossil fuel producing assets globally. By contrast, there were 1.5 billion solar panels produced in 2022. The cost of deploying CCS is therefore unlikely to benefit from the rapid cost reductions of modular renewables. Nuclear even less so. There are 440 nuclear power stations in operation today, they take many years to build and remain hugely expensive. 

Minerals and Metals for a Low-Carbon Future: Implications for Developing Countries 30 October 2017 — 5:00PM TO 8:00PM Anonymous (not verified) 13 October 2017 Chatham House, London

This roundtable will explore two sides of minerals and metals for a low-carbon future - the growing demand for metals required for low-carbon technology and the technological and policy innovations that will be required to manage the carbon footprint of the mining sector and its wider energy and industrial linkages. Based around a presentation and scenarios developed by the World Bank, this roundtable discussion will assess which strategic metals will likely rise in demand in order to deliver a low-carbon future, before exploring the possible implications for resource-rich developing countries. In particular, what does a growing demand of minerals for a clean energy future mean for governments and industry, and how might developing countries benefit from this trend? What impact might growth of the mining sector have on a sustainable and climate-smart development? Can renewable energy and other clean tech innovations in the mining industry help reduce the carbon footprint of the sector and related industries, and under what circumstances? And how fit-for-purpose are current donor approaches to the mining sector in an increasingly carbon-constrained world?

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Decarbonizing Heat: A New Frontier for Technologies and Business Models 27 February 2019 — 8:15AM TO 9:45AM Anonymous (not verified) 3 December 2018 Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE

Building space and water heating accounts for over 35 percent of global energy consumption - nearly double that of transport. However, there has been limited progress in decarbonizing the sector to date. International cooperation is required to ensure harmonized policies drag low carbon heating technologies down the cost curve to the extent that low carbon heating is cost competitive and affordable. The initial presentations and discussion focus on:

• Demand reduction technologies and policies that speed up transformation of the sector.
• The different challenges for energy efficiency of retrofitting as opposed to new build.
• The impact of electrification on GHG emissions and the power sector.
• The comparative role of national and city level initiatives.

The meeting concludes by looking at the challenges and risks in accelerating the transformation of heating and the lessons that can be learned from other sectors.

Net Zero and Beyond: What Role for Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage? 23 January 2020 — 8:30AM TO 10:00AM Anonymous (not verified) 6 January 2020 Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE

In the context of the feasibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, policymakers are beginning to pay more attention to options for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A wide range of potential carbon dioxide removal (CDR) options are currently being discussed and modelled though the most prominent among them are bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and afforestation and reforestation.

There are many reasons to question the reliance on BECCS assumed in the models including the carbon balances achievable, its substantial needs for land, water and other inputs and technically and economically viable carbon capture and storage technologies.

This meeting will examine the potentials and challenges of BECCS in the context of other CDR and emissions abatement options. It will discuss the requisite policy and regulatory frameworks to minimize sustainability and socio-political risks of CDR approaches while also avoiding overshooting climate goals.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

15 July 2020

Building carbon markets that work for Africa 31 January 2023 — 2:00PM TO 3:30PM Anonymous (not verified) 19 January 2023 Online

At this webinar, held in partnership with UNDP, speakers share experiences on carbon market advancement in Africa, highlighting challenges and obstacles.

Carbon finance offers a major opening towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement but progress across regions has been uneven, with the African continent accounting for just 15 per cent of voluntary carbon credits issued globally in 2021.

Harnessing the potential of carbon markets may offer one route towards closing the significant shortfall in climate financing for Africa, as well as accelerating transition in cooking and energy solutions and limiting deforestation.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement requires significant adjustment of regulatory and policy frameworks at national level in order to align with emerging global imperatives within carbon markets. Various stakeholders, including the private sector, need to take these realities into considerations as they seek to meet commitments towards a more sustainable future.

Governments and the private sector alike need to address the obstacles that have held back Africa’s participation in carbon markets, and should explore all options including both the compliance and voluntary markets, and market-based alternatives such as emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes.

At this webinar, held in partnership with UNDP, speakers share experiences on carbon market advancement in Africa, highlighting challenges and obstacles. Speakers also explore in-country experiences and make proposals on how Africa might benefit from a functional global carbon market.

CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, today announced its new CBL Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) futures have launched and are available for trading. A total of five...

Gene Myers, owner and chief sustainability officer of Thrive Home Builders in Denver will deliver the 2024 Hankin Distinguished Lecture, hosted by the residential construction program and the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center. His talk, “A Homebuilder’s Journey to Carbon Neutral Construction,” will be held at 4 p.m. on Nov. 6 in Robb Hall at the Hintz Family Alumni Center at University Park.

Lara Fowler, chief sustainability officer at Penn State, director of Penn State Sustainability, and teaching professor of law, will give the talk, “Decarbonizing Penn State: How Does Law, Policy, and Financing Fit In?” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 18, in 112 Walker Building on the University Park campus, as well as via Zoom.

WILMINGTON, Del. – Today, Delaware Governor John Carney, U.S. Senators Tom Carper and Chris Coons and U.S. Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester (all D-Del.) announced $127.5 million for Port Wilmington as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Ports Program, a $3 billion investment by the Biden-Harris Administration in zero-emission port equipment and infrastructure. The […]

Argentina’s copper and lithium projects are rich in opportunities for Australian mining equipment, technology and services providers.

Imagine living with water up to your knees for half of the year, where homes are flooded, and people constantly fear that the sea might one day engulf the town and everyone in it. This is the reality for the sinking islands in the Philippines—a cluster of four island barangays in Tubigon located in the […]

The proposed Northern China Agriculture and Food Ecosystem Net Zero Transformation Project (project) will support the PRC to achieve its climate commitment through catalyzing financing and strengthening institutional capacity for net zero transformation in agriculture and food ecosystem.

Soil is full of an uncountable number of viruses, and scientists are only beginning to understand just how substantial their role in the carbon cycle may be

Our Future Chronicles column explores an imagined history of inventions and developments yet to come. In our latest glimpse into the near future, Rowan Hooper tells how seaweed was a game changer when it came to getting carbon out of the atmosphere in the 2030s

The climate impact of flights taken by the super-rich rose sharply from 2019 to 2023, fuelling calls for a carbon tax on private aviation

Complex carbon-based molecules crucial to life on Earth originated somewhere in space, but we didn't know where. Now, huge amounts of them have been spotted in a huge, cold cloud of gas

An AI-powered model found that approaching intersections more slowly could lower yearly US carbon emissions by up to around 123 million tonnes

In this week's issue of our environment newsletter, we look at the carbon capture potential of the world's oceans and what effect beavers are having in the Arctic (spoiler: it's not good).

Cement is ubiquitous, but the process of making it emits carbon into the atmosphere. The industry says there's no easy way to avoid that, which is why it's turning to carbon capture and storage technology as a way to decarbonize.

Research expeditions conducted at sea using a rotating gravity machine and microscope found that the Earth’s oceans may not be absorbing as much carbon as researchers have long thought.

Oceans are believed to absorb roughly 26 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions by drawing down CO₂ from the atmosphere and locking it away. In this system, CO₂ enters the ocean, where phytoplankton and other organisms consume about 70 percent of it. When these organisms eventually die, their soft, small structures sink to the bottom of the ocean in what looks like an underwater snowfall.

This “marine snow” pulls carbon away from the surface of the ocean and sequesters it in the depths for millennia, which enables the surface waters to draw down more CO₂ from the air. It’s one of Earth’s best natural carbon-removal systems. It’s so effective at keeping atmospheric CO₂ levels in check that many research groups are trying to enhance the process with geoengineering techniques.

But the new study, published on 11 October in Science, found that the sinking particles don’t fall to the ocean floor as quickly as researchers thought. Using a custom gravity machine that simulated marine snow’s native environment, the study’s authors observed that the particles produce mucus tails that act like parachutes, putting the brakes on their descent—sometimes even bringing them to a standstill.

The physical drag leaves carbon lingering in the upper hydrosphere, rather than being safely sequestered in deeper waters. Living organisms can then consume the marine snow particles and respire their carbon back into the sea. Ultimately, this impedes the rate at which the ocean draws down and sequesters additional CO₂ from the air.

The implications are grim: Scientists’ best estimates of how much CO₂ the Earth’s oceans sequester could be way off. “We’re talking roughly hundreds of gigatonnes of discrepancy if you don’t include these marine snow tails,” says Manu Prakash, a bioengineer at Stanford University and one of the paper’s authors. The work was conducted by researchers at Stanford, Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Oceans Absorb Less CO₂ Than Expected

Researchers for years have been developing numerical models to estimate marine carbon sequestration. Those models will need to be adjusted for the slower sinking speed of marine snow, Prakash says.

The findings also have implications for startups in the fledgling marine carbon geoengineering field. These companies use techniques such as ocean alkalinity enhancement to augment the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon. Their success depends, in part, on using numerical models to prove to investors and the public that their techniques work. But their estimates are only as good as the models they use, and the scientific community’s confidence in them.

“We’re talking roughly hundreds of gigatonnes of discrepancy if you don’t include these marine snow tails.” —Manu Prakash, Stanford University

The Stanford researchers made the discovery on an expedition off the coast of Maine. There, they collected marine samples by hanging traps from their boat 80 meters deep. After pulling up a sample, the researchers quickly analyzed the contents while still on board the ship using their wheel-shaped machine and microscope.

The researchers built a microscope with a spinning wheel that simulates marine snow falling through sea water over longer distances than would otherwise be practical.Prakash Lab/Stanford

The device simulates the organisms’ vertical travel over long distances. Samples go into a wheel about the size of a vintage film reel. The wheel spins constantly, allowing suspended marine-snow particles to sink while a camera captures their every move.

The apparatus adjusts for temperature, light, and pressure to emulate marine conditions. Computational tools assess flow around the sinking particles and custom software removes noise in the data from the ship’s vibrations. To accommodate for the tilt and roll of the ship, the researchers mounted the device on a two-axis gimbal.

Slower Marine Snow Reduces Carbon Sequestration

With this setup, the team observed that sinking marine snow generates an invisible halo-shaped comet tail made of viscoelastic transparent exopolymer—a mucus-like parachute. They discovered the invisible tail by adding small beads to the seawater sample in the wheel, and analyzing the way they flowed around the marine snow. “We found that the beads were stuck in something invisible trailing behind the sinking particles,” says Rahul Chajwa, a bioengineering postdoctoral fellow at Stanford.

The tail introduces drag and buoyancy, doubling the amount of time marine snow spends in the upper 100 meters of the ocean, the researchers concluded. “This is the sedimentation law we should be following,” says Prakash, who hopes to get the results into climate models.

The study will likely help models project carbon export—the process of transporting CO₂ from the atmosphere to the deep ocean, says Lennart Bach, a marine biochemist at the University of Tasmania in Australia, who was not involved with the research. “The methodology they developed is very exciting and it’s great to see new methods coming into this research field,” he says.

But Bach cautions against extrapolating the results too far. “I don’t think the study will change the numbers on carbon export as we know them right now,” because these numbers are derived from empirical methods that would have unknowingly included the effects of the mucus tail, he says.

Marine snow may be slowed by “parachutes” of mucus while sinking, potentially lowering the rate at which the global ocean can sequester carbon in the depths.Prakash Lab/Stanford

Prakash and his team came up with the idea for the microscope while conducting research on a human parasite that can travel dozens of meters. “We would make 5- to 10-meter-tall microscopes, and one day, while packing for a trip to Madagascar, I had this ‘aha’ moment,” says Prakash. “I was like: Why are we packing all these tubes? What if the two ends of these tubes were connected?”

The group turned their linear tube into a closed circular channel—a hamster wheel approach to observing microscopic particles. Over five expeditions at sea, the team further refined the microscope’s design and fluid mechanics to accommodate marine samples, often tackling the engineering while on the boat and adjusting for flooding and high seas.

In addition to the sedimentation physics of marine snow, the team also studies other plankton that may affect climate and carbon-cycle models. On a recent expedition off the coast of Northern California, the group discovered a cell with silica ballast that makes marine snow sink like a rock, Prakash says.

The crafty gravity machine is one of Prakash’s many frugal inventions, which include an origami-inspired paper microscope, or “foldscope,” that can be attached to a smartphone, and a paper-and-string biomedical centrifuge dubbed a “paperfuge.”

Barsana, India (AFP) Nov 8, 2024
Venerated as incarnations of Hindu deities, India's sacred cows are also being touted as agents of energy transition by a government determined to promote biogas production to cut its dependence on coal. It is an understatement to say that Nakul Kumar Sardana is proud of his new plant at Barsana, in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state. Firstly, says the vice-president of a biomass joint

Bormioli Pharma has announced a partnership with Chiesi, an international, research-focused biopharmaceutical company (Chiesi Group), to supply Carbon Capture PET bottles.

May 24, 2024

At first glance, the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism may look like a potential source of international discord. But a closer look suggests that the EU’s strict carbon-pricing regime may be the best chance the world has to achieve the Paris climate agreement’s ambitious emissions-reduction goals.

Apr 26, 2024

Concerns over resource adequacy during periods of peak demand or supply crises are rising with increasing deployment of renewable energy. Conleigh Byers says mandatory forward market contracts could help.

Jun 6, 2024

Emily Grubert, Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy Policy and of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, discussed the dangers of an unplanned transition from a fossil-based energy system to a zero-carbon energy system during a talk at Harvard Kennedy School.

Despite talk of a green recovery, global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise as the world emerged from coronavirus lockdowns

Complex carbon-based molecules crucial to life on Earth originated somewhere in space, but we didn't know where. Now, huge amounts of them have been spotted in a huge, cold cloud of gas

Soil is full of an uncountable number of viruses, and scientists are only beginning to understand just how substantial their role in the carbon cycle may be

The climate impact of flights taken by the super-rich rose sharply from 2019 to 2023, fuelling calls for a carbon tax on private aviation