@AstorPerkins
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Astor Perkins
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Find out how student activism, methane detection from space and agricultural research is helping with: Policies to spur deployment of large capital to climate action Reduction in methane gas in industries, urban environments and agriculture Food security and agricultural resiliency on Earth It's free to attend and open to all. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/astor-perkins-quarterly-series-tickets-151677689051 The Role of Climate Activism on Legislation and Capital Nick Engelfried, Youth Activist & Author Ilana Cohen, Youth Climate Activist and Freelance Climate Journalist Satellite Detection of Global Methane Emissions Professor Steven Wofsy, Abbott Lawrence Rotch Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Science, Harvard University More precise than other methane-sensing satellites that came before, MethaneSAT will allow scientists to track emissions to their sources and provide key data for reduction efforts. The MethaneSAT project has an ambitious policy goal: reduce global methane emissions from oil and gas facilities by 45 percent by 2025 and 70 percent by 2030. If achieved, it would have a similar impact on the climate over 20 years as closing one-third of the world’s coal plants. EDF plans to make the data publicly available — in near real time — to researchers, lobbyists, regulators, and others. Harvard’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability recently awarded a grant to a multidisciplinary project, headed by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Robert Stavins, that involves 17 faculty members from six Harvard Schools and seeks to leverage publicly available data on methane — including from MethaneSAT — to affect policies and cut emissions. Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space Professor Matthew Gilliham, Director of the Waite Research Institute, University of Adelaide and Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space aims to create on-demand, zero-waste, high-efficiency plants and plant products to address grand challenges in sustainability for Space and on Earth. Significant advances in plant, food, and sensory science; process and systems engineering; law and policy; and psychology are expected to deliver transformative solutions for Space habitation – and create enhanced plant-derived food and bioresources to capitalize upon emergent and rapidly expanding domestic and global markets. Anticipated outcomes include industry uptake of innovative plant forms, foods, technologies, and commodities; and the ability to incorporate new insights into agriculture here on Earth for sustainability and resiliency. Register today before tickets are sold out. Free to attend. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/astor-perkins-quarterly-series-tickets-151677689051 #sustainability #climatechange #climateaction #climatetech #cleantech #survival https://www.eventbrite.com/e/astor-perkins-quarterly-series-tickets-151677689051
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Astor Perkins
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Mercedes has broken ground on a new battery recycling facility in Germany, focusing on “closing the loop” and allowing the automaker to source more battery materials sustainably. Two of the biggest challenges in the industry of electric vehicles are the price of battery materials and what happens with batteries when they are at the end of their useable lives. Yet more and more manufacturers are finding that these two problems can help solve each other through the use of battery recycling. In efforts to source more materials more sustainably and cheaply, Mercedes has broken ground on its first battery recycling facility that will slowly ramp to help meet the automaker’s material demand. Mercedes’ new facility in Kuppenheim, Germany, aims to achieve a remarkable 96% recovery rate for four key materials; lithium, cobalt, nickel, and eventually graphite. It will have an annual recycling capacity of 2,500 tons and aims to begin processing by the end of this year. Mercedes also specifies that the new facility will be 100% carbon neutral as part of the German automaker’s continuing efforts to decarbonize its production facilities in the coming years. “This is of particular importance in view of the limited availability of important and highly sought-after raw materials such as lithium, cobalt or nickel,” noted Thekla Walker, Minister for the Environment, Climate Protection and the Energy Sector Baden-Württemberg. “Crises such as the corona pandemic or the brutal Russian war of aggression against Ukraine have clearly demonstrated our dependence on supply chains and primary raw materials. Increased recycling can help to reduce this dependence on critical raw materials and thus strengthen the resilience of the economy.” Mercedes joins the likes of Tesla, General Motors, and many others, establishing battery recycling capabilities worldwide. Tesla has already announced that it would make recycled materials a bigger part of its production with the help of Redwood materials. General Motors has worked closely with Lithion to establish battery recycling as part of its planned introduction of numerous EVs in the near future. While at the same time, national governments are also incentivizing many of these projects to help reduce the waste that could become an issue in a wholly electrified future. Late last month, the U.S. Department of Energy granted one of its first-ever lithium battery recycling loans to a battery recycler in Upstate New York, LiCycle. And with the growing need for this infrastructure, the agency is expected to continue to invest in the future. https://www.teslarati.com/mercedes-new-battery-recycling-facility-germany/
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Good news. Recycling it is.
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Great to hear recycling of car batteries is developing
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Recycling helps in coming up with more sustainable solutions.
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As a Universal Hydrogen-branded plane, equipped with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to power an aircraft, made its maiden test flight in eastern Washington. The 15-minute test flight of a modified Dash-8 aircraft was short, but it showed that hydrogen could be viable as a fuel for short-hop passenger aircraft. That is, if Universal Hydrogen — and others in the emerging world of hydrogen flight — can make the technical and regulatory progress needed to make it a mainstream product. Dash-8s, a staple at regional airports, usually transport up to 50 passengers on short hops. The Dash-8 used in Thursday’s test flight from the Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake had decidedly different cargo. The Universal Hydrogen test plane, nicknamed Lightning McClean, had just two pilots, an engineer and a lot of tech onboard, including an electric motor and hydrogen fuel cell supplied by two other startups. The stripped-down interior contained two racks of electronics and sensors, and two large hydrogen tanks with 30 kg of fuel. Beneath the plane’s right wing, an electric motor from magniX was being driven by the new hydrogen fuel cell from Plug Power. This system turns hydrogen into electricity and water — an emission-free powerplant that Eremenko believes represents the future of aviation. The fuel cell operated throughout the flight, generating up to 800kW of power and producing nothing but water vapor and smiles on the faces of a crowd of Universal Hydrogen engineers and investors. “We think it’s a pretty monumental accomplishment,” Eremenko said. “It keeps us on track to have probably the first certified hydrogen airplane in passenger service." https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/02/universal-hydrogen-takes-to-the-air-with-the-largest-hydrogen-fuel-cell-ever-to-fly/
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Wow! This is impressive
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Hydrogen powered planes will greatly reduce emissions.
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Congrats 👏👏 @UniversalHydrogen. That's a great innovation.
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The U.S. installed more battery storage last year than ever before, with California and Texas leading the way The United States is in a battery boom, adding nearly as much capacity on the power grid in 2022 as it did in all previous years combined. The surge is reshaping America’s regional electric grids. In California, for example, analysts credit a wave of new battery installations with sparing the state from electric blackouts late last summer, when a searing heat wave sent power demand soaring. The United States installed 4 gigawatts of battery capacity in 2022, nearly matching the 4.7 GW installed in all previous years combined, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration figures. California and Texas accounted for 90 percent of U.S. battery installations, bringing online 2.4 GW and 1.3 GW, respectively, in 2022. The battery explosion in America’s two most populous states is largely due to the growing strength of solar. California and Texas are the first- and second-largest solar markets in the United States, respectively, by some distance. The high penetration of solar in each state contributes to large swings in electricity prices, which fall during the day when solar is producing and surge in the evening when demand rises and solar production falls off. Batteries are well-placed to profit from the price surge during the evening hours. Lithium-ion batteries, which account for the vast majority of utility-scale energy storage installations, can charge quickly using surplus solar generation during the daytime hours and dispatch power over a four-hour interval in the evening. “You’re really chasing arbitrage,” said Dan Finn-Foley, an analyst who tracks the storage industry at PA Consulting. “Storage can capture a lot of value there.” The sheer scope of America’s energy storage boom is stunning, he said. In 2018, the United States installed a total of 189 megawatts of storage capacity. Last year, the largest single installed project was 350 MW, according to the American Clean Power Association, a trade group. The growth is not surprising, Finn-Foley said. The lithium-ion batteries used for grid purposes are the same batteries used in electric vehicles. As the EV market has grown, it has scaled up supply chains and driven down battery costs for grid-scale storage. Batteries used in the power sector make up a small part of the overall lithium-ion battery market. “It is safe to say that the stationary grid storage industry would not exist today without the EV industry,” Finn-Foley said. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-battery-installations-soared-in-2022-reshaping-power-grids/
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Here's to renewable energy 👏🏽
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Good to read!
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Dear Astor Perkins Thank you for getting your climate love to level 2! We have reached out to United States Senate and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! /Adam We Don't Have Time
Astor Perkins
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Last year’s colossal Inflation Reduction Act and its hundreds of billions of dollars in cleantech subsidies are designed to spur private-sector investment and accelerate the country’s decarbonization effort. “It is truly massive,” says Melissa Lott, director of research at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “It’s industrial policy. It’s the kitchen sink. It’s a strong, direct, and clear signal about what the US is prioritizing.” The tax incentives have made the US irresistible to investors, say cleantech developers, and are sucking money away from other countries. Since the passage of the IRA last year, $90 billion of capital has already been committed to new projects, according to Climate Power, an advocacy group. “The US is now the most opportunity-rich, most aggressive growth, most prolific market for renewables investment in the world today,” says David Scaysbrook, managing partner of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a global cleantech private equity group. “And will be for quite some time.” And the underlying effort to break the dependence on cheap Asian components that have sped the advance of renewables in recent years leaves many analysts skeptical. At a time when the White House is also contending with high inflation and Russian aggression, can the US reset the global energy order, create high-paying cleantech jobs at home, and cut emissions—all at the same time? “There is simply no reason why the blades for wind turbines cannot be made in Pittsburgh rather than Beijing,” Biden said in a speech last April. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/the-us-plan-to-become-the-worlds-cleantech-superpower/
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US as a super power is in a position to influence transition by leading from the front.
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Clean energy production allows us to generate the energy we need without the greenhouse gas emissions and negative environmental effects that come with fossil fuels, in turn helping to reduce climate change.
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Clean energy gives you status in this new world
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A natural seed has inspired the design of a robot that can bury itself in soil when exposed to rainfall. The mechanism relies on the shape-changing properties of wood — a simple and elegant example of sustainable innovation. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00396-4
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There is magic in technology. Well done.
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Pretty cool! Never seen anything like this before
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Great innovation
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Trees genetically engineered to grow faster and bigger will be planted on private land in Georgia and Pennsylvania by US firm Living Carbon starting early February. The company says its modified poplar and loblolly pine trees can capture more carbon than unmodified trees, but hasn’t yet demonstrated this outside a laboratory setting. Maddie Hall, the company’s CEO, says 4 million to 5 million trees will be planted by the middle of 2024. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2356602-forests-bioengineered-to-capture-more-carbon-will-be-planted-in-the-us/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1675164176-1
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Should bioengineering and genetically modified crops be encouraged?
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Great point. We don't take anything at face value. Empirical research and more evaluations
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Very interesting take on the problem, and just hope the natural ecosystem in the area are considered. Here in Ireland, much of our "forests" are made up of plantations of Sitka Spruce for commercial use. The spruce is non native and it's obvious from how little life lives in these plantations. The bioengineered aspect is another matter entirely that needs further questioning
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A controlled fusion reaction has generated more energy than was put into the system for the first time, bringing viable fusion power another step closer to reality. For the first time on Earth, a controlled fusion reaction has generated more power than it requires to run, researchers have confirmed. The experiment is a major step towards commercial fusion power, but experts say there is still a vast engineering effort needed to increase efficiency and reduce cost. In an experiment on 5 December, the lab’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) fusion reactor generated a power output of 3.15 megajoules from a laser power output of 2.05 megajoules – a gain of around 150 per cent. However, this is far outweighed by the roughly 300 megajoules drawn from the electrical grid to power the lasers in the first place. There are two main research approaches aiming to achieve viable nuclear fusion. One uses magnetic fields to contain a plasma, while the other uses lasers. NIF uses the second approach, known as inertial confinement fusion (ICF), where a tiny capsule containing hydrogen fuel is blasted with lasers, causing it to heat up and rapidly expand. This creates an equal and opposite reaction inwards, compressing the fuel. The nuclei of hydrogen atoms then fuse together to form heavier elements and some of their mass is released as energy – just as it is in the sun. Today’s announcement confirms that researchers have not only reached the crucial break-even milestone, but surpassed it. During the press conference, Jean-Michel Di-Nicola at LLNL said that at peak power – which NIF only achieves for a few billionths of a second – the lasers draw 500 trillion watts, which is more power than output by the entire US national grid. Jeremy Chittenden at Imperial College London says the experiment is a historic moment for fusion research. “It’s a major vindication of the approach that we’ve been trying, for ICF, for nigh on 50 years. It’s very significant.” Most fusion investment is currently poured into the alternative approach of magnetic confinement, in particular a reactor design called a tokamak. The Joint European Torus (JET) reactor near Oxford, UK, began operating in 1983. When running, it is the hottest point in the solar system, reaching 150 million°C (270 million°F). Earlier this year, JET sustained a reaction for 5 seconds, producing a record 59 megajoules of heat energy. A larger and more modern replacement, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France, is nearing completion and its first experiments are due to start in 2025. Another reactor using the same design, the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device, recently managed to sustain a reaction for 30 seconds at temperatures in excess of 100 million°C. https://lnkd.in/gYgr3wf7
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Great innovation
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This is truly a historical milestone that we have been waiting over 70 years for. Please read the entire article to make informed comments. Fusion is vastly different from fission. Thanks for taking the time to be well informed.
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100% Historic!
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The first-ever federal auction of floating offshore wind power sites off the Pacific coast ended Wednesday with bids totaling $757 million. When fully developed, the sites could power 1.5 million homes. The turbines will float in water as much as half a mile deep more than 20 miles off the California coast and send electricity ashore via cables along the seabed. The money paid by the five winning companies will go to the U.S. Treasury. "Today’s lease sale is further proof that industry momentum – including for floating offshore wind development – is undeniable,” said Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. They mark the beginnings of a critical U.S.-based industry to build floating offshore wind turbines and the technology and know-how that goes with them, said Stephanie McClellan, executive director of Turn Forward, an offshore wind advocacy organization. "We’re excited that the vast potential of offshore wind on the west coast is on its way to fruition," she said. "Now California – and the United States – have an opportunity to be a major global exporter for the offshore floating wind industry." The leases were offered by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees offshore energy and mineral projects. Each lease is for 25 years. The leases were for two areas, one off the coast near Eureka, near the Oregon border, and one off the southern California coast near Morro Bay, north of Santa Barbara. These deep-water sites are all 20 miles and more offshore, enough that they will largely not be visible to people onshore. Together, the sites include five separate lease areas that collectively could host several hundred turbines and produce more than 4.5 gigawatts of power, according to BOEM. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2022/12/07/first-ever-pacific-offshore-wind-auction-nets-757-million/10847186002/
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Dear Astor Perkins Thank you for getting your climate love to level 2! We have reached out to Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! /Adam We Don't Have Time
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So encouraging to read about this development
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This is a great technology, the oceans are clearly underutilized.
Astor Perkins
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Successful ground test in the development of hydrogen power to cut carbon emissions. British engineer Rolls-Royce has successfully used hydrogen instead of conventional jet fuel to power a modern aircraft engine in a world first for the aviation industry, according to the company. The ground test, which took place at a government test facility at Boscombe Down, used green hydrogen generated by wind and tidal power from the Orkney Islands in Scotland. Rolls-Royce used a converted AE 2100-A turboprop engine that powers civil and military aircraft to conduct the test in partnership with easyJet. It marks another step in the industry’s attempts to prove that hydrogen could play a viable role to help companies reduce harmful carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. The Race to Zero pledge backed by the United Nations is committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and airlines are pushing to use more sustainable fuel as an alternative to petroleum-based jet fuel. Flying is one of the most difficult industries to decarbonize, and technologies such as electricity or hydrogen-powered aircraft are still years from carrying a plane full of people over long distances. Airbus plans to use a superjumbo A380 to test hydrogen-powered jet engines as part of a plan to bring a zero emissions aircraft into service by 2035. The Toulouse-based group is working with CFM International, a joint venture between France’s Safran and General Electric of the US, to develop an engine that can run on hydrogen. The Rolls-Royce-led trial, although not involving flying an aircraft, is part of a new hydrogen demonstration program launched in the summer by the FTSE 100 group in partnership with easyJet after research showed there was market potential for hydrogen-powered aircraft. The two companies plan to move on to a second set of tests, which will in turn lead up to a full-scale ground trial of a Rolls-Royce Pearl 15 business jet engine. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/11/rolls-royce-tests-hydrogen-fueled-aircraft-engine-in-aviation-world-first/
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Dear Astor Perkins Thank you for getting your climate love to level 2! We have reached out to Rolls-Royce and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! /Muhammad We Don't Have Time
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Good!
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Extremely encouraging. Its only a matter of time for full transition.
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Many researchers see a huge role for the gas in decarbonizing economies. Making steel green is just one of the ways that hydrogen is now expected to help decarbonize the world’s economy. Although some have touted hydrogen’s use as a transportation fuel, it’s unlikely to have much impact in that sector or in heating, for which batteries and electrical power already provide more efficient low-carbon solutions. Rather, hydrogen’s biggest contribution will be to clean up industrial processes, from producing plastics and fertilizers to refining hydrocarbons. These industries have conventionally been thought of as harder to decarbonize, and have received less attention from the media, investors and policymakers. Hydrogen might find uses in energy production, too. Liquid fuels made from hydrogen might one day power air travel and shipping. And hydrogen could even help to decarbonize the electricity grid: excess solar or wind power could be diverted into making the gas, which could then be used in other industrial processes or simply to store energy. In this way, hydrogen is expected to act as a bridge between many different sectors of the economy. Hydrogen is sort of unique because of its versatility in the ways you can produce it and in the ways in which you can use it,” says Dharik Mallapragada, a chemical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Policymakers anxious to reach net-zero emissions goals have begun a massive push for hydrogen, notably in the United States and the European Union. In some cases, they are subsidizing the price of low-carbon hydrogen; in others, handing out tax credits for hydrogen producers or for industries that use it. Partly as a result, investment in hydrogen projects is experiencing a boom. The Hydrogen Council, an industry group in Brussels, estimates that the hundreds of large-scale hydrogen projects announced already amount to a possible investment of US$240 billion by 2030 — although so far, only one-tenth of these are fully completed deals. By 2050, the council thinks the market for hydrogen and hydrogen technologies will be worth $2.5 trillion per year. Analysts now project that the world will see a five- to sevenfold increase in hydrogen production by mid-century (see ‘Hydrogen sources’). This should help to cut the world’s carbon footprint — but only if that hydrogen is itself obtained without adding to CO2 emissions, as it is in the Luleå pilot. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03699-0?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=nature&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1668620463-1
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Hydrogen is highly explosive, volatile and unstable unlike SAFE rooftop/parking lot sunshine, the wind, geothermal and ocean energy.
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Hydrogen is a very important step towards the new green energy
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Dear Astor Perkins Thank you for getting your climate love to level 2! We have reached out to Nature and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! /Muhammad We Don't Have Time
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New research published on November 14 in the journal Nature Sustainability shows a pathway toward full decarbonization of U.S. aviation fuel use by substituting conventional jet fuel with sustainably produced biofuels. The study, led by a team of Arizona State University researchers, found that planting the grass miscanthus on 23.2 million hectares of existing marginal agricultural lands—land that often lays fallow or is poor in soil quality—across the United States would provide enough biomass feedstock to meet the liquid fuel demands of the U.S. aviation sector fully from biofuels, an amount expected to reach 30 billion gallons/year by 2040. "We demonstrate that it is within reach for the United States to decarbonize the fuel used by commercial aviation, without having to wait for electrification of aircraft propulsion," said Nazli Uludere Aragon, co-corresponding author on the study and a recent ASU Geography Ph.D. graduate. "If we are serious about getting to net zero greenhouse gas emissions, we need to deal with emissions from air travel which are expected to grow under a business-as-usual scenario. Finding alternative, more sustainable liquid fuel sources for aviation is key to this." Integrating ecosystem, atmospheric science, and economic expertise In the study, the researchers used an integrated framework of land assessments, hydro-climate modeling, ecosystem modeling, and economic modeling to assess where and under what conditions across the United States, energy crops used for biojet fuels could be grown sustainably using criteria that evaluates both environmental and economic performance. The criteria was extensive. The team first identified and assessed where optimal marginal agriculture lands already existed in the U.S. They then assessed whether or not one could grow the right energy crops on the land without using additional water. The team then analyzed whether growing energy crop feedstocks on these lands would have detrimental effects on the surrounding climate or soil moisture and predicted the potential productivity of yields of two different grasses—miscanthus and switchgrass—as suitable biomass energy feedstocks. Finally, the team quantified the amount and the cost of biojet fuel that would be produced and distributed nationwide at scale. "The current way we produce sustainable jet fuel is very land inefficient and not on a large scale," said Nathan Parker, an author on the study and an assistant professor in the School of Sustainability. "There are very limited ways that aviation could become low carbon emitting with a correspondingly low climate impact and this is one way we've shown that is feasible and can get the aviation industry to be carbon neutral through agriculture." The scientists emphasized that this integrated systems perspective was critical to the study. In the past, research around the potential of biofuels has largely consisted of isolated assessments that have not been well-integrated, for example, overlooking key data on how the altering crop cover influences the surrounding climate. "When you plant crops over strategically designed areas, the planting of these crops has an impact on the climate," said Matei Georgescu, co-corresponding author of the study and associate professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and Director of the Urban Climate Research Center at ASU. "If there is a change in the underlying landscape, for example an increase or decrease in the amount of vegetation, there may be implications for local to regional scale climate, including more or less precipitation, or warmer or cooler temperatures." To account for these land-atmosphere interactions, the research team took outputs from their hydroclimate model to inform their ecosystem model. The team then evaluated the economic feasibility for farmers to grow these grasses. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00990-w
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We don't need to mess up 27 million acres and keep it from being natural habitat. This makes make footprint bigger. Instead use carbon from the environment plus cheap clean energy from nuclear wind and solar. Pretending nuclear doesn't exist and isn't cheap safe and faster is lethality dangerous.
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First priority is to transition to clean energy then other developments to follow. Good one.
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ZERO Exhaust aircraft powered by rooftop/parking lot sunshine, the wind, geothermal and ocean energy is possible with a little bit of research and development.
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A September groundbreaking marked the official start of South Dakota’s largest economic development project: a sustainable aviation fuel facility estimated at more than $1 billion to be built by Colorado-based Gevo Inc. “It’s the first of its kind in the world,” said Steve Westra, commissioner of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. Gevo selected the site for its project, called Net-Zero 1, after 18 months of due diligence, the company said. The company aims to eliminate greenhouse gases from transportation fuels, including sustainable aviation fuel, also known as SAF, renewable gasoline and diesel fuel. It also has a development facility in Luverne, Minnesota. “Lake Preston met the company’s criteria for a site, which needed to include the availability of low-carbon/sustainably grown corn, access to rail and local acceptance of wind energy usage,” said Heather Manuel, vice president of corporation communications. “This site and all future sites need to offer an appealing mix of attributes that enable the company to produce transportation fuels with the lowest carbon footprint possible.” In Lake Preston, Gevo estimates it will need 35 million bushels of sustainable corn each year. “It will help the ag community beyond belief,” Westra said. “I think we’ll see a more consistent marketplace for corn, and that really helps the locally grown corn market.” The approach fits the state’s strategy of supporting value-added agriculture, he added. “We want to get our ag community the highest value we can for their products before they leave the state, and that’s really where the Gevo project fit well,” he said. The approach also is a perfect example of the way the biotechnology industry uniquely thrives in a state like South Dakota, said Joni Ekstrum, executive director of South Dakota Biotech. “Bioscience exists to help us feed, fuel and heal the world, and Gevo’s project is an exciting example of what that looks like in our state,” she said. “Leveraging local agriculture to produce renewable fuels is exactly what we’re able to achieve in South Dakota, and we couldn’t be more encouraged that an operation like this saw that opportunity.” Gevo plans to hire about 90 full-time employees, with 1,000 employed during construction. https://www.siouxfalls.business/first-of-its-kind-sustainable-aviation-fuel-facility-in-the-world-positions-south-dakota-to-build-on-biofuels-success/
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Good flying!
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Awesome. it will create jobs and provide a solution.
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This is great ...it will change the aviation sector to a more sustainable green sector
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EMIT has identified more than 50 methane super-emitters in its first few months of operation — and that's not even its main job. A powerful eye in the sky is helping scientists spy "super-emitters" of methane, a greenhouse gas about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. That observer is NASA's Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation instrument, or EMIT for short. EMIT has been mapping the chemical composition of dust throughout Earth's desert regions since being installed on the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS) in July, helping researchers understand how airborne dust affects climate. That's the main goal of EMIT's mission. But it's making another, less expected contribution to climate studies as well, NASA officials announced on Tuesday (Oct. 25). The instrument is identifying huge plumes of heat-trapping methane gas around the world — more than 50 of them already, in fact. "Reining in methane emissions is key to limiting global warming. This exciting new development will not only help researchers better pinpoint where methane leaks are coming from, but also provide insight on how they can be addressed — quickly," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement(opens in new tab). "The International Space Station and NASA's more than two dozen satellites and instruments in space have long been invaluable in determining changes to the Earth's climate," Nelson added. "EMIT is proving to be a critical tool in our toolbox to measure this potent greenhouse gas — and stop it at the source." EMIT is an imaging spectrometer designed to identify the chemical fingerprints of a variety of minerals on Earth's surface. The ability to spot methane as well is a sort of happy accident. "It turns out that methane also has a spectral signature in the same wavelength range, and that's what has allowed us to be sensitive to methane," EMIT principal investigator Robert Green, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon. https://lnkd.in/etTRgGbz
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The possibility of stopping the emissions at the source is the best.
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Nice way of keeping polluters in check!
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Polluting companies should be ware of the eagles eye that's keeping a check on them as they mint millions from destroying the planet. Authorities should take action following this lead.
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Minerva Lithium has produced Nano Mosaic, a coordinated polymer framework that looks a bit like black gravel and extracts critical materials from brine in just three days. Minerva says that it can extract one metric ton of lithium using just 30,000 gallons of water, and it can do it in three days. Evaporative brine processing needs to evaporate 500,000 gallons of water to get to the same amount of lithium. Just one gram of this absorbent material has a surface area equal to that of a soccer pitch, which should give you an idea of just how little you’d need to extract a large amount of minerals. Runner-Up: Intropic Materials Plastics are great for so many things, but they stay around for an awfully long time. Intropic leaps to the rescue with a set of enzymes that can be added to plastics at the very beginning of their life cycle, before it is even turned into products. The additives the company makes have been proof-of-concept tested and it wants to upend how plastics are made and disposed of. Intropic’s additives make many of the most commonly used plastics biodegradable in normal commercial composting. The enzymes are added to the pellets or powders that are used in the normal course of plastic production. This gives plastics new, biodegradable capabilities without changing the manufacturing processes used to create plastic products. At the end of the life cycle, when it’s time to get rid of the material, the products can be composted into their component parts. https://lnkd.in/dEYFkCCx
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A huge congratulations to them
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Thanks to record deployment of renewables and EVs, the CO2 intensity of the world’s energy supply is improving again after worsening in 2021 when the economy rebounded sharply Despite concerns about the effects of the current energy crisis, global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion are expected to grow by just under 1% this year, only a small fraction of their increase last year, as a strong expansion of renewables and electric vehicles prevents a much sharper rise. New IEA analysis of the latest data from around the world shows that these CO2 emissions are on course to increase by close to 300 million tonnes in 2022 to 33.8 billion tonnes – a far smaller rise than their jump of nearly 2 billion tonnes in 2021, which resulted from the rapid global recovery from the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic. This year’s increase is driven by power generation and by the aviation sector, as air travel rebounds from pandemic lows. The rise in global CO2 emissions this year would be much larger – more than tripling to reach close to 1 billion tonnes – were it not for the major deployments of renewable energy technologies and electric vehicles (EVs) around the world. Even though the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has propped up global coal demand in 2022 by making natural gas far more expensive, the relatively small increase in coal emissions has been considerably outweighed by the expansion of renewables. Global energy trends have also been affected this year by the impacts of Russia’s war on the world economy, which have significantly dampened expectations for economic growth, notably in Europe. The combined result is that the CO2 intensity of the world’s energy supply is set to improve slightly in 2022, resuming a years-long trend of consistent improvement that was disrupted last year by the emissions-intensive economic recovery from the Covid crisis. This year’s expected improvement contrasts with what happened following the 2008 global financial crisis, which saw strong deteriorations in the CO2 intensity of energy supply for several years after the initial economic shock. “The global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a scramble by many countries to use other energy sources to replace the natural gas supplies that Russia has withheld from the market. The encouraging news is that solar and wind are filling much of the gap, with the uptick in coal appearing to be relatively small and temporary,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “This means that CO2 emissions are growing far less quickly this year than some people feared – and that policy actions by governments are driving real structural changes in the energy economy. Those changes are set to accelerate thanks to the major clean energy policy plans that have advanced around the world in recent months.” Solar PV and wind are leading an increase in global renewable electricity generation in 2022 of more than 700 terawatt-hours (TWh), the largest annual rise on record. Without this increase, global CO2 emissions would be more than 600 million tonnes higher this year. The rapid deployment of solar and wind is on course to account for two-thirds of the growth in renewable power generation. Despite the challenging situation that hydropower has faced in several regions due to droughts this year, global hydropower output is up year-on-year, contributing over one-fifth of the expected growth in renewable power. While electricity generation from both wind and solar PV is growing far more than any other source in 2022, coal is expected to post the next largest increase as some countries revert to coal use in response to soaring natural gas prices. In total, global CO2 emissions from coal-fired power generation are set to grow by more than 200 million tonnes, or 2%, this year, led by increases in Asia. The European Union’s CO2 emissions are on course to decline this year despite an increase in coal emissions. The rise in European coal use is expected to be temporary, with a strong pipeline of new renewable projects forecast to add around 50 gigawatts of capacity in 2023. These additions would generate more electricity than the expected increase in coal-fired power generation in the EU in 2022. In China, CO2 emissions are set to remain broadly flat this year, reflecting the mixture of different forces at work, including weaker economic growth, the impacts of drought on hydropower, and major deployments of solar and wind. As well as the challenges for hydropower in some regions, the world’s low-emissions electricity supply has suffered a setback from a series of nuclear power plant outages, which are set to reduce global nuclear power production by over 80 TWh. This has largely been due to more than half of France’s fleet of nuclear reactors being offline for part of the year. The drop in nuclear power generation globally has contributed to an increased use of coal and oil for electricity generation. The world’s use of natural gas is expected to decline following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, resulting in a decrease in CO2 emissions of around 40 million tonnes in 2022. Demand for oil is set to grow more than for any other fossil fuel in 2022, with oil-related CO2 emissions up by around 180 million tonnes. This has been driven largely by the transport sector as travel restrictions have been lifted and pre-pandemic commuting and travel patterns have resumed. Aviation is expected to contribute around three-quarters of the rise in emissions from oil use, notably due to increases in international air travel. However, the aviation sector’s emissions are still only around 80% of their pre-pandemic levels. Uncertainty in global natural gas markets will continue to shape many key energy trends for the rest of this year and in 2023. However, promising signs of lasting structural changes to the CO2 intensity of global energy are evident in 2022 – and they are set to be reinforced by major increases in government support for clean energy investment, notably in the US Inflation Reduction Act, as well as in decarbonisation plans such as the European Union’s Fit for 55 package and Japan’s Green Transformation (GX) plan, and in ambitious clean energy targets in China and India. The effects of recent policies on energy security and global emissions trends will be explored in depth by the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2022, which will be released on 27 October. https://www.iea.org/news/defying-expectations-co2-emissions-from-global-fossil-fuel-combustion-are-set-to-grow-in-2022-by-only-a-fraction-of-last-year-s-big-increase
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Dear Astor Perkins Thank you for getting your climate love to level 2! We have reached out to IEA and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! /Muhammad We Don't Have Time
Astor Perkins
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Significantly enhanced sub-ambient passive cooling enabled by evaporation, radiation, and insulation. As more air conditioning units draw ever more power each year, we now appear trapped in a cycle, only accelerating the problem of global heating further. Cooling without power: One possible way to break this cycle could lie with passive cooling. This kind of technology absorbs heat from the surrounding environment, and then exploits physical effects including insulation, evaporation, and radiation to transfer this heat away from the system being cooled – all without any added power. Three cooling layers: A team of researchers in Massachusetts has just made important steps towards overcoming these challenges. Within a flat, three-layered panel, MIT researchers combined several passive cooling techniques — each counteracting the shortcomings of the others. The panel’s top layer features a highly insulating aerogel: an ultra-light, sponge-like material, featuring sparse networks of cross-linked polymers, where a vast majority of the volume is taken up by empty space. This structure makes aerogels highly insulating to heat, while allowing gases and other kinds of radiation to readily pass through. Underneath the aerogel, the team incorporated a hydrogel: a material featuring a similar network of insoluble polymers, this time immersed in water. This layer is insulated by the aerogel above, but as the heat energy that does make it through the top layer is absorbed, the water it contains is partly evaporated into vapor – which rises up through the aerogel. In addition, the hydrogel converts some of the heat it absorbs into infrared radiation. Since both the aerogel and Earth’s atmosphere are transparent to this radiation, that energy is then released back into outer space, without heating up the air outside. Finally, the researchers placed a reflective, mirror-like material beneath the hydrogel. This layer reflects back any heat that manages to pass through the top two layers – ensuring that as much heat as possible is absorbed by the hydrogel. A key advantage of this design is that it combines the unique benefits of insulation, evaporation, and radiation. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666386422003629?via%3Dihub
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Dear Astor Perkins Thank you for getting your climate love to level 2! We have reached out to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! /Muhammad We Don't Have Time
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Scientists inventing solutions towards climate crisis. Well done
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Wooow this should be implemented in the urban areas
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Cobalt-based catalysts could be used to turn mixed plastic waste into fuel, new plastics, and other products. But to the surprise of the researchers, a catalyst made of a microporous material called a zeolite that contains cobalt nanoparticles can selectively break down various plastic polymer molecules and turn more than 80 percent of them into propane. Although zeolites are riddled with tiny pores less than a nanometer wide (corresponding to the width of the polymer chains), a logical assumption had been that there would be little interaction at all between the zeolite and the polymers. Surprisingly, however, the opposite turned out to be the case: Not only do the polymer chains enter the pores, but the synergistic work between cobalt and the acid sites in the zeolite can break the chain at the same point. That cleavage site turned out to correspond to chopping off exactly one propane molecule without generating unwanted methane, leaving the rest of the longer hydrocarbons ready to undergo the process, again and again. “Once you have this one compound, propane, you lessen the burden on downstream separations,” Román-Leshkov says. “That’s the essence of why we think this is quite important. We’re not only breaking the bonds, but we’re generating mainly a single product” that can be used for many different products and processes. The materials needed for the process, zeolites and cobalt, “are both quite cheap” and widely available, he says, although today most cobalt comes from troubled areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some new production is being developed in Canada, Cuba, and other places. The other material needed for the process is hydrogen, which today is mostly produced from fossil fuels but can easily be made other ways, including electrolysis of water using carbon-free electricity such as solar or wind power. The researchers tested their system on a real example of mixed recycled plastic, producing promising results. But more testing will be needed on a greater variety of mixed waste streams to determine how much fouling takes place from various contaminants in the material — such as inks, glues, and labels attached to the plastic containers, or other nonplastic materials that get mixed in with the waste — and how that affects the long-term stability of the process. Together with collaborators at NREL, the MIT team is also continuing to study the economics of the system, and analyzing how it can fit into today’s systems for handling plastic and mixed waste streams. “We don’t have all the answers yet,” Román-Leshkov says, but preliminary analysis looks promising. https://news.mit.edu/2022/plastics-recycling-cobalt-catalyst-1006
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Dear Astor Perkins Thank you for getting your climate love to level 2! We have reached out to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! /Muhammad We Don't Have Time
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Plastics are a menace. Innovations towards their pollution solution is much welcome at this time. Keep up.
Astor Perkins
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Continuous hydrodeoxygenation of lignin to jet-range aromatic hydrocarbons. An underutilized natural resource could be just what the airline industry needs to curb carbon emissions. Researchers at three institutions—the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Washington State University—report success in using lignin as a path toward a drop-in 100% sustainable aviation fuel. Lignin makes up the rigid parts of the cell walls of plants. Other parts of plants are used for biofuels, but lignin has been largely overlooked because of the difficulties in breaking it down chemically and converting it into useful products. The newly published research demonstrated a process the researchers developed to remove the oxygen from lignin, such that the resulting hydrocarbons could be used as a jet fuel blendstock. Gregg Beckham and Earl Christensen are the researchers involved from NREL. The paper points to the need to use sustainable sources for jet fuel as the airline industry has pledged to dramatically reduce carbon emissions. Airlines consumed 106 billion gallons of jet fuel globally during 2019, and that number is expected to more than double by 2050. Accomplishing the industry's goal of achieving net carbon neutrality during that same period will require a massive deployment of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) with high blend limits with conventional fuel. Jet fuel is a blended mixture of different hydrocarbon molecules, including aromatics and cycloalkanes. Current commercialized technologies do not produce those components to qualify for a 100% SAF. Instead, SAF blendstocks are combined with conventional hydrocarbon fuels. As the largest source of renewable aromatics in nature, lignin could hold the answer to achieving a complete bio-based jet fuel. This newly published work illustrates the ability of a lignin pathway to complement existing and other developing pathways. Specifically, the lignin pathway described in this new work allows the SAF to have fuel system compatibility at higher blend ratios. Because of its recalcitrance, lignin is typically burned for heat and power or used only in low-value applications. Previous research has yielded lignin oils with high oxygen contents ranging from 27% to 34%, but to be used as a jet fuel that amount must be reduced to less than a half-percent. Other processes have been tried to reduce the oxygen content, but the catalysts involved require expensive noble metals and proved to be low yielding. Researchers at the trio of institutions demonstrated an efficient method that used earth-abundant molybdenum carbide as the catalyst in a continuous process, achieving an oxygen content of about 1%. https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00406-8
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I would love to have 100% emission-free flights
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I hope we get to follow up on this and that it makes its way to commercial aviation
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Very interesting
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Assessing seafood nutritional diversity together with climate impacts informs more comprehensive dietary advice Seafood holds promise for helping meet nutritional needs at a low climate impact. The researchers assess the nutrient density and greenhouse gas emissions, weighted by production method, that result from fishing and farming of globally important species. The highest nutrient benefit at the lowest emissions is achieved by consuming wild-caught small pelagic and salmonid species, and farmed bivalves like mussels and oysters. Many but not all seafood species provide more nutrition at lower emissions than land animal proteins, especially red meat, but large differences exist, even within species groups and species, depending on production method. Which nutrients contribute to nutrient density differs between seafoods, as do the nutrient needs of population groups within and between countries or regions. Based on the patterns found in nutritional attributes and climate impact, the researchers recommend refocusing and tailoring production and consumption patterns towards species and production methods with improved nutrition and climate performance, taking into account specific nutritional needs and emission reduction goals. The researchers demonstrate how seafood products differ in nutrient density and climate impact both in relation to each other, and to terrestrial animal protein sources. Further, they identify those species that provide the most overall nutrients for the least emissions as well as those that provide the least nutritional value for the highest climate cost. Doing so, they add a nutritional dimension to our understanding of emissions from the seafood sector that can be further adapted to country- and population-specific dietary needs to identify opportunities for seafood to help satisfy human diets within carbon constraints. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00516-4?
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Dear Astor Perkins Thank you for getting your climate love to level 2! We have reached out to Nature and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! /Adam We Don't Have Time
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Interesting, I have always read that the impact of seafood was massive
Astor Perkins
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Companies like Redwood Materials (raised $792 million), Li-Cycle (Canada, raised $667.7 million) and Green Li-ion (Singapore, raised $15 million) have made a name for themselves in recycling batteries. The activity of recycling existing lithium batteries remains one of the hardest nuts to crack as the world tries desperately to move to more renewable, clean sources of energy. Right now Lithium-ion batteries are one of the few viable solutions for decarbonizing energy, but the world has a high dependence on countries that mine lithium, which creates undesirable environmental impacts, supply chain constraints and geopolitical tensions. Tozero is a new startup out of Germany that says it is offering a novel process to recover critical materials such as lithium, nickel and cobalt from lithium-ion batteries. It’s now raised €3.5 million in a pre-seed financing round led by Berlin-based Atlantic Labs. Verve Ventures, Possible Ventures, angels and other founders joined the round, for example former VW board member Jochem Heizmann, as well as co-founders of Personio and FINN, among others. With the fresh funding, tozero will build their prototype plant in Munich, Germany. This is where one-third of Europe’s lithium-ion batteries are planned to be produced by 2030. Sarah Fleischer and Dr. Ksenija Milicevic Neumann, tozero’s co-founders, also have the support and technical advise of Prof. Bernd Friedrich, a pioneer in battery recycling research at IME, RWTH Aachen University. Tozero’s idea is to put the raw materials from batteries such as lithium, cobalt, nickel etc. back into the market as fresh battery-grade materials to battery producers. If it works, this would decrease the environmental footprint of the battery industry. https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/06/just-outside-of-munich-a-startup-plans-a-new-process-to-recycle-lithium-ion-batteries/
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Costs of climate change far surpass government estimates, study says. The new comprehensive analysis pegs the social cost of carbon at $185 a ton — more than triple the current federal standard. The social cost of carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) measures the monetized value of the damages to society caused by an incremental metric tonne of CO2 emissions and is a key metric informing climate policy. Used by governments and other decision-makers in benefit-cost analysis for over a decade, SC-CO2 estimates draw on climate science, economics, demography, and other disciplines. However, a 2017 report by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine1 (NASEM) highlighted that current SC-CO2 estimates no longer reflect the latest research. The report provided a series of recommendations for improving the scientific basis, transparency, and uncertainty characterization of SC-CO2 estimates. The researchers show that improved probabilistic socioeconomic projections, climate models, damage functions, and discounting methods that collectively reflect theoretically consistent valuation of risk, substantially increase estimates of the SC-CO2. The preferred mean SC-CO2 estimate is $185 per tonne of CO2 ($44-413/t-CO2: 5-95% range, 2020 US dollars) at a near-term risk-free discount rate of 2 percent, a value 3.6-times higher than the US government’s current value of $51/t-CO2. The estimates incorporate updated scientific understanding throughout all components of SC-CO2 estimation in the new open-source GIVE model, in a manner fully responsive to the near-term NASEM recommendations. The higher SC-CO2 values, compared to estimates currently used in policy evaluation, substantially increase the estimated benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation and thereby increase the expected net benefits of more stringent climate policies. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05224-9
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Dear Astor Perkins Thank you for getting your climate love to level 2! We have reached out to Nature and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! /Adam We Don't Have Time
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Very interesting and something that should be the basis of social policies
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Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a new kind of battery, made entirely from abundant and inexpensive materials, that could help to fill that gap. The new battery architecture, which uses aluminum and sulfur as its two electrode materials, with a molten salt electrolyte in between, is described today in the journal Nature, in a paper by MIT Professor Donald Sadoway, along with 15 others. “I wanted to invent something that was better, much better, than lithium-ion batteries for small-scale stationary storage, and ultimately for automotive [uses],” explains Sadoway, who is the John F. Elliott Professor Emeritus of Materials Chemistry. In addition to being expensive, lithium-ion batteries contain a flammable electrolyte, making them less than ideal for transportation. So, Sadoway started studying the periodic table, looking for cheap, Earth-abundant metals that might be able to substitute for lithium. The commercially dominant metal, iron, doesn’t have the right electrochemical properties for an efficient battery, he says. But the second-most-abundant metal in the marketplace — and actually the most abundant metal on Earth — is aluminum. “So, I said, well, let’s just make that a bookend. It’s gonna be aluminum,” he says. Then came deciding what to pair the aluminum with for the other electrode, and what kind of electrolyte to put in between to carry ions back and forth during charging and discharging. The cheapest of all the non-metals is sulfur, so that became the second electrode material. As for the electrolyte, “we were not going to use the volatile, flammable organic liquids” that have sometimes led to dangerous fires in cars and other applications of lithium-ion batteries, Sadoway says. They tried some polymers but ended up looking at a variety of molten salts that have relatively low melting points — close to the boiling point of water, as opposed to nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit for many salts. “Once you get down to near body temperature, it becomes practical” to make batteries that don’t require special insulation and anticorrosion measures, he says. The three ingredients they ended up with are cheap and readily available — aluminum, no different from the foil at the supermarket; sulfur, which is often a waste product from processes such as petroleum refining; and widely available salts. “The ingredients are cheap, and the thing is safe — it cannot burn,” Sadoway says. In their experiments, the team showed that the battery cells could endure hundreds of cycles at exceptionally high charging rates, with a projected cost per cell of about one-sixth that of comparable lithium-ion cells. They showed that the charging rate was highly dependent on the working temperature, with 110 degrees Celsius (230 degrees Fahrenheit) showing 25 times faster rates than 25 C (77 F). https://lnkd.in/eGGuQqRu
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Dear Astor Perkins Thank you for getting your climate love to level 2! We have reached out to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! /Adam We Don't Have Time
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Prof. Sadoway has been working on this for years, and several implementations on grid-level capacity are running already. This IS a gamechanger, with finetuning this allows multiday storage of renewable energy delivered in function of demand. Size, durability and temp. of operation are a challenge, but the cost is low: I'm a fan for years already ...
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Oh this is great!
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Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have released a study which examines “the technical outlook, economic feasibility, and environmental impact of battery-electric containerships.” Breaking from previous studies, the researchers have classified the volume of space housing the batteries as an opportunity cost, rather than a fixed technical constraint. After modeling a wide variety of containership sizes, as well as 13 major world trade routes, the research suggests that more than 40% of the world’s fleet of containerships could be electrified “cost-effectively and with current technology,” by the end of this decade. Using only technology available for purchase today, nearly all ships with routes shorter than 2,000 kilometers are economically advantageous, and ships with routes as long as 3,000km are economically viable. An electrified containership will also cause some environmental damage, however, the estimates of electrified ship’s air pollution, and the social cost of carbon, are only 1/12th that of an ICE ship. In a future in which the costs of large ICE containerships will continue rising, as electrified containerships become increasingly cost effective, the authors posit that ICE ships will be grossly more expensive than electrified containerships. The authors show that at current battery prices, the electrification of trade routes less than 1,500 km is economical, and has minimal impact to ship carrying capacity. The average cost of lithium-ion batteries has plummeted 89% since 2010, and is expected to reach $50 per kWh in the near future. Assuming a battery cost of $100 per kWh, the TCP for a battery-electric containership is already lower than that of an ICE equivalent, for routes less than 1,000km. And when battery prices reach $50 per kWh, which is predicted for the near future, electrified ships will be cost-effective on routes as long as 5,000km. Battery chemistry is another key factor in configuring electric cargo ships. Vessels that take short, frequent trips have lower power requirements, but would need to recharge quickly. These vessels should benefit from the high charge rates and long life cycles of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Long range ships already spend more time docked in each port – typically well over 24h – and could take advantage of the relatively low cycle life and high energy density of nickel manganese cobalt oxide batteries. The Yara Birkeland is an 80m long, 7MWh electrified autonomous containership that can hold 120 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), which makes 12 nautical mile trips. https://lnkd.in/e4j_qz8f
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It's way to optimistic at coast minerals, battery pack cost had risen. And if we use batteries for everything a surge of mineral usage will increase prices even more. Not accounting for the environmental impacts. Large containership should be powered by modular nuclear reactors, refill every 5 to 10 years as a module.
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Robert Sansone’s research could pave the way for the sustainable manufacturing of electric vehicles that do not require rare-earth magnets Robert Sansone is a natural born engineer. From animatronic hands to high-speed running boots and a go-kart that can reach speeds of more than 70 miles per hour, the Fort Pierce, Florida-based inventor estimates he’s completed at least 60 engineering projects in his spare time. And he’s only 17 years old. A couple years ago, Sansone came across a video about the advantages and disadvantages of electric cars. The video explained that most electric car motors require magnets made from rare-earth elements, which can be costly, both financially and environmentally, to extract. The rare-earth materials needed can cost hundreds of dollars per kilogram. In comparison, copper is worth $7.83 per kilogram. The highschooler had heard of a type of electric motor—the synchronous reluctance motor—that doesn’t use these rare-earth materials. This kind of motor is currently used for pumps and fans, but it isn’t powerful enough by itself to be used in an electric vehicle. So, Sansone started brainstorming ways he could improve its performance. Over the course of a year, Sansone created a prototype of a novel synchronous reluctance motor that had greater rotational force—or torque—and efficiency than existing ones. The prototype was made from 3-D printed plastic, copper wires and a steel rotor and tested using a variety of meters to measure power and a laser tachometer to determine the motor’s rotational speed. His work earned him first prize, and $75,000 in winnings, at this year’s Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the largest international high school STEM competition. Synchronous reluctance motors don’t use magnets. Instead, a steel rotor with air gaps cut into it aligns itself with the rotating magnetic field. Reluctance, or the magnetism of a material, is key to this process. As the rotor spins along with the rotating magnetic field, torque is produced. More torque is produced when the saliency ratio, or difference in magnetism between materials (in this case, the steel and the non-magnetic air gaps), is greater. He found that his novel design exhibited 39 percent greater torque and 31 percent greater efficiency at 300 revolutions per minute (RPM). At 750 RPM, it performed at 37 percent greater efficiency. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-17-year-old-designed-a-motor-that-could-potentially-transform-the-electric-car-industry-180980550/
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Impressive!
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This is impressive... Such skills would go a long way in reducing the use of fossil fuels in the world
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He's such a tech guru,his ingenuity could help so much in the climate space.
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Super interesting topics!
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We have to call on the right actions to be taken. Power of activism.
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Intellectuals together to support climate change actions that better us all