This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

David Janka stands at the helm of the Auklet, an 18-meter charter boat that’s traveled Alaska’s waters longer than the region has been an American state. It’s the peak of summer as he putters into Snug Harbor, a shallow curve in a shoreline of Knight Island walled by towering cliffs and stands of cedar, spruce, and hemlock. He steers toward the beach, aiming for a potato-shaped rock the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. He’s here to take its picture.

For 33 years, someone has traveled here each summer to photograph the unassuming boulder, nicknamed Mearns Rock. Collectively, the photos are an unexpected offshoot of one of the United States’ worst environmental disasters.

In 1989, the Exxon Valdez supertanker ran aground on Bligh Reef, dumping 40 million liters of thick black crude into Prince William Sound. Oil spread to Snug Harbor, 80 kilometers away. Mearns Rock and all its marine denizens were “totally painted in oil,” says Alan Mearns, the rock’s eponym, who worked on the hazmat team for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the spill’s aftermath.

During the cleanup, Exxon crews and contractors power washed oil off shorelines into the ocean, where it was easier to corral. But the effort also ripped away marine life.

“Our concern immediately became, Is a cleanup going to be worse than leaving the oil on?” says Mearns.

In the end, Exxon washed some sections of the coast and left others untreated. Mearns Rock remained oiled. For the next decade, Mearns and a team of NOAA chemists and biologists returned to dozens of sites in the region to assess the ecosystem’s recovery from oil exposure and power washing. Mearns started photographing these research visits, using boulders like Mearns Rock as landmarks. When the larger study ended, Mearns and his NOAA colleague John Whitney secured funding to keep taking yearly photos until 2012. Since then, the project has survived on the enthusiasm of volunteers like Janka, who now consistently photograph eight of the original sites, stopping in when they’re nearby. The dedicated group has included skippers, scientists, and local coast guard volunteers.

Side by side, the 33 images of Mearns Rock look like a collection of a child’s yearly school photos. In one, the boulder boasts a thick topper of rockweed. Another year, it’s buzz-cut bare, followed by a stubbly growth of barnacles the next summer. Together, the photos demonstrate the dynamism of the intertidal zone, where mussels, barnacles, and seaweed clamor for real estate.

“There’s a lot that we can learn from a simple picture,” says Scott Pegau, a research manager at the Oil Spill Recovery Institute in Cordova, Alaska. This June, during an aerial herring survey, he’ll dock his floatplane in Shelter Bay, 20 kilometers southwest of Snug Harbor, to photograph two refrigerator-sized boulders named Bert and Ernie.

The decades-long photo series is also helping researchers understand the region’s natural variability, where the intertidal zone changes from boulder to boulder, bay to bay, year to year.

While mussels and barnacles rebounded to natural numbers within a few years of the spill, not all species were so lucky. Several populations still haven’t recovered, including a local killer whale pod. To this day, when Janka has guests on the Auklet, he can stop at certain beaches and find pockets of toxic oil just a spoonful of sand beneath the surface.

Janka has been intimately familiar with the oil spill since the night of the Exxon Valdez wreck. He shuttled journalists into the disaster zone during the five frenzied days after the spill, and he met Mearns when NOAA later hired him to ferry scientists to their sites. Though he retired from chartering this year, Janka plans to return to Mearns Rock to snap another photo this summer.

The Exxon Valdez proved to Janka the power of visual documentation. So many positive things happened because images of the spill were passed around the world, he says. The US government implemented oil spill legislation, formed citizen councils to oversee Prince William Sound’s oil industry, and legislated double-hulled tankers. “I don’t think that would have happened if there weren’t photographs,” he says.

The ongoing project feels less attached to the 1989 oil spill and more focused on the future, says Mearns, who retired from NOAA in 2018 but continues to steward the photo collection. Prince William Sound has made a tentative recovery but could be devastated again. Alaska’s waters are warming, new species are moving north, and rising seas are pushing the intertidal zone up the shoreline. A citizen council just flagged the Valdez oil terminal in Prince William Sound as an “unacceptable safety risk.” Who knows what the next 33 years will bring? The team is actively looking for volunteer photographers to keep the project running.

“I turn 80 this summer. I keep thinking, well, maybe I should back off. But I can’t. It’s fun,” Mearns says. As long as his friends keep sending photos, he’ll keep building the boulder albums, checking out each rock’s latest look as he adds another photo to the end of the line.

Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified those responsible for cleaning the beaches. Exxon hired the crews that power washed oil off shorelines, not NOAA.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Today’s cruise ships are environmental nightmares. Just one vessel packed with a veritable petri dish of passengers can burn as much as 250 tons of fuel per day, or about the same emissions as 12,000 cars. If the industry is to survive, it will need to adapt quickly in order to adequately address the myriad ecological emergencies facing the planet—and one Norwegian cruise liner company is attempting to meet those challenges head-on.

Earlier today, Hurtigruten Norway unveiled the first designs for a zero-emission cruise ship scheduled to debut by the end of the decade. First announced in March 2022 as “Sea Zero,” Hurtigruten (Norwegian for “the Fast Route”) showed off its initial concept art for the craft on Wednesday. The vessel features three autonomous, retractable, 50m-high sail wing rigs housing roughly 1,500-square-meters of solar panels. Alongside the sails, the ship will be powered by multiple 60-megawatt batteries that recharge while in port, as well as wind technology. Other futuristic additions to the vessel will include AI maneuvering capabilities, retractable thrusters, contra-rotating propellers, advanced hull coatings, and proactive hull cleaning tech.

[Related: Care about the planet? Skip the cruise, for now.]

“Following a rigorous feasibility study, we have pinpointed the most promising technologies for our groundbreaking future cruise ships,” said Hurtigruten Norway CEO Hedda Felin. Henrik Burvang, Research and Innovation Manager at VARD, the company behind the ship concept designs, added the forthcoming boat’s streamlined shape, alongside its hull and propulsion advances, will reduce energy demand. Meanwhile, VARD is “developing new design tools and exploring new technologies for energy efficiency,” said Burvang.

With enhanced AI capabilities, the cruise ships’ crew bridge is expected to significantly shrink in size to resemble airplane cockpits, but Hurtigruten’s futuristic, eco-conscious designs don’t rest solely on its next-gen ship and crew. The 135-meter-long concept ship’s estimated 500 guests will have access to a mobile app capable of operating their cabins’ ventilation systems, as well as track their own water and energy consumption while aboard the vessel.

Next up for Hurtigruten’s Sea Zero project is a two-year testing and development phase for the proposed tech behind the upcoming cruise ship, particularly focusing on battery production, propulsion, hull design, and sustainable practices. Meanwhile, the company will also look into onboard hotel operational improvements, which Hurtigruten states can consume as much as half a ship’s overall energy reserves.

Hurtigruten also understands if 2030 feels like a long time to wait until a zero-emission ship. In the meantime, the company has already upgraded two of its seven vessels to run on a battery-hybrid-power system, with a third on track to be retrofitted this fall.  Its additional vessels are being outfitted with an array of tech to CO2 emissions by 20-percent, and nitrogen oxides by as much as 80 percent.

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In 2015, the United Nations announced a series of interdependent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) meant to provide a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.” In the years since, the UN and various partner organizations have released periodic progress reports that assess global movement towards these benchmarks. The latest annual recap, published on Tuesday, focuses on SDG 7’s aim at providing “affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy” to the world, alongside universal access to clean cooking and electricity, doubling historic levels of efficiency improvements, and increasing renewable energy usage by the end of the decade.

The UN’s 2023 assessment of efforts so far? Not great.

According to the Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report, the world’s current pace is simply not en route to achieving “any of the 2030 targets.” Although the commission acknowledges some regions’ improvements in various areas such as renewable energy availability, the number of people globally lacking electricity access is likely to have actually increased for the first time in decades due to the ongoing energy crisis exacerbated by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The report also explains the most pressing factors styming progress towards SDG 7 include the uncertain global economic outlook, high inflation, currency fluctuations, the growing number of countries dealing with debt distress, and supply chain issues.

[Related: 1 in 5 people are likely to live in dangerously hot climates by 2100.]

At humanity’s current trajectory, nearly 2 billion people will still lack clean cooking facilities in 2030, with another 660 million without reliable electricity access. The report’s summary notes that, according to the World Health Organization, over 3 million people die every year due to illnesses stemming from polluting technologies and fuel that increase exposure to toxic household air pollution.

“We must protect the next generation by acting now,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, said in a statement. “Investing in clean and renewable solutions to support universal energy access is how we can make real change.” “Clean cooking technologies in homes and reliable electricity in healthcare facilities can play a crucial role in protecting the health of our most vulnerable populations,” Ghebreyesus added.

[Related: Extreme weather and energy insecurity can compound health risks.]

There is at least one bright spot in the discouraging report, however. According to the UN Statistics Division, even accounting for recent electrification slowdowns, the number of people lacking electricity has halved over the past ten years—down to 675 million in 2021 versus around 1.1 billion in 2010.

“Nonetheless, additional efforts and measures must urgently be put in place to ensure that the poorest and hardest-to-reach people are not left behind,” explained Stefan Schweinfest of the UN’s Statistics Division in the UN’s statement. “To reach universal access by 2030, the development community must scale up clean energy investments and policy support.”

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The race to electrify the world’s vehicles and store energy will require batteries — so many of them, in fact, that meeting the demand we will see by 2040 will require 30 times the amount of critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel that those industries currently use.

That presents an enormous challenge, one exacerbated by the mining industry’s alarming allegations of labor crimes, environmental destruction, and encroachments on Indigenous land. There are ways to mitigate electrification’s extractive impacts, one of which may seem obvious: Recycle every battery we make. 

Doing so would reduce the world’s need to mine these minerals by 10 percent within 16 years, because the critical materials in batteries are infinitely reusable. Eventually, a robust circular battery economy could all but eliminate the need to extract them at all.

Of course, that would require recovering every EV pack at the end of its life, a sizable undertaking as the United States prepares for hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles to retire by the end of the decade. A nascent ecosystem of startups is working toward that goal, and the Inflation Reduction Act includes tax credits to incentivize the practice. But some electrification advocates say those steps do not go far enough. While the European Union recently passed a regulation mandating EV battery recycling, there is no such law in the U.S. Proponents of a federal recycling standard say that without one, batteries that could be recycled might get left behind, increasing the need for mining and undermining electrification’s environmental benefits. 

“We need a coordinated federal response to truly have a large-scale impact on meeting our demand,” said Blaine Miller-McFeeley, a policy advocate at Earthjustice, which favors a federal recycling requirement. “If you compare us to the EU, we are woefully behind and need to move much more quickly.”

That movement would have to come from Congress, according to Miller-McFeeley. Historically, however, regulating recycling has been left up to the states and local jurisdictions. The Biden administration has instead been supporting the country’s budding EV battery recycling industry, mainly by making it good business to recover critical materials. 

The Department of Energy wants to establish a “battery ecosystem” that can recover 90 percent of spent lithium batteries by 2030. It has granted billions in loans to battery recyclers to build new facilities. Automakers are incentivized to buy those recyclers’ products, because part of the federal EV tax credit applies only to cars with batteries that include a minimum amount of critical minerals that were mined, processed or recycled in the U.S. or by a free-trade partner. Manufacturers also get a tax credit for producing critical materials (including recycled ones) in the U.S.

Daniel Zotos, who handles public advocacy at the battery recycling startup Redwood Materials, said in an email that a healthy market for recycled materials is emerging. “Not only is there tremendous value today in recycling these metals, but the global demand for metals means that automakers need to source both more mined and recycled critical minerals.”

Zotos said Redwood Materials agrees with the approach the federal government has taken. “The U.S. has in fact chosen to help incentivize, rather than mandate, recycling through provisions established in the Inflation Reduction Act, which we’re deeply supportive of.”

During a pilot project in California last year, the company recovered 95 percent of the critical materials in 1,300 lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride EV and hybrid batteries. The cost of retrieving packs from throughout the state was the biggest barrier to profitability, but Zotos said that expense will subside as the industry grows.

A tiny but growing secondary market for EV batteries is also driving their reuse. Most batteries will be retired once their capacity dwindles to about 70 to 80 percent, due to the impact on the car’s range. But they’re still viable enough at that point to sustain a second life as storage for renewable energy like wind and solar power. 

B2U Storage Solutions used 1,300 retired batteries from Nissan and Honda to create 27 megawatts hours of storage at its solar farm just north of Los Angeles in Lancaster, California. Photovoltaic panels charge the packs all day, and B2U sells the stored power to the local utility during peak demand in the evening. “There is more value in reuse,” said company president Freeman Hall, “and we’re not doing anything more than deferring recycling another four or five years.” 

Homeowners and hobbyists are embracing second-life batteries, too. Henry Newman, co-owner of the auto dismantler EV Parts Solutions in Phoenix, said customers buy his Tesla and Nissan Leaf batteries to convert classic cars or create DIY power storage at home. Any batteries that Newman can’t sell are picked up by Li-Cycle, a lithium-ion battery recycler with a plant in Gilbert, Arizona. 

Newman said dismantlers and customers seem to want to do the right thing. “I know there will be people who don’t follow regulation, but my experience in the last six to seven years is that the industry is pretty conscious of it and tries to mitigate throwing these things in the trash,” he said. A law could help prevent mishandling, but Newman worries about any overreach or added costs that would come with more regulation. 

But relying on the market to ensure proper stewardship is risky, said Jessica Dunn, a senior analyst in the clean transportation program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The recycling of cars has traditionally been a market-based environment,” she said. “But we’re dealing with a completely different system now. EV batteries are big and have a lot of critical materials in them that we need to get out of them no matter if it’s economical or not.” 

Transporting EV batteries, which can weigh more than 1,500 pounds, is expensive (as much as one-third of the cost of recycling them), dangerous, and logistically challenging. Packs can catch fire if improperly handled, and they are classified as hazardous material, which requires special shipping permits. If the battery is in a remote location or is damaged, a recycler could deem it too much trouble to retrieve without a mandate to do so.

Dunn also said that not all batteries contain enough valuable materials for it to make financial sense to go through the trouble of recovering them. While most EV batteries currently contain high-value cobalt and nickel, a new generation of cheaper lithium-ion-phosphate, or LFP, batteries don’t use those metals. Tesla, Ford, and Rivian all recently announced they will use LFPs in some models.

“Just because there aren’t nickel and cobalt in them doesn’t mean that the lithium isn’t something that we should be recovering,” said Dunn. Redwood Materials said it collects lithium-ion phosphate batteries and uses the lithium within them to assemble new battery components, and that they collect all battery packs no matter their condition.

Finally, without guidelines in place, viable batteries may not be repurposed before being recycled, which Dunn said undermines their sustainability. “You’ve already put all that literal energy — and the environmental impacts that go along with that — into manufacturing these batteries,” she said. “So if you can squeak an extra five to 10 years out of them, that’s a really good option.” 

With the U.S. poised to see about 165,000 electric vehicle batteries retire in 2030, Dunn said the time to ensure no batteries are stranded is now. “We’re not seeing a big wave now, but that’s coming, and so we need to be prepared for that.”

There has been some federal movement toward a recycling requirement. The 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directed the Department of Energy to establish a task force to develop an “extended battery producer responsibility framework” to address battery design, transport, and recycling.

Extended producer responsibility, or EPR, is the approach that the EU took in its battery regulation that passed last December. EPR puts the onus on the manufacturer to ensure that what they produce is properly repurposed and then recycled, either by compelling them to pay for the recycling or to handle it themselves. 

Thirty-three states have such laws, covering 16 products ranging from mattresses to packaging. “It is a paradigm shift for how waste is managed in the United States,” said Scott Cassel of the Product Stewardship Institute. But Congress has never passed such a law. 

EV battery recycling might be the issue that could garner bipartisan support for one. Access to critical materials is a foreign policy and national security issue: China processes more than half the world’s lithium and cobalt, which means a steady domestic supply from recycling would help alleviate dependency on a geopolitical rival. 

Building out the infrastructure to dismantle, recover, and process battery materials could also create thousands of jobs, an accomplishment most lawmakers are happy to align themselves with.  

Republican senators alluded to both benefits when supporting the bipartisan Strategic EV Management Act of 2022, which passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act last year. It requires multiple agencies to work on guidelines for “reusing and recycling” batteries from vehicles retired from the federal fleet. 

Republican Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee said in a statement that the bill would ensure agencies could “reap the full economic benefits of EV investments … and do so in a manner that lessens our dependence on communist China.” 

These laws set in motion efforts to design recycling frameworks, but the timelines to develop them span years. In the meantime, a few states are weighing their own mandates. “The states don’t want to wait for any of these bills to move,” Cassel said. “They’re ready to act right now.”

In California, a Senate bill would require battery suppliers to ensure that all “vehicle traction batteries” be recovered, reused, repurposed, or recycled. The bill passed unanimously this week and is headed to the Assembly. Senator Ben Allen, who introduced the bill, said there is bipartisan political and industry support for creating a framework. “You need a system in place,” he said. “That’s like saying, ‘Oh, the people will drive just fine to and from work. We don’t need traffic laws.’” 

As it has been with other clean-vehicle targets, California could be a bellwether for a standard that would eventually take hold nationally.

“We’d love to create a system that could help to inform national policy,” said Allen. “And in this case, with this industry support and bipartisan backing, there actually may be a blueprint here.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/technology/the-u-s-doesnt-have-a-law-mandating-ev-battery-recycling-should-it/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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Given America’s penchant for gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs, you might be surprised to learn that the country’s gasoline usage is going down, maybe for good. Even though only about 1 percent of cars on the road today are electric, some say the United States has already passed “peak gasoline” — the pivotal moment when the fuel’s use finally begins a permanent decline after a century of growth. 

Gasoline consumption has not fully bounced back to levels seen before local governments began lockdowns in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of people stopped driving to work every day. Back in the pre-pandemic year of 2018, Americans burned an average of 392 million gallons of gasoline, more than one gallon every day for every person in the country. Since that annual peak, a combination of remote work, high gas prices, and fuel economy standards that require that new cars get better gas mileage have diminished demand. To stay profitable, oil refiners have cut back on production.

Demand for gasoline this year could end up at around 366 million gallons per day, down 7 percent from 2018, according to analysis provided to Grist by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy research and advocacy nonprofit. With recent policies like the Inflation Reduction Act offering a tax credit of up to $7,500 for an electric vehicle and the Biden administration’s new emissions rules — which require two-thirds of new passenger vehicles be electric by 2031 — gasoline demand could decrease almost a quarter by 2030, according to the research group, compared to current levels.

That’s still not fast enough to hit important targets to slash greenhouse gases, says Janelle London, the co-executive director of Coltura, an organization advocating for the end of gasoline. “Scientists are saying that we have to cut emissions from all sources in half by 2030 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and gasoline use just is not on track,” she said. The majority of the country’s transportation-related carbon emissions come from burning gasoline in cars, trucks, and SUVs. And transportation is currently the country’s largest source of pollution. London says that the fastest way to cut consumption is to target electric vehicle incentives toward “gasoline superusers”: the 10 percent of population that drives the most and guzzles nearly a third of the country’s gas. 

That’s not who’s buying electric vehicles right now. The typical EV driver is likely to be among those who drive the least, London said. “The only way we’re going to solve this near-term problem is to get the biggest gasoline users to switch to EVs, like, now, as soon as possible.” California, for instance, is on track for a 10 percent cut in gasoline use by 2030, far from its goal of halving gasoline use by the end of the decade. If superusers in California bought electric vehicles before everyone else, it would result in a steep, 43 percent drop that would move the state much closer to its climate goals.

London says that federal tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act “could be much better designed,” and she’s not the only one who thinks so. Ashley Nunes, director of federal climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center, says the credits aren’t necessarily prompting people to give up their gas-powered cars. They’re just adding another vehicle. An estimated 44 percent of households with an electric vehicle have at least two other cars, if not three — nearly all of which run on gas. “First and foremost, I think that electric vehicle incentives should not be given to people who are not turning in their gasoline-powered car,” Nunes said. “We’re not paying for you to add another car in your garage.” 

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Sustainable Cities and Society, Nunes and other researchers found that offering blanket subsidies for electric vehicles isn’t an economically effective way of reducing carbon emissions. Targeting subsidies at households with only one vehicle and toward taxi or Uber drivers produces more bang for the federal buck. “You want to target people who drive their cars a lot, because that’s where you see the real emission benefits associated with EVs,” Nunes said.

In some states, there’s new interest in getting frequent drivers to switch to EVs. A bill in Vermont, for instance, would allow the Burlington Electric Department to use funds to help gasoline superusers buy electric vehicles. It passed through the state legislature this month and is headed to Republican Governor Phil Scott’s desk. If signed, it’ll be the first legislation in the country to offer EV incentives specifically to “superusers,” a term coined by Coltura two years ago.

Coltura makes the case that converting the biggest gasoline users into EV owners means less money for gas stations and more for power providers. “Utilities have a huge interest in getting these superusers to switch to EVs,” London said. “Suddenly, they’d be using a lot of electricity, right?” Someone who uses 1,000 gallons of gasoline a year, if switched to an EV, would use about 9,000 kilowatts of extra electricity each year, according to Coltura. Using the average cost of gasoline and electricity in February 2023, that means they’d spend about $1,150 on electricity instead of $3,390 on gas, saving roughly $2,000 a year.

There’s another effort underway in California that would allow superusers to receive more funding, in addition to federal tax credits, to switch. Assembly Bill 1267 would have directed the California Air Resources Board to institute a program that maximizes the reduction in gasoline — and thus the climate impact — for each dollar spent on incentives for superusers. After passing unanimously through two committee hearings this spring with bipartisan support, the bill died last week. (London said that it will likely be reintroduced next year.) The state already has a hodgepodge of programs that help lower-income residents buy electric cars — including one that offers grants of up to $9,500 to replace a gas guzzler with a cleaner vehicle — though they have suffered from a lack of funding.

The superusers who make less than the state’s median income wind up spending 10 percent of their income just on putting gas in their car. “People say you can’t afford an EV,” London said. “If you’re a superuser, you can’t afford to keep paying for gasoline.” 

The average price of an electric car is about $59,000, higher than the $48,000 average for all cars. But London says that average EV cost is “irrelevant” since there are cheaper options on the market. “The question is, is there an EV at the price point that I can afford one?” she asks. While the cheapest EV model, the Chevy Bolt, is being discontinued, a new Nissan Leaf starts at just under $30,000, and tax credits can knock the price down further.

Clayton Stranger, a managing director at the Rocky Mountain Institute, said that there was a “compelling” economic case to target superusers with EV incentives, though the savings alone might not be enough to make people switch: The infrastructure needs to be built in rural places to make people feel comfortable driving an electric car, giving them confidence there’s a place to charge if they need it.

And then there’s the other aspect of ending the gasoline era: getting Americans out of their cars and into buses and trains, and onto bike lanes and sidewalks. “We also need to significantly reduce the amount of driving that is done,” Stranger said. “EVs alone don’t get us all the way there.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/peak-gasoline-superusers-electric-vehicle-incentives/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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Sweat was dripping down Luis Cassiano’s face. It was 2012, and Rio de Janeiro’s hottest day to date: At nearly 110 degrees Fahrenheit, the seaside city had just barely beaten its previous record set in 1984.

Cassiano and his mother, then 82, had lived in the same narrow four-story house since they moved to Parque Arará, a favela in northern Rio, some 20 years earlier. Like many other homes in the working-class community — one of more than 1,000 favelas in the Brazilian city of over 6.77 million — its roof is made of asbestos tiles. But homes in his community are now often roofed with corrugated steel sheets, a material frequently used for its low cost. It’s also a conductor of extreme heat.

While the temperatures outside made his roof hot enough to cook an egg — Cassiano said he once tried and succeeded — inside felt worse. “I only came home to sleep,” said Cassiano. “I had to escape.”

Parque Arará mirrors many other low-income urban communities, which tend to lack greenery and are more likely to face extreme heat than their wealthier or more rural counterparts. Such areas are often termed “heat islands” since they present pockets of high temperatures — sometimes as much as 20 degrees hotter than surrounding areas.

That weather takes a toll on human health. Heat waves are associated with increased rates of dehydration, heat stroke, and death; they can exacerbate chronic health conditions, including respiratory disorders; and they impact brain function. Such health problems will likely increase as heat waves become more frequent and severe with climate change. According to a 2021 study published in Nature Climate Change, more than a third of the world’s heat-related deaths between 1991 and 2018 could be attributed to a warming planet.

The extreme heat worried Cassiano. And as a long-time favela resident, he knew he couldn’t depend on Brazil’s government to create better living conditions for his neighbors, the majority of whom are Black. So, he decided to do it himself.

While speaking with a friend working in sustainable development in Germany, Cassiano learned about green roofs: an architectural design feature in which rooftops are covered in vegetation to reduce temperatures both inside and outdoors. The European country started to seriously explore the technology in the 1960s, and by 2019, had expanded its green roofs to an estimated 30,000 acres, more than doubling in a decade.

“Why can’t favelas do that too?” he recalled thinking.

Scientific research suggests green infrastructure can offer urban residents a wide range of benefits: In addition to cooling ambient temperatures, they can reduce stormwater runoff, curb noise pollution, improve building energy efficiency, and ease anxiety.

More than 10 years since that hot day in 2012 — and several heat records later — Cassiano heads Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit he started to educate residents about how they can build their own green roofs. Favela construction comes with its own set of technical peculiarities and public policy problems, and Cassiano enlisted the help of local scientists to research best practices and materials. But covering the roofs of an entire neighborhood requires time and — even with cost-reducing measures — a big budget.

His work has been steady, but slow. He is still far from converting every roof in his community of some 20,000 people. And with the effects of climate change arriving quickly, time may not be on their side. Still, Cassiano sees Teto Verde Favela as a template for others in similar situations around the world.

“I started to imagine the whole favela with green roofs,” he said. “And not just this favela, but others, too.”

Green roofs have been around for thousands of years, but it wasn’t until the 1960s and 70s that the modern-day version really took off, thanks to new irrigation technology and protection against leaks developed in Germany.

The technology cools local temperatures in two ways. First, vegetation absorbs less heat than other roofing materials. Second, plant roots absorb water that is then released as vapor through the leaves — a process known as evapotranspiration that offers similar cooling effects to how sweat cools human skin.

Green roofs can also help prevent flooding by reducing runoff. A conventional roof might let 100 percent of rain run off, allowing water to pour into streets, but a green roof, depending on its structure and slope, “can reduce this runoff generation rate to anywhere from 25 to 60 percent,” Lucas Camargo da Silva Tassinari, a civil engineer who researches the effectiveness of green roofs, wrote in an email to Undark.

Such interventions could be helpful in Brazil, where flooding is an ongoing issue, and temperatures are rising. A 2015 study showed that land surface temperatures in the city’s heat islands had increased 3 degrees over the previous decade. But greenery appears to help: Researchers from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, or UFRJ, found a 36 degree difference in land surface temperatures between the city’s warmest neighborhoods and nearby vegetated areas.

In Parque Arará, Cassiano said the temperature regularly rises well above what is registered as the city’s official temperature, often measured in less dense areas closer to the ocean. He decided his community’s first green roof prototype would be built on his own home. As he researched the best way to get started, Cassiano came across Bruno Rezende, a civil engineer who was looking at green roofs as part of his doctoral thesis at UFRJ. When he told him about his idea, Rezende came to Parque Arará right away.

There isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach to green roofs. A designer must take into account each location’s specific climate and building type in order for the project to not only be effective, but also structurally sound.

The problem is that green roofs can be quite heavy. They require a number of layers, each serving its own unique purpose, such as providing insulation or allowing for drainage. But Parque Arará, like all of Rio’s favelas, wasn’t built to code. Homes went up out of necessity, without engineers or architects, and are made with everything from wood scraps and daub, to bricks, cinder blocks, asbestos tiles, and sheet metal. And that informal construction couldn’t necessarily hold the weight of all the layers a green roof would require.

After looking at Cassiano’s roof, Rezende’s first suggestion was to cover it with rolls of bidim, a lightweight nonwoven geotextile made of polyester from recycled drink bottles. Inside those rolls of bidim, leftover from a recent construction project, they placed several types of plants: basket plants, inchplants, creeping inchplants, and spiderworts. They set the rolls in the grooves of the asbestos roof, and then created an irrigation system that dripped water down.

With a cheap way to install lightweight green roofs, Rezende brought Cassiano to meet his advisers and present what they had found. The university agreed that the project showed such promise that it would provide materials for the next step, Cassiano said.

Once the plants on Cassiano’s roof had time to grow, Rezende and André Mantovani, a biologist and ecologist at Rio’s Botanical Gardens, returned to see what effect it had on Cassiano’s home. With several sensors placed under the roofs, the researchers compared the temperature inside his house to that of a neighbor’s for several days. (The researchers intended the study to last longer, but the favela’s unreliable energy system kept cutting power to their sensors.)

Despite the study’s limitations, the results were encouraging. During the period that researchers recorded temperatures, Cassiano’s roof was roughly 86 degrees. His neighbor’s, on the other hand, fluctuated between 86 and 122 degrees. At one point, the roofs of the two homes differed by nearly 40 degrees.

For Cassiano, the numbers confirmed what he suspected: If he wanted to make a difference, he needed to put green roofs on as many homes as possible.

“When we talk about green roofs, we think about one house. But that’s not enough,” said Marcelo Kozmhinsky, an agronomic engineer in Recife who specializes in sustainable landscaping. “When you start to imagine a street, a block, a neighborhood, and a city or a community as a whole with several green roofs, then you have something. Because it’s about the collective. It benefits everyone.”

But thinking on a larger scale comes with a host of new challenges. In order for a green roof to be safe, a structure has to be able to support it, and studying the capacity of individual buildings takes time. And even with low-cost materials such as bidim, installing green roofs on hundreds or thousands of homes requires significant funds.

“The biggest obstacle is the cost,” said Bia Rafaelli, an architect based in São Paulo who has worked with communities like Cassiano’s to teach them about sustainable building options. “To make this all viable on a large scale,” installing green roofs on all the favelas, she said, “there would need to be sponsorship from companies or help from the government.”

While some municipalities in Brazil have legislation requiring green roofs on new construction when possible, Rio de Janeiro does not. A bill that would create a similar law to those in other cities has been at a standstill in Rio’s city council since May 2021.

Rio does, however, incentivize builders to install green roofs and other sustainable options — like solar panels and permeable paving. But such efforts don’t typically benefit residents of the favelas, where most building is done informally, without construction companies looking to legislation for guidelines and benefits.

In addition to red tape and other bureaucratic hurdles, any project related to the favelas also faces longstanding racism. According to a 2021 study conducted by Instituto Locomotiva, Data Favela, and Central Única das Favelas, 67 percent of the population in favelas across Brazil is Black. That’s disproportionately higher than the country’s general population, which is 55 percent Black.

“Public policy doesn’t reach” favelas, said Diosmar Filho, a geographer and senior researcher at the research association Iyaleta, where he heads studies on inequality and climate change. The working-class communities, he said, are heat islands because of environmental racism — the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color — which has left much of Brazil’s Black population with inadequate housing and health care, both of which are aggravated by the effects of climate change.

Such trends aren’t isolated to Brazil. A 2020 study published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning found that White neighborhoods in South African cities had disproportionately higher access to urban green infrastructure, including parks and green roofs — which the authors dubbed a “green Apartheid.” In a 2019 study, researchers at the University of Michigan used a spatial analysis to determine that green roofs were predominantly located in the city’s downtown, which they noted was more White and affluent than the rest of the city. (The study had limited data, however, and only analyzed 10 green roofs.)

Without support from the government or other authorities, Filho said, Black people often turn to each other for help. “It’s always the Black population that’s producing quality of life for the Black population,” he said, referring to people like Cassiano and projects like Teto Verde Favela.

“The actions of Teto Verde would be a great point of reference for urban housing policy for the reduction of impacts of climate change,” said Filho. But when municipalities deny people of color the right to safe housing and ways to push back against climate change, he added, “that’s when it becomes a case of environmental racism.”

Back in Rio, Cassiano continues to collaborate with research scientists and students at UFRJ. Together, they test new materials and methods to improve on the initial green roof prototype first installed on his home more than 10 years ago. To adapt for favela construction, his primary focus has been to reduce cost and reduce weight.

Instead of using an asphalt blanket as a layer of waterproof screening, Cassiano uses a vinyl sheet sandwiched between two layers of bidim. This means the cost of roofs installed by Teto Verde Favela is roughly 5 Brazilian reais, or $1, per square foot; conventional green roofs, though difficult to estimate in cost, can run as much as 53 Brazilian reais ($11) for the same amount of space. His roofs also started out hydroponic, meaning no soil was used, in order to decrease their weight.

Cassiano’s mother, now 93, loves caring for the plants on their roof. It not only helps lower the temperature in their home on hot days and retains rainwater to help prevent flooding in a downpour, but Cassiano said it also gives their mental health a much-needed boost.

“Now I couldn’t live here in this house without this green roof,” said Cassiano. “It makes me so happy when I see birds, when I see butterflies, when I see a flower or a fruit,” he added.

“It’s so much more than I ever imagined.”

Jill Langlois is an independent journalist based in São Paulo, Brazil. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, and TIME, among others.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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These days, it seems like every carmaker—from those focused on luxury options to those with an eye more toward the economical—is getting into electric vehicles. And with new US policies around purchasing incentives and infrastructure improvements, consumers might be more on board as well. But many people are still concerned about whether electric vehicles are truly better for the environment overall, considering certain questions surrounding their production process. 

Despite concerns about the pollution generated from mining materials for batteries and the manufacturing process for the EVs themselves, the environmental and energy experts PopSci spoke to say that across the board, electric vehicles are still better for the environment than similar gasoline or diesel-powered models. 

When comparing a typical commercial electric vehicle to a gasoline vehicle of the same size, there are benefits across many different dimensions. 

“We do know, for instance, if we’re looking at carbon dioxide emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, that electric vehicles operating on the typical electric grid can end up with fewer greenhouse gas emissions over the life of their vehicle,” says Dave Gohlke, an energy and environmental analyst at Argonne National Lab. “The fuel consumption (using electricity to generate the fuel as opposed to burning petroleum) ends up releasing fewer emissions per mile and over the course of the vehicle’s expected lifetime.”

[Related: An electrified car isn’t the same thing as an electric one. Here’s the difference.]

EVs also produce no tailpipe emissions, which means reductions in particulate matter or in smog precursors that contribute to local air pollution.

“The latest best evidence right now indicates that in almost everywhere in the US, electric vehicles are better for the environment than conventional vehicles,” says Kenneth Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics at Yale School of the Environment. “How much better for the environment depends on where you charge and what time you charge.”

Electric motors tend to be more efficient compared to the spark ignition engine used in gasoline cars or the compression ignition engine used in diesel cars, where there’s usually a lot of waste heat and wasted energy.

Creating an EV produces pollution during the manufacturing process. “Greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing an electric vehicle are almost twice that of an internal combustion vehicle…that is due primarily to the battery. You’re actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions to produce the vehicle, but there’s a net overall lifecycle benefit or reduction because of the significant savings in the use of the vehicle,” says Gregory Keoleian, the director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan. “We found in terms of the overall lifecycle, on average, across the United States, taking into account temperature effects, grid effects, there was 57 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for a new electric vehicle compared to a new combustion engine vehicle.” 

In terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with operating the vehicles, fully battery-powered electric vehicles were the best, followed by plug-in hybrids, and then hybrids, with internal combustion engine vehicles faring the worst, Keoleian notes. Range anxiety might still be top of mind for some drivers, but he adds that households with more than one vehicle can consider diversifying their fleet to add an EV for everyday use, when appropriate, and save the gas vehicle (or the gas feature on their hybrids) for longer trips.

The breakeven point at which the cost of producing and operating an electric vehicle starts to gain an edge over a gasoline vehicle of similar make and model occurs at around two years in, or around 20,000 to 50,000 miles. But when that happens can vary slightly on a case-by-case basis. “If you have almost no carbon electricity, and you’re charging off solar panels on your own roof almost exclusively, that breakeven point will be sooner,” says Gohlke. “If you’re somewhere with a very carbon intensive grid, that breakeven point will be a little bit later. It depends on the style of your vehicle as well because of the materials that go into it.” 

[Related: Why solid-state batteries are the next frontier for EV makers]

For context, Gohlke notes that the average EV age right now is around 12 years old based on registration data. And these vehicles are expected to drive approximately 200,000 miles over their lifetime. 

“Obviously if you drive off your dealer’s lot and you drive right into a light pole and that car never takes more than a single mile, that single vehicle will have had more embedded emissions than if you had wrecked a gasoline car on your first drive,” says Gohlke. “But if you look at the entire fleet of vehicles, all 200-plus-million vehicles that are out there and how long we expect them to survive, over the life of the vehicle, each of those electric vehicles is expected to consume less energy and emit lower emissions than the corresponding gas vehicle would’ve been.”

To put things in perspective, Gillingham says that extracting and transporting fossil fuels like oil is energy intensive as well. When you weigh those factors, electric vehicle production doesn’t appear that much worse than the production of gasoline vehicles, he says. “Increasingly, they’re actually looking better depending on the battery chemistry and where the batteries are made.” 

And while it’s true that there are issues with mines, the petrol economy has damaged a lot of the environment and continues to do so. That’s why improving individual vehicle efficiency needs to be paired with reducing overall consumption.

EV batteries are getting better

Mined materials like rare metals can have harmful social and environmental effects, but that’s an economy-wide problem. There are many metals that are being used in batteries, but the use of metals is nothing new, says Trancik. Metals can be found in a range of household products and appliances that many people use in their daily lives. 

Plus, there have been dramatic improvements in battery technology and the engineering of the vehicle itself in the past decade. The batteries have become cheaper, safer, more durable, faster charging, and longer lasting. 

“There’s still a lot of room to improve further. There’s room for improved chemistry of the batteries and improved packaging and improved coolant systems and software that manages the batteries,” says Gillingham.

The two primary batteries used in electric vehicles today are NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) and LFP (lithium-ferrous-phosphate). NMC batteries tend to use more precious metals like cobalt from the Congo, but they are also more energy dense. LFP uses more abundant metals. And although the technology is improving fast, it’s still in an early stage, sensitive to cold weather, and not quite as energy dense. LFP tends to be good for utility scale cases, like for storing electricity on the grid. 

[Related: Could swappable EV batteries replace charging stations?]

Electric vehicles also offer an advantage when it comes to fewer trips to the mechanic; conventional vehicles have more moving parts that can break down. “You’re more likely to be doing maintenance on a conventional vehicle,” says Gillingham. He says that there have been Teslas in his studies that are around eight years old, with 300,000 miles on them, which means that even though the battery does tend to degrade a little every year, that degradation is fairly modest.

Eventually, if the electric vehicle markets grow substantially, and there’s many of these vehicles in circulation, reusing the metals in the cars can increase their benefits. “This is something that you can’t really do with the fossil fuels that have already been combusted in an internal combustion engine,” says Trancik. “There is a potential to set up that circularity in the supply chain of those metals that’s not readily done with fossil fuels.”

Since batteries are fairly environmentally costly, the best case is for consumers who are interested in EVs to get a car with a small battery, or a plug-in hybrid electric car that runs on battery power most of the time. “A Toyota Corolla-sized car, maybe with some hybridization, could in many cases, be better for the environment than a gigantic Hummer-sized electric vehicle,” says Gillingham. (The charts in this New York Times article help visualize that distinction.) 

Where policies could help

Electric vehicles are already better for the environment and becoming increasingly better for the environment. 

The biggest factor that could make EVs even better is if the electrical grid goes fully carbon free. Policies that provide subsidies for carbon-free power, or carbon taxes to incentivize cleaner power, could help in this respect. 

The other aspect that would make a difference is to encourage more efficient electric vehicles and to discourage the production of enormous electric vehicles. “Some people may need a pickup truck for work. But if you don’t need a large car for an actual activity, it’s certainly better to have a more reasonably sized car,” Gillingham says.  

Plus, electrifying public transportation, buses, and vehicles like the fleet of trucks run by the USPS can have a big impact because of how often they’re used. Making these vehicles electric can reduce air pollution from idling, and routes can be designed so that they don’t need as large of a battery.  

“The rollout of EVs in general has been slower than demand would support…There’s potentially a larger market for EVs,” Gillingham says. The holdup is due mainly to supply chain problems. 

Switching over completely to EVs is, of course, not the end-all solution for the world’s environmental woes. Currently, car culture is very deeply embedded in American culture and consumerism in general, Gillingham says, and that’s not easy to change. When it comes to climate policy around transportation, it needs to address all the different modes of transportation that people use and the industrial energy services to bring down greenhouse gas emissions across the board. 

The greenest form of transportation is walking, followed by biking, followed by using public transit. Electrifying the vehicles that can be electrified is great, but policies should also consider the ways cities are designed—are they walkable, livable, and have a reliable public transit system connecting communities to where they need to go? 

“There’s definitely a number of different modes of transport that need to be addressed and green modes of transport that need to be supported,” says Trancik. “We really need to be thinking holistically about all these ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

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In 2020, about 34 million households in the United States experienced some degree of energy insecurity. Energy insecurity is defined as the inability to meet basic household energy needs, like reducing or foregoing basic necessities to pay energy bills. Others may maintain unsafe temperatures at home due to cost concerns, both of which are “chronic” forms of energy insecurity. Individuals may also experience “acute” energy insecurity, or a short-term disruption to energy sources due to infrastructural or environmental reasons, much like power outages.

People who need electronic medical devices and live in poor housing conditions tend to experience higher rates of energy insecurity. A recent Nature Communications study characterized power outages across the country from 2018 to 2020 and found that there were almost 17,500 power outages lasting more than eight hours. Outages of this duration are considered medically relevant because of potential health hazards for vulnerable groups, especially those who require electricity-dependent durable medical equipment (DME) such as oxygen concentrators and infusion pumps. Although some DME can have backup battery power, they only last a few hours.

“Understanding to what extent power outages affect health motivated us to create the county-level power outages dataset,” says Joan Casey, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington, who was involved in the study. “As our grid ages and climate change worsens, we need to understand who power outages affect.”

[Related: Fossil fuels are causing a buildup of human health problems.]

The authors used local indicators of spatial association (LISA) to identify countries with high levels of social and medical vulnerability alongside frequent power outages. In particular, counties in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Michigan experience frequent medically-relevant power outages and have a high prevalence of electricity-dependent DME use. They “face a high burden and may have more trouble responding effectively, which could result in more adverse health outcomes,” says Casey.

The authors also determined the overlap between climate events occurring on the same day as medically-relevant power outages. They reported that about 62 percent of such outages co-occurred with extreme weather events, like heavy precipitation, anomalous heat, and tropical cyclones. Furthermore, medically-relevant outages are 3.4 times more common on days with a single event and 10 times more common on days with multiple events. Weather and climate events may drive large-scale outages, but increased energy demand from an aging electrical grid may play a role in county-level outages.

Upgrading the grid and relying further on distributed generation like generating and storing renewable energy are necessary to prevent power outages and ensure that huge areas won’t go offline, says Casey. The Department of Energy intends to modernize the grid to increase resiliency, add capacity for clean energy, and optimize power delivery. The department is also investing in energy infrastructure like microgrids, which can disconnect from national infrastructure and continue to run even when the main grid is down, and grid-scale energy storage devices, which store clean electricity to help provide power during peak loads.

“Certain communities and individuals may experience more and more severe power outages or have less ability to respond,” says Casey. “These groups may be persistently marginalized and lack access to generators, charging centers, or health care.”

Communities of color have unequal access to energy generation and battery storage, even though they tend to be the hardest hit when it comes to power outages following extreme climate events. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, rural and Black communities in Puerto Rico appeared to have the longest restoration times. Higher percentages of Hispanic/Latino populations were also associated with longer outages in Florida after Hurricane Irma in 2017. Meanwhile, counties with a higher proportion of Hispanic/Latino residents faced more severe power outages during the 2021 Texas winter storm. Black residents reported more day-long outages as well.

“We need to work to understand who is most at risk during an outage and provide support to these populations,” says Casey. “This could involve preparing health systems to receive patients, community charging stations for those that rely on electricity-dependent medical equipment, or weatherproofing homes to keep indoor temperature at more optimal levels.”

[Related: Heart disease-related deaths rise in extreme heat and extreme cold.]

Developing a registry for individuals medically dependent on electricity would establish a national estimate for this vulnerable population and document their geographic location. This can help state, territorial, and local health departments prioritize efforts and anticipate the resources that first responders should deploy during emergencies. At present, the Department of Health and Human Services only keeps the record of over 2.9 million Medicare beneficiaries who need electricity-dependent DME. The number of DME users covered by other insurance programs is not known. 

Jurisdictions with a high prevalence of prolonged outages could also help vulnerable populations by establishing temporary emergency power stations. Such a solution could make electricity more accessible and reduce avoidable emergency department visits, which may prevent crowding. Together, upgrading the grid, mitigating climate change, and providing alternative electricity sources can all minimize the impacts on power supply faced by vulnerable populations and communities of color.

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Researchers recently constructed a material capable of generating near constant electricity from just the ambient air around it—thus possibly laying the groundwork for a new, virtually unlimited source of sustainable, renewable energy. In doing so, and building upon their past innovations, they now claim almost any surface could potentially be turned into a generator via replicating the electrical properties of storm clouds… but trypophobes beware.

According to a new study published today with Advanced Materials, engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have demonstrated a novel “air generator” (Air-gen) film that relies on microscopic holes smaller than 100 nanometers across—less than a thousandth the width of a single human hair. The holes’ incredibly small diameters rely on what’s known as a “mean free path,” which is the distance a single molecule can travel before colliding with another molecule of the same substance.

[Related: The US could reliably run on clean energy by 2050.]

Water molecules are floating all around in the air, and their mean free path is around 100 nm. As humid air passes through Air-gen material’s miniscule holes, the water molecules come into direct contact with first an upper, then lower chamber in the film. This creates a charge imbalance, i.e. electricity.

It’s the same physics at play in storm clouds’ lightning discharges. Although the UMass Amherst team’s product generates a miniscule fraction of a lightning bolt’s estimated 300 million volts, its several hundred millivolts of sustained energy is incredibly promising for scalability and everyday usage. This is particularly evident when considering that air humidity can diffuse in three-dimensional space. In theory, thousands of Air-gen layers can be stacked atop one another, thus scaling up the device without increasing its overall footprint. According to the researchers, such a product could offer kilowatts of power for general usage.

[Related: How an innovative battery system in the Bronx will help charge up NYC’s grid.]

The team believes their Air-gen devices could one day be far more space efficient than other renewable energy options like solar and wind power. What’s more, the material can be engineered into a variety of form factors to blend into an environment, as contrasted with something as visually noticeable as a solar farm or wind turbine.

“Imagine a future world in which clean electricity is available anywhere you go,”Jun Yao, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the paper’s senior author, said in a statement. “The generic Air-gen effect means that this future world can become a reality.”

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Update May 25, 2023: This post has been updated with a comment from Chevron.

The already questionable $2 billion a year voluntary emissions offset market is facing even more scrutiny. An investigation by transnational corporate watchdog Corporate Accountability first reported in The Guardian found that carbon offsets from fossil fuel giant Chevron are mostly worthless—could also cause harm. The investigation found that the company relies on “junk” carbon offsets and “unviable” technologies. These actions do little to offset the company’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

The new research from Corporate Accountability found that between 2020 and 2022, 93 percent of the offsets that Chevron bought and counted towards their climate targets from voluntary carbon markets were actually too environmentally problematic to be considered as anything other than worthless or junk.

[Related: Many popular carbon offsets don’t actually counteract emissions, study says.]

Carbon offsets are tradable “rights” or certificates that allow the buyer to compensate for 1 ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent in greenhouse gasses. These offsets are usually in the form of an investment in emissions-reducing environmental projects in other parts of the world. 

An investigation by The Guardian and Germany’s Die Zeit, and the nonprofit journalism outfit, SourceMaterial earlier this year found that the world’s leading provider of these offsets, Verra, may be making the climate worse. Verra is often used by major corporations like Shell and Disney, but over 90 percent of Verra’s most popular rainforest offset credits were discovered to be  “phantom credits” that do not result in “genuine carbon reductions.”

Carbon offsets are considered worthless or having low environmental integrity if the project is linked to a plantation, forest, or green energy project. This includes hydroelectric dams that don’t lead to any additional reductions in greenhouse gasses, or exaggerates the benefits and minimizes risks of emitting emissions, among some other factors.

Chevron often purchased offsets that focused on large dams, plantations, or forests, according to the report. It found that many of these “worthless” offsets are also linked to some alleged social and environmental harms. These harms are primarily in communities in the global south, which happen to face the most harm by the climate crisis that Big Oil helped create. 

“Chevron’s junk climate action agenda is destructive and reckless, especially in light of climate science underscoring the only viable way forward is an equitable and urgent fossil fuel phase-out,” Rachel Rose Jackson from Corporate Accountability told The Guardian.

Chevron is the second-largest fossil fuel company in the United States and its vast operations stretch north to Canada and the United Kingdom and south towards Brazil, Nigeria, and Australia. It reported over $35 billion in profits in 2022 and its projected emissions between 2022 and 2025 are equal to those from 364 coal-fired power plants per year. This is more than the total emissions of 10 European countries combined for a similar three-year period, according to the report.

[Related: BP made $28 billion last year, and now it’s backtracking on its climate goals.]

Chevron “aspires” to achieve net zero upstream emissions by 2050, largely relying on carbon offset schemes and carbon capture and storage to do this. Carbon offsets rely on environmental projects to cancel out a company’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The new report further argues that the widespread use of these worthless offsets undermines the company’s net zero aspiration. Their net-zero aspirations only apply to less than 10 percent of the company’s carbon footprint–the upstream emissions that are produced from the production and transport of gas and oil. It excludes the downstream or end use emissions that are due to burning fossil fuels.

“Any climate plan that is premised on offsets, CCS, and excludes scope 3 [downstream] emissions is bound to fail,” Steven Feit, fossil economy legal and research manager at the Center for International Environmental Law, told The Guardian. “It’s clear from this report and other research that net zero as a framework opens the door for claims of climate action while continuing with business as usual, and not moving towards a low-carbon Paris [agreement]-aligned 1.5-degree [2.7 degree] future.”

Bill Turenne, an external affairs coordinator from Chevron, added via email that Chevron believes the report is “biased against our industry and paints an incomplete picture of Chevron’s efforts to advance a lower carbon future.” The offsets reviewed in the Corporate Accountability report are “compliance-grade offsets accepted by governments in the regions where we operate,” Turenne said.

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The concept of a sailboat might conjure up thoughts of swanky sailing holidays or fearsome pirates—and some companies are hoping to bring them back into the mainstream, albeit in a modern, emissions-focused way. According to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), there are seven types of Wind Propulsion Technologies, or sails, which could potentially help the organization bring down the shipping industry’s currently massive carbon footprint. 

[Related: Colombia is deploying a new solar-powered electric boat.]

Wired reports that a Swedish company called Oceanbird is building a sail that can fit onto existing vessels. The Wingsail 560 looks kind of like an airplane wing placed vertically like a mast on a boat, and this summer the company plans to test out a prototype on land. If all goes well, next year it could be making its oceanic debut on a 14-year-old car carrier, also known as a roll-on/roll-off or RoRo shipping container, called the Wallenius Tirranna.

This is how the sail, coming in at 40-meters high and weighing 200 metric tons, works—the sail has two parts, one of which is a flap that brings air into a more rigid, steel-cored component that allows for peak, yacht-racing inspired aerodynamics, according to Wired. Additionally, the wing is able to fold down or tilt in order to pass underneath bridges and reduce wind power in case of an approaching storm. One Oceanbird sail placed on an existing vessel is estimated to reduce fuel consumption from the main engine by up to 10 percent, saving around 675,000 liters of diesel each year, according to trade publication Offshore Energy.

But, the real excitement is the idea of a redesigned vessel built especially for the gigantic sails. According to Wired, the Oceanbird-designed, 200-meter-long car carrier Orcelle Wind could cut emissions by at least 60 percent compared to a sailless RoRo vessel. The company themselves even estimates that it could reduce emissions by “up to 90 percent if all emissions-influencing factors are aligned.” However, it will still be a few years before one of these hits the high seas. 

[Related: Care about the planet? Skip the cruise, for now.]

Oceanbird isn’t the only company setting sail—according to Gavin Allwright, secretary general of the International Windship Association, by the end of the year there could be 48 or 49 wind-powered vessels on the seas. One such ship already took a voyage from Rotterdam to French Guiana in late 2022 using a hybrid propulsion of traditional engines and sails. However Allwright tells Wired “we’re still in pretty early days.”

The IMO has already set a climate goal of halving emissions between 2008 and 2050, but experts have called this goal “important, but inadequate” to keep emissions low enough for a liveable future. Currently, these goals are still not being reached, with a Climate Action Tracker assessment showing that emissions are set to grow until 2050 unless further action is taken.

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A new report finds that methane regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency  could spur job growth in Texas as oil and gas operators measure, monitor and mitigate the harmful greenhouse gas.

While Texas officials argue the methane regulations would kill jobs, the report, published today by the Texas Climate Jobs Project and the Ray Marshall Center at the University of Texas, Austin, found that new federal methane regulations could create between 19,000 and 35,000 jobs in the state. 

Oil and gas producing regions, including the Permian Basin, would need a significant workforce to detect methane leaks, replace components known to leak the gas and plug abandoned wells. Previous research shows the methane mitigation industry is already growing.

In the absence of state methane rules, the EPA’s draft methane rule, first issued in November 2021 and strengthened in a supplemental filing last November, along with a new methane fee under the Inflation Reduction Act, will have a major impact on oil and gas operations in the Lone Star state. 

“We want to show that environmental policies are not job killers,” said Christopher Agbo, research and policy coordinator for the Texas Climate Jobs Project, an affiliate of the Texas AFL-CIO. “You can create tens of thousands of good-paying, family-sustaining union jobs while also cutting back on emissions.”

Changing the Methane Narrative 

The EPA’s methane regulations, to be finalized later this year, would reduce methane emissions 87 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The Inflation Reduction Act’s first-ever methane fee for large emitters will also start in 2024 at $900 per ton of methane and increase to $1,500 per ton by 2026.

Reducing methane emissions is one of the most effective short-term measures to slow the pace of climate change because methane traps about 80 times more heat in the atmosphere over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide.

But Texas has been a stubborn opponent of federal methane regulations. In January 2021, shortly after Biden ordered the EPA to develop new methane rules, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order directing state agencies to use every legal avenue to oppose federal action challenging the “strength, vitality, and independence of the energy industry.”

After the EPA released its draft methane rule in 2021, Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian issued a statement that “anti -oil and -gas policies will kill jobs, stifle economic growth, and make America more reliant o[n] foreign nations to provide reliable energy.”

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Railroad Commission submitted joint public comments to the EPA, referring to provisions of the proposed methane rules as “burdensome,” “economically unreasonable” and “onerous.”

The new report, Mitigating Methane in Texas, seeks to change the narrative on methane regulations in Texas, concluding that the methane mitigation sector could grow rapidly as new regulations go into effect. 

Slashing methane emissions in Texas would be a mammoth undertaking. The effort would require the creation of thousands of new jobs, from deploying drones to measure emissions to decommissioning orphaned wells to installing flare systems on storage tanks.

The report authors found that to comply with methane regulations, Texas would need at least 19,000 workers and up to as many as 35,000, which would add between six and nine percent to the number employed in the oil and gas industry in 2022.

“We are the largest emitter of methane in the country,” Agbo said. “So all this funding and regulations toward methane mitigation are going to play a huge role in Texas.”

He and co-author Greg Cumpton, of the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources at UT Austin, found that methane mitigation would create long-term maintenance jobs in the oil and gas sector, including leak inspection and detection, leak repair and storage tank maintenance. Short-term replacement and abatement jobs would include replacing methane-emitting components like pneumatic controllers. 

The biggest labor demand would be in the Permian Basin, where the authors estimate addressing methane emissions would require an additional 7,556 jobs. The report authors urge new jobs in methane mitigation be unionized and protected under prevailing wage laws and other high road employment practices. 

“Part of ensuring that the jobs created in areas like the Permian Basin are good-paying jobs would be implementing Department of Labor-registered apprenticeship programs,” Agbo said. “There needs to be collaboration between labor unions, local, state and local governments, and also workforce development boards in the area.”

“A Big Growth Field”

Oil and gas operators around the world are already working to reduce methane emissions. Some turn to Austin-based SeekOps, a company that pairs sensor technology with autonomous drones to measure emissions. While many of the firm’s clients are in Europe—where methane regulations have been in effect for years—SeekOps expects its U.S. clientele to grow.

“It’s a big growth field,” said Paul Khuri, SeekOps vice president of business development. “Next year is going to be a huge year, because the IRA taxes start on Jan. 1.”

SeekOps currently has 30 employees, including data analysts, atmospheric scientists, software and hardware engineers and drone pilots. The company was founded in California but relocated to Austin to be closer to potential customers in the energy industry. 

Khuri said SeekOps clients include oil and gas companies that have voluntarily committed to emissions reductions, regardless of the local regulatory framework. He said he will be watching how the federal government enforces the new methane fees to gauge how much the methane mitigation industry could grow.

“That will be a really good indicator of where the market is going to head and see whether this will be a massive growth area,” Khuri said.

A 2021 Environmental Defense Fund report found that the methane mitigation sector was already growing rapidly. The report identified 215 firms manufacturing technology or providing services to manage methane emissions in the oil and gas industry. The number of manufacturing firms had increased by 33 percent from 2014 to 2021 and the number of service firms had increased by 90 percent between 2017 and 2021.

The EDF report found that more companies mitigating methane had employees located in Texas than any other state. Companies headquartered in Texas include Solar Injection Systems in Odessa, which manufactures solar-powered chemical injection pumps; Cimarron Energy, an emissions control company in Houston, and CI Systems in Carrollton, which commercializes infrared remote sensing technology. 

Arvind Ravikumar, an engineering professor and co-director of the Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab at UT Austin, said that oil and gas companies are facing pressure on multiple fronts to reign in methane emissions. More buyers of U.S. natural gas in Europe and Asia are tracking supply chain methane emissions and some utilities are seeking “certified natural gas” with lower associated methane emissions.

“Even if the EPA methane regulations were not in place, the majority of these emissions detection and reduction efforts would go on,” Ravikumar said.

Because methane emissions occur through venting and leaking, not combustion, direct on-site measurements are necessary, Ravikumar said. This bodes well for job creation.

“Methane mitigation or methane emissions detection is not something you can do remotely. You have to be on the ground,” he said. “What that means is you’re going to put a lot more people in some of the most remote, rural corners of the country.”

Ravikumar said many facets of methane measurement and accounting must still be ironed out. But he agreed the economic benefits to oil and gas producing regions of Texas cannot be overlooked.

“Having a policy that’s going to create jobs exclusively in remote parts of the country is really hard to do,” Ravikumar said. “And methane is one place where you can do that successfully.”

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

In the Mon Valley of western Pennsylvania, steel was once a way of life, one synonymous with the image of rural, working-class Rust Belt communities. At its height in 1910, Pittsburgh alone produced 25 million tons of it, or 60 percent of the nation’s total. Bustling mills linger along the Monongahela River and around Pittsburgh, but employment has been steadily winding down for decades.  

Though President Trump promised a return to the idealized vision of American steelmaking that Bruce Springsteen might sing about, the industry has changed since its initial slump four decades ago. Jobs declined 49 percent between 1990 and 2021, when increased efficiency saw the sector operating at its highest capacity in 14 years. Despite ongoing supply chain hiccups and inflation, demand continues growing globally, particularly in Asia. But even as demand for this essential material climbs, so too does the pressure to decarbonize its production.

Earlier this month, the progressive Ohio River Valley Institute released a study that found a carefully planned transition to “green” steel — manufactured using hydrogen generated with renewable energy — could be a climatic and economic boon. It argues that as countries work toward achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, a green steel boom in western Pennsylvania could help the U.S. meet that goal, make its steel industry competitive again, and employ a well-paid industrial workforce.

“A transition to fossil fuel-free steelmaking could grow total jobs supported by steelmaking in the region by 27 percent to 43 percent by 2031, forestalling projected job losses,” the study noted. “Regional jobs supported by traditional steelmaking are expected to fall by 30 percent in the same period.”

In a world struggling to keep global climate change below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the traditional coke-based process of making steel, which uses coal to power the furnaces that melt iron ore, remains a big problem. The industry generates 7.2 percent of all carbon emissions worldwide, making it more polluting than the entire European Union. Old-school steel manufacturing relies on metallurgical coal — that is, high-quality, low-moisture coal, which still releases carbon, sulfur dioxide, and other pollutants. About 70 percent of today’s steel is made that way, much of it produced cheaply in countries with lax environmental regulations. However, only 30 percent of U.S. production uses this method.

Technological improvements and pressure to reduce emissions have led to increased use of leftover, or “scrap,” steel during production. When products made of traditional, coke-based steel have reached the end of their useful life, they can be returned to the furnace and recycled almost infinitely. This reduces the labor needed to produce the same amount and quality of steel as traditional production methods, and it accounts for about 70 percent of the nation’s output.

The scrap is melted in an electric arc furnace and uses hydrogen, rather than coke, to process iron ore. It requires less energy than traditional methods, particularly if renewable energy powers the furnace and generates the hydrogen. Nick Messenger, an economist who worked on the Institute’s study, believes this approach could revitalize the Rust Belt by placing the region at the forefront of an innovation the industry must inevitably embrace.

“What we actually show is that by doing that three-step process and doing it all close to home in Pennsylvania,” he said, “each step of that process has the potential to create jobs and support jobs in the community” — from building and operating solar panels and turbines, to operating electrolyzers to produce electricity, to making the steel itself.

The study claims a business-as-usual approach would follow current production and employment trends, leading to a 30 percent reduction in jobs by 2031. A transition to hydrogen-based electric arc manufacturing could increase jobs in both the steel and energy industries by as much as 43 percent. The study calls western Pennsylvania an ideal location for this transition, given its proximity to clean water, an experienced workforce, and 22,200 watts of wind and solar energy potential.

To make it work for the Mon Valley, the study notes, manufacturers must get started as soon as possible. The quest for green steel isn’t just an ideological matter, but a question of global economic power. “There’s a huge new race, in a sense, to get in on the ground floor,” Messenger said. “When you’re the first one, you attract the types of capital, you attract the types of businesses and entrepreneurs and industries that cause that kind of flourishing boom to happen around this particular sector.” 

The Ohio Valley’s fabled steel mills may be looking, if cautiously, toward a decarbonized future. Two years ago, U.S. Steel canceled a $1.3 billion investment in the Mon Valley Works complex, citing, in part, its net-zero goals and the need to switch to electric arc steel production. Of course, the biggest challenge is that while the Mon Valley has massive wind energy potential, very little of it has been tapped. But thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, federal subsidies and tax breaks could give clean energy developers a boost.

The Biden administration has shown faith in green steel through a series of grant programs, subsidies and tax credits, including $6 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act to decarbonize heavy industry. But Europe has the advantage. Nascent projects in Sweden, Germany, and Spain dot the European Union, with the United Kingdom close behind. Some are using hydrogen, but others are experimenting with biochar, electrolysis, or other ways to power the electric arc process. 

In the United States, a company called Boston Metal is experimenting with an oxide electrolysis model, hoping to make the U.S. a leader in green steel technology. This model eliminates the need for coal by creating a chemical reaction that emulates the reaction that turns iron ore into steel. The company is in the process of commercializing its technology and plans to license it to steel manufacturers. Adam Rauwerdink, the company’s senior vice president of business development, hopes to see its first adopter by 2026.

Rauwerdink believes the world is moving away from traditional steel manufacturing and  that U.S. companies will be playing catch up if they don’t adapt. He has seen more and more companies and investors get on board in the past five years, including ArcelorMittal, the world’s second biggest steel producer. It invested $36 million in Boston Metal this year. He considers that investment a clear sign that the race for green steel is on, and it’s time for manufacturers to embrace the technology — or get left behind.

“Historically, you would have built a steel plant near a coal mine,” he said. “Now you’re going to be building it where you have clean power.”

This story has been updated to clarify that Boston Metal is still commercializing its technology.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/steel-built-the-rust-belt-green-steel-could-help-rebuild-it/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post Steel built the Rust Belt. Green steel could help rebuild it. appeared first on Popular Science.

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On a small patch of land in the northeast Bronx in New York City sits a tidy but potent battery storage system. Located across the street from a beige middle school building, and not too far from a Planet Fitness and a Dollar Tree, the battery system is designed to send power into the grid at peak moments of demand on hot summer afternoons and evenings. 

New York state has a goal of getting a whopping six gigawatts of battery storage systems online in the next seven years, and this system, at about three megawatts, is a very small but hopefully helpful part of that. It’s intended to be able to send out those three megawatts of power over a four-hour period, typically between 4 pm and 8 pm on the toastiest days of the year, with the goal of making a burdened power grid a bit less stressed and ideally a tad cleaner. 

The local power utility, Con Edison, recently connected the battery system to the grid. Here’s how it works, and why systems like this are important.

From power lines to batteries, and back again

The source of the electricity for these batteries is the existing power distribution lines that run along the top of nearby poles. Those wires carry power at 13,200 volts, but the battery system itself needs to work with a much lower voltage. That’s why before the power even gets to the batteries themselves, it needs to go through transformers. 

During a January tour of the site for Popular Science, Adam Cohen, the CTO of NineDot Energy, the company behind this project, opens a gray metal door. Behind it are transformers. “They look really neato,” he says. Indeed, they do look neat—three yellowish units that take that voltage and transform it into 480 volts. This battery complex is actually two systems that mirror each other, so other transformers are in additional equipment nearby. 

After those transformers do their job and convert the voltage to a lower number, the electricity flows to giant white Tesla Megapack battery units. Those batteries are large white boxes with padlocked cabinets, and above them is fire-suppression equipment. Not only do these battery units store the power, but they also have inverters to change the AC power to DC before the juice can be stored. When the power does flow out of the batteries, it’s converted back to AC power again. 

The battery storage system is designed to follow a specific rhythm. It will charge gradually between 10 pm and 8 am, Cohen says. That’s a time “when the grid has extra availability, the power is cheaper and cleaner, [and] the grid is not overstressed,” he says. When the day begins and the grid starts experiencing more demand, the batteries stop charging. 

In the summer heat, when there’s a “grid event,” that’s when the magic happens, Cohen says. Starting around 4 pm, the batteries will be able to send their power back out into the grid to help destress the system. They’ll be able to produce enough juice to power about 1,000 homes over that four-hour period, according to an estimate by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA.

[Related: How the massive ‘flow battery’ coming to an Army facility in Colorado will work]

The power will flow back up into the same wires that charged them before, and then onto customers. The goal is to try to make the grid a little bit cleaner, or less dirty, than it would have been if the batteries didn’t exist. “It’s offsetting the dirty energy that would have been running otherwise,” Cohen says. 

Of course, the best case scenario would be for batteries to get their power from renewable sources, like solar or wind, and the site does have a small solar canopy that could send a teeny tiny bit of clean energy into the grid. But New York City and the other downstate zones near it currently rely very heavily on fossil fuels. For New York City in 2022 for example, utility-scale energy production was 100 percent from fossil fuels, according to a recent report from the New York Independent System Operator. (One of several solutions in the works to that problem involves a new transmission line.) What that means is that the batteries will be drawing power from a fossil-fuel dominant grid, but doing so at nighttime when that grid is hopefully less polluting. 

How systems like these can help

Electricity is very much an on-demand product. What we consume “has to be made right now,” Cohen notes from behind the wheel of his Nissan Leaf, as we drive towards the battery storage site in the Bronx on a Friday in January. Batteries, of course, can change that dynamic, storing the juice for when it’s needed. 

This project in the Bronx is something of an electronic drop in a bucket: At three megawatts, the batteries represent a tiny step towards New York State’s goal to have six gigawatts, or 6,000 megawatts, of battery storage on the grid by 2030. Even though this one facility in the Bronx represents less than one percent of that goal, it can still be useful, says Schuyler Matteson, a senior advisor focusing on energy storage and policy at NYSERDA. “Small devices play a really important role,” he says. 

One of the ways that small devices like these can help is they can be placed near the people who are using it in their homes or businesses, so that electricity isn’t lost as it is transmitted in from further away. “They’re very close to customers on the distribution network, and so when they’re providing power at peak times, they’re avoiding a lot of the transmission losses, which can be anywhere from five to eight percent of energy,” Matteson says. 

And being close to a community provides interesting opportunities. A campus of the Bronx Charter Schools for Better Learning sits on the third floor of the middle school across the street. There, two dozen students have been working in collaboration with a local artist, Tijay Mohammed, to create a mural that will eventually hang on the green fence in front of the batteries. “They are so proud to be associated with the project,” says Karlene Buckle, the manager of the enrichment program at the schools.

Grid events

The main benefit a facility like this can have is the way it helps the grid out on a hot summer day. That’s because when New York City experiences peak temperatures, energy demand peaks too, as everyone cranks up their air conditioners. 

To meet that electricity demand, the city relies on its more than one dozen peaker plants, which are dirtier and less efficient than an everyday baseline fossil fuel plant. Peaker plants disproportionately impact communities located near them. “The public health risks of living near peaker plants range from asthma to cancer to death, and this is on top of other public health crises and economic hardships already faced in environmental justice communities,” notes Jennifer Rushlow, the dean of the School for the Environment at Vermont Law and Graduate School via email. The South Bronx, for example, has peaker plants, and the borough as a whole has an estimated 22,855 cases of pediatric asthma, according to the American Lung Association. Retiring them or diminishing their use isn’t just for energy security—it’s an environmental justice issue.

So when power demand peaks, “what typically happens is we have to ramp up additional natural gas facilities, or even in some instances, oil facilities, in the downstate region to provide that peak power,” Matteson says. “And so every unit of storage we can put down there to provide power during peak times offsets some of those dirty, marginal units that we would have to ramp up otherwise.” 

By charging at night, instead of during the day, and then sending the juice out at peak moments, “you’re actually offsetting local carbon, you’re offsetting local particulate matter, and that’s having a really big benefit of the air quality and health impacts for New York City,” he says.  

[Related: At New York City’s biggest power plant, a switch to clean energy will help a neighborhood breathe easier]

Imagine, says Matteson, that a peaker plant is producing 45 megawatts of electricity. A 3-megawatt battery system coming online could mean that operators could dial down the dirty plant to 42 megawatts instead. But in an ideal world, it doesn’t come online at all. “We want 15 of [these 3 megawatt] projects to add up to 45 megawatts, and so if they can consistently show up at peak times, maybe that marginal dirty generator doesn’t even get called,” he says. “If that happens enough, maybe they retire.” 

Nationally, most of the United States experiences a peak need for electricity on hot summer days, just like New York City does, with a few geographic exceptions, says Paul Denholm, a senior research fellow focusing on energy storage at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. “Pretty much most of the country peaks during the summertime, in those late afternoons,” he says. “And so we traditionally build gas turbines—we’ve got hundreds of gigawatts of gas turbines that have been installed for the past several decades.” 

While the three-megawatt project in the Bronx is not going to replace a peaker plant by any means, Denholm says that in general, the trend is moving towards batteries taking over what peaker plants do. “As those power plants get old and retire, you need to build something new,” he says. “Within the last five years, we’ve reached this tipping point, where storage can now outcompete new traditional gas-fired turbines on a life-cycle cost basis.” 

Right now, New York state has 279 megawatts of battery storage already online, which is around 5 percent of the total goal of 6 gigawatts. Denholm estimates that nationally, nearly nine gigawatts of battery storage are online already. 

“There’s significant quantifiable benefits to using [battery] storage as peaker,” Denholm says. One of those benefits is a fewer local emissions, which is important because “a lot of these peaker plants are in places that have historically been [environmental-justice] impacted regions.” 

“Even when they’re charging off of fossil plants, they’re typically charging off of more efficient units,” he adds. 

If all goes according to plan, the batteries will start discharging their juice this summer, on the most sweltering days. 

The post How an innovative battery system in the Bronx will help charge up NYC’s grid appeared first on Popular Science.

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On May 11, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will propose new limits on the greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants. Second only to the nation’s transportation sector, the electricity sector generates about 25 percent of all greenhouse gas pollution in the US. 

[Related: Renewable energy is climbing in the US, but so are our emissions—here’s why.]

According to the EPA, the proposal for coal and new natural gas power plants would keep up to 617 million metric tons of total carbon dioxide from spilling into the air through 2042. This is the equivalent to reducing the annual emissions of about half the cars in the United States. The EPA estimates that the net climate and health benefits of these new standards on new gas and existing coal-fired power plants are up to $85 billion through 2042.

“By proposing new standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, EPA is delivering on its mission to reduce harmful pollution that threatens people’s health and wellbeing,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. “EPA’s proposal relies on proven, readily available technologies to limit carbon pollution and seizes the momentum already underway in the power sector to move toward a cleaner future. Alongside historic investment taking place across America in clean energy manufacturing and deployment, these proposals will help deliver tremendous benefits to the American people—cutting climate pollution and other harmful pollutants, protecting people’s health, and driving American innovation.”

The new rules will likely not mandate the use of technologies that capture carbon emissions before they leave a smokestack, such as direct air capture. It will instead set caps on pollution rates that planet operators will have to meet by either using a different technology or switching to a fuel source like green hydrogen. 

The new limits represent the Biden administration’s most ambitious effort to date to roll back the pollution from the US’ second-largest contributor to climate change. It also follows the current administration’s plans to cut car tailpipe emissions by speeding up the transition to mostly elective vehicles and curb methane leaks from gas and oil wells.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is adding over $370 billion into clean energy programs and the administration hopes that these new actions push the US further in the fight to constrain further human-made global warming.  

[Related: At New York City’s biggest power plant, a switch to clean energy will help a neighborhood breathe easier.]

These investments and regulations could put the US on track to meet President Biden’s pledge that the US will cut greenhouse gasses in half by 2030 and stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2050. While more policies are needed to reach the 2050 target, scientists say these goals must be met by all major industrialized nations to keep average global temperatures from increasing by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit compared with pre industrial levels. Beyond that temperature tipping point, catastrophic flooding, drought, heat waves, flooding, species extinction, and crop failure will become significantly harder for humanity to handle. Earth has already warmed by two degrees Fahrenheit.

If these regulations are finalized, they would mark the first time that the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. It extends to all current and future electric plants as well. 

The plan will face steep opposition from the fossil fuel industry and Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.

Despite these proposed new regulations, Biden has also faced criticism from many environmentalists for the decision to approve the Willow oil project in Alaska this March. Environmental groups call this massive oil drilling plan by ConocoPhillips a “carbon bomb” that could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil per day. 

Many younger voters and young climate activists say Biden broke a major 2020 campaign promise by approving Willow. With this in mind, EPA officials will announce these new regulations at the University of Maryland.

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WHEN A NUCLEAR-POWERED satellite crashes to Earth, whom do the authorities call? What about when a derailed train spills toxic chemicals? Or when a wildfire burns within the fenceline of a nuclear-weapons laboratory? When an earthquake damages a nuclear power plant, or when it melts down? 

Though its name isn’t catchy, the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) is on speed dial for these situations. If hazardous material—whether of the nuclear, radiological, biological, chemical, or natural variety—gets spewed into the atmosphere, NARAC’s job is to trace its potentially deadly dispersion. The center’s scientists use modeling, simulation, and real-world data to pinpoint where those hazards are in space and time, where the harmful elements will soon travel, and what can be done.

The landscape of emergency response

NARAC is part of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which is run by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which itself is part of the Department of Energy—the organization in charge of, among other things, developing and maintaining nuclear weapons. 

Plus, NARAC is part of a group called NEST, or the Nuclear Emergency Support Team. That team’s goal is to both prevent and respond to nuclear and radiological emergencies—whether they occur by accident or on purpose. Should a dirty bomb be ticking in Tempe, they’re the ones who would search for it. Should they not find it in time, they would also help deal with the fallout. In addition, NEST takes preventative measures, like flying radiation-detecting helicopters over the Super Bowl to make sure no one has poisonous plans. “That’s a very compelling national mission,” says Lee Glascoe, the program leader for LLNL’s contribution to NEST, which includes NARAC. “And NARAC is a part of that.”

And if a suspicious substance does get released into the atmosphere, NARAC’s job is to provide information that NEST personnel can use in the field and authorities can use to manage catastrophe. Within 15 minutes of a notification about toxic materials in the air, NARAC can produce a 3D simulation of the general situation: what particles are expected where, where the airflow will waft them, and what the human and environmental consequences could be. 

In 30 to 60 minutes, they can push ground-level data gathered by NEST personnel (who are out in the field while the NARAC scientists are running simulations) into their supercomputers and integrate it into their models. That will give more precise and accurate information about where plumes of material are in the air, where the ground will be contaminated, where affected populations are, how many people might die or be hurt, where evacuation should occur, and how far blast damage extends. 

Modeling the atmosphere

These capabilities drifted into Lawrence Livermore decades ago. “Livermore has a long history of atmospheric modeling, from the development of the first climate model,” says John Nasstrom, NARAC’s chief scientist.

That model was built by physicist Cecil “Chuck” Leith. Leith, back in the early Cold War, got permission from lab director Edward Teller (who co-founded the lab and was a proponent of the hydrogen bomb) to use early supercomputers to develop and run the first global atmospheric circulation model. Glascoe calls this effort “the predecessor for weather modeling and climate modeling.” The continuation of Leith’s work split into two groups at Livermore: one focused on climate and one focused on public health—the common denominator between the two being how the atmosphere works. 

In the 1970s, the Department of Energy came to the group focused on public health and asked, says Nasstrom, whether the models could show in near real time where hazardous material would travel once released. Livermore researchers took that project on in 1973, working on a prototype that during a real event could tell emergency managers at DOE sites (home to radioactive material) and nuclear power plants who would get how much of a dose and where.

The group was plugging along on that project when the real world whirled against its door. In 1979, a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania partially melted down. “They jumped into it,” Nasstrom says of his predecessors. The prototype system wasn’t yet fully set up, but the team immediately started to build in 3D information about the terrain around Three Mile Island to get specific predictions about the radionuclides’ whereabouts and effects.

After that near catastrophe, the group began preemptively building that terrain data in for other DOE and nuclear sites before moving on to the whole rest of the US and incorporating real-time meteorological data. “Millions of weather observations today are streaming into our center right now,” says Nasstrom, “as well as global and regional forecast model output from NOAA [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], the National Weather Service, and other agencies.” 

NARAC also evolved with the 1986 Chernobyl accident. “People anticipated that safety systems would be in place and catastrophic releases wouldn’t necessarily happen,” says Nasstrom. “Then Chernobyl went wrong, and we quickly developed a much larger-scale modeling system that could transport material around the globe.” Previously, they had focused on the consequences at a more regional level, but Chernobyl lofted its toxins around the globe, necessitating an understanding of that planetary profusion.

“It’s been in a continuous state of evolution,” says Nasstrom, of NARAC’s modeling and simulation capabilities. 

‘All the world’s terrain mapped out’

Today, NARAC uses high-resolution weather models from NOAA as well as forecast models it helped develop. Every day, the center brings in more than a terabyte of weather forecast model data. And those 3D topography maps they previously had to scramble to make are all taken care of. “We already have all the world’s terrain mapped out,” says Glascoe. 

NARAC also keeps up-to-date population information, including how the distribution of people in a city differs between day and night, and data on the buildings in cities, whose architecture changes airflow. That’s on top of land-use information, since whether an area is made up of plains or forest changes the analysis. All of that together helps scientists figure out what a given hazardous release will mean to actual people in actual locations around actual buildings.

Helping bring all those inputs together, NARAC scientists have also created ready-to-go models specific to different kinds of emergencies, such as nuclear power plant failures, dirty bomb detonations, plumes of biological badness, and actual nuclear weapons explosions. “So that as soon as something happens, we can say, ‘Oh, it’s something like this,’ that we got something to start with.” 

Katie Lundquist, a scientist specializing in scientific computing and computational fluid dynamics, is NARAC’s modeling team lead. Her team helps develop the models that underlie NARAC’s analysis, and right now it is working to improve understanding of how debris would be distributed in the mushroom cloud after a nuclear detonation and how radioactive material would mix with the debris. She’s also working on general weather modeling and making sure the software is all up to snuff for next-generation exascale supercomputers. 

“The atmosphere is really complex,” Lundquist says. “It covers a lot of scales, from a global scale down to just tiny little eddies that might be between buildings in an area. And so it takes a lot of computing power.”

NARAC has also striven to improve its communications game. “The authorities make the decision, but in a crisis, you can’t just give them all the information you’ve generated technically,” Glascoe says. “You can’t give them all sorts of pretty images of a plume.” They want one or two pages telling them only what the potential impact is. “And what sort of guidelines might help their decision making of whether people should shelter, evacuate, that sort of thing,” says Glascoe. 

To that end, NARAC has made publicly available examples of its briefing products, outlining what an emergency manager could expect to see in its one to two pages about dirty bombs, nuclear detonations, nuclear power plant accidents, hazardous chemicals, and biological agents.

The sim of all fears

Recently, the team has been assisting with radioactive worries in Ukraine, where Russia has interfered with the running of nuclear power plants. It also previously kept an analytical eye on the 2020 fires in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone and the same year’s launch of the Mars Perseverance rover. The rover had a plutonium power source, and NARAC was on hand to simulate what would happen in the event of an explosive accident. Going farther back, the team mobilized for weeks on end during the partial meltdown of the Fukushima reactors in Japan in 2011. 

But one of the events Glascoe is most proud of happened in late 2017, when sensors in Europe started picking up rogue radioactive activity. Across the continent, instruments designed to detect elemental decay saw spikes indicating ruthenium-106, with more than 300 total detections. “We were activated to try and figure out, ‘Well, what’s going on? Where did this come from?’” says Glascoe. 

As NARAC started its analysis, Glascoe remembered an internal research project involving the use of measurement data, atmospheric transport models, statistical methods, and machine learning that he thought might be helpful in tracing the radioactivity backward, rather than making the more standard forward prediction. “As the data comes in, the modeling gets adjusted to try and identify where likely sources are,” says Glascoe. 

Like the prototype that DOE had called up for use with Three Mile Island, this one wasn’t quite ready, but Glascoe called headquarters for permission anyway. “I said, ‘Hey, I know we haven’t really kicked the tires too much on this thing, except they did conclude this project and it looks like it works.’” They agreed to let him try it. 

Four days and many supercomputer cycles later, the team produced a map of probable release regions. The bull’s-eye was on a region with an industrial center. “And sure enough, a release from that location would do the trick,” says Glascoe. 

The suspect spot was in Russia, and many now believe the radioactivity came from the Mayak nuclear facility, which processes spent nuclear fuel. Mayak is located in a “closed city,” one that tightly controls who goes in and out. 

Ultimately, no one can stop the atmosphere’s churn, or its tendency to push particles around. The winds don’t care about borders or permits. And NARAC is there to scrutinize, even if it can’t stop, that movement.

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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After embracing artificial intelligence, Microsoft is taking another gamble on a promise from OpenAI’s CEO for one more moonshot goal—nuclear fusion. As CNET reports, Microsoft announced it has entered into a power purchase agreement with a startup company called Helion Energy that is slated to go into effect in 2028. Unlike AI’s very immediate realities, however, experts suspectbelieve the project’s extremely short timeframe and technological constraints make this timeline unrealisticcould easily prove disastrous.

Nuclear fusion is considered by many to be the end-all be-all of clean, virtually limitless energy production. Compared to fission reactions within traditional nuclear power plants that split atoms apart, fusion occurs when atoms are forced together within extremely high temperatures to produce a new, smaller mass atom, thus generating comparatively massive amounts of energy in the process. Researchers accomplished important fusion advancements in recent years, but a sustainable, affordable reactor has yet to be designed. What’s more, many experts estimate achieving this milestone won’t happen without “a few decades of research,” if ever.

Helion was founded in 2013, and received a $375 million investment from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2021, shortly after it became the first private company to build a reactor component capable of reaching 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit). The optimum temperature for fusion, however, is roughly double that temperature. Meanwhile, Altman’s OpenAI itself garnered a massive partnership with Microsoft earlier this year, and has since integrated its high-profile generative artificial intelligence programming into its products, albeit not without its own controversy.

[Related: Physicists want to create energy like stars do. These two ways are their best shot.]

Helion aims to have its first fusion generator online in 2028. This generator would theoretically provide at least 50 megawatts following a one-year ramp up period—enough energy to power roughly 40,000 homes near a yet-to-be-determined facility location in Washington state. From there, Microsoft plans to pay Helion for its electricity generation as part of its roadmap to match its entire energy consumption with zero-carbon energy purchases by the end of the decade. As CNBC notes, because it’s a power purchase agreement, Helion could face financial penalties for not delivering on its aggressive goal.

In 2015, Helion’s CEO David Kirtley estimated their company would achieve “scientific net energy gain” in nuclear fusion within three years. Within nuclear fusion research, this energy gain refers to the ability to viably emit more power than it takes to produce. When asked this week by MIT Technology Review if Helion met those goals, a representative declined to comment, citing competitiveness concerns, but said its “initial timeline projections” had assumed the company would raise funds faster than it ultimately managed.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Helion CEO David Kirtley also admitted in a statement released Wednesday,  but we are confident in our ability to deliver the world’s first fusion power facility.”

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Satellite data reveals that methane leaks from two main fossil fuel fields in Turkmenistan caused more global heating last year than all of the carbon emissions in the United Kingdom. The satellite data was produced by French energy and environmental geo-analytics company Kayrros for the Guardian.

[Related: Methane is the greenhouse gas we can no longer afford to ignore.]

The data, as reported by the Guardian, shows that the western western fossil fuel field on the coast of the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan leaked over 2.9 million tons (2.6 million metric tonnes) of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted almost 2 million tons (1.8 million metric tonnes) during that timeline. Because methane is so much more potent than carbon dioxide, the two fields emit the equivalent of more than 403 million tons (366 million metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide, or more than the annual emissions by the United Kingdom. China and the United States are the largest emitters of CO₂ in the world and the UK ranks at 17.

Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas that is emitted during the production and transport of oil, natural gas, and coal. Emissions can also result from agriculture and livestock practices, land use, and the decay of organic waste in landfills, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. In 2021, methane accounted for 12 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the US, which is especially concerning since  it is 25 percent more effective at trapping heat than CO_2.

Methane was officially added to the list of climate change priorities to address this decade by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2021. The amount of methane emitted by human activity has been underestimated in the past and emissions have surged in the past 15 years. A 2020 study by the University of Rochester found that levels of “naturally released” methane reported in the atmosphere were 10 times too high, and fossil fuel-based methane is actually about 25 to 40 percent higher than scientists previously predicted. 

“The big take-home nugget for me is they said if you look at all the warming activity done by humans over the last century … carbon dioxide has contributed 0.75 degrees Celsius, while methane has contributed to 0.5 degrees Celsius,” Bob Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, told PopSci in 2021. 

Previous reporting from the Guardian found that Turkmenistan is a top country for methane “super emitting” leaks and it is possible that switching from a process called flaring to venting methane might be behind the explosion in emissions. Flaring burns unwanted gas and adds CO₂ into the atmosphere, but it is an easy process to detect and has been increasingly frowned upon. Venting releases the invisible methane into the air completely unburned and has been harder to track until more recent developments in satellite technology. Since methane traps 80 times more heat than CO₂  over two decades, venting is far worse for the climate.

[Related: Everything you should know about methane as regulations loosen.]

“Methane is responsible for almost half of short-term [climate] warming and has absolutely not been managed up to now – it was completely out of control,” Kayrros president Antoine Rostand, told the Guardian.  “We know where the super emitters are and who is doing it,” he said. “We just need the policymakers and investors to do their job, which is to crack down on methane emissions. There is no comparable action in terms of [reducing] short-term climate impacts.”

Turkmenistan is currently China’s second biggest supplier of gas and the country is planning to double its exports to China. Until 2018, Turkmen citizens received free gas and electricity, but the country is also incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. The likelihood of severe drought is projected to increase “very significantly” over the course of this century, and crop yields are expected to fail.

The upcoming 2023 COP28 climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates is seen by some to be an opportunity for change in the region. One source told the Guardian that diplomatic efforts are being made to urge Turkmenistan to cut its methane emissions. “We are really hoping Cop28 is a forcing mechanism,” the source said.

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

A Gallup survey released in late April found that 55 percent of U.S. adults support the use of nuclear power. That’s up four percentage points from last year and reflects the highest level of public support for nuclear energy use in electricity since 2012. 

The survey found that Republicans are more likely to favor nuclear energy than Democrats, consistent with previous Gallup polls. Experts say that partisan divide is particularly visible at the state level, with more pro-nuclear policies adopted in Republican-controlled states than left-leaning ones. But Democratic support for nuclear energy is on the rise, and advances in nuclear technologies and new federal climate laws could be behind the broader shift in public opinion toward nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy has historically been a source of immense controversy. A series of high-profile nuclear accidents and disasters, from Three Mile Island in 1979 to Chernobyl in 1986 to Fukushima in 2011, have raised safety concerns — even though the death toll from fossil fuel power generation far outstrips that of nuclear power generation. Several government nuclear programs have also left behind toxic waste that place disproportionate burdens on Indigenous communities.

But nuclear power doesn’t produce carbon emissions, and it’s more consistent and reliable than wind and solar energy, which vary depending on the weather. For these reasons, the Biden administration has identified nuclear energy as a key climate solution to achieve grid stability in a net-zero future. The administration is pushing for the deployment of a new generation of reactors called “advanced nuclear”: a catch-all term for new nuclear reactor models that improve on the safety and efficiency of traditional reactor designs. 

In a recent report, the Department of Energy found that regardless of how many renewables are deployed, the U.S. will need an additional 200 gigawatts of advanced nuclear power — enough to power about 160 million homes — to reach President Joe Biden’s goal of hitting net-zero emissions by 2050. 

Gallup has tracked several swings in public opinion since first asking about nuclear in 1994. From 2004 to 2015, a majority of Americans favored nuclear power use, with a high of 62 percent in support in 2010. But in 2016, the survey found a majority opposition to nuclear power for the first time. Gallup speculated that lower gasoline prices that year may have “lessened Americans’ perceptions that energy sources such as nuclear power are needed.” In recent years, views on nuclear power had been evenly divided until the latest poll, conducted between March 1 and 23.

The new poll found that 62 percent of Republicans support the use of nuclear power, compared to 46 percent of Democrats. The support from Republicans is likely driven by “a focus on energy independence, supporting innovation, supporting American leadership globally, and supporting American competition with folks like China and Russia specifically in terms of the nuclear space,” said Ryan Norman, senior policy advisor at the center-left think tank Third Way.

Matt Bowen, a senior research scholar on nuclear energy at Columbia University, points out that those political differences in public opinion have played out at the state level. As he puts it, conservative states tend to have “a much more supportive environment” for nuclear energy policies. 

In Tennessee, for example, Republican Governor Bill Lee announced a plan in February to allocate $50 million in the state budget to support nuclear power-related businesses. In 2021, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon welcomed the arrival of a planned advanced nuclear reactor site in his state, set to be one of the first advanced reactors to operate in the country. And last February, West Virginia repealed the state’s ban on construction of nuclear power plants. 

Many of the states passing laws to enable nuclear infrastructure have experienced major job losses as a result of a declining coal sector, Norman observes.

Meanwhile, states that have placed restrictions on the construction of new nuclear power facilities are largely Democratically controlled. Those 12 states include Democratic strongholds like California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. 

On a national level, Norman from Third Way emphasized that the recent Gallup poll reflects growing support from people of all political backgrounds. 

Democratic support for nuclear power jumped up 7 percent this year, up from 39 percent in 2022. Recent studies on decarbonization pathways and the Biden administration’s climate goals have spotlighted nuclear power as a potential clean energy solution — a possible reason for the uptick.

In addition to the Department of Energy’s modeling, the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero by 2050 scenario found that in order to fully decarbonize the global economy, worldwide nuclear power capacity would need to double between 2022 and 2050. 

In Congress, nuclear power has enjoyed some rare moments of bipartisan support. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have joined forces to pass a few successful pro-nuclear laws. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law injected $6 billion toward maintaining existing nuclear power plants. And while the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act was an entirely Democratic effort, it included a technology-neutral tax credit for low-carbon energy that can be used for nuclear power plants. The climate spending law also allocates millions in investments for advanced nuclear research and demonstration.

Bowen credits Democratic lawmakers’ newfound openness to nuclear power to the increasing urgency of addressing climate change. As he put it, nuclear could be one answer to a question policymakers are increasingly asking themselves: “How do you achieve these deep decarbonization scenarios, especially since we have less and less time?”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/us-support-for-nuclear-power-soars-to-highest-level-in-a-decade/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

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This story from the March 2012 issue of Popular Science covered the nuclear fusion experiments of Taylor Wilson, who was then 16. Wilson is currently 28 and a nuclear physicist who’s collaborated with multiple US agencies on developing reactors and defense technology. The author of this profile, Tom Clynes, went on to write a book about Wilson titled The Boy Who Played With Fusion.

“PROPULSION,” the nine-year-old says as he leads his dad through the gates of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “I just want to see the propulsion stuff.”

A young woman guides their group toward a full-scale replica of the massive Saturn V rocket that brought America to the moon. As they duck under the exhaust nozzles, Kenneth Wilson glances at his awestruck boy and feels his burden beginning to lighten. For a few minutes, at least, someone else will feed his son’s boundless appetite for knowledge.

Then Taylor raises his hand, not with a question but an answer. He knows what makes this thing, the biggest rocket ever launched, go up.

And he wants—no, he obviously needs—to tell everyone about it, about how speed relates to exhaust velocity and dynamic mass, about payload ratios, about the pros and cons of liquid versus solid fuel. The tour guide takes a step back, yielding the floor to this slender kid with a deep-Arkansas drawl, pouring out a torrent of Ph.D.-level concepts as if there might not be enough seconds in the day to blurt it all out. The other adults take a step back too, perhaps jolted off balance by the incongruities of age and audacity, intelligence and exuberance.

As the guide runs off to fetch the center’s director—You gotta see this kid!—Kenneth feels the weight coming down on him again. What he doesn’t understand just yet is that he will come to look back on these days as the uncomplicated ones, when his scary-smart son was into simple things, like rocket science.

This is before Taylor would transform the family’s garage into a mysterious, glow-in-the-dark cache of rocks and metals and liquids with unimaginable powers. Before he would conceive, in a series of unlikely epiphanies, new ways to use neutrons to confront some of the biggest challenges of our time: cancer and nuclear terrorism. Before he would build a reactor that could hurl atoms together in a 500-million-degree plasma core—becoming, at 14, the youngest individual on Earth to achieve nuclear fusion.

WHEN I MEET Taylor Wilson, he is 16 and busy—far too busy, he says, to pursue a driver’s license. And so he rides shotgun as his father zigzags the family’s Land Rover up a steep trail in the Virginia Mountains north of Reno, Nevada, where they’ve come to prospect for uranium.

From the backseat, I can see Taylor’s gull-like profile, his forehead plunging from under his sandy blond bangs and continuing, in an almost unwavering line, along his prominent nose. His thinness gives him a wraithlike appearance, but when he’s lit up about something (as he is most waking moments), he does not seem frail. He has spent the past hour—the past few days, really—talking, analyzing, and breathlessly evangelizing about nuclear energy. We’ve gone back to the big bang and forward to mutually assured destruction and nuclear winter. In between are fission and fusion, Einstein and Oppenheimer, Chernobyl and Fukushima, matter and antimatter.

“Where does it come from?” Kenneth and his wife, Tiffany, have asked themselves many times. Kenneth is a Coca-Cola bottler, a skier, an ex-football player. Tiffany is a yoga instructor. “Neither of us knows a dang thing about science,” Kenneth says.

Almost from the beginning, it was clear that the older of the Wilsons’ two sons would be a difficult child to keep on the ground. It started with his first, and most pedestrian, interest: construction. As a toddler in Texarkana, the family’s hometown, Taylor wanted nothing to do with toys. He played with real traffic cones, real barricades. At age four, he donned a fluorescent orange vest and hard hat and stood in front of the house, directing traffic. For his fifth birthday, he said, he wanted a crane. But when his parents brought him to a toy store, the boy saw it as an act of provocation. “No,” he yelled, stomping his foot. “I want a real one.”

This is about the time any other father might have put his own foot down. But Kenneth called a friend who owns a construction company, and on Taylor’s birthday a six-ton crane pulled up to the party. The kids sat on the operator’s lap and took turns at the controls, guiding the boom as it swung above the rooftops on Northern Hills Drive.

To the assembled parents, dressed in hard hats, the Wilsons’ parenting style must have appeared curiously indulgent. In a few years, as Taylor began to get into some supremely dangerous stuff, it would seem perilously laissez-faire. But their approach to child rearing is, in fact, uncommonly intentional. “We want to help our children figure out who they are,” Kenneth says, “and then do everything we can to help them nurture that.”

At 10, Taylor hung a periodic table of the elements in his room. Within a week he memorized all the atomic numbers, masses and melting points. At the family’s Thanksgiving gathering, the boy appeared wearing a monogrammed lab coat and armed with a handful of medical lancets. He announced that he’d be drawing blood from everyone, for “comparative genetic experiments” in the laboratory he had set up in his maternal grandmother’s garage. Each member of the extended family duly offered a finger to be pricked.

The next summer, Taylor invited everyone out to the backyard, where he dramatically held up a pill bottle packed with a mixture of sugar and stump remover (potassium nitrate) that he’d discovered in the garage. He set the bottle down and, with a showman’s flourish, ignited the fuse that poked out of the top. What happened next was not the firecracker’s bang everyone expected, but a thunderous blast that brought panicked neighbors running from their houses. Looking up, they watched as a small mushroom cloud rose, unsettlingly, over the Wilsons’ yard.

For his 11th birthday, Taylor’s grandmother took him to Books-A-Million, where he picked out The Radioactive Boy Scout, by Ken Silverstein. The book told the disquieting tale of David Hahn, a Michigan teenager who, in the mid-1990s, attempted to build a breeder reactor in a backyard shed. Taylor was so excited by the book that he read much of it aloud: the boy raiding smoke detectors for radioactive americium . . . the cobbled-together reactor . . . the Superfund team in hazmat suits hauling away the family’s contaminated belongings. Kenneth and Tiffany heard Hahn’s story as a cautionary tale. But Taylor, who had recently taken a particular interest in the bottom two rows of the periodic table—the highly radioactive elements—read it as a challenge. “Know what?” he said. “The things that kid was trying to do, I’m pretty sure I can actually do them.”

A rational society would know what to do with a kid like Taylor Wilson, especially now that America’s technical leadership is slipping and scientific talent increasingly has to be imported. But by the time Taylor was 12, both he and his brother, Joey, who is three years younger and gifted in mathematics, had moved far beyond their school’s (and parents’) ability to meaningfully teach them. Both boys were spending most of their school days on autopilot, their minds wandering away from course work they’d long outgrown.

David Hahn had been bored too—and, like Taylor, smart enough to be dangerous. But here is where the two stories begin to diverge. When Hahn’s parents forbade his atomic endeavors, the angry teenager pressed on in secret. But Kenneth and Tiffany resisted their impulse to steer Taylor toward more benign pursuits. That can’t be easy when a child with a demonstrated talent and fondness for blowing things up proposes to dabble in nukes.

Kenneth and Tiffany agreed to let Taylor assemble a “survey of everyday radioactive materials” for his school’s science fair. Kenneth borrowed a Geiger counter from a friend at Texarkana’s emergency-management agency. Over the next few weekends, he and Tiffany shuttled Taylor around to nearby antique stores, where he pointed the clicking detector at old
radium-dial alarm clocks, thorium lantern mantles and uranium-glazed Fiesta plates. Taylor spent his allowance money on a radioactive dining set.

Drawn in by what he calls “the surprise properties” of radioactive materials, he wanted to know more. How can a speck of metal the size of a grain of salt put out such tremendous amounts of energy? Why do certain rocks expose film? Why does one isotope decay away in a millionth of a second while another has a half-life of two million years?

As Taylor began to wrap his head around the mind-blowing mysteries at the base of all matter, he could see that atoms, so small but potentially so powerful, offered a lifetime’s worth of secrets to unlock. Whereas Hahn’s resources had been limited, Taylor found that there was almost no end to the information he could find on the Internet, or to the oddities that he could purchase and store in the garage.

On top of tables crowded with chemicals and microscopes and germicidal black lights, an expanding array of nuclear fuel pellets, chunks of uranium and “pigs” (lead-lined containers) began to appear. When his parents pressed him about safety, Taylor responded in the convoluted jargon of inverse-square laws and distance intensities, time doses and roentgen submultiples. With his newfound command of these concepts, he assured them, he could master the furtive energy sneaking away from those rocks and metals and liquids—a strange and ever-multiplying cache that literally cast a glow into the corners of the garage.

Kenneth asked a nuclear-pharmacist friend to come over to check on Taylor’s safety practices. As far as he could tell, the friend said, the boy was getting it right. But he warned that radiation works in quick and complex ways. By the time Taylor learned from a mistake, it might be too late.

Lead pigs and glazed plates were only the beginning. Soon Taylor was getting into more esoteric “naughties”—radium quack cures, depleted uranium, radio-luminescent materials—and collecting mysterious machines, such as the mass spectrometer given to him by a former astronaut in Houston. As visions of Chernobyl haunted his parents, Taylor tried to reassure them. “I’m the responsible radioactive boy scout,” he told them. “I know what I’m doing.”

One afternoon, Tiffany ducked her head out of the door to the garage and spotted Taylor, in his canary yellow nuclear-technician’s coveralls, watching a pool of liquid spreading across the concrete floor. “Tay, it’s time for supper.”
“I think I’m going to have to clean this up first.”
“That’s not the stuff you said would kill us if it broke open, is it?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not instantly.”

THAT SUMMER, Kenneth’s daughter from a previous marriage, Ashlee, then a college student, came to live with the Wilsons. “The explosions in the backyard were getting to be a bit much,” she told me, shortly before my own visit to the family’s home. “I could see everyone getting frustrated. They’d say something and Taylor would argue back, and his argument would be legitimate. He knows how to out-think you. I was saying, ‘You guys need to be parents. He’s ruling the roost.’ “

“What she didn’t understand,” Kenneth says, “is that we didn’t have a choice. Taylor doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘can’t.’ “

“And when he does,” Tiffany adds, “he doesn’t listen.”

“Looking back, I can see that,” Ashlee concedes. “I mean, you can tell Taylor that the world doesn’t revolve around him. But he doesn’t really get that. He’s not being selfish, it’s just that there’s so much going on in his head.”

Tiffany, for her part, could have done with less drama. She had just lost her sister, her only sibling. And her mother’s cancer had recently come out of remission. “Those were some tough times,” Taylor tells me one day, as he uses his mom’s gardening trowel to mix up a batch of yellowcake (the partially processed uranium that’s the stuff of WMD infamy) in a five-gallon bucket. “But as bad as it was with Grandma dying and all, that urine sure was something.”

Taylor looks sheepish. He knows this is weird. “After her PET scan she let me have a sample. It was so hot I had to keep it in a lead pig.

“The other thing is . . .” He pauses, unsure whether to continue but, being Taylor, unable to stop himself. “She had lung cancer, and she’d cough up little bits of tumor for me to dissect. Some people might think that’s gross, but I found it scientifically very interesting.”

What no one understood, at least not at first, was that as his grandmother was withering, Taylor was growing, moving beyond mere self-centeredness. The world that he saw revolving around him, the boy was coming to believe, was one that he could actually change.

The problem, as he saw it, is that isotopes for diagnosing and treating cancer are extremely short-lived. They need to be, so they can get in and kill the targeted tumors and then decay away quickly, sparing healthy cells. Delivering them safely and on time requires expensive handling—including, often, delivery by private jet. But what if there were a way to make those medical isotopes at or near the patients? How many more people could they reach, and how much earlier could they reach them? How many more people like his grandmother could be saved?

As Taylor stirred the toxic urine sample, holding the clicking Geiger counter over it, inspiration took hold. He peered into the swirling yellow center, and the answer shone up at him, bright as the sun. In fact, it was the sun—or, more precisely, nuclear fusion, the process (defined by Einstein as E=mc2) that powers the sun. By harnessing fusion—the moment when atomic nuclei collide and fuse together, releasing energy in the process—Taylor could produce the high-energy neutrons he would need to irradiate materials for medical isotopes. Instead of creating those isotopes in multimillion-dollar cyclotrons and then rushing them to patients, what if he could build a fusion reactor small enough, cheap enough and safe enough to produce isotopes as needed, in every hospital in the world?

At that point, only 10 individuals had managed to build working fusion reactors. Taylor contacted one of them, Carl Willis, then a 26-year-old Ph.D. candidate living in Albuquerque, and the two hit it off. But Willis, like the other successful fusioneers, had an advanced degree and access to a high-tech lab and precision equipment. How could a middle-school kid living on the Texas/Arkansas border ever hope to make his own star?

When Taylor was 13, just after his grandmother’s doctor had given her a few weeks to live, Ashlee sent Tiffany and Kenneth an article about a new school in Reno. The Davidson Academy is a subsidized public school for the nation’s smartest and most motivated students, those who score in the top 99.9th percentile on standardized tests. The school, which allows students to pursue advanced research at the adjacent University of Nevada–Reno, was founded in 2006 by software entrepreneurs Janice and Robert Davidson. Since then, the Davidsons have championed the idea that the most underserved students in the country are those at the top.

On the family’s first trip to Reno, even before Taylor and Joey were accepted to the academy, Taylor made an appointment with Friedwardt Winterberg, a celebrated physicist at the University of Nevada who had studied under the Nobel Prize–winning quantum theorist Werner Heisenberg. When Taylor told Winterberg that he wanted to build a fusion reactor, also called a fusor, the notoriously cranky professor erupted: “You’re 13 years old! And you want to play with tens of thousands of electron volts and deadly x-rays?” Such a project would be far too technically challenging and hazardous, Winterberg insisted, even for most doctoral candidates. “First you must master calculus, the language of science,” he boomed. “After that,” Tiffany said, “we didn’t think it would go anywhere. Kenneth and I were a bit relieved.”

But Taylor still hadn’t learned the word “can’t.” In the fall, when he began at Davidson, he found the two advocates he needed, one in the office right next door to Winterberg’s. “He had a depth of understanding I’d never seen in someone that young,” says atomic physicist Ronald Phaneuf. “But he was telling me he wanted to build the reactor in his garage, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my lord, we can’t let him do that.’ But maybe we can help him try to do it here.”

Phaneuf invited Taylor to sit in on his upper-division nuclear physics class and introduced him to technician Bill Brinsmead. Brinsmead, a Burning Man devotee who often rides a wheeled replica of the Little Boy bomb through the desert, was at first reluctant to get involved in this 13-year-old’s project. But as he and Phaneuf showed Taylor around the department’s equipment room, Brinsmead recalled his own boyhood, when he was bored and unchallenged and aching to build something really cool and difficult (like a laser, which he eventually did build) but dissuaded by most of the adults who might have helped.

Rummaging through storerooms crowded with a geeky abundance of electron microscopes and instrumentation modules, they came across a high-vacuum chamber made of thick-walled stainless steel, capable of withstanding extreme heat and negative pressure. “Think I could use that for my fusor?” Taylor asked Brinsmead. “I can’t think of a more worthy cause,” Brinsmead said.

NOW IT’S TIFFANY who drives, along a dirt road that wends across a vast, open mesa a few miles south of the runways shared by Albuquerque’s airport and Kirkland Air Force Base. Taylor has convinced her to bring him to New Mexico to spend a week with Carl Willis, whom Taylor describes as “my best nuke friend.” Cocking my ear toward the backseat, I catch snippets of Taylor and Willis’s conversation.

“The idea is to make a gamma-ray laser from stimulated decay of dipositronium.”

“I’m thinking about building a portable, beam-on-target neutron source.”

“Need some deuterated polyethylene?”

Willis is now 30; tall and thin and much quieter than Taylor. When he’s interested in something, his face opens up with a blend of amusement and curiosity. When he’s uninterested, he slips into the far-off distractedness that’s common among the super-smart. Taylor and Willis like to get together a few times a year for what they call “nuclear tourism”—they visit research facilities, prospect for uranium, or run experiments.

Earlier in the week, we prospected for uranium in the desert and shopped for secondhand laboratory equipment in Los Alamos. The next day, we wandered through Bayo Canyon, where Manhattan Project engineers set off some of the largest dirty bombs in history in the course of perfecting Fat Man, which leveled Nagasaki.

Today we’re searching for remnants of a “broken arrow,” military lingo for a lost nuclear weapon. While researching declassified military reports, Taylor discovered that a Mark 17 “Peacemaker” hydrogen bomb, which was designed to be 700 times as powerful as the bomb detonated over Hiroshima, was accidentally dropped onto this mesa in May 1957. For the U.S. military, it was an embarrassingly Strangelovian episode; the airman in the bomb bay narrowly avoided his own Slim Pickens moment when the bomb dropped from its gantry and smashed the B-36’s doors open. Although its plutonium core hadn’t been inserted, the bomb’s “spark plug” of conventional explosives and radioactive material detonated on impact, creating a fireball and a massive crater. A grazing steer was the only reported casualty.

Tiffany parks the rented SUV among the mesquite, and we unload metal detectors and Geiger counters and fan out across the field. “This,” says Tiffany, smiling as she follows her son across the scrubland, “is how we spend our vacations.”

Willis says that when Taylor first contacted him, he was struck by the 12-year-old’s focus and forwardness—and by the fact that he couldn’t plumb the depth of Taylor’s knowledge with a few difficult technical questions. After checking with Kenneth, Willis sent Taylor some papers on fusion reactors. Then Taylor began acquiring pieces for his new machine.

Through his first year at Davidson, Taylor spent his afternoons in a corner of Phaneuf’s lab that the professor had cleared out for him, designing the reactor, overcoming tricky technical issues, tracking down critical parts. Phaneuf helped him find a surplus high-voltage insulator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Willis, then working at a company that builds particle accelerators, talked his boss into parting with an extremely expensive high-voltage power supply.

With Brinsmead and Phaneuf’s help, Taylor stretched himself, applying knowledge from more than 20 technical fields, including nuclear and plasma physics, chemistry, radiation metrology and electrical engineering. Slowly he began to test-assemble the reactor, troubleshooting pesky vacuum leaks, electrical problems and an intermittent plasma field.

Shortly after his 14th birthday, Taylor and Brinsmead loaded deuterium fuel into the machine, brought up the power, and confirmed the presence of neutrons. With that, Taylor became the 32nd individual on the planet to achieve a nuclear-fusion reaction. Yet what would set Taylor apart from the others was not the machine itself but what he decided to do with it.

While still developing his medical isotope application, Taylor came across a report about how the thousands of shipping containers entering the country daily had become the nation’s most vulnerable “soft belly,” the easiest entry point for weapons of mass destruction. Lying in bed one night, he hit on an idea: Why not use a fusion reactor to produce weapons-sniffing neutrons that could scan the contents of containers as they passed through ports? Over the next few weeks, he devised a concept for a drive-through device that would use a small reactor to bombard passing containers with neutrons. If weapons were inside, the neutrons would force the atoms into fission, emitting gamma radiation (in the case of nuclear material) or nitrogen (in the case of conventional explosives). A detector, mounted opposite, would pick up the signature and alert the operator.

He entered the reactor, and the design for his bomb-sniffing application, into the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. The Super Bowl of pre-college science events, the fair attracts 1,500 of the world’s most switched-on kids from some 50 countries. When Intel CEO Paul Otellini heard the buzz that a 14-year-old had built a working nuclear-fusion reactor, he went straight for Taylor’s exhibit. After a 20-minute conversation, Otellini was seen walking away, smiling and shaking his head in what looked like disbelief. Later, I would ask him what he was thinking. “All I could think was, ‘I am so glad that kid is on our side.’ “

For the past three years, Taylor has dominated the international science fair, walking away with nine awards (including first place overall), overseas trips and more than $100,000 in prizes. After the Department of Homeland Security learned of Taylor’s design, he traveled to Washington for a meeting with the DHS’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which invited Taylor to submit a grant proposal to develop the detector. Taylor also met with then–Under Secretary of Energy Kristina Johnson, who says the encounter left her “stunned.”

“I would say someone like him comes along maybe once in a generation,” Johnson says. “He’s not just smart; he’s cool and articulate. I think he may be the most amazing kid I’ve ever met.”

And yet Taylor’s story began much like David Hahn’s, with a brilliant, high-flying child hatching a crazy plan to build a nuclear reactor. Why did one journey end with hazmat teams and an eventual arrest, while the other continues to produce an array of prizes, patents, television appearances, and offers from college recruiters?

The answer is, mostly, support. Hahn, determined to achieve something extraordinary but discouraged by the adults in his life, pressed on without guidance or oversight—and with nearly catastrophic results. Taylor, just as determined but socially gifted, managed to gather into his orbit people who could help him achieve his dreams: the physics professor; the older nuclear prodigy; the eccentric technician; the entrepreneur couple who, instead of retiring, founded a school to nurture genius kids. There were several more, but none so significant as Tiffany and Kenneth, the parents who overcame their reflexive—and undeniably sensible—inclinations to keep their Icarus-like son on the ground. Instead they gave him the wings he sought and encouraged him to fly up to the sun and beyond, high enough to capture a star of his own.

After about an hour of searching across the mesa, our detectors begin to beep. We find bits of charred white plastic and chunks of aluminum—one of which is slightly radioactive. They are remnants of the lost hydrogen bomb. I uncover a broken flange with screws still attached, and Taylor digs up a hunk of lead. “Got a nice shard here,” Taylor yells, finding a gnarled piece of metal. He scans it with his detector. “Unfortunately, it’s not radioactive.”

“That’s the kind I like,” Tiffany says.

Willis picks up a large chunk of the bomb’s outer casing, still painted dull green, and calls Taylor over. “Wow, look at that warp profile!” Taylor says, easing his scintillation detector up to it. The instrument roars its approval. Willis, seeing Taylor ogling the treasure, presents it to him. Taylor is ecstatic. “It’s a field of dreams!” he yells. “This place is loaded!”

Suddenly we’re finding radioactive debris under the surface every five or six feet—even though the military claimed that the site was completely cleaned up. Taylor gets down on his hands and knees, digging, laughing, calling out his discoveries. Tiffany checks her watch. “Tay, we really gotta go or we’ll miss our flight.”

“I’m not even close to being done!” he says, still digging. “This is the best day of my life!” By the time we manage to get Taylor into the car, we’re running seriously late. “Tay,” Tiffany says, “what are we going to do with all this stuff?”

“For $50, you can check it on as excess baggage,” Willis says. “You don’t label it, nobody knows what it is, and it won’t hurt anybody.” A few minutes later, we’re taping an all-too-flimsy box shut and loading it into the trunk. “Let’s see, we’ve got about 60 pounds of uranium, bomb fragments and radioactive shards,” Taylor says. “This thing would make a real good dirty bomb.”

In truth, the radiation levels are low enough that, without prolonged close-range exposure, the cargo poses little danger. Still, we stifle the jokes as we pull up to curbside check-in. “Think it will get through security?” Tiffany asks Taylor.

“There are no radiation detectors in airports,” Taylor says. “Except for one pilot project, and I can’t tell you which airport that’s at.”

As the skycap weighs the box, I scan the “prohibited items” sign. You can’t take paints, flammable materials or water on a commercial airplane. But sure enough, radioactive materials are not listed.

We land in Reno and make our way toward the baggage claim. “I hope that box held up,” Taylor says, as we approach the carousel. “And if it didn’t, I hope they give us back the radioactive goodies scattered all over the airplane.” Soon the box appears, adorned with a bright strip of tape and a note inside explaining that the package has been opened and inspected by the TSA. “They had no idea,” Taylor says, smiling, “what they were looking at.”

APART FROM THE fingerprint scanners at the door, Davidson Academy looks a lot like a typical high school. It’s only when the students open their mouths that you realize that this is an exceptional place, a sort of Hogwarts for brainiacs. As these math whizzes, musical prodigies and chess masters pass in the hallway, the banter flies in witty bursts. Inside humanities classes, discussions spin into intellectual duels.

Although everyone has some kind of advanced obsession, there’s no question that Taylor is a celebrity at the school, where the lobby walls are hung with framed newspaper clippings of his accomplishments. Taylor and I visit with the principal, the school’s founders and a few of Taylor’s friends. Then, after his calculus class, we head over to the university’s physics department, where we meet Phaneuf and Brinsmead.

Taylor’s reactor, adorned with yellow radiation-warning signs, dominates the far corner of Phaneuf’s lab. It looks elegant—a gleaming stainless-steel and glass chamber on top of a cylindrical trunk, connected to an array of sensors and feeder tubes. Peering through the small window into the reaction chamber, I can see the golf-ball-size grid of tungsten fingers that will cradle the plasma, the state of matter in which unbound electrons, ions and photons mix freely with atoms and molecules.

“OK, y’all stand back,” Taylor says. We retreat behind a wall of leaden blocks as he shakes the hair out of his eyes and flips a switch. He turns a knob to bring the voltage up and adds in some gas. “This is exactly how me and Bill did it the first time,” he says. “But now we’ve got it running even better.”

Through a video monitor, I watch the tungsten wires beginning to glow, then brightening to a vivid orange. A blue cloud of plasma appears, rising and hovering, ghostlike, in the center of the reaction chamber. “When the wires disappear,” Phaneuf says, “that’s when you know you have a lethal radiation field.”

I watch the monitor while Taylor concentrates on the controls and gauges, especially the neutron detector they’ve dubbed Snoopy. “I’ve got it up to 25,000 volts now,” Taylor says. “I’m going to out-gas it a little and push it up.”

Willis’s power supply crackles. The reactor is entering “star mode.” Rays of plasma dart between gaps in the now-invisible grid as deuterium atoms, accelerated by the tremendous voltages, begin to collide. Brinsmead keeps his eyes glued to the neutron detector. “We’re getting neutrons,” he shouts. “It’s really jamming!”

Taylor cranks it up to 40,000 volts. “Whoa, look at Snoopy now!” Phaneuf says, grinning. Taylor nudges the power up to 50,000 volts, bringing the temperature of the plasma inside the core to an incomprehensible 580 million degrees—some 40 times as hot as the core of the sun. Brinsmead lets out a whoop as the neutron gauge tops out.

“Snoopy’s pegged!” he yells, doing a little dance. On the video screen, purple sparks fly away from the plasma cloud, illuminating the wonder in the faces of Phaneuf and Brinsmead, who stand in a half-orbit around Taylor. In the glow of the boy’s creation, the men suddenly look years younger.

Taylor keeps his thin fingers on the dial as the atoms collide and fuse and throw off their energy, and the men take a step back, shaking their heads and wearing ear-to-ear grins.

“There it is,” Taylor says, his eyes locked on the machine. “The birth of a star.”

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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Back in 2021, President Joe Biden announced the administration’s new Justice40 Initiative through Executive Order 14008. The program’s aim is that 40 percent of the benefits of certain federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities. Investments related to climate change, clean energy, reduction of legacy pollution, and the development of water and wastewater infrastructure, among others, all fall within the initiative.

The administration doesn’t intend the program to be a one-time investment, but rather, a way to improve the distribution of the benefits of government programs and ensure that they reach disadvantaged communities. Since it was established, 19 federal agencies have released a total of nearly 470 covered programs, with three agencies joining just last month. While it’s promising that the administration recognizes the need to address long-standing equities, it’s critical to assess how they plan to make environmental justice a reality.

Marginalized and underserved communities must be prioritized to advance environmental justice

Hannah Perls, senior staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program (EELP), says that many of the environmental injustices around the country today are the result of a legacy of disinvestment in low-income communities. This is especially true in communities of color where “racist policies barred or discouraged public and private investment in housing, critical infrastructure, public transit, and natural spaces.”

[Related: Stronger pollution protections mean focusing on specific communities.]

These communities often face greater exposure to industrial pollution, higher health risks from deteriorating infrastructure, and more energy and housing burdens than wealthier, white communities, says Perls. They also lose out often in competitive federal funding processes—and in some cases, funding is intentionally withheld. This only reinforces existing wealth disparities. By explicitly targeting that 40 percent of federal climate investments reach these communities, the Justice 40 Initiative hopes to combat the legacy of disinvestment and equitably distribute the benefits of the transition to renewable energy, she adds.

To identify disadvantaged communities, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has put out its Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), a geospatial mapping tool that identifies overburdened and underserved census tracts across all states.

“Agencies can build upon the CEJST as needed, again on a program-by-program basis,” says Perls. “One benefit of this flexibility is that agencies can incorporate burdens specific to their jurisdiction. For example, the Department of Energy’s definition incorporates five measures of energy burden and two measures of fossil dependence.”

The CEJST is an exciting starting point that the federal government can continue to refine. That said, “environmental justice burdens don’t necessarily follow census boundaries, so there should be opportunities for communities to make the case to receive federal dollars if their community is not identified by the tool,” says Silvia R. González, director of climate change, environmental justice, and health research at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.

How to ensure that the benefits reach disadvantaged communities

All covered programs are required to consult the community stakeholders, ensure their involvement in determining program benefits, and report data on said benefits. An established number of 40 percent provides clear guidelines and expectations for agencies. To strengthen that goal, a team of researchers and advocates recommend that the 40 percent be a minimum for direct investments in disadvantaged communities.

“A direct investment means the percentage is not just a goal that relies on counting trickle-down benefits,” says González, who was involved in the report. “The straightforward nature of a direct benefit strategy would enhance transparency and accountability to taxpayers because it is tough to measure trickle-down benefits.”

To ensure investment objectives are met, transparency in reporting and evaluation is necessary, she adds. Accountability mechanisms are a must in guaranteeing equitable, effective, and efficient implementation.

[Related: The hard truth of building clean solar farms.]

“We currently have no federal environmental justice law,” says Perls. “As a result, most of the administration’s environmental justice commitments, including the Justice40 Initiative, are established via Executive Order and are therefore not judicially enforceable.”

Fortunately, there are some ways to monitor how the government is living up to its promises. The administration recently published the first version of the Environmental Justice Scorecard, a government-wide assessment of the actions taken by federal agencies to achieve environmental justice goals. Harvard Law School’s EELP also has a Federal Environmental Justice Tracker that tracks the progress of the administration’s environmental justice commitments and other agency-specific initiatives.

Overall, experts say it’s a positive sign that the Justice40 Initiative has catalyzed critical discussions to face climate change and historical disinvestment head-on. But as with any ambitious policy agenda, the implementation will need to overcome many hurdles, says González. The most vulnerable communities tend to be those that are least resourced, and they should not get left behind. Some communities or households may be under-resourced due to language, technology, trust, and capacity barriers to programs that can help them develop financial and health resiliency. There will need to be capacity-building and technical assistance for under-resourced communities to apply for and manage these investments, she adds.

In general, there is strong potential for Justice40-covered programs to bring transformational change from the bottom up. The knowledge and lived experiences of disadvantaged communities could shape targeted investments to ensure that their needs are met. “I hope Justice40 builds a framework rooted in principles of self-governance and self-determination, direct engagement, and collaboration with communities,” says González, “instead of top-down solutions.”

The post How the US is fighting wealth disparities in climate action appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Biden administration wants cryptocurrency miners to pay up if they intend to continue consuming more electricity than every television in the US combined each year. On Tuesday, the White House announced its 2024 proposed budget featuring the Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) tax, which aims to slap a 30 percent surcharge on crypto firms’ power intake.

“Currently, cryptomining firms do not have to pay for the full cost they impose on others, in the form of local environmental pollution, higher energy prices, and the impacts of increased greenhouse gas emissions on the climate,” reads the Biden administration’s statement released earlier this week. “The DAME tax encourages firms to start taking better account of the harms they impose on society.”

[Related: Bitcoin’s steep environmental costs go beyond its hunger for energy.]

Recent studies have shown that crypto mining’s extremely high energy costs negatively impact the environment, electricity grids, and quality of life for those living nearby. The pollution generated often disproportionately affects low-income areas and communities of color, while the stress on power infrastructure can also raise consumer prices while straining equipment and endangering the public. Despite these issues, the Biden administration argues that crypto firms offer neither local nor national benefits that often come from other businesses consuming the same amounts of electricity.

“There is little evidence of benefits to local communities in the form of employment or economic opportunity, and research has found that minor increases in local tax revenue are more than offset by increased energy prices for firms and households,” the White House adds.

[Related: Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested and charged with fraud.]

Fueled by viral media coverage and big-name endorsements, many cryptocurrencies (particularly its most popular variant, Bitcoin) experienced dramatic speculative runs beginning in late 2020. Following Bitcoin’s all-time high of nearly $69,000 per coin in November 2021, numerous financial scandals hit the industry, most notably the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange firm FTX and subsequent arrest of its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried on charges of fraud. Since then, values have since plummeted to around $29,000 for 1 BTC at the time of writing.

In March, members of Congress announced the Crypto-Asset Environmental Transparency Act, a bill that would force cryptominers to disclose their annual emissions. “When one year of U.S. Bitcoin mining creates as many carbon emissions as 7.5 million gas-powered cars—we have a problem,” bill co-sponsor Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) wrote on Twitter at the time. “The crypto industry is growing, but so is the fight for climate justice. We will hold these companies accountable.”

If passed, the Biden administration estimates the DAME tax would raise around $10.5 billion in revenue over the next decade.

The post US crypto firms might soon pay taxes for exorbitant energy use appeared first on Popular Science.

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Best overall		Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro		SEE IT	This is a solid all-around mix of features and affordability.
Best for camping		Goal Zero Yeti 1000 Core		SEE IT	This powerful pack is easy to transport to a site.
Best for homes		EcoFlow Delta Pro		SEE IT	This is the pick if you need lots of scalable capacity.

If you’re camping and want to charge up your lantern, phone, or other devices, a solar generator sure would be convenient. Or perhaps you’re van-living your way across the country, and you need to work on the go and keep your conversion electrified—yet another solid case for a solar-powered generator. Whatever the case, few things are as useful in today’s tech-driven world as a source of reliable, renewable power. The best solar generators can reliably and sustainably meet various energy needs, and we’re here to help you find the right one for you.

• Best overall: Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro
• Best high-capacity: Jackery Explorer 3000 Pro
• Best for frequent use: Anker 767 Portable Power Station Solar Generator
• Best for camping: Goal Zero Yeti 1000 Core
• Best for off-grid living: Bluetti AC200 Max
• Best for homes: EcoFlow Delta Pro
• Best portable: Anker 545
• Best budget: Jackery Explorer 300

How we chose the best solar generators

As an avid outdoorsman, I’ve had the opportunity to test an extremely wide range of outdoor gear, including mobile and off-grid electrification equipment like solar-powered generators, as well as inverter and dual-fuel generators. These became particularly essential when the pandemic forced my travels to become domestic rather than international, which prompted me to outfit a van for long-term road-tripping. 

To bring my work along for the ride, I needed a constant power source to charge my laptop, a portable fridge, lighting, and a myriad of devices and tools … even ebikes. As a result, I’ve tried all the leading portable power stations (and plenty that aren’t leading, too), so I know precisely what separates the best from the blah. I’ve written all about it (and other outdoor tech) for publications, including the Daily Beast, Thrillist, the Manual, and more. There were cases when my own opinion resulted in a tie, and I, therefore, looked to reviews from actual customers to determine which solar generators delivered the most satisfaction to the most users.

The best solar generators: Reviews & Recommendations

The solar generators on this list span a wide range of budgets, from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. They span several use cases, from camping to a backup for your home. Only you know all the factors that make one of these the best solar generator for you, but we think that one of these will get the job done.

Best overall: Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro

Nick Hilden

SEE IT

Buy it used or refurbished: eBay

Why it made the cut: This Jackery solar generator delivers the best blend of capacity, input/output capability, portability, and durability.

Specs

• Storage capacity: 2,160Wh
• Input capacity: 1,200W
• Output capacity: 2,200W (4,400W surge)
• Dimensions: 15.1 x 10.5 x 12.1 inches
• Weight: 43 lbs
• Price: $2,498

Pros

• Fast charging and outstanding capacity
• Durable and easy to use
• Plenty of ports
• Can connect to six 200W solar panels

Cons

• Heavy for its size

The biggest portable power station from Jackery, a leading solar generator manufacturer, the Explorer 2000 Pro offers a tremendous 2,160 watt-hours of power, making it capable of charging a full camping setup for a few days. When plugged into six 200W solar panels, an upgrade over the four-panel setup available on the Jackery Explorer 1500, you can fully charge this portable power station in just 2-2.5 hours. That’s less than half the time of the smaller model.

On top of all that, it’s extremely user-friendly. Numerous output ports ensure that you can plug in a wide range of devices and electrical equipment. Its functions are highly intuitive, and the digital display is easy to understand. Like other Jackery generators, it’s incredibly durable, too. The one potential downside is its weight: At 43 pounds, it’s a bit heavy for its size. Even so, for all the power you can store, and the rapid-charging time, the Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro will keep the lights on wherever you need power.

For more on the Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro, check out our full review.

Best high-capacity: Jackery Explorer 3000 Pro

Nick Hilden

SEE IT

Specs

• Storage capacity: 3,024Wh
• Output capacity: 3,000W
• Dimensions: 18.6 x 14.1 x 14.7 inches
• Weight: 63.9 pounds
• Price: $2,799

Pros

• Ample power storage for long trips or outages
• Sturdy handles and wheels make it easy to move
• Smooth design makes it easy to load and unload
• High peak output for power-intensive tasks
• Lots of ports for connectivity

Cons

• 200W solar panels can be klunky
• Relatively pricey

This is the big sibling to our best overall pick. Inside the Jackery Explorer 3000 Pro, you’ll find 3,024Wh of power storage, which is enough to power even large devices for extended periods of time. It can charge a high-end smartphone more than 100 times on a single charge. It can also power full-on appliances in an RV or emergency situation.

Despite its large capacity, we learned firsthand that the Jackery Explorer 3000 Pro is relatively easy to move around. Sturdy handles molded into its case make it easy to pick up, while an extending handle and wheels make it easy to roll around at the campsite or any other location.

It can charge in less than three hours from a standard outlet or, under optimal conditions with the 200W solar panels, it can fill up as quickly as eight hours. That full solar array can get large and unwieldy, but a smaller setup can still provide ample charging if you don’t need to max out the capacity daily.

This portable power station offers the best of everything we loved about the Explorer 2000 Pro, there’s just more of it. When you’re living the van life, powering an RV, or trying to ride out a power outage, more is definitely better if you can justify the extra cost.

Best for frequent use: Anker 767 Portable Power Station Solar Generator

Stan Horaczek

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: High capacity and fast charging make this long-lasting battery a solid everyday driver.

Specs

• Storage capacity: 2,048Wh
• Output capacity: 2,400W
• Dimensions: 20.67 x 9.84 x 15.55 inches
• Weight: 67.3 pounds
• Price: $1,999

Pros

• Charges up to 80% in less than two hours
• Solid output and storage capacity
• Optional battery pack doubles capacity
• LiFePO4 batteries survive more charge cycles than traditional models
• Plenty of ports
• Built-in handle and wheels for transport

Cons

• Heavy for its capacity
• No USB-C in for charging

Anker has equipped its massive portable power station with LiFePO4 batteries, which stand up much better to repeat charging and discharging over the long term than common lithium-ion cells. Anker claims it can charge and discharge up to 3,000 times before it reaches 80% battery health compared to 500 in a similar lithium-ion setup. While I haven’t had the chance to run it through 3,000 cycles, LiFePO4 batteries have a well-earned reputation for longevity. 

Regarding overall performance, the Anker 767 does everything you’d want a unit with these specs to do. The bad weather has given me [Executive Gear Editor Stan Horaczek] ample chances, unfortunately, to test it in real-world situations. 

The built-in battery offers a 2048Wh capacity and pumps out up to 2,400W. It does so through four standard AC outlets, an RV outlet, two 120W car outlets, two 12W USB-A ports, and three 100W USB-C ports. 

I used it during a blackout to keep our Wi-Fi running while charging my family’s devices. Filling a phone from zero barely makes a dent in the power station’s capacity, and it ran the router for several hours with plenty of juice left. 

In another instance, it powered our small meat freezer for four hours before the power came back on with some juice still left in the tank. It does what it promises. 

There are a few nice extra touches as well. Built-in wheels and an extendable handle allow it to roll like carry-on luggage. Unfortunately, those are necessary inclusions because it weighs a hefty 67.3 pounds. It’s manageable but definitely heavy compared to its competition. 

The Anker 767 is compatible with the company’s 200W solar panels, which fold up for easy transportation. I mostly charged the unit through my home’s AC power, a surprisingly quick process. The 767 Portable Power Station can go from flat to more than 80% charge in less than a half hour with sufficient power. It takes about two hours to get it fully juiced. 

Anker also offers a mobile app that connects to the power station via Bluetooth if you want to control it without actually going over and touching it.

Best for camping: Goal Zero Yeti 1000 Core

Nick Hilden

SEE IT

Buy it used or refurbished: eBay

Why it made the cut: Thanks to its outstanding portability, high storage capacity, and Yeti’s famous durability, the Goal Zero Yeti 1000 Core is great for packing along for camping or van-living. 

Specs

• Storage capacity: 983Wh
• Input capacity: 600W
• Output capacity: 1,200W (2,400W surge)
• Dimensions: 9.86 x 15.25 x 10.23 inches
• Weight: 31.68 lbs
• Price: $1,198.95

Pros

• Highly portable
• Incredible durability
• Rapid recharge rate
• Plenty of plugs

Cons

• Expensive for its size/capacity

Yeti is long-renowned for making some of the best outdoor gear money can buy, so when the company launched its Goal Zero line of solar generators, it was no surprise that they turned out to be awesome. While the whole line is great, the 1000 Core model’s balance between capacity and portability makes it perfect for taking on the road.

While the 1000 Core has a third less capacity than our top pick, it charges up faster, making it a great option for rapid solar replenishment. That said, its capacity is no slouch, offering 82 phone charges, 20 for a laptop, or upwards of 15 hours for a portable fridge (depending on wattage). Suffice it to say, that it’s more than capable of powering your basic camping gear.

Beyond its charging capabilities, the Goal Zero 1000 Core excels at camping thanks to its hearty build quality. Built super tough—like pretty much everything Yeti makes—its exterior shell provides solid protection.

The biggest issue it presents is the cost. Like pretty much everything Yeti produces, its price tag isn’t small. While there are other 1000-level solar generators for less, this one offers a great balance of power storage and portability.

For more on the Goal Zero Yeti 1000 Core, check out our full review.

Best for off-grid living: Bluetti AC200 Max

Bluetti

SEE IT

Buy it used or refurbished: eBay

Why it made the cut: Thanks to its high solo capacity and ability to daisy-chain with additional batteries, the Bluetti AC200 Max is perfect for bringing power off the grid.

Specs

• Storage capacity: 2,048Wh standalone, expandable up to 8,192Wh
• Input capacity: 1,400W
• Output capacity: 2,200W (4,800W surge)
• Dimensions: 16.5 x 11 x 15.2 inches
• Weight: 61.9 lbs
• Price: $1,999

Pros

• Massive capacity
• Daisy-chain capability
• Lightning-fast input capacity
• 30A RV plug and two wireless charging pads
• Surprisingly affordable for what it offers

Cons

• Pretty heavy
• Fan can get loud, especially in hot weather

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a solar generator better suited for living off the grid for an extended period than the Bluetti AC200 Max. It boasts a substantial 2,048Wh capacity, allowing you to power your whole life off it longer than most portable generators. Even better, you can daisy-chain multiple Bluetti batteries, expanding its capacity to a massive 8.192Wh. That’s flat-out enormous and translates into the ability to power a full-sized fridge for over a day or several hours of air conditioning. For the more modest needs of people who are used to living off a generator, it will last for a very long time.

At the same time, the AC200 Max has an outstanding input capacity of 1,400W. That means you can plug in a pretty hefty array of solar panels to replenish its stores quickly. This allows you to keep your off-grid setup going with little to no interruption. It also features some specialty charging options, including a 30A plug, which lets you plug it directly into an RV, and multiple wireless charging pads for smaller devices.

Best for homes: EcoFlow Delta Pro

Nick Hilden

SEE IT

Buy it used or refurbished: eBay

Why it made the cut: The EcoFlow Delta Pro delivers the standalone and expandable power capacity necessary to power your entire home.

Specs

• Storage capacity: 3,600Wh standalone, expandable up to 25,000Wh
• Input capacity: 6,500W
• Output capacity: 3,600W (7,200W surge)
• Dimensions: 25 x 11.2 x 16.4 inches
• Weight: 99 lbs
• Price: $3,699

Pros

• Enormous capacity
• Daisy-chain capability
• 30A RV plug
• Lightning-fast input capacity
• Wi-Fi and Smartphone connectivity

Cons

• Very heavy
• Expensive

If you’re looking for the best solar generator for home backup in the event of a power outage, the EcoFlow Delta Pro stands apart from the pack, thanks to an unrivaled power and output capacity. The Delta Pro alone packs a 3,600Wh wallop, and you can expand that to 25,000Wh by chaining it to extra EcoFlow batteries and generators. That’s a ton of power and it has the substantial output capacity necessary to power an entire house worth of electronics when you need it to.

The Delta Pro also offers a companion app for iOS and Android that allows you to monitor energy usage, customize its operation, and monitor and manage a number of other elements.

While it’s not overly large for what it does, the Delta Pro is a heavy piece of equipment. It has wheels, so it is technically portable, but this is meant to be put down in a home or other semi-permanent site. Given its size and power, it’s also a much more expensive device, especially if you’re springing for the add-ons. As the best solar power generator to provide backup power for your entire home, however, it’s worth every penny. 

Best portable: Anker 545

Anker

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Buy it used or refurbished: eBay

Why it makes the cut: If you’re looking for highly portable power, the Anker 545 delivers.

Specs

• Storage capacity: 778Wh
• Input capacity: 240W
• Output capacity: 770W
• Dimensions: 11.81 x 8.03 x 7.28 inches
• Weight: 18.2 lbs
• Price: $559.99

Pros

• Lightweight and compact
• Plenty of capacity
• Built-in lights

Cons

• Slower input capacity

When portability is a priority, the Anker 545 offers the compact size and reduced weight you’re looking for and packs fairly substantial power to boot. Roughly the size of a shoebox and lighter than a case of beer, it’s easy to pack along with camping gear and move around without too much effort.

To get something so light, though, you have to compromise on power. The Anker 545 has a capacity of 778Wh and an output capacity of 770W, which is plenty of power for keeping your devices charged. Specifically, that should provide about 55 phone charges, 10 for a laptop, or 38 for a camera. Unfortunately, the outlets only output at up to 500W, so it cannot power more demanding devices like hair dryers or electric stoves.

That said, the Anker 545 has some bells and whistles, including an integrated flashlight and ambient light. All told it’s a solid option if you need a highly mobile generator.

Best budget: Jackery Explorer 300

Stan Horaczek

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Buy it used or refurbished: Amazon

Why it made the cut: With its reasonable capacity, compact size, and solid build quality at a low price, the Jackery Explorer 300 is a great budget pick.

Specs

• Storage capacity: 293Wh
• Input capacity: 90W
• Output capacity: 300W (500W surge)
• Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.2 x 7.8 in
• Weight: 7.1 lbs
• Price: $250

Pros

• Affordable
• Durable
• Portable
• Reasonable capacity

Cons

• No flashlight
• Slower input capacity

Though it isn’t quite as impressive as our top picks for best overall and best high-capacity, Jackery’s smaller Explorer 300 solar generator is super compact and lightweight with a decent power capacity for its price. Less a mobile power station than an upscale power bank, the 7-pound Jackery Explorer 300 provides plenty of portable recharges for your devices when you’re camping, on a job site, driving, or just need some power and don’t have convenient access to an outlet. Its modest 293Wh capacity isn’t huge, but it’s enough to provide 31 phone charges, 15 for a camera, 6 for the average drone, 2.5 for a laptop, or a few hours of operation for a minifridge or TV. A built-in flashlight would have upped its camping game somewhat, but at $300 (and often considerably less if you catch it discounted), this highly portable little power station does a lot for a little.

We tested this portable power station for several months, and it came in handy numerous times, especially during the winter when power outages abound. At one point, we had it powering two phones, a MacBook, and a small light.

The built-in handle makes it very easy to lug around. It feels like carrying a lunch box. The screen is easy to read, and the whole package seems fairly durable. Our review unit hasn’t taken any dramatic tumbles yet, but it has gotten banged around in car trunks, duffle bags, and other less-than-luxurious accommodations with no issues. If you catch one of these on sale, get it and stick it in a cabinet. You’ll be extremely glad to have it around when the need arises.

What to consider before buying the best solar generators

Over the past few years, solar generators have exploded onto the market. There are now dozens of different brands that largely look more or less the same at a glance. The fact is there are only a few standouts amidst a sea of knockoffs. Here’s what to look for to ensure you’re getting a great one:

How much power can it store?

A portable solar generator comes in an extremely wide range of sizes, but a generator’s size doesn’t automatically make it capable of storing a lot of power. In fact, most are disappointingly limited and unable to store much more juice than a portable charger.

To properly check a generator’s storage, you must look at its capacity, measured in watt-hours (Wh). One watt-hour is the equivalent of 1 watt flowing over the course of an hour. The best solar generators offer capacities of several hundred and sometimes several thousand watt-hours. That doesn’t mean, however, that it will provide power for several hundred or several thousand hours. Any generator will ultimately last a different amount of time, depending on what’s plugged into it.

It’s easy to predict how long a generator will last when you use it to power one thing. For example, if you were to power a 100-watt bulb using a power station with a capacity of 500 watt-hours, it would stay lit for five continuous hours. Add a portable fridge that requires 50 watts per hour, your phone which uses 18, a mini-fan that uses three … you get the picture. The more capacity, the better.

Charging capability

No solar generator will hold a charge forever, so you want one capable of charging as quickly and easily as possible. This is where we put the “renewable” into “renewable energy.”

All of the power stations included in this roundup can be charged by connecting them to solar panels (hence the designation “solar generators”). Still, you also want to look for the ability to charge via other sources like wall outlets and your vehicle’s 12-volt plug. This ensures that you can charge up whether you’re off-grid in the sun, plugged in while preparing at home, or using your dash socket on the go.

You must also monitor a model’s charging input capacity, measured in watts (W). For example, a solar-powered generator with a max input of 100W can take in a continuous flow of up to 100 watts, which is about the minimum that you’ll reasonably want to look for. Most of the generators below have input capacities of at least a few hundred watts when charging via solar, so a few 50- to 200-watt solar panels will max them out.

Output capability

Solar generators need to keep the power coming in and going out. The best solar generators can simultaneously charge all your intended devices via whatever plugs are necessary.

Any portable power station worth your money will have a high output capacity so you can charge many devices, even if they require a lot of juice. A generator’s maximum output should be much higher than its max input. While a particular model might only be capable of taking in a few hundred watts at any given moment, it will usually put out exponentially more. At a minimum, you’ll want a generator that can put out 300 watts at a time, though you’ll want at least 500 for larger tasks.

The best solar generators should also offer a variety of output plugs, including AC outlets, USB-A, USB-C, and even 12-volt DC outlets like the one in your vehicle dash. This ensures you can charge several devices simultaneously regardless of their plug. The number of ports you’ll need will vary depending on how many devices you need to power, but it should have at least a couple of AC outlets and a few USB-A ports.

Portability

While portable battery sources have been around for a while now, over the past several decades, they’ve been pretty heavy, unwieldy things. One of the most exciting aspects of the latest generation of solar generators is that they’ve become much more physically compact. 

Suppose you plan on taking a generator camping or working it into a van conversion where every square inch matters; well, size and weight become major considerations. All of the products we’ve recommended are about the size of one or two shoeboxes—three at the most. The lightest is about the weight of a 24-pack of soda, while the heaviest is 100 pounds. Most fall somewhere between 30-60 pounds.

If you’re using your generator as a more or less stationary source of backup power at home, portability isn’t a huge issue. Still, we generally recommend keeping weight and size in mind; You never know when you’ll need it for something other than a backup. (Plus, who wants to lug around something heavy and awkward if they don’t have to?) 

Another consideration regarding portability involves the necessity for accessories, which can impact how easy it is to move and use your generator. Some generators, for example, require a lot of removable battery packs, which can be a hassle when you’re on the go or packing a vehicle. All of the inclusions on our list require some accessories—you can’t get solar power without connecting cables and solar panels—but they work well with minimal add-ons.

Durability

As with any product you expect to last, durability and all-around quality craftsmanship are essential. This is especially true if you plan on lugging your generator around on camping and road trips. Many subpar power stations are made from cheap components and flimsy plastic that doesn’t feel like it will hold up under the rigors of the road.

Durability isn’t something you can determine by reading a spec sheet off the internet. You’ve actually got to take the generator out, use it a bunch, and see how it holds up. I’ve verified the durability of these recommendations via a combination of my own actual field tests and reviews culled from countless real product owners.

Related: Best electric generators

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best solar generators

• Best overall: Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro
• Best high-capacity: Jackery Explorer 3000 Pro
• Best for frequent use: Anker 767 Portable Power Station Solar Generator
• Best for camping: Goal Zero Yeti 1000 Core
• Best for off-grid living: Bluetti AC200 Max
• Best for homes: EcoFlow Delta Pro
• Best portable: Anker 545
• Best budget: Jackery Explorer 300

We’re living in a “golden age” for portable solar generators. When I was a kid, and my family was playing around with solar gear while camping in the ‘90s, the technology couldn’t charge many devices, so it wasn’t all that practical. 

By contrast, the solar generators we’ve recommended here are incredibly useful. I’ve relied on them to power my work and day-to-day needs while road-tripping nationwide. They’re also great when the power goes out. When a windstorm cut the power at my house for a couple of days, I was still working, watching my stories, and keeping the lights on. 

We haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of the potential offered by portable, reliable, renewable, relatively affordable power. What we can do now is already incredible. The potential for what may come next, though, is truly mind-blowing.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

The post The best solar generators for 2023, tested and reviewed appeared first on Popular Science.

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Decarbonizing the energy sector requires ramping up power generation from renewable sources. However, increasing renewable energy generation poses some challenges, like mismatches between production and demand. Output from renewables varies seasonally and annually due to insolation differences and trends in weather, which means there may be periods of over- and undergeneration.

Seasonal heating and cooling—usually the largest energy expenses in households—don’t align often with renewable energy generation patterns, says Amarasinghage T. Perera, an associate research scholar in the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment at Princeton University. For instance, there is higher heating demand in the winter, but more renewable energy generation during the summer. In such cases, it’s important to store additional energy in the summer to cater to the winter heating demand, he adds. This explains why long-term energy storage is needed to support renewable technologies.

According to a recent study published in Applied Energy, underground water has the potential for storing much-needed renewable energy. This approach, called aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES), uses naturally occurring groundwater or aquifers for long-term storage of thermal energy that can be used to assist the heating and cooling of buildings, says Perera, who was involved in the study.

[Related: Scientists think we can get 90 percent clean energy by 2035.]

In an ATES system, there are two wells connected to the same groundwater reservoir. During the summer, cold groundwater is pumped up to provide cooling, warmed at the surface, and then stored. During the winter, the opposite happens—the warm groundwater is pumped up to provide heating, cooled at the surface, and then stored. The cycle repeats seasonally.

Energy storage is often discussed in relation to decarbonizing the transportation sector by replacing internal combustion engine vehicles with those supported by battery and hydrogen storage. However, for grid storage, the materials required to store electric charge in batteries have a high energy cost, while hydrogen storage results in significant energy losses. Perera says more research funding can help identify the broader potential of thermal energy storage technologies.

“Compared to conventional groundwater heat pumps, the extraction of heated or cooled groundwater which was previously injected into the subsurface enables a more efficient operation,” says Ruben Stemmle, a researcher from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)’s Institute of Applied Geosciences in Germany who was not involved in the study. ATES systems can also store excess heat from industrial processes, combined heat and power plants, or solar thermal energy. Overall, it helps bridge the seasonal mismatch between the demand and availability of thermal energy, he adds.

Long-term seasonal storage and demand-driven utilization of previously unused heat sources, like waste heat or excess solar thermal energy, can promote the decarbonization of the heating and cooling sector, as well as reduce primary energy consumption, says Stemmle.

According to the study, ATES can improve the flexibility of the energy system, allowing it to withstand fluctuations in renewable energy demand and generation from future climate variations. It could make urban energy infrastructure more resilient by preventing additional burdens on the grid during hot or cold months.

[Related: How can electrified buildings handle energy peaks?]

ATES has very high storage capacities due to large volumes of groundwater available in many areas like major groundwater basins and complex hydrological structures. This enables ATES application for district heating and cooling or large building complexes with high energy demands, says Stemmle. It can significantly reduce the use of fossil fuels compared to conventional types of heating and cooling, he adds, like gas boilers and compression chillers.

Currently, there are over 3,000 ATES systems in the Netherlands alone. Some are also found in Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium. They aren’t as widely used in the US yet, but adding ATES to the grid could reduce the consumption of petroleum products by up to 40 percent.

To increase ATES deployment, policymakers can support funding programs for ATES systems and related technologies, like heat pumps and heating grids, says Stemmle. He emphasizes the importance of decreasing market barriers as well, which can be achieved by establishing a simple and rapid permitting procedure and a uniform regulatory framework governing ATES operations. The deployment of such thermal energy storage systems could help achieve a more climate change-resilient grid in the future.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Industrial mining in the deep ocean is on the horizon. Despite several countries including Germany, France, Chile, and Canada calling for a pause on the field’s development, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the organization tasked with both regulating and permitting deep-sea mining efforts, is nearing the deadline to finalize rules for how companies will operate. Companies, meanwhile, are busy testing the capabilities of their machines—equipment designed to collect polymetallic nodules, rocks rich in cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese that litter some parts of the seafloor.

Top of mind for many scientists and politicians is what ramifications deep-sea mining might have on fragile marine ecosystems, including those far from the mining site. At the heart of the debate is concern about the clouds of sediment that can be kicked up by mining equipment.

“Imagine a car driving on a dusty road, and the plume of dust that balloons behind the car,” says Henko de Stigter, a marine geologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. “This is how sediment plumes will form in the seabed.”

Scientists estimate that each full-scale deep-sea mining operation could produce up to 500 million cubic meters of discharge over a 30-year period. That’s roughly 1,000 six-meter-long shipping containers full of sediment being discharged into the deep every day, spawning from a field of mining sites spread out over an area roughly the size of Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, and Germany.

These sediment plumes threaten to smother life on the ocean floor and choke midwater ecosystems, sending ripples throughout marine ecosystems affecting everything from deep-sea filter-feeders to commercially important species like tuna. Yet discussions of the plumes’ potential consequences are clouded by a great deal of uncertainty over how far they will spread and how they will affect marine life.

To clarify just how murky deep-sea mining will make the water, scientists have been tagging along as companies conduct tests.

Two years ago, Global Sea Mineral Resources, a Belgian company, conducted the first trials of its nodule-collecting vehicles. Scientists working with the company found that more than 90 percent of the sediment plume settled out on the seafloor, while the rest lingered within two meters of the seabed near the mined area. Other studies from experiments in the central Pacific Ocean found that the sediment plumes reached as far as 300 meters away from the disturbed site, though the thickest deposition was within 100 meters. This is a shorter spread than earlier models, which predicted deep-sea mining plumes could spread up to five kilometers from the mining site.

Beyond the sediment kicked up by submersibles moving along the seafloor, deep-sea mining can muddy the water in another way.

As polymetallic nodules are lifted to the surface, the waste water that’s sucked up along with the nodules is discharged back into the ocean. Doug McCauley, a marine scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says this could potentially create “underwater dust storms” in upper layers of the water column. Over the course of a 20-year mining operation, this sediment could be carried by ocean currents up to 1,000 kilometers before sinking to the seabed.

Some particularly fine-grained particles could remain suspended in the water column, traveling long distances with the potential to affect a wide range of marine animals. According to another recent study, it’s these tiny particles that are the most harmful to filter-feeders like the Mediterranean mussel.

To avoid these consequences on midwater ecosystems, at least, scientists are advising would-be deep-sea miners to discharge waste water at the bottom of the ocean where mining has already created a disturbance. This would be a departure from the ISA’s messaging, which is to not specify at what depth waste water should be released.

For its own trials last December, the Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian company, says it worked hard to minimize the amount of sediment discharged in the waste water it released at a depth of 1,200 meters.

“We’ve optimized our system to leave as much sediment on the seabed as possible,” says Michael Clarke, environmental manager at TMC. Clarke says he’s skeptical of previously published research projecting vast sediment plumes. “When we were trying to measure the [midwater] plume a few hundred meters away from the outlet, we couldn’t even find the plume because it diluted so much.”

Clarke says the company is currently analyzing both baseline and impact data for its test mining, including looking at how far small particles spread and how long they remain suspended. The results will be submitted to the ISA as part of an environmental impact assessment.

As deep-sea mining inches closer and scientists ramp up their research efforts, it’s important to keep one thing clear: “I can tell you that we’re not going to discover that deep-sea mining is good for marine ecosystems,” McCauley says. “The question is, How bad will it be?”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

In the premier episode of Apple TV’s climate show, Extrapolations, it’s 2037 and Earth is in turmoil. Global temperatures have reached record highs. Wildfires rage on every continent. People lack clean drinking water, while a stone-faced billionaire hoards patents to life-saving desalination technology. 

People are understandably upset. Because it’s nearly a decade and a half in the future, protests now include towering holograms and desperate calls to limit global warming — which has long since blown past 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — to 2 degrees C. One thing is eerily familiar, though: In one scene, demonstrators chant “net-zero now!” — a catchphrase with origins at the end of the last decade. 

To some, this is a surprising slogan to hear today, let alone in 2037. Although the concept of global net-zero is rooted in climate science, today’s carbon neutrality pledges from individual governments and corporations have been criticized in some quarters as a “con,” because they allow polluters to continue emitting greenhouse gases. The carbon offset projects that are supposed to neutralize all those residual emissions are often questionable, if not a sham.

“If today’s version of net-zero is still the rallying cry for climate action 15 years from now, we are in big, big trouble,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy for the nonprofit Corporate Accountability. “I hope we’re headed down a different path.”

Just what that path looks like, however, remains a matter of debate.

The concept of net-zero is rooted in the climate science of the early 2000s. Between 2005 and 2009, a series of research articles showed that global temperatures would continue rising alongside net emissions of carbon dioxide. The “net” acknowledged the role of long-term processes like deep-ocean carbon uptake, in which the seas absorb the pollutant from the air. These processes occur over decades, even centuries.

The term “net-zero” doesn’t appear in the Paris Agreement of 2015, but it was at about that time that it went mainstream. Based on recommendations from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, countries agreed in Article 4 of the accord to achieve a “balance” between sources and sinks of greenhouse gas emissions during the second half of the century.

So far, so good; this is relatively noncontroversial. “Global net-zero is nonnegotiable if you’re serious about climate targets,” said Sam Fankhauser, a professor of climate change economics and policy at the University of Oxford. Where things start to skew, however, is when individual countries and businesses adopt net-zero targets for themselves. “That’s where you leave the science and get into the realm of policy and opinion,” Fankhauser said.

Sweden became the first country to legislate a midcentury net-zero goal in 2017. Since then, that target has exploded in popularity, almost to the exclusion of other pledges. Some 92 percent of the global economy is now covered by a patchwork of such commitments, made by entities including 130 countries and 850 of the planet’s largest publicly traded companies. 

Fankhauser considers that good news. “None of those firms or organizations had any targets at all before, so they’re moving in the right direction,” he said, although he added that there’s lots of room for improvement in the integrity of those promises. A global analysis published last year found that 65 percent of the largest corporate net-zero targets don’t meet minimum reporting standards, and only 40 percent of municipal targets are reflected in legislation or policy documents.

Others, however, have harsher words for something they consider little more than “rank deception” from big polluters. With heads of state and fossil fuel companies pledging net-zero yet planning to expand oil and gas reserves, Jackson said the logic behind carbon neutrality has been “completely lit on fire” by greenwashing governments and corporations. “They have entirely co-opted the net-zero agenda,” she said. 

At the heart of the issue lies that little word, “net,” and the offsets it implies. When companies or governments can’t get their climate pollution to zero, they can pay for offset projects to either remove carbon from the atmosphere or prevent hypothetical emissions — like by protecting a stand of trees that otherwise would have been razed. Under ideal conditions, a third party evaluates these offsets and converts them into “credits” polluters can use to claim that some of their emissions have been neutralized.

The problem, however, is these offsets are too often bogus — the market for them is “honestly kind of a Wild West,” said Amanda Levin, interim director of policy analysis for the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. For projects claiming to avoid emissions, it’s difficult to prove the counterfactual: Would a given forest really have been cut down without the offset project? And carbon removal schemes like those based on afforestation — planting trees that will store carbon as they grow — might last only a few years if a disease or forest fire comes along.

Levin said polluters too often use poorly regulated and opaque “junk offsets” to delay the absolute emissions reductions required to combat climate change. Although the IPCC includes offsets in nearly all of its pathways to keep global warming well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), experts agree those offsets should be considered a last resort used only when it’s no longer possible to further cut climate pollution. 

“Net-zero does not mean that we don’t have to take steps to directly reduce our emissions,” Levin said. 

Many, many others — from environmental groups to scientists to policymakers — agree. Where opinions differ, however, is what to do about it. Many net-zero critiques are paired with suggestions for reform, like a 2022 report from a U.N. panel that blasted nongovernmental net-zero pledges as “greenwash.” It recommended tighter guidelines on reporting and transparency, as well as new measures to ensure the integrity of offsets.

Carbon Market Watch, a European watchdog and think tank, takes a slightly different approach. In a February letter to members of the European Parliament, the organization called for a total ban on “carbon neutrality” claims for companies’ products, arguing that such boasts give consumers the false idea that business as usual can continue without adverse impacts on the climate or environment. 

“To say that you neutralize your climate impact by investing in an avoided deforestation program halfway across the world? That’s not scientifically sound,” said Lindsay Otis, a policy expert for Carbon Market Watch. “It deters from real mitigation efforts that will keep us in line with our Paris Agreement goals.”

To Otis, it’s not necessarily offset projects that should be banned. Although she acknowledged that many are problematic, she said mitigation efforts like reforestation can have “a potential real-world benefit,” and it would be a mistake to stop funding them. Instead, she considers this a communication problem: Rather than allowing companies to claim carbon mitigation projects cancel out residual emissions, Carbon Market Watch favors a “contribution claim” model, in which polluters advertise only their financial support for such projects. Some carbon credit sellers like Myclimate are embracing a version of that model, as is the global payment service Klarna.

Carbon Market Watch distinguishes between “carbon neutrality” claims, which describe companies’ products and current environmental performance, and “net-zero” claims about what companies say they’ll do in the future, as in “net-zero by 2050.” It says the latter are still permissible, but only if backed by a detailed plan to quickly drive down emissions and not offset them.

On its face, this is similar to an alternative benchmark that has gained popularity in recent years: “real zero,” which involves the rapid elimination of all fossil fuel production and greenhouse gas emissions without the use of offsets. At least two major companies, the utilities NextEra and National Grid, have eschewed their own net-zero goals in favor of real zero. However, some environmental groups — including a coalition of 700 organizations from around the world — take the concept further. They see real zero as a whole new lens with which to view equitable climate action, one that rejects a single-minded, technocratic focus on greenhouse gas emissions. 

“The real zero framing puts at the center not just the urgency” of climate mitigation, “but also fairness,” said Jackson, the policy director at Corporate Accountability. She and others say real zero is an opportunity to reorient the international climate agenda around new priorities, like funneling climate finance to the developing world and protecting Indigenous land rights. It also sets faster decarbonization timelines for the biggest historical polluters and demands that they pay reparations to communities most harmed by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

It’s a far-reaching and ambitious agenda, and its calls for climate justice are broadly supported by experts and policy wonks. Still, some push back, returning to the idea of net-zero as a global necessity. 

“While real zero is a valuable guiding light, net-zero is still a worthy and necessary goal,” said Jackie Ennis, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Her modeling shows that even the most ambitious carbon mitigation scenarios will require offsets for the hardest-to-abate corners of the economy, which she defined to include waste management and animal agriculture. She pointed to work from the independent Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market to define criteria that define a “high-quality” offset — including whether it contributes to sustainable development goals and doesn’t violate the rights of Indigenous peoples.

According to Fankhauser, the “gold standard” here is geological removal, in which carbon is drawn out of the atmosphere and locked up in rock formations. This technology can’t yet handle even a tiny fraction of the planet’s overall carbon emissions, but experts say it could one day enable offsets that are less prone to double-counting and more likely to sequester carbon for the long haul.

Fankhauser suggested a sort of middle ground between real and net-zero, in which governments set different decarbonization targets for different sectors: net-zero for those like shipping and steel-making for which zero-carbon alternatives aren’t yet viable, and the total elimination of emissions for the rest of the economy. Some jurisdictions already do something like this. The economy-wide net-zero target set by New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act prohibits offsets for the power sector and caps them at 15 percent for the state’s overall emissions by 2050. That means 85 percent of Empire State emissions reductions must come from actually reducing emissions. 

“That’s a perfect example of how policymakers are trying to constrain the use of offsets so they’re being used where it’s most valuable,” said Levin, with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

More global efforts, however, are hard to come by, likely because there’s so much contention around the net-zero agenda. One thing people seem to agree on, however, is that the status quo is not working. Although thousands of companies and governments have pledged to reach net-zero sometime in the next several decades, the planet is still on track for dangerous levels of global warming — 2.8 degrees C (5 degrees F), to be precise. That’s more than enough to “cook the fool out of you,” as one protester in Extrapolations so eloquently put it.

“The current trajectory is one of failure,” Jackson told Grist, though she said it’s not too late to turn things around. “The money exists, the technology exists, the capacity exists — it’s only the lack of political will. If we’re brave enough to alter course and redirect toward what we know is needed, then a totally different world is possible.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

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Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Offshore wind is one of the fastest-growing sources of renewable energy, and with its expansion comes increasing scrutiny of its potential side effects. Alessandro Cresci, a biologist at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway, and his team have now shown that larval cod are attracted to one of the low-frequency sounds emitted by wind turbines, suggesting offshore wind installations could potentially alter the early life of microscopic fish that drift too close.

Cresci and his colleagues made their discovery through experiments conducted in the deep fjord water near the Austevoll Research Station in Norway. The team placed 89 cod larvae in floating transparent mesh chambers that allowed them to drift naturally, then filmed as they subjected half the fish in 15-minute trials to the output of an underwater sound projector set to 100 Hz to mimic the deep thrum put out by wind turbines.

When left to their own devices, all of the cod larvae oriented themselves to the northwest. Like the closely related haddock, cod have an innate sense of direction that guides their ocean swimming. When the scientists played the low-frequency sound, the baby fish still had a northwest preference, but it was weak. Instead, the larvae favored pointing their bodies in the direction of the sound. Cresci thinks the larvae may be attracted to the 100-Hz sound waves because that low frequency is among the symphony of sounds sometimes part of the background din along the coastline or near the bottom of the ocean where the fish might like to settle.

As sound waves propagate through water, they compress and decompress water molecules in their path. Fish can tell what direction a sound is coming from by detecting changes in the motion of water particles. “In water,” says Cresci, fish are “connected to the medium around them, so all the vibrations in the molecules of water are transferred to the body.”

Like other creatures on land and in the sea, fish use sound to communicate, avoid predators, find prey, and understand the world around them. Sound also helps many marine creatures find the best place to live. In previous research, scientists have shown that by playing the sounds of a thriving reef near a degraded reef they could cause more fish to settle in the area. For many species, where they settle as larvae is where they tend to be found as adults.

Even if larval fish are attracted to offshore wind farms en masse, what happens next is yet unknown.

Since fishers typically can’t safely operate near turbines, offshore wind farms could become pseudo protected areas where fish populations can grow large. But Ella Kim, a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego who studies fish acoustics and was not involved with the study, says it could go the other way.

Kim suggests that even if fish larvae do end up coalescing within offshore wind farms, the noise from the turbines and increased boat traffic to service the equipment could drown out fish communication. “Once these larvae get there,” Kim says, “will they have such impaired hearing that they won’t be able to even hear each other and reproduce?”

Aaron Rice, a bioacoustician at Cornell University in New York who was not involved with the study, says the research is useful because it shows that not only can fish larvae hear the sound, but that they’re responding to it by orienting toward it. Rice adds, however, that the underwater noise from real wind turbines is far more complex than the lone 100-Hz sound tested in the study. He says care should be taken in reading too much into the results.

As well as noise pollution, many marine species are also at risk from overfishing, rising ocean temperatures, and other pressures. When trying to decide whether offshore wind power is a net benefit or harm for marine life, says Rice, it’s important to keep these other elements in mind.

“The more understanding that we can have in terms of how offshore wind [power] impacts the ocean,” he says, “the better we can respond to the changing demands and minimize impacts.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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The foundation for the world’s deepest offshore wind turbine has just been installed 17 miles off the coast of Scotland. Last week, the roughly 441,000-pound “jacket,” or foundation, was placed at a depth of 58.6 meters—just over 192 feet—by the Sapiem 7000, the world’s third largest semi-submersible crane vessel. It was the 112th jacket installed at the 114-wind turbine Seagreen wind farm, which will be Scotland’s largest when it is fully operational later this year.

Wind turbines like these work like an inverse fan. Instead of using electricity to generate wind, they generate electricity using wind. The thin blades are shaped like aircraft wings and as the wind flows across them, the air pressure on one side decreases. This difference in air pressure across the blade generates both lift and drag, which causes the rotor to spin. The spinning rotor then powers a generator, sending electricity to the grid. 

Offshore wind farms like Seagreen have a number of advantages over land-based wind turbines. Since wind speeds at sea tend to be faster and more consistent than they are over land, it’s easier to reliably generate greater amounts of electricity. Even small increases in wind speed can have a dramatic effect: in a 15-mph wind, a turbine can generate double the amount of electricity it can generate in a 12-mph wind.

[Related: The NY Bight could write the book on how we build offshore wind farms in the future]

Also, coastal areas frequently have high energy requirements. In the US, more than 40 percent of the population, some 127 million people, live in coastal counties. By generating power offshore close to where it’s used, there is less need for long-distance energy transmission, and cities don’t have to dedicate already scarce space to power plants. 

But of course, the biggest advantage of any wind farm is that they can provide renewable energy without emitting toxic environmental pollutants or greenhouse gasses. They don’t even need or consume important non-petrochemical resources like water, although they can have other environmental impacts that engineers are trying to solve for.

The recently installed foundations at Seagreen will each support a Vestas V164-10 MW turbine. With a rotor diameter of roughly 540-feet—that’s more than one-and-a-half football fields—and standing up to 672 feet tall—more than twice the height of the Statue of Liberty—these turbines will be absolutely huge. Each one will be capable of generating up to 10,000 kilowatts (KW) of power in good conditions.

Although Seagreen actually started generating electricity last summer, when the wind farm is fully operational later this year, the 114 wind turbines will have a combined total capacity of 1,075 megawatts (MW). While that’s not enough to crack the top 100 power stations in the US, the wind farm is projected to produce around 5,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity each year, which is enough to provide clean and sustainable power to more than 1.6 million UK households. That’s around two-thirds of the population of Scotland. 

Really, the Seagreen site shows how far wind power has come. While wind farms don’t yet have the capacity to fully replace fossil fuel power plants, Seagreen will still displace more than 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that would otherwise have been released by Scottish electricity generation. According to Seagreen, that’s the equivalent of removing a third of all Scotland’s cars from the road. 

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This article was originally featured on The Drive.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed Wednesday perhaps its most sweeping changes to vehicle emissions controls in its history, a far-reaching measure that could effectively mandate a tenfold increase in EV sales by the middle of the next decade. Under the proposed plan, electric-car sales would comprise more than two-thirds of overall light-duty new car sales and nearly half of all medium-duty car sales by 2032. The plan would also ratchet up emissions targets for internal combustion-powered vehicles by roughly 13 percent every year from 2027 to 2032, compared to 5-10 percent increases proposed for 2023-2026 model-year cars. The EPA’s proposal will likely face a mountain of legal challenges before it’s adopted. Still, regulators said they would build in language that would make the standards tougher to repeal for subsequent administrations.

“By proposing the most ambitious pollution standards ever for cars and trucks, we are delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s promise to protect people and the planet, securing critical reductions in dangerous air and climate pollution and ensuring significant economic benefits like lower fuel and maintenance costs for families,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

The EPA said its proposal could save the average new-car buyer $12,000 over the lifetime of the vehicle, compared to an ICE engine. The proposal for light- and medium-duty vehicles was accompanied by a proposal for heavy-duty fleets to electrify 25 percent of their trucks and half of all new buses to be electric by 2032. This week the EPA also proposed recalculating how efficiency is measured among electrified vehicles to represent the impact of those cars more accurately in Corporate Average Fuel Economy figures. Combined, the total impact of the EPA’s suggested regulations could vastly reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced on America’s roadways. However, the ambitious targets exceed President Joe Biden’s initial target of 50 percent EV sales by the decade’s end. 

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most major automakers in America, CEO John Bozzella called the proposal “aggressive by any measure. By that I mean it sets automotive electrification goals in the next few years that are … very high,” he wrote, according to Automotive News. 

Automakers and unions are likely to push back against the regulations, which they’ve said could cost jobs and further hike the prices of new cars. Last year, EV sales accounted for less than 6 percent of overall vehicle sales and 2 percent of heavy-truck sales. In addition to building battery facilities in the U.S. that won’t come online for several years, automakers have warned that existing and planned charging infrastructure may not handle such a dramatic increase in EVs, and critical mineral supplies wouldn’t be enough. The Biden administration has offered trillions in spending to accelerate both while pushing forward with ambitious targets. The EPA doesn’t have the mandate to quantify overall vehicle sales but instead can set targets to force automakers to otherwise comply with those stringent rules. 

Going forward, the plan will be open to public comment and face scrutiny from legislators and others, likely including legal challenges. 

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Best Overall		HQST Solar Panel 2pcs 100 Watt 12V Monocrystalline		SEE IT	Get renewable energy for the campsite, RV, or even the home with these impressive monocrystalline solar panels.
Best for the Money		Nekteck 21W Solar Charge		SEE IT	Lightweight and affordable, these monocrystalline solar panels are ideal for backpacking or hiking.
Best for Camping		Goal Zero Boulder 200 Watt Briefcase		SEE IT	This foldable pair of solar panels is easy to pack into a vehicle and set up at a campsite using the built-in kickstand to get the best angle.

Hydro, wind, geothermal, and solar panels all represent the future of renewable energy. But why wait for everyone else to figure out the benefits when you can take the initiative to start relying on renewable energy today? Whether you are looking to completely power a home, generate power for an RV, or just charge your phone at the campsite, have the best solar panels are an excellent choice. 

The best solar panels are typically made with monocrystalline silicon wafers. Their high efficiency and power output make them ideal for powering a home. However, polycrystalline and thin film solar panels are also effective choices that are more affordable. To get a better understanding of the various products available, take a look at this list of top products, then keep reading for detailed information on solar panel types, size, weight, and device integration to help you find the best solar panels for long-lasting renewable energy.

• Best overall: HQST Solar Panel 2pcs 100 Watt 12V Monocrystalline
• Best for the money: Nekteck 21W Solar Charger
• Best for camping: Goal Zero Boulder 200 Watt Briefcase
• Best portable: Jackery SolarSaga 60W Solar Panel
• Best for RVs: Renogy 200 Watt Monocrystalline

How we chose the best solar panels

Having used solar panels to power camp stoves, mobile devices, and power stations for many camping trips, this first-hand experience helped to found the basis for the selection criteria, though extension research was also required in order to choose the best products from over 30 different panels. The top choices were selected based on the type of solar panel, the size and weight of each product, as well as the suitability of the solar panel for various uses, like powering solar generators, hiking, camping, or heading out in the RV.

Monocrystalline products represent the best options available simply because they outperform both polycrystalline and thin film solar panels in both efficiency and power output. The size and weight of a panel impacts the suitability of the product for specific uses. For instance, a 50-pound solar panel isn’t a good choice for hiking, but it works perfectly well for powering the home or even mounting on an RV. Lighter-weight products may blow off a home or RV. The efficiency and power output of each product impacted our decision-making, but the individual ranges were typical representations of each type. Monocrystalline products offer the best efficiency and power output. Polycrystalline panels are the second best, while thin film products rely more on affordability and portability to stand out.  

The best solar panels: Reviews & Recommendations

Whether you’re using a solar panel to power a solar generator for an outdoor party or preparing to go off the grid, we have plenty of choices to fit your lifestyle, budget, and use. Look on the bright side of life by checking out our recommendations below.

Best overall: HQST Solar Panel 2pcs 100 Watt 12V Monocrystalline

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: These monocrystalline panels have corrosion-resistant aluminum frames to ensure the solar panels can be used outdoors for an extended period of time.

Specs

• Type: Monocrystalline
• Output: 100 Watts
• Weight: 12.1 pounds

Pros

• High efficiency rating of 21 percent
• Suitable for houses, boats, caravans, RVs, or camping
• Durable, corrosion-resistant aluminum frame

Cons

• Must connect to compatible power station to charge mobile devices

The HQST 2-Piece Solar Panel Set comes with two 100-watt panels that each measure 40.1 inches tall by 20 inches wide. They’re just 1.2 inches thick. These best-quality solar panels have predrilled holes in the back of their frames that make it much easier to mount the panels to Z-brackets, pole mounts, or tilt mounts. 

Each panel weighs 12.1 pounds and they can either be used separately or collectively to generate electricity. However, it should be noted that these solar panels are made for charging power stations, backup batteries, and any vehicles that operate with a 12V battery. This means that they are not equipped with outlets for USB, USB-C, or any other adapters for mobile devices. 

The panels are supported by a durable aluminum frame that is specifically designed to resist corrosion, withstand snow loads of up to 112.8 pounds per square foot (PSF), and weather any winds of up to 140 miles per hour. With a high-efficiency rating of 21 percent and the versatility to be used for a house, boat, caravan, RV, or even camping, these panels are an excellent option for safe, renewable energy.

Best for the money: Nekteck 21W Solar Charger

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Why it made the cut: Pack this lightweight product into a backpack to take to the campsite and take advantage of the two built-in USB ports for mobile device charging.

Specs

• Type: Monocrystalline
• Output: 21 Watts
• Weight: 1.1 pounds

Pros

• High efficiency rating of 21 to 24 percent
• Foldable and compact for easy storage
• Best suited for hiking, backpacking, and camping

Cons

• Can easily blow away in moderate wind if not secured

These best solar panels for the money are lightweight and essential for camping, backpacking, and hiking trips that require the user to carry everything they need in a backpack. The Nekteck 21W Solar Charger weighs just 1.1 pounds and can fold up to just a quarter of the original size, saving space in the user’s backpack. When this product is unfoldable it reveals three monocrystalline solar panels that each have an efficiency rating of about 21 to 24 percent, ensuring that a high level of energy is captured from the sun and transferred to the USB outputs.

Plug in up to two USB devices at once to draw power directly from the 21-watt panels. It’s flexible, so it’s easy to arrange in such a way that it gets a good look at the sun. Simply adjust the angle and position of the solar panels according to the current position of the sun. Just keep in mind that this product only weighs 1.1 pounds, so even moderate winds can carry the panels away if they are not secured.

Best for camping: Goal Zero Boulder 200 Watt Briefcase

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Why it made the cut: Pack the briefcase-style monocrystalline panels into the truck or car and use the built-in kickstand for optimal positioning.

Specs

• Type: Monocrystalline
• Output: 200 Watts
• Weight: 46.2 pounds

Pros

• High efficiency rating of 21 percent
• Built-in kickstand
• Folds to just half the original size
• Comes with a carrying case and handle

Cons

• Too heavy to carry on hikes or backpacking trips 

The goal of camping is to get out into the wilderness and enjoy the outdoors, but it doesn’t have to mean totally abandoning technology. In fact, it’s advised to at least have an emergency radio available at all times to stay up to date on current and future weather conditions, as well as call for help in emergencies. The Goal Zero Boulder 200-Watt Solar Panels is an excellent option to ensure that the campsite has power for the emergency radio, mobile device, electric camp stoves, and any other items that users take with them camping. 

Each solar panel has a power output of 100 Watts, but both panels are attached and cannot be used independently, so these monocrystalline panels have a combined output of 200 Watts and an efficiency rating of 21 percent. The panels come with a carrying case, a built-in handle, and a kickstand to make transporting and setting up the panels easier. Even with those portability features, the 46.2-pound weight makes this the best solar panels for camping but a poor option for hiking or backpacking. 

Best portable: Jackery SolarSaga 60W Solar Panel

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Why it made the cut: A built-in kickstand and handle make this foldable 60-Watt solar panel easy to carry and set up.

Specs

• Type: Monocrystalline
• Output: 60 Watts
• Weight: 6.6 pounds 

Pros

• High efficiency rating of 23 percent
• Built-in kickstand and handle
• Lightweight and compact

Cons

• Vulnerable to high winds
• Low power output

Despite its small size, the Jackery Solar Saga Solar Panel has a high-efficiency rating of 23 percent due to the premium monocrystalline construction. However, while the size doesn’t impact the efficiency of the silicon wafers, it does reduce the overall power output to just 60 Watts. That stream is still more than enough to charge up to two devices at once through the USB-C and USB-A ports. Additionally, the panels can connect to an available power station to simply store the collected energy until the sun goes down and the camp lights come out. 

These best portable solar panels can fold in half and it has built-in handles to make it easier to carry. It weighs just 6.6 pounds, which is ideal for hiking, backpacking, and camping, though the slight weight does leave the panels vulnerable to high winds. The built-in kickstand helps to support the panels, but it’s advised to secure them to be certain that they do not get blown away.

Best for RVs: Renogy 200 Watt Monocrystalline

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Why it made the cut: Set up these monocrystalline panels to get an output of up to 200 Watts at an efficiency rating of 21 percent.

Specs

• Type: Monocrystalline
• Output: 200 Watts
• Weight: 35.9 pounds

Pros

• High efficiency rating of 21 percent
• Comes with a solar charge controller
• Adjustable, corrosion-resistant aluminum stand
• Built-in handles

Cons

• Too heavy for hiking or backpacking

Operate the accessories and charging ports on an RV or a boat with these impressive Renogy 200-Watt Panels. These best solar panels for RVs come equipped with a solar charger controller to convert the solar power to usable electricity for both 12V and 24V batteries. The controller has a clear LCD display so that the user can review the operating information, switch between Amp and Volts on the display, and use the controller to set the battery type. 

Mount the panels to the RV or simply use the built-in stand to set these panels up in the optimal position to absorb energy from the sun. This product is made with monocrystalline silicon wafers with an efficiency rating of 21 percent and a combined power output of 200 Watts, though it should be mentioned that each solar panel has an individual output of just 100 Watts. These panels weigh 35.9 pounds, so they are not the best for hiking or backpacking, but the heavy weight and adjustable, corrosion-resistant aluminum stand ensure that the panels can hold up in poor weather.

Things to consider when buying the best solar panels

Solar panels are an investment that should be carefully considered in order to ensure that you get the best option for your situation. There are significant differences between the capabilities of the various solar panel types, but the size, weight, portability, and device integration can also help to determine which products are the best solar panels for camping, backpacking, or installing on the roof of your home. Take some time to learn about these important factors before making a decision. 

Solar panel types

The type of solar tech you choose for your panels can have a profound effect on the appearance, cost, efficiency, and power absorption. The three main types can be differentiated by the material that is used to make the solar cells, including monocrystalline, polycrystalline, and thin film.

• Monocrystalline solar panels are made with silicon wafers that are cut from a single silicon crystal. This construction method and material results in higher efficiency and power output than either polycrystalline or thin film panels. Monocrystalline products tend to have an efficiency that exceeds 20 percent, while the power output can range from 100 Watts (W) to over 400 Watts. However, these products usually cost more than both polycrystalline and thin film solar panels.
• Polycrystalline solar panels can immediately be differentiated from monocrystalline due to the blue solar cells instead of black cells. The color differences, as well as the lower efficiency and power output, can be linked to the way in which polycrystalline solar panels are made. Instead of using a single silicon crystal to create the silicon wafers, a polycrystalline solar panel is made up of silicon crystal fragments that have been melted together through a superheating process. This type of panel typically has an efficiency rating between 15 to 17 percent and will usually have a maximum output of 200 Watts.
• Thin film solar panels are the most affordable option available. They are made with several different materials including cadmium telluride (CdTe), amorphous silicon (a-Si), and copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS). These products also typically incorporate conducting layers made of glass, ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), aluminum, or steel. While this type of panel only has an efficiency rating of about 11 percent and a maximum power output of 100 Watts, they are usually lightweight and may even be flexible, making thin film panels great for camping, hiking, and backpacking.

Size & weight 

The specific size and weight of a solar panel is a key consideration when you are trying to determine the suitability of a product. For instance, compact lightweight solar panels are excellent for hiking, backpacking, and camping because they can fit into a backpack and don’t cause excessive fatigue. However, these panels are vulnerable to the wind because of their broad, flat shape and low weight, meaning that they can be carried away easily.

Alternatively, broad heavy panels are great for mounting on the roof of the house or an RV, but they are much too bulky to pack into a vehicle or set up at a campsite. So, it’s important to figure out how you want to use the solar panel before deciding on a specific product. 

Device & battery integration

The purpose of solar panels is to absorb the solar power from the sun and convert it to usable electricity for a range of different devices and batteries. However, each product will have different devices that they can connect to, like USB-charging mobile devices, 12V batteries, or power stations. Before investing in solar panels, make sure that the specific product can be used as intended. 

If you are looking for a way to charge your mobile devices, then it’s necessary to find solar panels that have USB outlets, but if the goal is to charge a boat battery, then solar panels that connect to 12V batteries would be best. If you aren’t quite sure what you want to use the panels to charge then it’s advised to invest in a power station that can collect, store, and convert the energy from the panels into usable electricity for a variety of different purposes.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best solar panels

• Best overall: HQST Solar Panel 2pcs 100 Watt 12V Monocrystalline
• Best for the money: Nekteck 21W Solar Charger
• Best for camping: Goal Zero Boulder 200 Watt Briefcase
• Best portable: Jackery SolarSaga 60W Solar Panel
• Best for RVs: Renogy 200 Watt Monocrystalline

The highly efficient HQST Solar Panels are suitable for mounting to the RV, setting up at the campsite, or even mounting to the home to help save money on electric bills. However, if you are looking for a smaller solar panel for backpacking or hiking, then the affordable Nekteck 28W Solar Charger is the right way to go.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

The post The best solar panels of 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

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This article originally appeared in Grist.

Last year, U.S. renewable electricity generation surpassed coal for the first time, according to newly released federal data. The report marks a major milestone in the transition to clean energy, but experts say that much faster progress is needed to reach international climate targets.

According to the Energy Information Administration, a federal statistical agency, combined wind and solar generation increased from 12 percent of national power production in 2021 to 14 percent in 2022. Hydropower, biomass, and geothermal added another 7 percent — for a total share of 21 percent renewables last year. The figure narrowly exceeded coal’s 20 percent share of electricity generation, which fell from 23 percent in 2021. 

The growth in renewable electricity was largely driven by a surge in added wind and solar capacity, the agency said. Texas was the top wind-generating state last year, producing more than a quarter of all U.S. wind generation. It was also the leading state for natural gas and coal power. Iowa and Oklahoma landed at second and third in wind generation, accounting for 10 percent and 9 percent of national wind power respectively. 

California took the lead in solar, clocking in with 26 percent of the nation’s solar electricity. Texas came in second at 16 percent, followed by North Carolina at 8 percent. Renewable generation also exceeded nuclear for the second year in a row, after surging ahead for the first time in 2021. 

But the report found that fossil fuels still dominate the country’s energy mix. Natural gas remained the top source of electricity in the U.S. — its share rose from 37 percent of electricity generation in 2021 to 39 percent in 2022. 

For 2023, the Energy Information Administration forecasts additional growth in renewables. The agency predicts wind power will increase from 11 percent to 12 percent of total power generation this year. Solar is projected to rise from 4 percent to 5 percent. Coal is expected to further decline from 20 percent to 17 percent. Meanwhile, natural gas generation is expected to remain unchanged.

Despite the encouraging news, some energy experts say the uptick in renewables still isn’t fast enough. On Tuesday, the International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization, announced that global annual investments in renewables need to more than quadruple to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The assessment echoes the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top climate science body, which called for a rapid scale-down of greenhouse gas emissions largely produced from fossil fuels. 

Melissa Lott, director of research for the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, told the Associated Press that the $369 billion in clean energy spending authorized by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act should have a “tremendous” impact on further accelerating domestic renewable energy growth. But to reach that potential, the U.S. may need new policies to remove hurdles that stand in the way of building new clean energy infrastructure. 

In the United States, rapid deployment of renewable energy has been hindered by practical barriers including delays in connecting projects to aging electric grids. At the end of 2021, thousands of wind, solar, and battery storage projects were waiting to connect to grids across the country. According to data from the Department of Energy, less than 20 percent of wind and solar projects waiting to be connected are successfully completed. And even when projects are approved, developers often discover they need to pay for new transmission lines to deliver power to residents and businesses. Those transmission lines often face further permitting delays.

“It doesn’t matter how cheap the clean energy is,” Spencer Nelson, the managing director of research at the nonprofit ClearPath Foundation, recently told the New York Times. “If developers can’t get through the interconnection process quickly enough and get enough steel in the ground, we won’t hit our climate change goals.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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A new, colorful material partially made from wood pulp and cotton could one day help lower building temperatures when exposed to sunlight. And while similar films already exist utilizing either white or mirrored finishes, the newest variant offers iridescent hues thanks in part to cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) and the behavior of soap bubbles.

[Related: Scientists think this tiny greenhouse could be a game changer for agrivoltaics.]

Generally speaking, most objects will warm as they absorb the sun’s UV, infrared, and visible light. What isn’t absorbed is then reflected out as visible color. That said, a process known as passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC) can occasionally counteract the rising temperatures caused by absorbing light. PDRC occurs when a surface reflects a large amount of solar light back out as infrared rays without absorbing much else. This allows for surfaces that can be many degrees cooler than the air around it. Recently, researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered they could replicate this ability by capitalizing on certain plant cellulose properties alongside “structural color,” which results from light interacting with a surface’s varying thicknesses. This ability is most commonly seen within soap bubbles, which diffuse light in different directions across their varyingly thick surfaces to create kaleidoscopic patterns.

As New Scientist also notes, adding color pigment to a material usually increases the amount of light, and therefore heat, it absorbs. However, when researchers extracted cellulose nanocrystals from plants, then layered them atop a reflective sheet made of ethyl cellulose, they were able to use their prismatic properties to create red, green, and blue-colored films. Even with their new hues, the coatings remained around 3 degrees Celsius cooler than surrounding temperatures in direct sunlight. 

[ Related: Scientists use quantum computing to create glass that cuts the need for AC by a third.]

With additional experimentation on the layers of ethyl cellulose, the team also managed to produce multicolored films with a variety of textures, such as various woodgrains and finishes. Although the new films’ durability still needs improvement, their potential utility could one day extend to the building facades, vehicles, and indoor wall paints as an eco-friendly alternative to the use of A/C units, which are notorious for both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The team is presenting their latest results at the American Chemical Society’s annual spring meeting, and hopes to continue their research to improve future generations of the material. 

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In the future, wires might cross underneath oceans to effortlessly deliver electricity from one continent to another. Those cables would carry currents from giant wind turbines or power the magnets of levitating high-speed trains.

All these technologies rely on a long-sought wonder of the physics world: superconductivity, a heightened physical property that lets metal carry an electric current without losing any juice.

But superconductivity has only functioned at freezing temperatures that are far too cold for most devices. To make it more useful, scientists have to recreate the same conditions at regular temperatures. And even though physicists have known about superconductivity since 1911, a room-temperature superconductor still evades them, like a mirage in the desert.

What is a superconductor?

All metals have a point called the “critical temperature.” Cool the metal below that temperature, and electrical resistivity all but vanishes, making it extra easy to move charged atoms through. To put it another way, an electric current running through a closed loop of superconducting wire could circulate forever. 

Today, anywhere from 8 to 15 percent of mains electricity is lost between the generator and the consumer because the electrical resistivity in standard wires naturally wicks some of it away as heat. Superconducting wires could eliminate all of that waste.

[Related: This one-way superconductor could be a step toward eternal electricity]

There’s another upside, too. When electricity flows through a coiled wire, it produces a magnetic field; superconducting wires intensify that magnetism. Already, superconducting magnets power MRI machines, help particle accelerators guide their quarry around a loop, shape plasma in fusion reactors, and push maglev trains like Japan’s under-construction Chūō Shinkansen.

Turning up the temperature

While superconductivity is a wondrous ability, physics nerfs it with the cold caveat. Most known materials’ critical temperatures are barely above absolute zero (-459 degrees Fahrenheit). Aluminum, for instance, comes in at -457 degrees Fahrenheit; mercury at -452 degrees Fahrenheit; and the ductile metal niobium at a balmy -443 degrees Fahrenheit. Chilling anything to temperatures that frigid is tedious and impractical. 

Scientists made it happen—in a limited capacity—by testing it with exotic materials like cuprates, a type of ceramic that contains copper and oxygen. In 1986, two IBM researchers found a cuprate that superconducted at -396 degrees Fahrenheit, a breakthrough that won them the Nobel Prize in Physics. Soon enough, others in the field pushed cuprate superconductors past -321 degrees Fahrenheit, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen—a far more accessible coolant than the liquid hydrogen or helium they’d otherwise need. 

“That was a very exciting time,” says Richard Greene, a physicist at the University of Maryland. “People were thinking, ‘Well, we might be able to get up to room temperature.’”

Now, more than 30 years later, the search for a room-temperature superconductor continues. Equipped with algorithms that can predict what a material’s properties will look like, many researchers feel that they’re closer than ever. But some of their ideas have been controversial.

The replication dilemma

One way the field is making strides is by turning the attention away from cuprates to hydrates, or materials with negatively charged hydrogen atoms. In 2015, researchers in Mainz, Germany, set a new record with a sulfur hydride that superconducted at -94 degrees Fahrenheit. Some of them then quickly broke their own record with a hydride of the rare-earth element lanthanum, pushing the mercury up to around -9 degrees Fahrenheit—about the temperature of a home freezer.

But again, there’s a catch. Critical temperatures shift when the surrounding pressure changes, and hydride superconductors, it seems, require rather inhuman pressures. The lanthanum hydride only achieved superconductivity at pressures above 150 gigapascals—roughly equivalent to conditions in the Earth’s core, and far too high for any practical purpose in the surface world.

[Related: How the small, mighty transistor changed the world]

So imagine the surprise when mechanical engineers at the University of Rochester in upstate New York presented a hydride made from another rare-earth element, lutetium. According to their results, the lutetium hydride superconducts at around 70 degrees Fahrenheit and 1 gigapascal. That’s still 10,000 times Earth’s air pressure at sea level, but low enough to be used for industrial tools.

“It is not a high pressure,” says Eva Zurek, a theoretical chemist at the University at Buffalo. “If it can be replicated, [this method] could be very significant.”

Scientists aren’t cheering just yet, however—they’ve seen this kind of an attempt before. In 2020, the same research group claimed they’d found room-temperature superconductivity in a hydride of carbon and sulfur. After the initial fanfare, many of their peers pointed out that they’d mishandled their data and that their work couldn’t be replicated. Eventually, the University of Rochester engineers caved and retracted their paper.

Now, they’re facing the same questions with their lutetium superconductor. “It’s really got to be verified,” says Greene. The early signs are inauspicious: A team from Nanjing University in China recently tried to replicate the experiment, without success.

“Many groups should be able to reproduce this work,” Greene adds. “I think we’ll know very quickly whether this is correct or not.”

But if the new hydride does mark the first room-temperature superconductor—what next? Will engineers start stringing power lines across the planet tomorrow? Not quite. First, they have to understand how this new material behaves under different temperatures and other conditions, and what it looks like at smaller scales.

“We don’t know what the structure is yet. In my opinion, it’s going to be quite different from a high-pressure hydride,” says Zurek. 

If the superconductor is viable, engineers will have to learn how to make it for everyday uses. But if they succeed, the result could be a gift for world-changing technologies.

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Bottled water is one of the most popular beverages in the world. In the United States, bottled water has outsold carbonated soft drinks every year since 2016. Currently, the global bottled water market is worth $270 billion, and it’s projected to exceed $500 billion by the end of the decade. Only three countries combined make up almost half of the global market: the USA, China, and Indonesia.

Despite its widespread consumption, bottled water might actually slow the progress of providing universal access to safe drinking water, according to a recent report from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health (UNU-INWEH).

Bottled water can foster distrust of and distract attention from clean tap water

The report argues that the rapidly-growing bottled water industry may have an adverse impact on the investments in long-term public water supply infrastructure development and improvement. The expansion of the bottled water market may distract governmental efforts to provide safe drinking water for all, says Zeineb Bouhlel, study author and research and communication associate at the UNU-INWEH.

“In certain countries such as Mexico and Indonesia, the industry is somehow reducing the role of the state in providing safe water for the population,” says Bouhlel. “When bottled water is popular, the government may spend less effort and less financial resources to make the public water supply available for all and of better quality.”

According to the report, the drivers of the bottled water market aren’t the same around the world. In the Global North, people drink bottled water because they don’t trust tap water and believe the former is healthier. However, individuals in the Global South are primarily motivated by the lack or absence of a reliable public water supply.

[Related: Sorting and recycling plastic is notoriously hard—but this AI could help.]

“In many places, bottled water is an important source of safe drinking water absent adequate public water supply systems,” says Sara Hughes, water policy expert and associate professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan. “But the bottled water industry actively encourages distrust of tap water, which does erode public support and investment in public drinking water systems even where the water is available and safe to drink.”

The idea that bottled water is unquestionably safer than tap water must be challenged. The quality of bottled water can be compromised by the origin of the water or the industrial processes it goes through, the report says. For example, commercially-bottled water labeled “mineral water” or “spring water” isn’t guaranteed to be free of Cryptosporidium (Crypto) parasites, the second highest cause of reported waterborne disease outbreaks in 2015.

Globally, tap water is much more regulated and monitored than bottled water, with the latter having less sampling and no obligation to disclose information on the content or the process for some types and in certain countries, says Bouhlel.

The growing bottled water industry may distract attention and resources from the development of public water supply systems, when, in reality, less than half of what the world pays for bottled water every year is enough to ensure clean tap water access for millions of people without it for years to come.

The bottled water industry’s impact on the environment

The bottled water industry may have negative effects on the environment through the whole supply chain, from water extraction to packaging disposal, says Bouhlel. For instance, it contributes to the pressure on water resources and may increase water scarcity at a local level, he adds.

“Bottled water can place additional burden on aquifers, rivers, and streams, unless withdrawals are properly accounted for,” says Hughes. “In most parts of the U.S., and globally, we lack tools to accurately track and measure how an additional withdrawal—such as for bottled water—affects aquatic ecosystems, and the ability to regulate withdrawals from shared aquifers in particular.”

The production of plastics and the logistics of delivering the product to the consumer also come at the price of greenhouse gas emissions, says Bouhlel. The manufacturing of bottled water is very fossil-fuel intensive. A 2009 Environmental Research Letters study estimated the energy footprint of the various phases of bottled water production and found that it requires about 5.6 and 10.2 million joules of energy per liter, about 2000 times the energy cost of producing tap water.

[Related: Groundwater is an incredible resource. It’s time to treat it like one.]

“Environmental impacts may also be seen at the stage of disposal, where more than 80 percent of bottled water is packaged in plastic and PET containers, and where the recycling rate so far is very low at a global level,” he adds. Plastic bottles often end up in landfills and bodies of water, harming natural ecosystems and biodiversity.

Improving access to drinking water supply in the US

The United States has one of the safest public water supplies in the world. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for ensuring that public water systems meet the standards for drinking water quality. “[T]he majority of Americans do not need to purchase more expensive and environmentally harmful bottled water to meet their needs,” says Hughes. “That said, there are communities in the U.S. that do lack safe and reliable drinking water and that is completely unacceptable.”

A 2021 Nature Communications study reported that over a thousand community water systems are considered “serious violators” of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Moreover, about 48 percent of households on Indian reservations don’t have access to clean water. Residents of Jackson, Mississippi and Flint, Michigan have all been affected by a major water supply crisis in recent years as well.

According to Hughes, there are three significant drinking water supply challenges in the US, and they can all be addressed with federal investment: ensuring the old drinking water systems are maintained and kept in compliance, providing safe drinking water access in Tribal communities, and addressing drinking water quality and access problems facing rural communities.

“Communities need resources to upgrade and repair aging systems and replace lead service lines, and increasing water rates to cover these costs will not be feasible in all places,” says Hughes. “Tribal communities are in need of significant and long-overdue infrastructure investment.”

Rural communities, which face challenges related to declining water supplies and contaminated water sources, might require a mix of funding and regulatory solutions. This can include restricting agricultural runoff, exploring regionalization opportunities for rural water systems, and investing in technical capacities in these systems and their personnel, says Hughes.

In 2018, the EPA published its Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment and reported that the country needs about $472.6 billion to maintain and improve drinking water infrastructure over the next 20 years. It would be used to replace or improve deteriorating pipelines, expand infrastructure to reduce water contamination, and construct water storage reservoirs.

“Some of the most important policy changes could have more to do with how drinking water systems are funded and organized,” says Hughes, “rather than only ramping up regulatory requirements.”

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To jumpstart a paltry market for recycled plastic, governments across the globe are pushing companies to include recycled materials in their products. Last year, the United Kingdom introduced a tax on manufacturers that produce or import plastic packaging containing less than 30 percent recycled plastic. In 2024, New Jersey will begin enforcing similar rules, albeit with lower targets. California now requires that beverage containers be made of 15 percent recycled materials, and Washington will enact a similar requirement later this year. The European Commission, Canada, and Mexico are all considering comparable moves.

Currently, most plastic products are derived from freshly extracted fossil fuels, including crude oil and natural gas. Incorporating some recycled plastic could reduce emissions, and shrink pollution in waterways and landfills, experts say. But collecting, sorting, pulverizing, and melting post-consumer plastics for reuse is expensive. The new laws will potentially help recyclers find buyers for what would otherwise become waste.

But regulators may need a better way to verify that the new laws are working. While companies can enlist a third-party to certify their use of recycled content, most certifiers take a bird’s-eye view, tracking the materials across a range of products and factories. As a result, an item with a “recycled content” label might be completely devoid of recycled content.

This current approach, called mass balance, poses additional challenges for those seeking to verify recycled content. To work well, mass balance requires trustworthy and accurate data, which are not always available across a convoluted supply chain. Experts warn mass balance may also lead to inflated estimates of recycled content.

Researchers in the U.K. have developed a novel method to measure this recycled content that adds fluorescent dyes to recycled plastics at the beginning of manufacturing. By measuring the change in color, the team can determine the amount of recycled content in each individual plastic product. Through the nonprofit ReCon², the team is running pilot tests in real-world conditions and says this approach can help prevent fraud, keep costs low, and improve consumer trust.

In 2019, the world generated roughly 350 million tons of plastic, a doubling of production over the past two decades. Just 6 percent of global plastics produced came from recycled plastics, leaving most to be shoveled into landfills, incinerated, or carried into ecosystems. Recycling is not sufficient for solving the problem of plastic pollution, many researchers suggest. Instead, the issue will require some measure of reduction and re-use as well. Nevertheless, scientists say that these new laws and technologies that focus on this last option could mitigate the environmental harms of plastic production.

It’s “imperative” to be able to track materials through this recycling market in a way that makes sense, said Katrina Knauer, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “If we really want to make the circular economy a reality, efficient tracking and quantifiable tracking is going to be the only way we can really do that and create trust in a system.”

Companies like Unilever, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo have been making claims about using recycled content in their products for years. But the term “recycled content” is as flexible as the term “organic” before regulators clamped down on its use, said Knauer. Earning that badge now requires ticking several boxes determined by federal agencies in the U.S. and the European Commission in the EU. Recycled content hasn’t received the same kind of regulatory scrutiny.

As the recycling industry develops, “I think we will run into some of the same challenges that we ran into in the past with companies making claims that may not be very true,” said Knauer, who is also the chief technology officer at the Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment, an organization at the Department of Energy that helps companies adopt greener plastics technologies.

Right now, many companies use mass balance, which considers all of the inputs that go into making a product and then balances them with the outputs to calculate the amount of recycled material.

For example, say there are 20 plastic bottles in a recycling bin. Those enter a mass balance when they are handed over to a recycling company. A manufacturer may then buy these bottles from the recycling company, as well as the equivalent of 80 bottles from newly extracted oil or gas. Assuming the manufacturer then produces 100 total bottles, the mass balance will conclude that each bottle is made with 20 percent recycled content.

But there’s a twist: Under some certification schemes, the company can attribute its recycled material evenly across several plants, including those that haven’t been able to acquire any recycled material. As a result, you usually cannot calculate a single product’s recycled content, if it has any at all.

For Zero Waste Europe, a network of European communities and experts pushing companies and governments to reduce waste, this makes the mass balance approach “a simplistic and meaningless bookkeeping exercise.” But the problem goes beyond misleading marketing. Recycled material can be lower quality, and too much in a product may threaten the product’s integrity.

There are some benefits to mass balance’s flexible approach. With the supply of recycled plastics limited in some areas, it’s helpful to allow companies to compensate by using extra recycled content in areas with plenty to buy.

Eventually, however, consumers should be able to expect that the bottle in their hands has a specific level of recycled content. “That’s the ultimate goal, but it is a really complex system, and it takes a long time to make changes, so we’ll probably need to rely on mass balance to meet that kind of transition,” said Alix Grabowski, director of plastic and material science at the World Wildlife Fund.

That system complexity is felt in other ways, too. Tracking recycled materials along sometimes tortuous chains of purchases depends on trust between companies, said Wan-Ting Hsu, a material flow research analyst and Ph.D. candidate at University College London. Post-consumer plastic material can pass between many companies and jurisdictions with different rules about responsibility and accounting before it returns to retailers ready to sell it back to consumers.

In interviews with key stakeholders in the plastics value chain, such as brand owners and recyclers, Hsu has learned that companies struggle to verify the source of material, and often they are left to ask for data from previous owners, which can sometimes be inaccurate. Without better proof of content, companies could make misleading claims, experts say, though they could not point to public evidence of such cases.

Another issue: The methods to certify recycled content vary across certification bodies, and there is little consistency. When the Canadian government commissioned the environmental consultancy company Eunomia to consult with manufacturers, as evidenced in the 2021 report, the manufacturers said they often chose certification schemes that offered the most flexible approach. Under such schemes, the company with 20 recycled bottles in its mix of 100, for example, could claim 20 of its bottles are 100 percent recycled, even when this is not the case.

“At this point we haven’t had any real legislation for this,” said Sarah Edwards, North America CEO at Eunomia. Up until now, she added, companies have used certification more for marketing or as part of longer-term sustainability goals.

The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery told Undark that it requires beverage manufacturers to report data to them directly and does not use third-party certifiers at this time. It would not disclose the method to certify information reported. In a draft rule in Washington state that will be finalized later this year, the Department of Ecology said it will require that producers attest to the accuracy of their data or obtain third-party certification.

Mass balance is especially contentious when it is used to certify products created from chemical recycling, a collection of mostly new techniques to strip plastics down to their basic building blocks, called monomers. In contrast to mechanical recycling, which shreds plastic but keeps its chemical form, manufacturers can use monomers to construct many different kinds of plastics, which are made up of polymers.

As part of the chemical recycling process, a plant may burn a portion of the recycled material into fuel or other byproducts. Though this process releases greenhouse gases, some mass balance certifications allow a company to count the burned plastic towards its output of “recycled content.” The hypothetical supply chain that takes in 20 recycled bottles may still claim to produce bottles with 20 percent recycled content, even if 5 of those recycled bottles have been burnt as fuel.

In its 2021 report, Eunomia wrote that the chemical sector preferred to work with ISCC Plus, a third-party certifier in Germany that allows this kind of tabulation. In Edwards’ eyes, the chemical recycling industry is pushing for this as a temporary tool to get started.

There’s an additional point of contention: With some processes of reducing polymers down to monomers, molecules can react with ambient elements like nitrogen and hydrogen, inflating their weight with molecules that aren’t plastic. Calculating a mass balance just on weight — the typical approach for mechanical recycling — doesn’t work as well for chemical recycling and can overestimate the recycled content in materials.

A widely cited white paper published by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity committed to creating a circular economy, provided an example: Producing 100 pounds of polyamide, often used in textiles, would require 150 pounds of recycled material if measured with weight, or 170 pounds if measured with calorific value — a unit that quantifies an object’s energy and doesn’t change as readily.

Scientists and engineers have agreed to use more precise units, like calorific value, but “there is quite a bit of argument across the industry” about which units to use, Knauer said.

Michael Shaver, a professor of polymer science at the University of Manchester and one of the researchers involved with ReCon², said the group had “significant concerns in terms of the mass balance approach.”

“If the public believes that this is a measure of exactly how much plastic is in each package, that’s not what mass balance actually gives you, right?” he said.

Shaver wanted to develop a way to measure the recycled content in each individual product. He joined with Ph.D. student Zoé Schyns and research fellow Thomas Bennett, and together they developed a technique that adds fluorescent dye to the recycled materials during the manufacturing process. Regardless of what happens between the beginning and end of manufacturing, the ratio between fluorescence at the beginning and end reveals the concentration of recycled content in each individual product. Some of the light appears as green within the visible light spectrum, but one strategy is to keep the precise technique a secret so companies do not misuse it.

“We can show not only that everyone in your supply chain acted appropriately, but also that you have the same in all of your different bottles or film,” said Shaver. Although the public results focus on three of the most popular plastic types, the researchers say the approach can be adapted for other kinds of plastics and rules. Sponsors of a year-long trial phase include Kraft-Heinz and Reckitt, two large consumer good corporations, and the U.K.’s leading recycling label, OPRL.

The company believes roll out of the technology would require an industry-wide approach, even as others doubt that plastic producers can adapt to including tracers. Shaver expects that their nonprofit ReCon² will “shepherd” firms into the program, while it audits participating companies and gatekeeps against products with inaccurate or false recycled content claims. As a nonprofit, it would prioritize keeping the technique as low- cost as possible to promote adoption and minimize fraud through passive compliance.

On a broader scale, Knauer expects that establishing trust in measuring recycled content will take action from governments, as happened with “organic” labels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may be moving in this direction. In 2021, the agency laid out a national recycling strategy that includes the creation of “recycled content measures.” (A spokesperson told Undark that the EPA hasn’t started working on this yet.)

“I do not think that mass balance is the way we’re going to do it forever,” said Knauer. “I think there’s a lot to be done in this space and a lot more innovation we can certainly do.”

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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A UK-based startup is aiming to heat swimming pools with its data centers. According to BBC News, Deep Green is using the heat generated by a “washing-machine-sized” server rig to heat the water in Exmouth Leisure Centre’s 25-meter (82 foot) public swimming pool. Its “digital boilers” are a pretty clever idea, and can reduce the environmental impact of both the swimming pool and the server. 

Data centers have a surprisingly large environmental impact. While browsing the web, streaming shows on Netflix, or posting to Instagram doesn’t necessarily feel like you’re doing something that could harm the environment, all the information getting sent to your smartphone, computer, or TV is stored in a data center somewhere. It takes a fair amount of electricity to keep all the servers running, and most importantly, to cool them down so they don’t overheat. 

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), data centers and data transmission networks account for between 1 and 1.5 percent of global electricity use and are collectively responsible for around 1 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions (or 0.6 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions). While that might not sound like a lot, it puts it in the same ballpark as aviation and shipping, which are responsible for 1.7 percent and 1.9 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. 

[Related: This Is Why Microsoft Is Putting Data Servers In The Ocean]

This is why Deep Green’s data center solution is so neat. Instead of just relying on electricity—often generated by fossil fuels—to cool its server rigs, the internal components are submerged in mineral oil which absorbs the heat, then a heat exchanger transfers the warmth to a swimming pool full of cold water, which cools the oil and thus keeps the components operating safely. The system is able to convert around 96 percent of the electricity it uses into heat for the pool. And since the electricity only comes from renewable sources, the whole thing as is green as is feasible. 

While the digital boiler can’t heat Exmouth Leisure Center’s pool entirely on its own, it is able to keep the water at a comfortable 86ºF roughly 60 percent of the time. While the gas boiler is still necessary to top up the water temperature, Deep Green claims that its system saves the pool over £20,000 (~$24,000) per year and reduces its annual CO2 emissions by almost 26 tons. Sean Day, who runs the leisure center, told BBC News: “The partnership has really helped us reduce the costs of what has been astronomical over the last 12 months—our energy prices and gas prices have gone through the roof.” 

[Related: Extreme heat is knocking out data centers]

Perhaps most interestingly about Deep Green’s technology, is that it costs the swimming pool operator nothing. The setup, installation, and digital boiler are all managed and maintained by Deep Green. The pool is even reimbursed for the electricity costs of running the server, so all the heat generated is essentially free. Instead, Deep Green operates as a regular web services company, charging its commercial customers for computing power and hosting. 

According to The Next Web, seven other pools around the UK have expressed an interest in Deep Green’s digital boiler. And the company doesn’t just plan to target leisure centers. Its technology can work with anything that requires large volumes of hot water, like apartment heating systems and distilleries. 

Deep Green isn’t the only company looking to repurpose waste heat from data centers. In Finland, the new Microsoft data center will be used to heat approximately 250,000 homes and businesses. A Facebook data center in Denmark warms 6,900 homes, while Amazon uses its data centers to heat its headquarters in Seattle as well as apartments, offices, and university buildings in Ireland. It’s likely that this is an engineering design we’re going to see a lot more of; data centers may heat everything from swimming pools to metropolises. 

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Since taking office, the Biden administration has faced intense cross-pressure regarding the Willow Project, a ConocoPhillips venture that would open up an immense swath of public land on Alaska’s North Slope to new oil drilling. While Alaska politicians and oil industry figures have vigorously lobbied the administration to approve the project — particularly in the wake of the energy crisis stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — progressives, environmental groups, and some Alaska Native communities have strenuously opposed it.

On Monday, the administration tried to placate both sides. The Bureau of Land Management announced its final approval of the project, clearing the way for ConocoPhillips to start drilling over the next few years. At the same time, the Department of the Interior said that it will restrict future drilling in other parts of Alaska as well as ban offshore oil drilling in a swath of Arctic Ocean waters.

The most recent Bureau of Land Management estimates suggest that Willow could produce some 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years, generating as much as $17 billion in revenue for Alaska and the federal government. Its projected economic impact has helped the project garner nearly universal support from elected officials in Alaska at the state and federal level, as well as the endorsement of some Alaska Native communities. Dan Sullivan, one of the state’s Republican senators, has also claimed that Willow could help counter “the dictator in Moscow” by reducing global reliance on Russian oil.

The project’s potential productivity has triggered the opposite response in environmentalist circles, with the Democrat-aligned think tank the Center for American Progress declaring Willow a “carbon disaster” when it called on the president to reject the project last year. As a candidate, Biden said that if he were elected there would be “no new drilling on federal lands, period.” The approval of the Willow Project marks the first time the president has broken this promise without being forced to by Congress or federal courts.

According to the government’s own estimate, Willow could result in the release of more than 249 million tons of carbon dioxide over three decades, after all the oil is drilled and burned — the equivalent of adding around 2 million cars to the road each year. Furthermore, an investigation published by Grist in October suggested that rapid permafrost thaw in the region could create little-understood safety risks if drilling continues as planned. Already last spring, a monthlong natural gas leak caused by Conoco’s nearby drilling led to hundreds of evacuations and panic in the Alaska Native village of Nuiqsut.

ConocoPhillips has been pursuing Willow since at least 2015, when the company’s engineers made a major oil discovery on leases that the company had owned for more than a decade. The Trump administration tried to force the project through the approval process in late 2020, but a federal court ruling kicked the decision back to the incoming Biden administration the following year. Biden’s Bureau of Land Management pushed forward a scaled-down version of the project last month, suggesting Conoco should be allowed to drill at three of its five proposed well pads on the site.

Meanwhile, the announcement from the Interior Department would protect an enormous swath of Alaska wilderness from future development, creating what one official described to the New York Times as a “firewall” against future drilling projects of Willow’s scale. In a press release on Sunday, Interior said it is drafting a rule that will prohibit oil drilling on more than half of the 23 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve, which is the location of the Willow Project and the largest single swath of public land in the U.S. The announcement also promised to protect 3 million acres of offshore waters on the Beaufort Sea.

In a statement, the Department said the rule was intended to “ensure this important habitat for whales, seals, polar bears, as well as for subsistence purposes, will be protected in perpetuity from extractive development.” It also said the new safeguards are “responding to Alaska Native communities who have relied on the land, water, and wildlife to support their way of life.”

Climate groups do not appear appeased by the proposed safeguards, arguing that new protections don’t make up for the damage the Biden administration will cause by approving Willow. Kristin Monsell, an attorney for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told the New York Times on Sunday that the split decision was “insulting.”

“Protecting one area of the Arctic so you can destroy another doesn’t make sense,” she said, “and it won’t help the people and wildlife who will be upended by the Willow project.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

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A bacterial relative of tuberculosis known as Mycobacterium smegmatis can pull off an incredibly impressive trick. When fuel is in short supply, it can absorb trace amounts of hydrogen in the atmosphere and water around it to convert into energy. Simply put, it turns air into electricity.

Unlike its infamous cousin, M. smegmatis is both nonpathogenic and commonly found in soil literally all over the world—from volcanic craters, to Antarctic climes, to the deepest ocean depths. This ubiquity and resilience is owed in part due to its ability to absorb miniscule levels of hydrogen for nutrition. Although researchers have been aware of the mechanism for some, they didn’t know how it worked. But as a new paper published in Nature reveals, the puzzle has finally been solved—and it could usher in a new era of revolutionary, clean energy.

Researchers at Australia’s Monash University Biomedicine Discovery Institute have discovered and isolated the M. smegmatis’ unique enzyme, dubbed “Huc,” enabling it to convert hydrogen into electricity. “Huc is extraordinarily efficient,” explains research co-lead and professor of microbiology, Chris Greening, in a statement last week. “Unlike all other known enzymes and chemical catalysts, it even consumes hydrogen below atmospheric levels—as little as 0.00005 percent of the air we breathe.”

[Related: Scientists think this tiny greenhouse could be a game changer for agrivoltaics.]

To isolate and identify the previously unknown enzyme, researchers utilized cryo-electron microscopy, which fired electrons at frozen Huc samples to map its atomic structure and electrical pathways. Another approach known as electrochemistry allowed researchers to demonstrate the purified enzyme could create electricity with only tiny concentrations of hydrogen. From there, researchers explained that by immobilizing Huc on an electrode, its electrons can subsequently transfer into an electrical circuit to generate current.

Although in its relative infancy, researchers hope the newly isolated Huc enzyme could one day be grown at scale, seeing as how M. smegmatis can be easily grown in large quantities within lab settings. What’s more, Huc isn’t alone in this ability. According to Monash researchers, between 60 and 80 percent of soil bacteria feature similar enzymes that collectively absorb 70 million metric tons of hydrogen per year. Further studies of these enzymes could provide insights into how to help stabilize atmospheric conditions in the face of climate change.

Before this, however, a natural Huc battery could be utilized akin to solar cells to eventually help power smartwatches, computers, or even one day cars. “Once we produce Huc in sufficient quantities, the sky is quite literally the limit for using it to produce clean energy,” said research co-lead Rhys Grinter, a research fellow at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and study co-lead, last week.

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Wastewater treatment plants are typically overlooked when it comes to reducing greenhouse gasses, but new research from Princeton University reveals the plants emit twice as much methane as previously thought.

Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas and the treatment plants should be part of any plan to reduce emissions, according to the study released last week. 

“Wastewater treatment plants are a major source of greenhouse gasses in cities and we need to start treating them like that,” said Mark Zondlo, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton and one of the authors of the research.

Published in the Environmental Science and Technology journal, the report is the largest conducted on methane pollution from wastewater treatment plants in the United States. The scientists examined 63 facilities in California and the East Coast. Their research showed that methane from these facilities exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimates by the equivalent of 5.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. 

Scientists use carbon dioxide equivalence as a metric to standardize the emissions of many different types of greenhouse gasses. The previous estimate for emissions by wastewater treatment plants was 6.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA. The new study calculates that current emissions are now 11.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. 

“We have more than a million miles of sewers in the U.S., filled with rich organic matter that may be causing methane emissions, but we have very little understanding of their scope,” said Z. Jason Ren, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, another co-author. 

While methane has long been a concern for scientists and environmentalists it is only recently that governments have focused on curbing the greenhouse gas. Cutting methane emissions as quickly as possible can drastically reduce the rate at which the planet heats up. 

The biggest culprit for methane emissions in wastewater treatment is a domed container used near the end of the process called an anaerobic digester. The digester contains small microbes, like bacteria, that can function without oxygen and help break down the harmful microbes in our waste. While this process produces methane naturally, in the past scientists underestimated the leaks in these supposedly airtight containers, an oversight that resulted in inaccurate emission counts.

The guidelines in use by the EPA were developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization within the United Nations that publishes reports on climate change every few years. But those IPCC guidelines failed to account for wide variations in emissions from plant to plant. The Princeton researchers discovered the most consistent factor in discovering high emissions was the use of an anaerobic digester. 

“We know urbanization is going to increase, we know centralized treatment [of waste] will increase, definitely in the US, but especially in the world. So let’s try and find a way to do this right, that’s a win for the water and a win for the air,” said Zondlo.

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

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The exterior paint on a building is often a major factor in keeping their indoors appropriately warm or cool, and a lot of work goes into developing new concoctions to improve insulation. Unfortunately, the volatile organic compounds found in modern synthetic paint have been shown to have harmful effects on both the environment and humans. On top of all that, air conditioning still contributes to over 10 percent of all electricity consumption in the US. Thankfully, we have butterflies and squid.

Those species and others inspired a researcher at University of Central Florida’s NanoScience Technology Center to create an ultra-lightweight, environmentally safe “plasmonic paint.” The unique paint relies on nanoscale structural arrangements of aluminum and aluminum oxide instead of traditional pigments to generate its hues. As detailed in Debashis Chanda’s recent paper published in Science Advances, traditional pigment paint colorants rely on their molecules’ light absorption properties to determine colors. Chanda’s plasmonic paint, in contrast, employs light reflection, absorption, and scattering based on its nanostructural geometric arrangements to create its visual palettes.

[Related: Are monarch butterflies endangered in the US?]

“The range of colors and hues in the natural world are astonishing—from colorful flowers, birds and butterflies to underwater creatures like fish and cephalopods,” said Chanda in a statement on Wednesday. Chanda went on to explain that these examples’ structural color serves as their hue-altering mechanism, as two colorless materials combine to produce color.

Compared to traditional available paint, Chanda’s plasmonic version is both dramatically longer lasting, eco-friendly, and efficient. Normal paints fade as their pigments lose the ability to absorb light electrons, but plasmonics’ nanostructural attributes ensure color could remain as vibrant as the day it was applied “for centuries,” claimed Chanda.

A layer of plasmonic paint can achieve full coloration at just 150 nanometers thick, making it arguably the lightest paint in the world, and ensuring magnitudes less is needed for projects. Chanda estimated that just three pounds of plasmonic paint would cover an entire Boeing 747 jet exterior—a job that usually requires around 1,000 pounds of synthetic paint.

[Related: A new paint can reflect up to 98.1 percent of sunlight.]

And then there’s the energy savings. Plasmonic paint reflects the entire infrared spectrum, thereby absorbing far less heat. During testing, a surface layered with the new substance typically remained between 25 and 30F cooler than a surface painted with commonly available commercial options. That could save consumers’ bucket loads of cash, not to mention dramatically cut down on energy needed to power A/C systems.

Chanda said fine-tuning is still needed to improve plasmonics’ commercial viability, as well as scale up production abilities to make it a feasible replacement for synthetic paint. Still, natural inspirations like butterflies could be what ultimately help save their beauty for centuries to come.

“As a kid, I always wanted to build a butterfly,” said Chanda. “Color draws my interest.”

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A floating wind turbine prototype has generated its first 1kWh of power off the coast of Spain’s Canary Islands, marking a major milestone in its makers’ goals to begin manufacturing their novel design at scale. Not to mention, it’s one of the first deployed floating turbines with a tension leg platform (TLP), an innovation that drastically reduces damage to sea floors.

Created by Spain-based X1 Wind, the startup company’s X30 floating prototype is the result of years of planning and fine-tuning, as well as includes several unique components and adaptations. At one-third the size of the final proposed turbine, X30 utilizes PivotBuoy, an augmented single point mooring (SPM) setup that allows the floating platform to passively align with wind currents, much like a classic weathervane. This eliminates the requirement of an active yaw actuator and ballast systems, thus minimizing the turbine’s overall weight and maintenance needs.

[Related: A wind turbine just smashed a global energy record—and it’s recyclable.]

X30’s tension leg platform addition provides boosted environmental benefits. In this setup, a TLP is kept stable and at rest using steel rods anchored to the sea floor with either suction anchors or caissons. The legs remain stretched via the turbine’s platform tension beneath the water line, and its braces will limit the turbine’s vertical movement atop the waves.

From there, a 1.4km underwater cable feeds the X30 prototype’s energy generation into the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands’ (PLOCAN) existing offshore test site smartgrid.

X1 Wind’s floating turbine design was first envisioned in 2012 by company cofounder Carlos Casanovas while a student at MIT. Since then, Casanova’s team has worked to bring the concept into the real world. The project first began its design phase in April 2019, before moving onto its manufacturing stage throughout the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Final assembly and construction finished in October 2022 in 50m deep waters off of the Canary Islands.

Once thought a pipe dream, offshore floating wind turbines are increasingly showing themselves to be an extremely promising asset in sustainable global energy generation. Speaking in 2022, Axelle Viré, an associate professor of Floating Offshore Wind at Delft University of Technology, estimated that floating wind turbines could be expected to generate between 150-200 gigawatts of energy in the coming decades. Currently, fixed wind turbines only generate 12 gigawatts. 

[Related: Scientists think we can get 90 percent clean energy by 2035.]

“Floating wind is set to play a vital role supporting the future energy transition, global decarbonisation and ambitious net-zero targets,” Casanovas stated in a statement on Tuesday. “Today’s announcement marks another significant stride forward for X1 Wind accelerating towards certification and commercial scale ambitions to deliver 15MW platforms and beyond in deepwater sites around the globe.”

X1 Wind hopes to move into full-scale production after its prototype testing is completed, with their floating wind turbines each generating 15mW of clean energy anchored in deep sea environments around the world.

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Last week in Washington state, an airplane that appeared perfectly normal from the outside made a brief flight. On the left side of the plane was a standard engine, burning jet fuel. But on the right side was something radically different: an electric motor that got its power not from batteries, but from hydrogen stored inside the aircraft. 

While burning jet fuel creates carbon emissions and particulate matter pollution, in this case the hydrogen system produces water vapor and heat. It’s just one way that aircraft makers are trying to make flying less bad for the planet: companies are working on planes that run off batteries, they are creating synthetic aviation fuel, and in this case, they are leveraging hydrogen fuel cells. 

“This is certainly the biggest aircraft to have ever flown on hydrogen fuel cells,” boasts Mark Cousin, the chief technical officer of Universal Hydrogen, the company behind the experimental aircraft. 

Here’s how the system works: While the left side of the plane stored its jet fuel in the wing like a typical aircraft, the hydrogen for the electric motor on the right wing was stored in tanks, in a gaseous form, in the back of the plane. “You simply can’t fit hydrogen in the wing of an airplane,” Cousin says. “It was taking up probably about a third of the fuselage length.” 

[Related: Watch this sleek electric plane ace its high-speed ground test]

The hydrogen travels up to the right wing, which is where the magic happens. There, in the nacelle hanging off the wing where the motor is, the hydrogen combines with compressed air (the air enters the equation thanks to the two inlets you can see near the motor on the right wing) in stacks of fuel cells. The system uses six stacks of fuel cells, each of which is made up of hundreds of individual fuel cells. Those fuel cell stacks create the electricity that the motor needs to run. “A fuel cell is a passive device—it has no moving parts,” Cousin says. The juice it creates comes in DC form, so it needs to go through inverters to become the AC power the motor requires. 

When the plane flew last week, it was a type of hybrid: a regular engine burning jet fuel in the wing on the left side, and the electric motor on the right running off that hydrogen and air. “Once we hit cruise, we throttled back and we flew almost exclusively on the right-hand engine,” the pilot said, according to The Seattle Times. “It was silent.”

Usually holding around 50 people, the aircraft, a modified Dash 8-300, in this case had just three aboard for the test flight, which had a duration of some 15 minutes. It flew at an altitude of about 2,300 feet above the ground. “The aircraft did a couple loops around the airfield,” Cousin says. Then eventually it made a “very, very smooth landing.” 

While the aircraft stored its hydrogen in gaseous form in the tanks in the back, the company has plans to switch to a method that stores the hydrogen as a liquid, which occupies less space than the gaseous assembly and doesn’t weigh as much. Those tanks must be kept at very cold temperatures, and the liquid needs to be converted to a gas before it can be used in the fuel cells. While this type of liquid hydrogen setup still takes up more space than regular jet fuel does, it’s a better solution than storing hydrogen in gaseous form, he says. Their plan is to switch the same plane that just flew over to a liquid hydrogen system this year. 

In terms of trying to decarbonize the aviation industry—after all, it’s a sizable producer of carbon dioxide emissions—Cousin argues that hydrogen is the best approach. “We think that hydrogen fuel is really the only viable solution for short- and medium-range airplanes,” he says. It’s certainly not the only approach, though. In September of last year, a battery powered plane called Alice also made a first flight in Washington state, and other companies, like Joby Aviation and Beta Technologies, are working on small aircraft that are also battery electric. 

Universal Hydrogen isn’t alone in pursuing hydrogen as a means of propelling aircraft. In February of last year, Airbus said that it would use a special, giant A380 aircraft to test out hydrogen technology, and in November, unveiled plans for an electric engine that also runs off hydrogen fuel cells.

Watch a short video about the recent flight, below.

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The field of agrivoltaics, in which land is used for both farming and solar power generation, has some basic logistical issues. Namely, it has been difficult to build structures that can both efficiently generate solar power while not blocking the sunlight needed for crops to actually grow. A team of researchers at UCLA recently discovered a novel solution to the issue that relies on organic materials. The process even outperforms conventional glass-roof greenhouses installed with traditional solar panel arrays.

[Related: Why your community’s next solar panel project should be above a parking lot.]

The team detailed their findings on Monday in Nature Sustainability, describing how integrating a layer of a naturally occurring chemical known as L-gluthathion can extend semi-transparent solar cells’ lifespans while also improving their efficiency. Yang Yang, a materials scientist at UCLA’s Samueli School of Engineering, explained that organic materials could be a major tool within agrivoltaics, because they selectivity absorb certain spectrums of light. Historically, however, they have been too unstable to widely deploy in the solar energy industry.

Inorganic solar cells’ organic counterparts often degrade extremely quickly as sunlight causes them to lose electrons through oxidation. By adding a thin layer of carbon-based L-gluthathion, the previously short-lived cells could maintain upwards of 80 percent efficacy after 1,000 usage hours—a major step up from the less than 20 percent efficacy over the same time period sans L-gluthathion.

[Related: Solar energy company wants to bolt panels directly into the ground.]

To test the new solar cells, Yang’s team compared the yields of two dollhouse-sized greenhouses growing broccoli, mung beans, and wheat. The transparent glass roof of one greenhouse was fitted with a number of traditional inorganic solar panels, while the other’s ceiling was entirely composed of the semitransparent organic panel arrays. To researchers’ surprise, the semitransparent greenhouse actually resulted in higher crop yields than its traditional counterpart. The team believes this could be thanks to the L-gluthathion layer blocking both ultraviolet and infrared rays—UV light often can damage plants, while infrared can heat greenhouses too much and cause crops to require more water.

Yang’s team hopes to eventually scale production of the new organic solar cells for widespread industrial usages. 

New, efficient, partially organic designs, along with proposed projects like more parking lot canopies and cheaper home applications, could help insure solar power as one of nations’ key tools in transitioning to green, sustainable energy grids.

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Animal feed plays a major role in the environmental impact of your diet. In dairy and beef production, it accounts for about 36 and 55 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, respectively. The raw materials for animal feed typically consist of crops like soybean and wheat and animal-based products like fish meal and fish oil. But the production of these ingredients could be detrimental to the environment. 

About 33 percent of croplands are dedicated to livestock feed production, which may result in nutrient and pesticide runoff. Crops for animal feed also make up about six percent of the GHG emissions from global food production. Meanwhile, increasing demand for feed made from marine byproducts may be unsustainable for ocean ecosystems.

“When we feed these ingredients to animals that have their own environmental impact from production, the overall impact is much higher than if we just ate the ingredients themselves, “ says Caitlin D. Kuempel, conservation scientist and lecturer at the Griffith University School of Environment and Science in Australia. “The more feed required to grow an animal, the higher this overall pressure can become.” 

Global food production, including plant and animal agriculture, is estimated to make up 26 percent of the total GHG emissions around the world. Therefore, to reduce the environmental impact of animal products, it may be beneficial to look at their diets and work on making them more sustainable as well.

Animal feed production has a significant environmental impact

For many types of farmed animals, feed typically accounts for 50 to 70 percent of production costs, says Kurt A. Rosentrater, food engineer and associate professor at Iowa State University whose research focuses on improving the sustainability of agricultural-based systems. 

“Ironically, the production of feed and the ingredients that go into these feeds can often result in up to about 70 percent of the environmental impacts from eating products from these animals,” says Rosentrater. That’s not the case for all species, especially since ruminants produce significant GHG emissions during digestion. But for most animal-based products, the most significant portion of environmental impacts happen on the farm before they are even processed into food products, he adds.

[Related: Smarter fertilizer use could shrink our agricultural carbon footprint.]

For instance, animal feed given to farmed broiler chickens and farmed salmonids (including salmon, marine trout, and Arctic char) account for more than half of their respective industries’ environmental impact, according to a recent Current Biology study. Feed production accounts for at least 78 percent of the environmental pressures of farmed chicken, and over 67 percent for that of salmon.

Chicken and salmon are the largest animal-sourced food sectors on land and the sea, which makes them a fitting focus for research. “We combined data on four pressures—greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater use, nutrient pollution, and land and sea disturbance—into a single metric to get a more holistic view of the environmental footprint of these two production systems,” says Kuempel, who was involved in the study.

The findings revealed that 95 percent of the environmental footprints of chicken and salmon are concentrated in just five percent of the world, which includes some of the largest producers like the US and Chile. Knowing the spatial distribution helps give more local context. This could help identify areas that may have resource competition, and focus on location-specific policies to reduce environmental impact, says Kuempel.

Moreover, the study found that more than 85 percent of farmed chicken and salmon’s environmental footprints overlap primarily due to their shared feed ingredients. Commercial poultry feed often consists of crops like corn and wheat, but they also contain fish meal and fish oils. At the same time, salmon aquaculture requires 2.5 million tons of crops like soybean and wheat for feed, but they still eat fish meal.

“Since feed contributes such a high percentage of their environmental footprint, this is an obvious area where changes could potentially be made to lower their environmental pressures overall,” says Kuempel.

Improve the sustainability of feed production

Some actions can improve the sustainability of feed production, including changing the dietary composition of feed ingredients to include more environmentally friendly options, says Kuempel. This can be effective since the environmental impacts of feeds are primarily influenced by their ingredients.

In a 2021 study, the authors found that reducing the proportion of high-impact ingredients, like cereals and oils, while increasing the proportion of low-impact ones, like peas or fava beans, may result in eco-friendlier pig production without harming animal performance.

[Related: What the ‘B’ label on your favorite drinks and snacks means.]

The fast-growing aquaculture industry has also influenced a shift to crop-based feed ingredients to maintain sustainability in ocean ecosystems. However, for carnivorous farmed fish, plant-based diets would affect their nutritional profile, and subsequently, human nutrition. More studies are needed to understand the impact of different feed formulations on various farmed fish.

A 2020 Scientific Reports study found that reducing the fish meal component from 35 to 15 percent in the feed for the Atlantic salmon parr reduced their growth. However, partially replacing it with fish protein hydrolysate (FPH) supplementation in a high plant protein diet might result in a similar growth performance with the fish fed with a 35 percent fish meal.

Kuempel also suggests introducing novel feeds like microalgae and insects to potentially reduce environmental pressure. Microalgae could successfully replace fish meal and fish oil in aquaculture diets while also improving growth and meat quality in poultry and pigs. Feeding trials conducted on chickens, several fish species, and pigs concluded that insect meal could replace over 25 percent of soy meal or fish meal in animal feed with no adverse effects.

Overall, animal feed production has the capacity to become more sustainable. “Many researchers are hard at work trying to improve the efficiency of ingredient growth and processing, as well as improved digestibility and reduced GHG emissions during digestion,” says Rosentrater. “Many promising developments are underway that will soon reduce the impacts of feed and ingredient production, processing, and digestion.”

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Over the past 15 years, coal power has been on a precipitous decline across the United States, dropping in use by over 50 percent. The rise of cheaper natural gas and renewable energy combined with environmental regulations has led to the shuttering of hundreds of plants across the country. Between 2010 and 2021, 36 percent of the country’s coal plants went offline; since then another 25 percent shut down or committed to retiring by 2030.

But even as coal declines, it is still keeping a deadly grasp on communities across the country, according to a new report from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. The coal sector is responsible for 3,800 premature deaths a year due to fine particle pollution, or PM2.5, from smokestacks. 

“We know that coal plants remain one of the biggest polluters in the United States,” said Holly Bender, senior director for energy campaigns with the Sierra Club. “What the [government] data didn’t show was who was most impacted by each of these plants.”

Coal plants release heavier particles and localized pollution that can have acute impacts within a 30- to 50-mile radius, but they also release fine particulate matter that gets blown hundreds of miles away downwind from tall smokestacks. The report looked at these particles specifically, finding that they had widespread impacts, causing premature death in states that don’t even border another state with a plant.

For example, the highest number of deaths due to coal plant pollution happened in Alleghany County in Pennsylvania and Cook County in Illinois, with 63 and 61 fatalities per year, respectively. Yet Cook Country is hundreds of miles away from the nearest power plant. The Labadie plant, Cook County’s biggest coal pollution contributor, owned by the American energy company Ameren, is over 300 miles away in rural Missouri. For the average coal plant, only 4 percent of premature deaths occurred in the facility’s same county and only 18 percent occurred in the same state, highlighting the cross-regional nature of the problem of coal soot.

Particulate pollution has a well-documented and disproportionate impact on people of color and low-income communities. The report notes how these inequities are increasing over time. While as a whole coal is the only pollution source that affects white Americans more than average, Daniel Prull, the author of the report, noted that the impacts varied from plant to plant; many coal facilities examined in the study had disproportionate impacts on communities of color, depending on where they were located.

Over 50 percent of the mortality caused by coal soot could be traced back to 17 plants, the report found. The parent company with the most deaths was Tennessee Valley Authority, which has four plants, and is owned by the U.S. government. Many of the other super-polluters, such as PPL, Berkshire Hathaway, and Ameren, were investor-owned utilities — which combined were responsible for 40 percent of these coal-driven premature deaths. “This is not just a problem that’s relegated to one part of the industry,” said Bender, adding that the parent companies causing the most harm were also the ones that have failed to make commitments to retire coal plants and transition to clean energy.

In line with the Clean Air Act, the EPA is supposed to regulate particulate pollution; last month it released a draft proposal to do so under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. While the draft standard would lower the exposure limit, the new Sierra Club report notes that it does nothing to explicitly address controlling emissions from coal power plants, over half of which lack modern pollution control technology. 

Coal continues to become increasingly uneconomic, Bender said, but it’s important to make sure the energy sector doesn’t simply move from one fossil fuel to another. “Natural gas could not be further from a climate solution,” she said. “We need to make sure we are truly on track to achieve these emission reductions that are necessary to address the climate crisis and the very real pollution burdens experienced across the country.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

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Solar canopies built above parking lots are an increasingly common sight around the country—you can already see these installed at university campuses, airports, and lots near commercial office buildings. Because the sun is a renewable resource, these solar canopies reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with energy production. 

The clean energy benefits are clear: A 32-acre solar carport canopy at Rutgers University in New Jersey, for instance, produces about 8.8 megawatts of power, or about $1.2 million in electricity. They also make use of existing space to generate clean energy rather than occupying croplands, arid lands, and grasslands.

There may be other perks to adding solar panels over parking lots, too. Research shows that the benefits of solar canopies can be taken a step further if electric vehicles (EVs) are able to charge right in the parking lot. People can tap into this potential by installing EV chargers in solar carports, which makes charging more accessible for owners and creates a small-scale local energy grid for the community. The expense of installation and other barriers, though, can make deployment challenging. 

EV charging in the carport

A solar carport canopy with 286 solar modules is able to produce about 140 megawatt-hours of energy per year for EV charging, according to a new Scientific Reports study. That’s enough to provide electricity to more than 3,000 vehicles per month if each car parks for an hour. The authors say charging EVs this way can generate 94 percent lower total carbon dioxide emissions than electricity from traditional grid methods. 

To maximize these benefits, smart technology that controls the timing and speed of charging is critical, says Lynn Daniels, manager at RMI’s Carbon-Free Transportation program who was not involved in the study. Smart charging allows users to optimize energy consumption by charging only when prices are cheaper due to low-energy demand or when more renewable energy is available on the grid.

[Related: Solar energy company wants to bolt panels directly into the ground]

EV ownership is growing so swiftly that entire electric grids are at risk of being stressed. If most owners across the US Western region continue to charge their EVs during nighttime, peak electricity demand can increase by up to 25 percent, according to a 2022 Applied Energy study. Accessible daytime charging at work or public charging stations would help address this problem and reduce GHG emissions.

There are ways to maximize emission reductions when smart-charging electric vehicles, according to a recent report from RMI, a nonprofit organization focusing on sustainability. “Our report found that, today, charging one million EVs at the right times is equivalent to taking between 20,000 and 80,000 internal combustion engine vehicles off the road,” says Daniels. If EVs represent 25 percent of vehicles by 2030, “emissions-optimized smart charging,” he adds, would be the equivalent of removing an additional 5.73 million automobiles with combustion engines.

A source of revenue, goodwill, and more

Solar canopies provide vehicles with protection from rain, sleet, hail, and other inclement weather, says Joshua M. Pearce, whose research specializes in solar photovoltaic technology and sustainable development at Western University in Canada. The shade they provide also means car owners may require less cooling from air conditioning at start-up because the vehicle didn’t stay under the sun. But that’s not all they can do.

A solar carport canopy with EV charging can be an opportunity for site owners to earn money if drivers have to pay a fee to charge their cars, says Daniels.

On the other hand, if businesses or large-scale retailers provide EV charging for free, Pearce says, that may develop goodwill with customers. Shoppers might spend more time and money while waiting for their cars to charge, allowing business owners to earn even more profit, he adds. And shopping centers have lots of potentially convertible areas: If Walmart deployed 11.1 gigawatts of solar canopies over its 3,571 Supercenter parking lots in the US, that would provide more than 346,000 solar-powered EV charging stations for 90 percent of Americans living within 15 miles of a store, according to a 2021 estimate.

[Related: What you need to know about converting your home to solar]

Solar canopies also save energy, since about 5 percent of electricity is lost each year as it travels from a power plant to your home or business. If the electricity the solar panels produce is used directly by the buildings they’re connected to or the EVs charging in the parking lots, transmission losses can be reduced, says Pearce.

The widespread deployment of solar canopies across parking lots may be an opportunity to create a small-scale local energy grid as well. The electrical grid is highly vulnerable to natural disasters, intentional physical attacks, and cyberattacks. Solar systems in parking lots can be used as anchors for microgrids—local, autonomous power systems that can remain operational while the main grid is down—that could make communities more resilient, “similar to how the US military uses solar to improve national security,” says Pearce.

Logistics of transforming parking lots

Upfront capital costs are the primary roadblocks to solar-powered carports with EV charging, says Pearce. The physical structure needs to be taller and more robust than a conventional solar farm, requiring more materials like metal and concrete, he adds. EV chargers also cost money, increasing the price even further. Commercial EV charging stations can cost around $2,500 to $40,000 for a single port. An installation often requires permits and approval from local authorities or inspectors, all of which are additional expenses and barriers to faster deployment.

The design of the solar array may be a challenge, too. “There’s a trade-off between right-sizing the solar array for current EV charging needs versus anticipated future demand and the costs of the solar array,” says Daniels. “The solar array design and location on the site can create significant variability in installation complexity and project costs.”

Daniels recommends raising awareness about the currently-available tax credits and other incentives, such as the federal solar tax credit that can deduct 30 percent of total commercial solar installation costs. There is a tax credit of 6 percent (with a maximum credit of $100,000 per unit) on commercial charging equipment as well, given that it is placed in a low-income community.

When it comes to new regulations, Pearce suggests that policymakers begin with a small step, like mandating solar-powered carports with EV charging capabilities for new surface parking or government-owned lots. After that, requirements for other locations like public universities could follow, he adds.

States or municipalities could also offer incentives other than the existing federal solar tax credit. To encourage state agencies, government offices, businesses, and nonprofits to install EV-charging solar canopies over parking lots, the Maryland Energy Administration’s Solar Canopy and Dual Use Technology Grant Program is offering grants. In 2019, one of these grants enabled IKEA to install a 1.5-megawatt solar canopy with EV charging stations at its Baltimore store.

Moreover, offering low- or no-interest loans to small- and medium-sized businesses can help them “keep up with the big firms investing millions in solar now simply to make money,” says Pearce. In general, if the federal government hopes to break one of the biggest barriers to the installation of solar canopies with EV charging capabilities, reducing upfront costs would be the key.

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This article was originally featured in Knowable.

Franklin Chang-Díaz gets into his car, turns on the radio and hears the news about another increase in the price of gasoline. But he sets off knowing that his trip won’t be any more expensive: His tank is filled with hydrogen. His car takes that element and combines it with oxygen in a fuel cell that works like a small power plant, creating energy — which goes into a battery to power the car — and water vapor. Not only will Chang-Díaz’s trip cost no more than it did yesterday, it will also pollute far less than a traditional gasoline-powered car would.

Chang-Díaz would like to have a public hydrogen station nearby whenever he needs to fill his tank, but that isn’t possible yet, either in his native Costa Rica or in any other Latin American country. He ends up instead at the hydrogen station he built himself, as part of a project aimed at demonstrating that hydrogen generated with renewable energy sources — green hydrogen — is the present, not the future.

A physicist, former NASA astronaut and the CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company, Chang-Díaz has a clear vision. Green hydrogen, he believes, is a fundamental player in lowering emissions from transportation and converting regions that import fossil fuels — such as his small Central American country — into exporters of clean energy, key to avoiding the catastrophic effects of global warming.

According to data from the Inter-American Development Bank, the most polluting sectors in Latin America to which clean hydrogen technology could be applied are transportation (which generates 40 percent of the region’s CO₂ emissions) and electricity and energy (36 percent of emissions). And Chang-Díaz is not alone in his belief in the promise. Large-scale hydrogen transportation will be part of the future, says Nilay Shah, a chemical engineer at Imperial College London. “By 2050, hydrogen could deliver 18 percent of the global energy supply … 28 percent of which would be destined for the transport sector,” he and his colleagues note in an article on the application of hydrogen in mobility technologies in the 2022 Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

But for green hydrogen to become an important player in the world’s energy resources, the technologies for obtaining it will need to be developed on a large scale. Latin America wants to be part of this future and is already preparing, with projects throughout the region.

Not all hydrogen is the same

Hydrogen is the lightest chemical element: Its nucleus has only one proton, orbited by an electron. It’s also the most common: Up to 90 percent of the atoms in the universe are believed to be hydrogen atoms. In its gaseous state (H ₂), it is tasteless, colorless and odorless. In the terrestrial environment, it is usually found in more complex compounds, such as two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom to form a water molecule (H ₂O), or four hydrogen atoms bonded to one carbon atom to form methane (CH ₄). If we need the hydrogen atoms alone, we must uncouple them from these compounds.

The use of hydrogen as an energy source is not new. For decades, NASA mixed H₂ gas with oxygen to generate the energy needed to lift hundreds of tons and send its shuttles into space. The US Department of Energy lists it as a safer fuel than fossil fuels because it is non-toxic and dissipates quickly in the event of a leak, since it is lighter than air.

At present, hydrogen as an energy source is mainly used in the production of petroleum derivatives, steel, ammonia and methanol. According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2020 the world’s population consumed about 90 million tons of hydrogen — equivalent to only 2.5 percent of global energy consumption. Latin America uses only 5 percent of this hydrogen, mainly in countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia and Chile. It is mostly dirty hydrogen, which pollutes the planet due to the processes used to obtain it.

Depending on how it is derived, hydrogen can be classified as gray, blue, green — or even black. Gray hydrogen is generated using fossil fuels — natural gas especially, in the case of Latin America. In a process called steam reforming, carbon monoxide (CO) and water vapor (H₂O) are subjected to high temperatures, moderate pressure and a catalyst, producing carbon dioxide (CO ₂) and hydrogen (H ₂). If coal is used instead of gas to generate the heat necessary for steam reforming, the hydrogen is then considered black — the worst of all, from an environmental point of view.

Blue hydrogen uses gas or coal in the same steam reforming process, but in this case 80 percent to 90 percent of the carbon emissions end up underground through a process called industrial carbon capture and storage (CSS). Finally, green hydrogen — also called clean hydrogen — uses electrical energy generated by renewable sources, such as solar and wind power, to separate the water molecule into its two elements, hydrogen and oxygen, by means of an anode and a cathode in a process called electrolysis.

Currently, less than 0.4 percent of the hydrogen utilized in Latin America is green; the rest is linked to fossil fuels. In fact, in 2019, hydrogen production for the region required more natural gas than all of the gas consumed in Chile, a country with 19 million inhabitants. And it generated more polluting emissions than those produced in a year by all the cars in Colombia, a nation with some 7 million vehicles.

Globally, 4 percent of hydrogen production is already the result of electrolysis, but the remaining 96 percent still requires gas, coal or petroleum derivatives.

Toward green hydrogen

With the goal of producing more and more green hydrogen, several projects on different scales are taking shape in Latin America.

• The Brazilian company Unigel plans to inaugurate a $120 million plant in 2023, which will produce 10,000 tons per year of green hydrogen — the equivalent of 60 megawatts (MW) — in its first stage.
• Sener Ingeniería Mexico announced in August 2022 the creation of the first of a series of small plants, of about 2.5 MW.
• Chile, for its part, is already seeing some of the fruits of its National Green Hydrogen Strategy, launched in 2020. This South American country says it plans to “conquer global markets” in 2030, mainly Europe and China, where it aims to send 72 percent of its production. The port of entry to Germany will be Hamburg. “With its great potential for green hydrogen production, Chile is on the verge of becoming an exporter of global magnitude,” said the mayor of Hamburg, Peter Tschenscher, during the signing of a cooperation agreement in September 2022.
• Uruguay launched the Green Hydrogen Sector Fund, with $10 million non-reimbursable funding from the government to finance projects. In August 2022, nine companies won a spot, some with names such as “Green H ₂ Production for Forest Transport” and “Palos Blancos Project: green hydrogen, ammonia and fertilizer production plant with wind and solar photovoltaic renewable energy.”
• And in Costa Rica, Chang-Díaz is helping lead the way to add green hydrogen to the country’s portfolio of clean energy sources (about 99 percent of electricity in Costa Rica is generated through sources such as the sun, wind and water from dams). In July 2022, Chang-Díaz demonstrated on social media how he fueled his car, at a prototype station, with green hydrogen produced in his own country.

While some Latin American countries may benefit from the production of green hydrogen, others will benefit from large-scale consumption of the clean energy source. For example, Trinidad and Tobago, which consumes 40 percent of the region’s hydrogen for its oil refining processes, emits 12.3 metric tons of carbon per person per year (by comparison, Costa Rica emits 1.6 metric tons per capita per year, according to 2019 World Bank data). If Trinidad and Tobago used green hydrogen in its processes instead of gray hydrogen, its carbon footprint would be significantly reduced.

Other countries are being creative and are not yet focusing on either production or consumption of green hydrogen. Panama, for example, seeks to become a storage and commercialization node for the element, like the air and maritime transport hub it already is. As part of this national energy transformation plan, called Green Hydrogen Roadmap, the authorities of this country signed a memorandum of understanding with Siemens Energy. Panama also has plans to produce some of its own green hydrogen eventually: The Ciudad Dorada Biorefinery, expected to begin construction this year, will have the capacity to generate 405,000 metric tons.

“Green hydrogen technology is developing worldwide and by 2030 Latin America will be the third region in the world with the most projects, after Europe and Australia,” says José Miguel Bermúdez, chemical engineer and energy technology analyst at the IEA.

For Shah, the reason for this growing interest is clear: Many Latin American countries have the potential to generate more clean energy than they need. “Let’s take Chile, for example,” he says. “The amount of potential for renewable electricity is probably 10 times more than the amount of electricity you need in the country.” Exporting that clean energy from Chile or Costa Rica in the form of electricity over long distances is complicated and expensive. But using it to create hydrogen and transport it in tanks to practically any place in the world is realistic, he says, although it will require investments — just as investments in oil tankers and gas pipelines were once needed.

But, Shah adds, green hydrogen could also be transported with existing infrastructure if it is used to create popular products, such as ammonia (NH₃, a nitrogen atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms, a compound widely used in agriculture) or synthetic fuels.

Challenges to be solved

After the production and distribution of green hydrogen comes its myriad uses. To power car batteries, it’s combined with oxygen in a fuel cell and generates water vapor and energy. To manufacture iron, hydrogen is used to transform one molecule of iron oxide (Fe₂O ₃) into two molecules of iron (Fe) and three molecules of water (H ₂O) at high temperatures — fossil fuels are currently used for this purpose. Processing this iron further, with more energy, produces steel.

The manufacture of cement also requires high temperatures, currently generated with fossil fuels: The IEA indicates that as much as 67 percent of hydrogen demand in 2030 could come from this industry. In addition, hydrogen combined with carbon in the Fischer-Tropsch process generates synthetic fuels, which are cleaner than traditional fossil fuels. Aircraft are already allowed to fly on up to 50 percent synthetic kerosene.

Some 50,000 hydrogen vehicles are already on the road worldwide, Bermúdez adds. Projections are that the number will soon skyrocket — China alone expects to have 1 million on its streets by 2035 — but experts agree that, in the short or medium term, hydrogen will not completely replace the most polluting fuels; instead, it will be one alternative in a matrix of different options, such as traditional electric cars or solar-powered airplanes. However, the experts also agree that it will be a significant option, not a marginal one.

“There will be a series of technologies and areas of opportunity that do not have to be specifically the same in all the countries of our region,” says Andrés González Garay, a process engineer at the chemical company BASF and a coauthor of the article on hydrogen production and its applications to mobility in the Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “It is also true that hydrogen, although it can be applied in a lot of areas, will not make sense in all of them, and it will depend a lot on our political, social and economic systems.”

To arrive at the more environmentally friendly scenario that green hydrogen offers, its production should be increased as soon as possible and, at the same time, its consumption needs to be encouraged, Shah says. “Global hydrogen production is expected to grow six to 10 times between now and 2050,” González Garay says, and the increase is projected to be mainly in clean hydrogen.

The role of governments will be pivotal, the scientists say. “If governments become the first users of hydrogen — for their buildings, for their vehicle fleets, for their other operations, for power generation — they become the customer. Then they can create the supply chain of hydrogen and give confidence to the producers that there is a market,” Shah says.

Adds Bermúdez: “The public sector needs to put the regulations and support programs in place to accelerate the private sector. Public policies are needed to force demand for green hydrogen…. If Latin America does not position itself well and start producing and closing agreements, it runs the risk of being left behind.”

Chang-Díaz, for his part, fears that countries like Costa Rica, despite producing almost all its electricity through clean renewable sources, risk moving too late to take advantage of the wave of green hydrogen that is already beginning to rise. In December 2022 he participated as a speaker at an international meeting held in San José, the capital of his country. But at the same time, a few kilometers away, the bill to support the green hydrogen sector, which has been under discussion for months, has not advanced in the Legislative Assembly.

So, at least for now, Chang-Díaz will remain the only one in his country who can travel in a car that uses green hydrogen as fuel.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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OFF-THE-GRID LIVING is experiencing a renaissance. Dwellings devised to support a sustainable lifestyle could help us adapt to some of our biggest present-day challenges—from a lack of housing for the world’s growing population to pollution and extreme weather. With the climate crisis in mind, architects are looking to more resilient options that don’t depend on the overdrawn electrical grid at all. Some designers are reinvigorating decades-old “biotecture,” like the 1970s Earthships made from reclaimed and natural materials; others are rejecting synthetics and leaning on Indigenous practices of building with natural materials. Meanwhile, weather-resistant domes and 3D-printed dwellings could house more people with fewer resources. We asked architects and engineers about off-the-grid living solutions that could help us adapt to changing environments. 

Earthships

The definition of the term off the grid usually focuses on electricity, but Earthships involve much more. Every feature of these structures, including heating, cooling, water supply, wastewater treatment, electricity, and some food production, is off the grid. Recycled materials like tires and bottles make up the walls and other structural elements; these components are already distributed around the world, so procuring them doesn’t use much energy. Overall, Earthships allow us to be self-sustaining, and therefore happier. 
—Jonah Reynolds, Earthship designer and builder at Pangea Design Build

3D-printed homes

We use trees and other plants to produce the fiber and the resin for printing a home in Maine, so it’s 100 percent renewable. You can change insulation on the walls and roof to make them more energy efficient, so you don’t even get air leaks. If in 200 years, your great-grandchildren don’t want the home anymore, they can grind it up and put it back into the printer and do it again. It makes a good choice for off-the-grid living because it’s customizable to your landscape. It can be made in any shape you desire. If you send in a drawing, in most cases, it can be produced.
—Habib Dagher, executive director of the Advanced Structure and Composites Center at the University of Maine

Tiny houses

A tiny house is generally defined as a dwelling with a main floor of under 450 square feet. Our models come on wheels and can have composting toilets or incinerator toilets, so that means you don’t even need to be hooked up to a sewer. We have special washers, refrigerators, and dishwashers that use a lot less electricity and water than you would in a regular home. We can pre-wire the home so that it’s easy to install solar. Your energy footprint, and just your footprint in general, is much smaller.
—Trine Rieck, lead designer at Tiny Heirloom

Geodesic bioceramic domes

Geodesic domes are constructed with precast ceramic composite materials, which are combinations of ceramics and nontoxic natural fibers like hemp and basalt. The space is really made to mimic the natural environment that humans evolved in. They are highly resilient to fires, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes, and result in about a 90 percent reduction in carbon footprint. They’re also easy for people to build—it’s kind of like putting together a Lego set. The domes are absolutely a great choice for off-grid living, and I think that at some point, they will be very common choices worldwide.
—Morgan Bierschenk, co-founder and CEO of Geoship

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Wind turbines are integral to our renewable energy future, but they come with a fatal flaw—their massive turbine blades are often relegated to landfills at the end of their lifespans. There, they remain indefinitely. It’s an unfortunately dire scalability conundrum that requires a remedy sooner than later, but one potential solution not only could provide the industry a way forward—it could take care of the existing backlog of trash.

The world’s largest manufacturer of turbines, Vestas Wind Systems A/S, announced on Tuesday its development of a new chemical solution that can break down turbine blades’ epoxy resin into recyclable material. “Going forward, we can now view old epoxy-based blades as a source of raw material,”  Lisa Ekstrand, Vestas Vice President and Head of Sustainability, said in a statement. Ekstrand added that once the new tech is scaled, all existing and future blade materials can be disassembled and re-used. “This signals a new era for the wind industry, and accelerates our journey towards achieving circularity,” she said.

[Related: A wind turbine just smashed a global energy record—and it’s recyclable.]

Turbine epoxy resins’ resilient chemical properties have long made them extremely difficult to recycle, a fact that looms large over the wind energy sector. Vestas’ statement explains that many mature markets’ first turbines are reaching their lifespans’ end. Industry analyst Wind Europe recently estimated that by 2025, around 25,000 tonnes of blades will be retired annually.

The implementation of the company’s new chemical solution, however, could theoretically overcome the problem entirely while simultaneously taking care of landfill backlogs. According to Mie Elholm Birkbak, Specialist, Innovation & Concepts at Vestas, the novel chemical process relies on already widely available ingredients, and thus can be easily deployed and scaled as needed. What’s more, the solution could be soon applied to all epoxy-based composite materials across a vast number of industries beyond just wind energy.

Vestas’ breakthrough was developed in collaboration with Aarhus University, the Danish Technological Institute, alongside a coalition of industry and academia working towards circular technology for turbine blades.

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While 2022 saw some climate victories, news of record-breaking earnings for petroleum companies such as BP, Exxon, and Shell demonstrate just how much more work lies ahead to knock out the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. Exxon earned a record-breaking amount of $56 billion in profits last year alone—that’s nearly $6.3 million every single hour for the entire year. 

For BP, which doubled its profits to an all-time high of $28 billion, it meant backtracking on what were already somewhat dubious climate change goals. Instead of lowering oil and gas production by 35 to 40 percent in the next decade, as previously stated, on Tuesday the fossil fuel giant announced that it is now setting goals back to just 20 to 30 percent reductions.

“BP is yet another fossil fuel giant mining gold out of the vast suffering caused by the climate and energy crisis,” Kate Blagojevic, Greenpeace UK’s head of climate justice told the Guardian. “What’s worse, their green plans seem to have been strongly undermined by pressure from investors and governments to make even more dirty money out of oil and gas. This is precisely why we need governments to intervene to change the rules.”

These fossil fuel companies have profited greatly from increasing energy prices due to the war in Ukraine. (European natural gas prices, for instance, have only just now fallen to pre-invasion prices.) 

[Related: Fossil fuels are causing a buildup of human health problems.]

Additionally, the goals set by companies such as BP and Shell for greenhouse gas reductions are somewhat dubious to begin with, analysts say—German group Climate Analytics found last summer that if big fossil fuel companies were to follow their own goals, the world will warm “significantly” more than the Paris Agreement limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius. According to a Goldman Sachs report, Exxon and Chevron are only on track to invest 10 percent of their capital into renewable energy.

The UK introduced an Energy Profits Levy on the gigantic profits made at fossil fuels companies, but that only applies to profits from extracting gas and oil in the UK, according to the BBC. Last night, President Joe Biden proposed quadrupling the tax on corporate stock buybacks to quell the “outrageous” profits made by fossil fuel companies and encourage investment in domestic energy.

The IPCC warns that fossil fuel emissions must be halved by 2030 in order to reach Paris Agreement goals. Support for fossil fuels almost doubled in 2021. 

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On February 7, President Joe Biden gave his 2023 State of the Union Address to a joint session of a newly split Congress, with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans controlling the House. This is what he had to say on major science, tech, and health related issues. 

Health policy priorities—COVID and healthcare

Biden touted the progress made to combat COVID-19 since he first took office in January 2021, when the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was just getting underway since beginning in December 2020. “COVID no longer controls our lives,” he said, “while the virus is not gone, thanks to the resilience of the American people, and the ingenuity of medicine, we have broken COVID’s grip on us.” 

The administration stands to end the public health emergency on May 11. The change to formally end the national emergency declarations would restructure the federal government’s response to treating the virus as an endemic threat to public health that can be managed through normal authorities.

[Related: Biden will end COVID-19 national emergencies in May. Here’s what that means.]

He also pointed to several policies Congress can still achieve to deliver cheaper prescription drugs to the American people—for example continuing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and capping the cost of insulin at $35 for seniors on Medicare.

“But there are millions of other Americans who are not on Medicare, including 200,000 young people with Type I diabetes who need insulin to save their lives,” said Biden. “Let’s finish the job this time. Let’s cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American who needs it.”

This was the first State of the Union after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and President Biden vowed to veto any national abortion ban. The Biden administration has taken steps to expand abortion access in the wake of the decision, including steps to make it easier to access the prescription pills used in a medication abortion. 

He touted the success of the PEPFAR program that has saved 25 million lives and transformed  the global fight against HIV/AIDS and the Cancer Moonshot program that Biden led while Vice President to Barack Obama. The program is a very personal initiative to the Bidens after their son Beau died of a brain tumor in 2015. 

“Our goal is to cut the cancer death rate by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years. Turn more cancers from death sentences into treatable diseases. And provide more support for patients and families,” said Biden.

When it comes to tech, CHIPS takes the spotlight

American ingenuity in tech was also on full display, with Biden highlighting the bipartisan Infrastructure Law and CHIPS and Science Act, especially when it comes to the jobs that will be created by investing in infrastructure and tech. The legislation devotes more than $50 billion intended to spur semiconductor manufacturing, research, development, and more in the United States.

[Related: Can the Chips and Science Act help the US avoid more shortages?]

“Semiconductors, the small computer chips the size of your fingertip that power everything from cellphones to automobiles, and so much more. These chips were invented right here in America. Let’s get that straight, they were invented in America,” said Biden. “America used to make nearly 40 percent of the world’s chips. But in the last few decades, we lost our edge and we’re down to producing only 10 percent.”

He also announced a new standard that will require all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in America and stressed his administration’s commitment to providing Americans with universal access to high-speed internet. 

Climate and the environment—wins and losses

The Biden Administration’s recent flurry of environmental legislation amidst the past year’s spike in gas prices shifted the spotlight on his policies on climate change.  

“The Inflation Reduction Act is also the most significant investment ever to tackle the climate crisis. Lowering utility bills, creating American jobs, and leading the world to a clean energy future,” said Biden, before touting the investments aimed at modernizing infrastructure in the face of a changing planet from electric grids to floods and water systems and clear energy.

[Related: 4 ways the Inflation Reduction Act invests in healthier forests and greener cities.]

He also called the $200 billion in profits brought in by oil and gas companies during a global energy crisis “outrageous,” and proposed quadrupling the tax on corporate stock buybacks to encourage more investment in increasing domestic energy production and keeping costs down.    

High profile attendees included wildfire experts and cancer survivors

U2 frontman Bono, Tyre Nicols’ family, and Paul Pelosi were among the high profile guests for the 535 members of Congress. Several were innovators, activists, and scientists making a mark on the science and tech world. 

These included Jennifer Gray Thompson, the CEO of After the Fire USA,  Paul Bruchez, a rancher who has worked with other landowners to restore a part of the threatened Colorado River, Grover Fugate, the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), and  David Anderson, President and CEO of NY-CREATES and the Albany Nanotech Complex. 

Some of the guests invited to the First Lady’s Box included Maurice and Kandice Barron whose daughter Ava is a survivor of a rare form of pediatric cancer, Amanda Zurawski, a woman from Texas who almost lost her life to a miscarriage due to Texas’ abortion law, and Lynette Bonar, an enrolled member of Navajo Nation who helped open the first cancer center opened on a Native American reservation.

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A public utility is experimenting with blending small amounts of carbon-free hydrogen into natural gas lines in some Minnesota homes, but critics argue the procedure remains largely an exercise in hot air.

As first reported last week by Energy News Network, the Midwest’s CenterPoint Energy company began injecting as much as five percent hydrogen gas into downtown Minneapolis residents’ methane supplies for their homes’ stoves and heaters last summer. After various small modifications at the $2.5 million hydrogen pilot production facility (which was built on a former coal gasification plant), the utility provider is now claiming success. But the lengthy list of overall remaining concerns still makes it unlikely to see green hydrogen mixing compose a large portion of future infrastructures.

[Related: A beginner’s guide to the ‘hydrogen rainbow’]

“Green” hydrogen involves utilizing renewable energy to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen in a facility, which is how we get hydrogen energy that can then be used to heat homes or fuel industrial production.  Nevertheless, the process remains cost-ineffective when compared to other low- and zero-emission energy sources such as wind and solar. In particular, green hydrogen production operates at between a 30 and 35 percent energy loss, and often requires expensive new plant updates and maintenance.

According to Energy News Networks, CenterPoint’s green hydrogen plant relies in part on wind energy renewable carbon credits, casting doubt on its true “clean” status. Carbon offset credits are a controversial, yet popular, tactic used by a large number of major corporations and industries, but critics are increasingly casting doubt about the strategy’s viability, efficacy, and even trustworthiness.

[Related: Many popular carbon offsets don’t actually counteract emissions, study says]

Despite the drawbacks, the hydrogen production industry is a rapidly growing sector with bipartisan blessing. Last year, the Biden Administration announced $8 billion in funding for states’ developing their hydrogen production, processing, and storage infrastructures, with an aim to lower its cost down to one dollar per kilogram within a decade. Much of this energy isn’t meant for green projects, however, but for petroleum processing and ammonia fertilizer production.

Last year, a report released by San Francisco-based think tank Energy Innovation cast extreme doubt on the alternative’s viability, citing exorbitant costs and society’s extremely limited timeframe for effectively tackling climate change. Further industry advancements and refining may one day result in viable large scale uses for green hydrogen, but funding for those projects will need to be balanced with efficient, realistic, and safe renewable energy sources.

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The electron is one of the most common bits of matter around us—every complete atom in the known universe has at least one. But the electron has far rarer and shadier counterparts, one of them being the muon. We may not think much about muons, but they’re constantly hailing down on Earth’s surface from the edge of the atmosphere. 

Muons can pass through vast spans of bedrock that electrons can’t cross. That’s good luck for scientists, who can collect the more elusive particles to paint images of objects as if they were X-rays. In the last several decades, they’ve used muons to pierce the veils of erupting volcanoes and peer into ancient tombs, but only in two dimensions. The few three-dimensional images have been limited to small objects.

That’s changing. In a paper published in the journal Science Advances today, researchers have created a fully 3D muon image of a nuclear reactor the size of a large building. The achievement could give experts new, safer ways of inspecting old reactors or checking in on nuclear waste.

“I think, for such large objects, it’s the first time that it’s purely muon imaging in 3D,” says Sébastien Procureur, a nuclear physicist at the Université Paris-Saclay in France and one of the study authors.

[Related: This camera can snap atoms better than a smartphone]

Muon imaging is only possible with the help of cosmic rays. Despite their sunny name, most cosmic rays are the nuclei of hydrogen or helium atoms, descended to Earth from distant galaxies. When they strike our atmosphere, they burst into an incessant rainstorm of radiation and subatomic particles.

Inside the rain is a muon shower. Muons are heavier—about 206 times more massive—than their electron siblings. They’re also highly unstable: On average, each muon lasts for about a millionth of a second. That’s still long enough for around 10,000 of the particles to strike every square meter of Earth per minute.

Because muons are heavier than electrons, they’re also more energetic. They can penetrate the seemingly impenetrable, such as rock more than half a mile deep. Scientists can catch those muons with specially designed detectors and count them. More muons striking from a certain direction might indicate a hollow space lying that way. 

In doing so, they can gather data on spaces where humans cannot tread. In 2017, for instance, researchers discovered a hidden hollow deep inside Khufu’s Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt. After a tsunami ravaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in 2011, muons allowed scientists to gauge the damage from a safe distance. Physicists have also used muons to check nuclear waste casks without risking leakage while opening them up.

However, taking a muon image comes with some downsides. For one, physicists have no control over how many muons drizzle down from the sky, and the millions that hit Earth each day aren’t actually very many in the grand scheme of things. “It can take several days to get a single image in muography,” says Procureur. “You have to wait until you have enough.”

Typically, muon imagers take their snapshots with a detector that counts how many muons are striking it from what directions. But with a single machine, you can only tell that a hollow space exists—not how far away it lies. This limitation leaves most muon images trapped in two dimensions. That means if you scan of a building’s facade, you might see the individual rooms, but not the layout. If you want to explore a space in great detail, the lack of a third dimension is a major hurdle.

In theory, by taking muon images from different perspectives, you can stitch them together into a 3D reconstruction. This is what radiologists do with X-rays. But while it’s easy to take hundreds of X-ray images from different angles, it’s far more tedious and time-consuming to do so with muons. 

Still, Procureur and his colleagues gave it a go. The site in question was an old reactor at Marcoule, a nuclear power plant and research facility in the south of France. G2, as it’s called, was built in the 1950s. In 1980, the reactor shut down for good; since then, French nuclear authorities have slowly removed components from the building. Now, preparing to terminally decommission G2, they wanted to conduct another safety check of the structures inside. “So they contacted us,” says Procureur.

Scientists had taken 3D muon images of small objects like tanks before, but G2—located inside a concrete cylinder the size of a small submarine and fitted inside a metal-walled building the size of an aircraft hangar—required penetrating a lot more layers and area.

Fortunately, this cylinder left enough space for Procureur and his colleagues to set up four gas-filled detectors at strategic points around and below the reactor. Moving the detectors around, they were able to essentially snap a total of 27 long-exposure muon images, each one taking days on end to capture.

[Related: Nuclear power’s biggest problem could have a small solution]

But the tricky part, Procureur says, wasn’t actually setting up the muon detectors or even letting them run: It was piecing together the image afterward. To get the process started, the team adapted an algorithm used for stitching together anatomical images in a medical clinic. Though the process was painstaking, they succeeded. In their final images, they could pluck out objects as small as cooling pipes about two-and-a-half feet in diameter.

“What’s significant is they did it,” says Alan Bross, a physicist at Fermilab in suburban Chicago, who wasn’t involved with this research. “They built the detectors, they went to the site, and they took the data … which is really involved.”

The effort, Procureur says, was only a proof of concept. Now that they know what can be accomplished, they’ve decided to move onto a new challenge: imaging nuclear containers at other locations. “The accuracy will be significantly better,” Procureur notes.

Even larger targets may soon be on the horizon. Back in Giza, Bross and some of his colleagues are working to scan the Great Pyramid in three dimensions. “We’re basically doing the same technique,” he explains, but on a far more spectacular scale.

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Air pollution is linked to numerous health concerns, from asthma to an increase in the amount and severity of lung and heart disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers air pollution a public health issue and their data estimates that 99 percent of the world breathes air with harmful levels of pollutants. 

Government regulations are a major tool in improving air quality. A study published February 1 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology finds that stricter clean heating policies put in place by China may have reduced 23,000 premature deaths in 2021 compared to 2015.

[Related: Coal and transportation fueled a surge in US carbon emissions last year.]

China has historically utilized  a centralized winter heating strategy that provides free or heavily subsidized heating to cities from about mid-November to March. Biomass burning, or burning wood and other vegetation for warmth, iswas also often used for heating in rural areas. This combination of biomass and coal burning is often associated with haze during China’s winters. 

In 2013, China introduced the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan which accelerated the use of a centralized heating district and encouraged a switch to cleaner fuels. Coal still accounted for 83 percent of total heating in 2016, but the Chinese central government issued its Clean Winter Heating Plan for Northern China the following year. 

[Related: Why China just can’t seem to quit coal.]

Between 2015 and 2021, Beijing, Tianjin, and 26 surrounding cities (known as the “2+26” cities) saw concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) reduced by 41.3 percent. Other northern Chinese that did not enact the same heating policy saw a 13 percent decrease. The team found that the premature deaths from poor air quality fell from 169,016 in 2015 to 145,460 in 2021.

“Our research demonstrates the effectiveness of China’s clean winter heating policies on reducing PM_2.5  – with particular success for the stricter clean heating policies in ‘2 + 26’ cities, which also led to a reduced impact of heating emissions on sulfur dioxide (SO2),” said study co-author and atmospheric biogeochemist Zongbo Shi, from the University of Birmingham, in a statement. “These results demonstrate clear air quality benefits from the stricter clean heating policies in ‘2 + 26’ cities.”

According to the study, evaluating the effectiveness of clean heating policies is difficult due to complicated chemical and physical processes in the atmosphere and socioeconomic factors. The team from Nankai University in Tianjin and the University of Birmingham in England used a new method that combined machine learning and a synthetic control method, which evaluates an intervention’s effect.

“Using a novel approach combining machine learning with causal inference, we showed that heating in northern China was a major source of air pollution,” said Shi. “However, clean heating policies have caused the annual PM_2.5 in mainland China to reduce significantly between 2015 and 2021, with significant public health benefits.”

Further decarbonizing measures will continue to help clean the air, according to the study. 

[Related: Tiny air pollutants may come from different sources, but they all show a similar biased trend.]

“Clean heating policies in northern China not only reduced air pollution but also greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to China’s push for carbon neutrality. However, we found that heating remains an important source of air pollution in northern China, particularly in cities that are not part of the ‘2+26’ cluster,” said Robert Elliot, study co-author and applied economist from the University of Birmingham, in a statement. “Decarbonizing heating should remain a key part of China’s carbon neutrality strategy that not only reduces air pollution but also provide[s] significant public health benefits.”

China still has a steep hill to climb to decarbonize as a whole. It aims to hit peak carbon emissions by 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060. While it is installing renewable energy rapidly, it still built 33 gigawatts of new coal plants in 2021 and hit a record-breaking 4.07 billion tonnes of coal output that same year.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Plastics produced from plants are often considered less environmentally damaging than plastics made from petrochemicals. But scientists are warning that we should be careful making such assumptions.

A new literature review examining the results of around 20 scientific papers has found that bio-based plastics, most of which are made from cornstarch, can be just as toxic as their conventional cousins when dumped in coastal environments. The review also shows that plastics marked as biodegradable often fail to break down in these environments.

The paper highlights the lack of research into the environmental toxicity of bioplastics. The authors write that, for now at least, regulations on bioplastics need to be as tight as those for petroleum-based polymers.

Bioplastic production has boomed in recent years on the back of concerns around plastic waste and the carbon footprint of plastic production. According to European Bioplastics, an industry association, 2.4 million tonnes of bioplastics was made globally in 2021—a number expected to triple to around 7.5 million tonnes by 2026. This represents less than two percent of global plastic production.

The term bioplastics is quite broad. It covers both bio-based plastics, which are made from plants or other non–fossil fuel organic matter rather than petroleum, and biodegradable plastics, whether bio-based or made from fossil fuels.

Bioplastics also aren’t necessarily different from conventional plastics, says Martin Wagner, an environmental toxicologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who was not involved in the review but whose work was included in the analysis. While some bioplastics are new chemical compounds, others are chemically identical to conventional plastics, just produced from carbon derived from plants rather than fossil fuels.

While acknowledging that there is not a lot of data available, and that much of it focuses on the same few bioplastics (such as polylactic acid and polyhydroxyalkanoates, which are mainly produced from starch from plants such as maize, sugar cane, and soybean), the review’s authors suggest that the toxic effects of bioplastics on marine and estuarine life can be of a similar magnitude as those from conventional plastics.

For instance, some of the studies included in the review show that both conventional plastics and bio-based plastics can affect how well mussels attach to rocks. They can also affect the activity of enzymes in the mussels’ digestive systems and gills, and provoke an immune response and kick-start detoxification mechanisms.

However, bioplastics also come with their own unique problems. Bio-based plastics, the review shows, can affect the marine environment in different ways than conventional plastic. For instance, two studies showed that plastic bags derived from cornstarch decrease the level of dissolved oxygen in marine substrates. The cornstarch plastic also causes the seafloor substrate to heat up. The authors of one paper suggest that the bioplastic had a sealing effect on the sediment.

The failure of plastics certified as biodegradable or compostable to break down under marine conditions is not particularly surprising. Degradable bioplastics are designed to break down and convert at least 90 percent of their material into carbon dioxide under specific composting, industrial, and laboratory conditions, not on the beach or the seafloor. But the reviewed studies found that in realistic marine conditions, degradation rates vary hugely depending on the thickness and type of bioplastic. While some items completely degraded or disintegrated in a few months, others could take years to completely degrade.

Wagner says the attitude that some people hold that everything that is biological is better is problematic and based on wishful thinking. “I think the underlying assumption that just because it is bio-based or biodegradable that makes it safer needs to be challenged because there is just no logical reasoning why that should be,” he explains.

Elena Fabbri, an expert in plastic toxicity at the University of Bologna in Italy who also wasn’t involved in the review, agrees: “It’s not correct to say that bioplastics are necessarily safer.”

Bioplastic development has focused on renewable feedstocks and sustainability, Wagner claims, but neglected the products’ sometimes unique safety issues. He says his work on bioplastics, such as starch-based and bamboo-based plastics, has shown that they contain toxic chemicals comparable to those in petroleum-based plastics. These toxic compounds could be either additives used to improve the functional performance of plastic, or substances added unintentionally, such as byproducts created during manufacturing, he explains.

Fabbri echoes Wagner, highlighting that many bioplastics contain thousands of additives. She adds that a large part of the problem is that manufacturers do not have to list the additives they use. This makes it challenging for researchers to identify these chemicals, she adds, as they do not know what they are looking for.

While Fabbri believes bioplastics are a good innovation, she says we need to be certain they are safe and sustainable—and this includes the products of their degradation.

“If you produce bioplastic as a safer plastic, you should also ensure that everything coming out from those plastics—the microplastics, the fragments, and the leaching compounds—are safer as well,” Fabbri explains.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Best overall		Tumo-Int 1000W 3 Blades Wind Turbine		SEE IT	Tumo-Int’s 1000W wind turbine provides enough power to take a bite out of your electric bill.
Best backyard		Automaxx Windmill 1500W Wind Turbine		SEE IT	With enough space, the Automaxx Windmill 1500W Wind Turbine delivers plenty of power.
Best small		Pacific Sky Power Survival Wind Turbine Generator		SEE IT	The Pacific Sky Power Survival Turbine can give you a little power boost when nothing else will.

When most people consider upgrading their homes to take advantage of sustainable energy, they run right to solar panels without considering other options, like wind turbines. While a residential wind turbine doesn’t typically generate enough power on its own to power a house entirely, it can handle a substantial portion of your power needs. It’s enough to drastically reduce your energy bills and, when paired with solar panels and other sustainable power sources, makes off-grid living possible. Whether you want to do your part and help our energy grid go green, give your home its own sustainable power source, or simply want to take a bite out of your energy bills, the best home wind turbines provide a reliable source of sustainable electricity wherever the wind blows. 

• Best overall: Tumo-Int 1000W 3 Blades Wind Turbine
• Best backyard: Automaxx Windmill 1500W Wind Turbine
• Best system: Auecoor 800W 12V 24V Solar Panel Wind Turbine Kit
• Best small: Pacific Sky Power Survival Wind Turbine Generator
• Best off-grid: Ramsond Atlas LM3500 Wind Turbine
• Best budget: Pikasola Wind Turbine Generator Kit

How we picked the best home wind turbines

As a tech-nut and green energy enthusiast, I’ve covered a wide range of sustainable energy products for the likes of Popular Science, Scientific American, The Daily Beast, The Manual, and more. These extensively researched selections represent the best wind turbines available right now, based on a combination of first-hand trials, input from industry professionals, and impressions from real buyers.

One critical caveat: In light of ongoing supply chain issues, we’ve elected to focus on turbines that are regularly available from major retailers like Amazon and Home Depot. There are several well-respected options that we’ve elected to leave out at this time, as they have not been in stock and may not be available again for the foreseeable future. We will update this story as more choices become widely available.

The best home wind turbines: Reviews & Recommendations

Our favorite residential wind turbines are made for many purposes and budgets. Some offer a substantial step toward personal energy independence, while others offer a small amount of backup power. Whatever you’re looking for, there should be a turbine for you on this list.

Best overall: Tumo-Int 1000W 3 Blades 48V Wind Turbine Generator Kit

Tumo-Int

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Why it made the cut: The Tumo-Int 1000W delivers solid power output combined with reliable design at a relatively affordable price.

Specs

• Form factor: Standalone
• Rated Power: 1000W max output
• Start-up wind speed: 6 mph
• Rated wind speed: 28 mph
• Safe wind speed: 90 mph

Pros

• Strong output
• Reliable design
• Automatic direction adjustment
• Low noise and vibration

Cons

• Expensive

You’ll need a powerful wind turbine to make a serious dent in your energy bill. When placed well, Tumo-Int 1000W can deliver that kind of power. It performs well at lower wind speeds and boasts a number of features that you won’t find in lesser turbines, such as automatic direction adjustment to boost efficiency.

It’s made to last, and rated for 15 years of maintenance-free operation. It features electromagnetic over-speed protection and overcharge protection to increase its lifespan. It’s also just solidly built: It can survive a bad tropical storm or even a low-level hurricane.

Best backyard: Automaxx Windmill 1500W Wind Turbine

Automaxx

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Why it made the cut: The Automaxx Windmill 1500W Wind Turbine offers high output if you’ve got the space for it.

Specs

• Form factor: Standalone
• Rated Power: 1500W max output
• Start-up wind speed: 5.6 mph
• Rated wind speed: 31 mph
• Safe wind speed: 110 mph

Pros

• Strong output
• Reliable design
• Bluetooth controllable 
• Automatic and manual braking system

Cons

• Very expensive
• Limited customer support

If you’re looking for a freestanding wind turbine for your backyard, the Automaxx Windmill 1500W is a powerful—if expensive—option. It offers a hearty 1500 watts of continuous output and operates at a relatively wide range of wind speeds. 

It also features maximum power point tracking (MPPT) that avoids voltage surges due to strong wind gusts and boasts both automatic and manual braking. The MPPT Controller can be monitored and controlled via Bluetooth. 

It’s certainly not cheap, but it’s a great home wind turbine if you’re willing to invest.

Best system: Auecoor 800W 12V 24V Solar Panel Wind Turbine Kit

AUECOOR

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Why it made the cut: This kit from Auecoor combines solar panels and wind turbines for a more comprehensive green energy solution.

Specs

• Form factor: Standalone and solar panels
• Rated Power: 400W max output
• Start-up wind speed: 6 mph
• Rated wind speed: 23.5 mph
• Safe wind speed: 80 mph

Pros

• All-weather green energy
• Easy installation
• Decent power output

Cons

• Not made from great parts
• Pole not included

Wind turbines and solar panels are a natural match. Turbines often work best at night when wind speeds tend to be faster, while solar panels store up plenty of energy during the day. Auecoor sells a green energy combo that pairs the two to generate up to 800W of power per hybrid kit. That isn’t enough to power a full home, but the combination provides enough electricity throughout the day to keep your batteries topped or power a smattering of small appliances. 

Candidly, this is as much a recommendation of the concept as it is the actual gear here. Mixing solar panels and a wind turbine is an awesome idea and this kit allows you to do so for less than $1,000, which is quite cheap. That said, users report that the components have a plasticky feel to them, which doesn’t instill a ton of confidence in the product overall. Auecoor offers a 6-year material and workmanship warranty, however, so you have some protection.

Best small: Pacific Sky Power Survival Wind Turbine Generator

Pacific Sky Power

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Why it made the cut: This turbine from Pacific Power Sky is ultra-portable and surprisingly affordable.

Specs

• Form factor: Standalone
• Rated Power: 15W max output
• Start-up wind speed: 8 mph
• Rated wind speed: 25 mph
• Safe wind speed: 40 mph

Pros

• Super portable
• No installation required
• Solid build quality
• Good customer service

Cons

• Low power output

Generating just 15W, the Survival Wind Turbine Generator from Pacific Sky Power is a portable power generator that can help you power up a phone, laptop, or another small device in an emergency situation when you’ve lost power or are far from any other power source.

Folding down to just a few square inches and weighing a mere 3 pounds, this tiny turbine is ideal for camping or backup van-life juice (when you’re off-grid, it never hurts to back up your solar generator back-up). It’s built to last, and won’t short out in the rain.

Obviously, this is not the kind of turbine you want if you’re looking to upgrade your home, but it’s a very useful (and comparatively affordable) way to get basic emergency power anywhere.

Best off-grid: Ramsond Atlas LM3500 Wind Turbine

Ramsond

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Why it made the cut: For big power and big durability, the Atlas LM3500 provides the off-grid performance and reliability you need.

Specs

• Form factor: Standalone
• Rated power: 3,000W
• Start-up wind speed: 4.5 mph
• Rated wind speed: 28 mph
• Safe wind speed: 110 mph

Pros

• High power output
• Built to last
• Low noise and vibration
• Professional appearance

Cons

• Expensive
• Heavy

If you’re looking for the most power you can get from a single wind-based power source at home, you’ll need a very big turbine. Atlas’ 3,000W LM3500 delivers much more power than any of our other picks and it’s very well built. It’s capable of generating 175 kWh per month, or roughly a quarter of the typical power needs of a low-power-usage home, at less than half its rated wind speed.

With a few of them, or with one and a set of solar panels, you should be able to generate enough power to run an off-grid cabin or a farm that requires intermittent electricity. It’s also solidly built and will provide many years of reliable performance.

It’s certainly not cheap and, at just over 200 pounds, it’s pretty heavy. Given the weight, it also won’t be easy to install. That said, if you have a good place to put it, you’ll have plenty of reliable power.

Best cheap: Pikasola Wind Turbine Generator Kit

Pikasola

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Why it made the cut: The Pikasola Wind Turbine Generator Kit delivers decent power output with easy installation at a great price.

Specs

• Form factor: Wall/roof mounted
• Rated power: 400W
• Start-up wind speed: 6 mph
• Rated wind speed: 29 mph
• Safe wind speed: 90 mph

Pros

• Low price
• Easy installation
• Durable quality

Cons

• Lower power output
• Can get noisy in high wind

For less than $300, the Pikasola Wind Turbine is a very affordable way to dip your toe in the alternative energy pool. With a maximum output of 400W, it’s made to give you just a small amount of power. That said, it’s easy to install, durable, and produces reliable electricity as long as the wind blows. Some owners have reported that it can get noisy at higher wind speeds, but at moderate speeds, it’s essentially silent. Using alternative energy is normally a major investment, but the Pikasola turbine gives you a real way to try the upgrade before you buy in for real.

What to consider when buying a wind turbine

Not all residential wind turbines are created equal. Many don’t generate enough power to make a meaningful difference for many homes. Some are prohibitively expensive or too large to be for residential use. Whatever the case, there are a few things to consider when choosing a wind turbine for your home.

What you can get out of a home wind turbine

According to the Energy Information Administration, The average home in the United States uses approximately 10,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year. To generate that much power, you need alternative energy sources that can harness nearly 30 kWh per day.

Realistically, you aren’t going to generate that much power using wind turbines. With ideal wind conditions, a single home turbine kit should produce about 3 kWh per day. To fully take your home off-grid, you’ll need several industrial-grade wind turbines or a combination of wind turbines and solar panels (the kind you install on your roof or in your backyard, as opposed to the portable kind).

If you adjust your expectations, though, you can get a lot out of even a single home wind turbine. A turbine that generates a maximum output of 400 watts (W) will give you up to 1.3 kWH per day. That’s enough to shave 4 percent off an average 30 kWh electric bill, or power a fridge and a few small devices if the power goes out.

We recommend shooting for the largest possible output that fits your budget and home. Some of our top picks generate 1000W or higher, which can knock the average energy bill down by 10 percent, or provide a moderate amount of backup power.

Who should buy a wind turbine?

Wind turbines can produce a fair amount of green electricity for you, but they need to be placed well. That means you need to take a good, hard look at your property and figure out whether wind power makes sense.

With freestanding turbines, you typically want a large open space like a field, large yard, or hilltop position. For a rooftop turbine, you need to find a spot on your roof that won’t be obstructed by trees where you can secure the turbine safely. Make sure your roof can handle the weight, and it probably shouldn’t be at a sharp incline.

If you don’t want a wide open space or safe spot on your roof that isn’t obstructed, you won’t be able to get the maximum output from the turbines. In that case, you may want to look at other ways of generating sustainable energy.

Type of wind turbine

Wind turbines vary greatly in regard to size, form, power output, and installation difficulty. The one that is right for you depends on your home, space, power needs, and building experience. 

Some wind turbines are smaller and designed to be installed directly onto your roof. They take advantage of the faster winds that tend to whip over your house. These are usually less expensive but they typically generate smaller power outputs. Also, you need to install them on your roof, which may be dangerous.

Standalone turbines tend to be significantly more powerful, but are usually more expensive and require a lot of open space like a field or an unblocked hilltop. They’re also often difficult to install. A rooftop turbine is relatively straightforward to bolt in place while standalone turbines require digging to seat the pole, structural support, running wires to the house, and so on.

Lastly, boat-owners can install smaller marine turbines to help power devices and equipment. While they don’t produce all that much power, they’re built to withstand maritime conditions and can be a great way to ensure that your batteries stay topped off.

Wind speed in your area

All of the specs about power production for wind turbines highlight their best output under ideal wind conditions. The average wind speed where you live can play a huge role in picking the right turbine for your home. To understand how wind speed impacts a turbine, we’ll need to define a few terms:

• Starting wind speed: the speed at which the blades turn but don’t yet produce usable power.
• Rated wind speed: the speed at which the turbine reaches its maximum energy output.
• Safe or “survival” wind speed: the maximum speed before the turbine becomes vulnerable to damage.

Check your local wind averages, including average lows and highs, to make sure that a particular turbine suits your area. Look for a turbine with a starting wind speed below your local average to ensure it works often. If you live somewhere where severe weather conditions occur regularly, safe speed will also be very important.

Installation and maintenance

Anytime you’re messing with your home electrical system, the first rule of thumb is: Hire a professional if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Installing a wind turbine takes a fair amount of know-how. Some of the turbines are very heavy, so the risk of injury is high—doubly so if you’re getting on your roof. Even if you manage to set up the turbine, it will still need to connect to your home’s power, which you leave to a professional. Realistically, most people should consult with a contractor and electrician for this kind of installation.

Also, keep in mind that your wind turbine will need long-term maintenance. While some are designed to operate for over a decade without a tune-up, you will occasionally want an expert to come to look your system over and make repairs as necessary. 

Price

Like solar generators and virtually any kind of power storage, home wind turbines are usually expensive. They come in a wide range of sizes and prices, from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. Moreover, while we’ve highlighted comparatively good options at many price points, the turbines that generate a meaningful amount will be fairly expensive.

Like installing solar panels on or around your home, you should think of setting up a wind turbine as a home improvement project and an investment. If you buy a better turbine, you will notice a bigger difference in your energy bills, and likely recoup the cost of installing it more quickly.

FAQs

Final thoughts on home wind turbines

Installing one of the best home wind turbines is a major home improvement project. You shouldn’t do it carelessly. Take your time and do some research to figure out what options, if any, will work on your property. If you have the space and the inclination, wind power can be an amazing, sustainable resource. 

The post The best home wind turbines of 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Undark.

“This is one of the least smelly carcasses,” said Todd Katzner, peering over his lab manager’s shoulder as she sliced a bit of flesh from a dead pigeon lying on a steel lab table. The specimens that arrive at this facility in Boise, Idaho, are often long dead, and the bodies smell, he said, like “nothing that you can easily describe, other than yuck.”

A wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, a government agency dedicated to environmental science, Katzner watched as his lab manager rooted around for the pigeon’s liver and then placed a glossy maroon piece of it in a small plastic bag labeled with a biohazard symbol. The pigeon is a demonstration specimen, but samples, including flesh and liver, are ordinarily frozen, catalogued, and stored in freezers. The feathers get tucked in paper envelopes and organized in filing boxes; the rest of the carcass is discarded. When needed for research, the stored samples can be processed and sent to other labs that test for toxicants or conduct genetic analysis.

Most of the bird carcasses that arrive at the Boise lab have been shipped from renewable energy facilities, where hundreds of thousands of winged creatures die each year in collisions with turbine blades and other equipment. Clean energy projects are essential for confronting climate change, said Mark Davis, a conservation biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But he also emphasized the importance of mitigating their effects on wildlife. “I’m supportive of renewable energy developments. I’m also supportive of doing our best to conserve biodiversity,” Davis said. “And I think the two things can very much coexist.”

To this end, Katzner, Davis, and other biologists are working with the renewable energy industry to create a nationwide repository of dead birds and bats killed at wind and solar facilities. The bodies hold clues about how the animals lived and died, and could help scientists and project operators understand how to reduce the environmental impact of clean energy installations, Davis said.

The repository needs sustained funding and support from industry partners to supply the specimens. But the collection’s wider potential is vast, Davis added. He, Katzner, and other stakeholders hope the carcasses will offer a wide array of wildlife biologists access to the animal samples they need for their work, and perhaps even provide insights into future scientific questions that researchers haven’t thought yet to ask.

In 1980, California laid the groundwork for one of the world’s first large-scale wind projects when it designated more than 30,000 acres east of San Francisco for wind development, on a stretch of land called the Altamont Pass. Within two decades, companies had installed thousands of wind turbines there. But there was a downside: While the sea breeze made Altamont ideal for wind energy, the area was also well-used by nesting birds. Research suggested they were colliding with the turbines’ rotating blades, leading to hundreds of deaths among red-tailed hawks, kestrels, and golden eagles.

“It’s a great place for a wind farm, but it’s also a really bad place for a wind farm,” said Albert Lopez, planning director for Alameda County, where many of the projects are located.

A 2004 report prepared for the state estimated deaths and offered recommendations that the authors said could add up to mortality reductions of anywhere from 20 to 50 percent. The most effective solution, the authors argued, involved replacing Altamont’s many small turbines with fewer larger turbines. But, the authors wrote, many measures to reduce deaths would be experimental, “due to the degree of uncertainty in their likely effectiveness.” More than a decade of research, tensions, and litigation followed, focused on how to reduce fatalities while still producing clean electricity to help California meet its increasingly ambitious climate goals.

While all this was happening, Katzner was earning his Ph.D. by studying eagles and other birds — and beginning to amass a feather collection halfway around the world. In Kazakhstan, where he has returned nearly every summer since 1997 to conduct field research, Katzner noticed piles of feathers underneath the birds’ nests. Carrying information about a bird’s age, sex, diet, and more, they were too valuable a resource to just leave behind, he thought, so he collected them. It was the start of what he describes as a compulsion to store and archive potentially useful scientific material.

Katzner went on to co-publish a paper in 2007, in which the researchers conducted a genetic analysis of naturally shed feathers, a technique that could allow scientists to match feather samples with the correct bird species when visual identifications are difficult. He later towed deer carcasses across the East Coast to lure and trap golden eagles in order to track their migration patterns. And today, part of his research involves testing carcasses for lead and other chemicals to understand whether birds are coming in contact with toxicants.

For the last decade, Katzner has also researched how birds interact with energy installations like wind and solar projects. During this time, studies have estimated that hundreds of thousands of birds die each year at such facilities in the United States. Thats’s still a small fraction of the millions of birds that at least one paper estimated are killed annually due to habitat destruction, downstream climate change, and other impacts of fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. But renewable energy is growing rapidly, and researchers are trying to determine how that continued growth might affect wildlife.

Bats seem attracted to spinning wind turbines, sometimes being struck by the blades while attempting to roost in the towers. Birds sometimes swoop down and crash into photovoltaic solar panels — possibly thinking the glass is water that is safe for landing. A separate, less common solar technology that uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays into heat energy is known to singe birds that fly too close — a factor that has drawn opposition to such facilities from bird activists. But scientists still don’t fully understand these many interactions or their impacts on bird and bat populations, which makes it harder to prevent them.

In 2015, by then on staff at the USGS, Katzner and a team of other scientists secured $1 million from the California Energy Commission to study the impacts of renewable energy on wildlife — using hundreds of carcasses from the Altamont Pass. NextEra Energy, one of the largest project owners there, chipped in a donation of approximately 1,200 carcasses collected from their facilities in Altamont.

The team analyzed 411 birds collected over a decade at Altamont and another 515 picked up during a four-year period at California solar projects. They found that the birds originated from across the U.S., suggesting renewable facilities could affect far away bird populations during their migrations. In early 2021, Katzner and a team of other scientists published a paper examining specimens collected at wind facilities in Southern California. Their results suggested that replacing old turbines with fewer, newer models did not necessarily reduce wildlife mortality. Where a project is sited and the amount of energy it produces are likely stronger determinants of fatality rates, the authors said.

In the Altamont, scientists are still working to understand impacts for birds and bats, with a technical committee created to oversee the work. Ongoing efforts to replace old turbines with newer ones are meant to reduce the number of birds killed there, but whether it’s working remains an open question, said Lopez. Installing fewer turbines that produce more energy per unit than earlier models was expected to provide fewer collision points for birds and more space for habitat. And when new turbines are put in, scientists can recommend spots within a project site where birds may be less likely to run into them. But other variables influence mortality aside from turbine size and spacing, according to the 2021 paper authored by Katzner and other scientists, like season, weather, and bird behavior in the area.

On a small road in the Altamont, a white sign marks an entrance to NextEra’s Golden Hills wind project, where the company recently replaced decades-old turbines with new, larger models. Not far away, another wind project sits dormant — a relic from another time. Its old turbines stand motionless, stocky, and gray next to their graceful, modern successors on the horizon. The hills are quiet except for the static buzz of power cables.

Some conservationists are still concerned about the area. In 2021, the National Audubon Society, which says it strongly supports renewable energy, sued over the approval of a new wind project in the Altamont, asserting that the county didn’t do enough environmental review or mitigation for bird fatalities.

Katzner attributes his work in California with the beginnings of the repository, which he’s dubbed the Renewables-Wildlife Solutions Initiative. Amy Fesnock, a Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist who collaborates with Katzner, simply calls it the “dead body file.”

In Idaho, Katzner has already amassed more than 80,000 samples — many drawn from the feather collection he’s kept for decades, and thousands more recently shipped in by renewable energy companies and their partners. Ultimately, Katzner would like to see a group of repository locations, all connected by a database. This would allow other scientists to access the bird and bat samples and use them in a variety of ways, extracting their DNA, for example, or running toxicology tests.

“Every time we get an animal carcass, it has value to research,” said Katzner. “If I think about it from a scientific perspective, if you leave that carcass out there in the field, you’re wasting data.”

That data is important to people like Amanda Hale, a biologist who helped build the repository while at Texas Christian University. She is now a senior research biologist at Western Ecosystems Technology, a consulting company that, along with providing other services, surveys for dead wildlife at renewable energy sites. Part of her new role involves liaising with clean energy companies and the government agencies that regulate them, making sure decision makers have the most current science to inform projects. Better data could assist clients in putting together more accurate conservation plans and help agencies know what to look for, she said, making regulation more straightforward.

“Once we can understand patterns of mortality, I think you can be better in designing and implementing mitigation strategies,” said Hale.

The initiative is not without its skeptics, though. John Anderson, executive director of the Energy and Wildlife Action Coalition, a clean energy membership group, sees merit in the effort but worries that the program could be “used to characterize renewable energy impacts in a very unfavorable light” without recognizing its benefits. The wind industry has long been sensitive to suggestions that it’s killing birds.

Several renewable energy companies that Undark contacted for this story did not respond to inquiries about wildlife monitoring at their sites or stopped responding to interview requests. Other industry groups, including the American Clean Power Association and the Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute, declined interview requests. But many companies appear to be participating — in Idaho, Katzner has received birds from 42 states.

William Voelker, a member of the Comanche Nation who has led a bird and feather repository called Sia for decades, says he’s frustrated at the lack of consideration for tribes from these types of U.S. government initiatives. Indigenous people, he said, have first right to “species of Indigenous concern.” His repository catalogs and sends bird carcasses and feathers to Indigenous people for ceremonial and religious purposes, and Voelker also cares for eagles.

“At this point we just don’t have any voice in the ring, and it’s unfortunate,” said Voelker.

Katzner, for his part, says he wants the project to be collaborative. The Renewable-Wildlife Solutions Initiative has sent some samples to a repository in Arizona that provides feathers for religious and ceremonial purposes, he said, and the RWSI archive could ship out other materials that it does not archive, but it has not yet contacted other locations to do so.

“It’s a shame if those parts of birds are not being used,” he said. “I’d like to see them get used for science or cultural purposes.” 

Many U.S. wind farms already monitor and collect downed wildlife. At a California wind facility an hour north of Altamont, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District tries to clear out its freezers at least once per year — before the bodies start to smell, said Ammon Rice, a supervisor in the government-owned utility’s environmental services department. The specimens that companies accumulate are often kept until they’re thrown out. Until recently, samples had been available to government and academic researchers on only a piecemeal basis.

There are many reasons why a clean energy company might employ people to pick up dead animals at its facility: Some states require companies to survey sites during certain stages of their development and keep track of how many birds and bats are found dead. Removing the carcasses can also deter scavengers, such as coyotes, foxes, and vultures. And the federal government has set voluntary conservation guidelines for wind projects; for some companies, complying with the recommendations is part of maintaining good political relationships.

Most of the time, human searchers canvas a project, walking transects under turbines or through solar fields. It’s “enormously labor intensive,” said Trevor Peterson, a senior biologist at Stantec, one of the consulting firms often hired to conduct those surveys. On some sites, trained dogs sniff out the dead bodies.

For years, conservation biologists have wanted to find a use for the creatures languishing in freezers at clean energy sites around the country. To get a nationwide project off the ground, Katzner started working with two other researchers: Davis, the conservation biologist at University of Illinois, and Amanda Hale, then a biology professor at Texas Christian University. They were part of a small community of people “who pick up dead stuff,” said Katzner. The three started meeting, joined by scientists at the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who helped connect the initiative with additional industry partners willing to send carcasses.

Building on Katzner’s existing samples, the repository has grown from an idea to a small program. In the last two years, it received about $650,000 from the Bureau of Land Management and earned a mention in the agency’s recent report to Congress about its progress towards renewable energy growth.

Davis had already been accepting samples from wind facilities when he started working on the repository. Often the bodies are mailed to his laboratory, but he prefers to organize hand-to-hand deliveries when possible, after one ill-fated incident in which a colleague received a shipped box of “bat soup.” To receive deliveries in person, Davis often winds up loitering in the university parking lot, waiting for the other party to arrive so they can offload the cargo.

“It sounds a lot like an illicit drug deal,” said Davis. “It looks a lot like an illicit drug deal — I assure you it is not.”

Recently, Ricky Gieser, a field technician who works with Davis, drove two and a half hours from Illinois to central Indiana to meet an Ohio wildlife official in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel. Davis arranged for Undark to witness the exchange through Zoom. With latex-gloved hands, Gieser transferred bags of more than 300 frozen birds and bats — lifting them from state-owned coolers and then gingerly placing them into coolers owned by his university. The entire transaction was over in under 15 minutes, but coordinating it took weeks.

Davis studies bats and other “organisms that people don’t like,” with a focus on genetics. He grew up in Iowa chasing spiders and snakes and now stores a jar of pickled rattlesnakes — a souvenir from his doctoral research — on a shelf behind his desk. Protecting these creatures, he said, is of extreme importance. Bats provide significant economic benefit, eating up bugs that harm crops. And their populations are declining at an alarming rate: A disease called white-nose syndrome has wiped out more than 90 percent of the population of three North American bat species in the last decade. In late November of 2022, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed Davis’s favorite species, the northern long-eared bat, as endangered.

For certain species, deaths at wind facilities are another stressor on populations. Scientists expect climate change to make the situation worse for bats and overall biodiversity. “Because of this confluence of factors, it’s just really tough for bats right now,” said Davis. “We need to work a lot harder than we are to make life better for them.”

Like other wildlife researchers, Davis has sometimes struggled to get his hands on the specimens he needs to track species and understand their behaviors. Many spend time in the field, but that’s costly. Depending on the target species, acquiring enough animals can take years, said Davis. He used museum collections for his doctoral dissertation, and still views them as an “untapped font of research potential.” But museums often focus on keeping samples intact for preservation and future research, so they may not work for every project.

That leaves salvage. Frozen bird and bat carcasses are “invaluable” to scientists, said Fesnock, the BLM wildlife biologist. So far, samples collected as part of the Renewables-Wildlife Solutions Initiative have led to about 10 scientific papers, according to Katzner. Davis says the collection could reduce research costs for some scientists by making a large number of samples available, particularly for species that are hard to collect. It’s difficult for scientists to catch migratory bats that fly high in the air with nets, making it challenging to estimate population levels. Bat biologists say there’s much we still don’t know about their behaviors, range, and number.

As scientists work to compile better data, a few companies are experimenting with mechanization as a possible way to reduce fatalities at their facilities. At a wind farm in Wyoming, utility Duke Energy has installed a rotating camera that resembles R2D2 on stilts. The technology, called IdentiFlight, is designed to use artificial intelligence to identify birds and shut turbines down in seconds to avoid collisions.

Prior to IdentiFlight, technicians used to set up lawn chairs amid the 17,000-acre site and look skyward, sometimes eight hours a day, to track eagles. It was an inefficient system prone to human error, said Tim Hayes, who recently retired as the utility’s environmental development director. IdentiFlight has reduced eagle fatalities there by 80 percent, he added. “It can see 360 degrees, where humans can’t, and it never gets tired, never blinks, and never has to go to the bathroom.”

Biologists say there are still unknowns around the efficacy of these types of technologies, in part because of incomplete data on the population size and spread of winged wildlife.

Katzner and his colleagues want the repository to help change this, but first they will need long term funding to help recruit more partners and staff. Davis estimated he needs between $1 and $2 million to build a sustainable repository at his university alone. Ideally, the USGS portion of the project in Boise would have its own building. For now, Katzner stores feathers in a space that doubles as a USGS conference room. Next door, in a room punctuated with a dull hum, the walls are lined with freezers. Some carry samples already cataloged. Others hold black trash bags filled with bird and bat bodies just waiting to be processed.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently announced its approval of the designs for a first-of-its-kind small modular reactor (SMR). This could signal a potential shift in the development and integration of next generation power plants in the US. While traditional nuclear facilities have long been based on very narrow specifications—think the instantly recognizable cooling towers—NuScale Power honed its SMR design over nearly a decade following early concept research undertaken at Oregon State University.

[Related: How to survive a nuclear bomb shockwave.]

Unlike existing plants, NuScale’s modular SMR allows for most of its components to be assembled within factories, hypothetically making them both cheaper and simpler to build on-site—although it remains to be seen if these new plants can break the stereotypically astronomical cost increases associated with nuclear construction. When completed, NuScale’s VOYGR™ SMR can house 12 factory-built power modules, each capable of generated 50 megawatts of power while taking up roughly a third the space of traditional large-scale reactors. The modules also only rely on natural processes like gravity and convection to cool the reactor without the need for any additional water, power, or operators.

Despite clearing the major regulatory hurdle, actual deployment of NuScale’s SMR is still years away. The company is currently working alongside the Department of Energy and  utility provider Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems to construct a demonstration facility at the Idaho National Laboratory. The first module is expected to come online in 2029, with full 462 megawatt plant capabilities scheduled for the following year.

[Related: How nuclear fusion could use less energy.]

Even then, numerous concerns remain surrounding the nuclear industry as a whole, from nuclear waste disposal, to uranium mining concerns, to the potential safety issues. Despite huge strides in design and size, NuScale’s SMR still must tackle some of those worries.

Still, the NRC’s recent approval of the first small modular reactor could soon usher in a major new era for nuclear energy. If nothing else, it’s not everyday that you hear of a new nuclear plant getting the greenlight—as The Verge also noted on Monday, the NRC has only approved six previous nuclear plant designs, all of which are much larger than NuScale’s proposed alternative.

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It’s been a pretty volatile couple of years for the world’s energy market. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the economy rapidly rebounding after COVID-19 lockdowns and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused record breaking spikes in the price of natural gas and oil prices hit their highest level since 2008 last year.

Three sites in Qatar are home to over 20 percent of global liquefied natural gas exports. But these site should monitored especially closely, because if an oil spill were to happen, an even more serious energy crisis would be eminent, according to a new study.

[Related: Yemen’s defunct oil tanker could set off a public health crisis.]

The study published January 12 by an international team of researchers in the journal Nature Sustainability pinpoints the location of a “high vulnerability zone” in the peninsula where an oil spill could shut down liquified natural gas export facilities and desalination plants on the coast for several days. 

To identify the offshore areas of the Qatar Peninsula that are vulnerable, the team used advanced numerical modeling to corollate data measured over the past five years on maritime data transports, circulation in the atmosphere, ocean currents, waves, and seafloor topographic map data.

They found that shutting down activity due to an oil spill in the most vulnerable area would almost certainly disrupt the global gas supply chain. A spill-induced shut down would also cause a significant water shortage for one of the world’s most at-risk countries for water scarcity. Qatar has used desalination to balance out its limited supply of groundwater for its growing population, but the process consumes a huge amount of energy.

According to the team, awareness of these vulnerability is imperative, especially since Qatar’s export capacity is expected to increase by approximately 64 percent over the next five years. Thus, this key port will continue to be a crucial hotspot in the global energy supply chain. An increased number of tanker incidents in the Gulf is also a concern, since these accidents could impact critical coastal infrastructure like the needed desalination plants.

[Related: What a key natural-gas pipeline has to do with the Russia-Ukraine crisis.]

Tanker ships—one of which can carry about enough energy to heat all of London for one week—crossing this area are the main risks for oil spills, not the oil rigs in the northern part of the Peninsula. The study finds that Qatar would only have a few days to contain an oil spill before the slicks would reach the country’s main liquefied gas export facility and desalination plant. Disruptions or a total shutdown of the desalination plant for just a day would force Qatar to rely on a small groundwater reserve and would increase liquified natural gas prices.  

To prevent the worst from happening, the study suggests increasing remote sensing in the Gulf’s most vulnerable areas with satellite and airborne images to increase warning times for spills and track how they evolve.

The study argues that the current vulnerability to environmental hazards in the Middle East is largely underestimated. Threats to water resources due to climate change was listed as the biggest threat to the Arab countries in the most recent Arab Barometer Report, a survey of 26,000 people in 12 countries conducted from October 2021 to July 2022.

“Global containment of major oil spills has always been challenging, but it is even harder in the shallow water of the Gulf where any intervention has to account for the complex circulation currents, a harsh operational environment, and the presence of highly-sensitive ecosystems on which three million humans rely for drinking water,” said co-author Essam Heggy from the University of Southern California Arid Climate and Water Research Center, in a statement. “I hope serious resources are put into resolving this vulnerability.”

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It was an engineering problem that had bugged Zhibin Yu for years — but now he had the perfect chance to fix it. Stuck at home during the first UK lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic, the thermal engineer suddenly had all the time he needed to refine the efficiency of heat pumps: electrical devices that, as their name implies, move heat from the outdoors into people’s homes.

The pumps are much more efficient than gas heaters, but standard models that absorb heat from the air are prone to icing up, which greatly reduces their effectiveness.

Yu, who works at the University of Glasgow, UK, pondered the problem for weeks. He read paper after paper. And then he had an idea. Most heat pumps waste some of the heat that they generate — and if he could capture that waste heat and divert it, he realized, that could solve the defrosting issue and boost the pumps’ overall performance. “I suddenly found a solution to recover the heat,” he recalls. “That was really an amazing moment.”

Yu’s idea is one of several recent innovations that aim to make 200-year-old heat pump technology even more efficient than it already is, potentially opening the door for much greater adoption of heat pumps worldwide. To date, only about 10 percent of space heating requirements around the world are met by heat pumps, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). But due to the current energy crisis and growing pressure to reduce fossil fuel consumption in order to combat climate change, these devices are arguably more crucial than ever.

Since his 2020 lockdown brainstorming, Yu and his colleagues have built a working prototype of a heat pump that stores leftover heat in a small water tank. In a paper published in the summer of 2022, they describe how their design helps the heat pump to use less energy. Plus, by separately rerouting some of this residual warmth to part of the heat pump exposed to cold air, the device can defrost itself when required, without having to pause heat supply to the house.

The idea relies on the very principle by which heat pumps operate: If you can seize heat, you can use it. What makes heat pumps special is the fact that instead of just generating heat, they also capture heat from the environment and move it into your house — eventually transferring that heat to radiators or forced-air heating systems, for instance. This is possible thanks to the refrigerant that flows around inside a heat pump. When the refrigerant encounters heat — even a tiny amount in the air on a cold day — it absorbs that modicum of warmth.

A compressor then forces the refrigerant to a higher pressure, which raises its temperature to the point where it can heat your house. It works because an increase of pressure pushes the refrigerant molecules closer together, increasing their motion. The refrigerant later expands again, cooling as it does so, and the cycle repeats. The entire cycle can run in reverse, too, allowing heat pumps to provide cooling when it’s hot in summer.

The magic of a heat pump is that it can move multiple kilowatt-hours of heat for each kWh of electricity it uses. Heat pump efficiencies are generally measured in terms of their coefficient of performance (COP). A COP of 3, for example, means 1 kWh of juice yields 3 kWh of warmth — that’s effectively 300 percent efficiency. The COP you get from your device can vary depending on the weather and other factors.

It’s a powerful concept, but also an old one. The British mathematician, physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin proposed using heat pump systems for space heating way back in 1852. The first heat pump was designed and built a few years later and used industrially to heat brine in order to extract salt from the fluid. In the 1950s, members of the British Parliament discussed heat pumps when coal stocks were running low. And in the years following the 1973-74 oil crisis, heat pumps were touted as an alternative to fossil fuels for heating. “ Hope rests with the future heat pump,” one commentator wrote in the 1977 Annual Review of Energy.

Now the world faces yet another reckoning over energy supplies. When Russia, one of the world’s biggest sources of natural gas, invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the price of gas soared — which in turn shoved heat pumps into the spotlight because with few exceptions they run on electricity, not gas. The same month, environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote a widely shared blog post titled “Heat pumps for peace and freedom” in which, referring to the Russian president, he argued that the US could “peacefully punch Putin in the kidneys” by rolling out heat pumps on a massive scale while lowering Americans’ dependence on fossil fuels. Heat pumps can draw power from domestic solar panels, for instance, or a power grid supplied predominantly by renewables.

Running the devices on green electricity can help to fight climate change, too, notes Karen Palmer, an economist and senior fellow at Resources for the Future, an independent research organization in Washington, DC, who coauthored an analysis of policies to enhance energy efficiency in the 2018 Annual Review of Resource Economics. “Moving towards greater use of electricity for energy needs in buildings is going to have to happen, absent a technology breakthrough in something else,” she says.

The IEA estimates that, globally, heat pumps have the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 500 million metric tons in 2030, equivalent to the annual CO ₂ emissions produced by all the cars in Europe today.

Despite their long history and potential virtues, heat pumps have struggled to become commonplace in some countries. One reason is cost: The devices are substantially more expensive than gas heating units and, because natural gas has remained relatively cheap for decades, homeowners have had little incentive to switch.

There has also long been a perception that heat pumps won’t work as well in cold climates, especially in poorly insulated houses that require a lot of heat. In the UK, for example, where houses tend to be rather drafty, some homeowners have long considered gas boilers a safer bet because they can supply hotter water ( around 140 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit), to radiators, which makes it easier to heat up a room. By contrast, heat pumps tend to be most efficient when heating water to around 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

The cold-climate problem is arguably less of an issue than some think, however, given that there are multiple modern air source devices on the market that work well even when outside temperatures drop as low as minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Norway, for example, is considered one of the world leaders in heat pump deployment. Palmer has a heat pump in her US home, along with a furnace as backup. “If it gets really cold, we can rely on the furnace,” she says.

Innovations in heat pump design are leading to units that are even more efficient, better suited to houses with low levels of insulation and — potentially — cheaper, too. For example, Yu says his and his colleagues’ novel air source heat pump design could improve the COP by between 3 percent and 10 percent, while costing less than existing heat pump designs with comparable functionality. They are now looking to commercialize the technology.

Yu’s work is innovative, says Rick Greenough, an energy systems engineer now retired from De Montfort University in the UK. “I must admit this is a method I hadn’t actually thought of,” he says.

And there are plenty more ideas afoot. Greenough, for instance, has experimented with storing heat in the ground during warmer months, where it can be exploited by a heat pump when the weather turns cool. His design uses a circulating fluid to transfer excess heat from solar hot-water panels into shallow boreholes in the soil. That raises the temperature of the soil by around 22 degrees Fahrenheit, to a maximum of roughly 66 degrees Fahrenheit, he says. Then, in the winter, a heat pump can draw out some of this stored heat to run more efficiently when the air gets colder. This technology is already on the market, offered by some installers in the UK, notes Greenough.

But most current heat pumps still only generate relatively low output temperatures, so owners of drafty homes may need to take on the added cost of insulation when installing a heat pump. Fortunately, a solution may be emerging: high-temperature heat pumps.

“We said, ‘Hey, why not make a heat pump that can actually one-on-one replace a gas boiler without having to really, really thoroughly insulate your house?’” says Wouter Wolfswinkel, program manager for business development at Swedish energy firm Vattenfall, which manufactures heat pumps. Vattenfall and its Dutch subsidiary Feenstra have teamed up to develop a high-temperature heat pump, expected to debut in 2023.

In their design, they use CO₂ as a refrigerant. But because the heat-pump system’s hot, high-pressure operating conditions prevent the gas from condensing or otherwise cooling down very easily, they had to find a way of reducing the refrigerant’s temperature in order for it to be able to absorb enough heat from the air once again when it returns to the start of the heat pump loop. To this end, they added a “buffer” to the system: a water tank where a layer of cooler water rests beneath hotter water above. The heat pump uses the lower layer of cooler water from the tank to adjust the temperature of the refrigerant as required. But it can also send the hotter water at the top of the tank out to radiators, at temperatures up to 185 degrees Fahrenheit.

The device is slightly less efficient than a conventional, lower temperature heat pump, Wolfswinkel acknowledges, offering a COP of around 265 percent versus 300 percent, depending on conditions. But that’s still better than a gas boiler (no more than 95 percent efficient), and as long as electricity prices aren’t significantly higher than gas prices, the high temperature heat pump could still be cheaper to run. Moreover, the higher temperature means that homeowners needn’t upgrade their insulation or upsize radiators right away, Wolfswinkel notes. This could help people make the transition to electrified heating more quickly.

A key test was whether Dutch homeowners would go for it. As part of a pilot trial, Vattenfall and Feenstra installed the heat pump in 20 households of different sizes in the town of Heemskerk, not far from Amsterdam. After a few years of testing, in June 2022 they gave homeowners the option of taking back their old gas boiler, which they had kept in their homes, or of using the high temperature heat pump on a permanent basis. “All of them switched to the heat pump,” says Wolfswinkel.

In some situations, home-by-home installations of heat pumps might be less efficient than building one large system to serve a whole neighborhood. For about a decade, Star Renewable Energy, based in Glasgow, has been building district systems that draw warmth from a nearby river or sea inlet, including a district heating system connected to a Norwegian fjord. A Scandinavian fjord might not be the first thing that comes to mind if you say the word “heat” — but the water deep in the fjord actually holds a fairly steady temperature of 46 degrees Fahrenheit, which heat pumps can exploit.

Via a very long pipe, the district heating system draws in this water and uses it to heat the refrigerant, in this case ammonia. A subsequent, serious increase of pressure for the refrigerant — to 50 atmospheres — raises its temperature to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. The hot refrigerant then passes its heat to water in the district heating loop, raising the temperature of that water to 195 degrees Fahrenheit. The sprawling system provides 85 percent of the hot water needed to heat buildings in the city of Drammen.

“That type of thing is very exciting,” says Greenough.

Not every home will be suitable for a heat pump. And not every budget can accommodate one, either. Yu himself says that the cost of replacing the gas boiler in his own home remains prohibitive. But it’s something he dreams of doing in the future. With ever-improving efficiencies, and rising sales in multiple countries, heat pumps are only getting harder for their detractors to dismiss. “Eventually,” says Yu, “I think everyone will switch to heat pumps.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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Last December, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles as part of its Clean Trucks Plan, clean air regulations that aim to reduce greenhouse gasses (GHG) and pollutants from the transportation sector. This new rule is the first time pollution standards for buses, semi-trucks, and commercial delivery trucks have been updated in more than 20 years.

The main focus of the new standards is nitrogen oxides (NOx), irritant gasses released by gasoline and diesel engines. Regulations tackling the reduction of other GHG emissions (like carbon dioxide and methane) would follow in the spring, EPA Administrator Michael Regan told The New York Times. Revised GHG standards for all heavy-duty vehicles might not start until the model year 2030.

When heavy-duty vehicles emit NOx, they “react in the atmosphere to form pollutants like fine particulate matter and ozone,” says Noelle Eckley Selin, professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “These pollutants are damaging to human health, as they lead to cardiovascular and respiratory issues.”

[Related: The EPA wants more ‘renewable’ fuel. But what does that actually mean?]

Heavy-duty vehicles contribute about 23 percent of GHG emissions from the transportation sector, making them the second-largest contributor only behind light-duty vehicles like cars. New vehicles, starting with the model year 2027, are required to comply with the updated clean air standards. The EPA says the new regulations are more than 80 percent stronger than the current ones, which also cover a broader range of the vehicle’s operating conditions.

For instance, NOx emissions are high when vehicles idle or operate in stop-and-go traffic—so-called low-load conditions that aren’t subject to current emission standards. Yet these low-load operations are estimated to account for most of the vehicle’s NOx emissions during a typical workday, which is why the scope of the new standards will include them as well. The new rule also requires manufacturers to make sure that emission control systems function properly and aren’t prone to tampering by the drivers.

According to the EPA, the new rule can reduce the NOx emissions of heavy-duty vehicles by 48 percent in 2045. By then, the agency expects the pollution reduction to have provided substantial health benefits, resulting in 18,000 fewer cases of childhood asthma, 3.1 million fewer cases of asthma and allergic rhinitis symptoms, and 78,000 fewer lost days of work.

Emission reduction in the transportation sector would not only reduce health burden, but also support environmental justice and equity, says Eri Saikawa, associate professor of environmental sciences at Emory University. Heavy-duty diesel vehicles cause a disproportionate impact on people of color and low-income communities because they are more likely to live or attend school near major roadways, resulting in greater-than-average exposures to these pollutants.

[Related: Urban sprawl defines unsustainable cities, but it can be undone.]

To mitigate air pollution and climate change, Saikawa emphasizes the need to also reduce emissions of black carbon, a short-lived but potent climate pollutant that heavy-duty vehicles produce as well. It is not yet clear if black carbon emissions would be addressed in the updated EPA regulations to come.

Even though air pollution in the US has significantly improved over the past decades, Selin says it remains harmful at current levels. Additional policies, especially those striving for net zero goals, would have plenty of potential to reduce other aspects of air pollution. “Efficiency improvements and emissions reductions will be important, but ultimately addressing the impacts of climate change and air pollution together will require zero-emission alternatives,” she adds.

The White House has major federal actions in place that will accelerate and advance the use of clean heavy-duty vehicles. The production of new technologies like zero-emission heavy-duty trucks is also expected to increase in the near future, helping support the effectiveness of the Clean Trucks Plan.

“This is a difficult sector to decarbonize, and this will require innovations in technology as well as new policy actions,” says Selin. Coordinated efforts to tackle the sector’s environmental impacts, she adds, will be vital to ensure those affected by air pollution receive the “greatest possible benefit.”

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Truly self-driving cars are still at least a few years down the road—but if the day does come when the software becomes a de facto means of navigation, a new study indicates it’s going to need to be much more energy efficient. If not, autopilot features could ostensibly neutralize any self-driving electric vehicles’ environmental benefits. According to a new study from researchers at MIT, statistical modeling indicates the potential energy consumption needed to power a near-future global fleet of autopiloted EVs would generate as much greenhouse gas as all of the world’s current data centers combined.

The physical locales which house the massive computer arrays powering the world’s countless applications today generate about 0.3 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions—roughly the annual amount of carbon produced by Argentina. Researchers estimated this level would be reached from the self-driving tech in 1 billion autonomous vehicles, each driving just one hour per day. For comparison, there are currently around 1.5 billion cars on the world’s roads.

[Related: Tesla is under federal investigation over autopilot claims.]

Researchers also found that in over 90 percent of the models generated, EV computers would need to use less than 1.2 kilowatts of computing power just to keep within today’s realm of data center emissions, something we simply cannot achieve with current hardware efficiencies. For example, in another statistical model analyzing a scenario in which 95 percent of all vehicles are autonomous by 2050 alongside computational workloads doubling every 3 years, cars’ hardware efficiencies would need to essentially double every year to keep emissions within those same levels. In comparison, the decades’ long accepted industry rate known as Moore’s Law states that computational power doubles every two or so years—a timeframe that is expected to eventually slow down, not accelerate.

The parameters for such scenarios—how many cars are on the roads, how long they are traveling, their onboard computing power and energy requirements, etc—might seem relatively clear , but there are numerous unforeseen ramifications to also consider. Autonomous vehicles could spend more time on roads while people multitask, for example, and they could actually spur additional demographics to add to traffic, such as both younger and older populations. Then there’s the issue of trying to model for hardware and software that doesn’t yet exist.

And then there are the neural networks to consider.

[Related: Tesla driver blames self-driving mode for eight-car pileup.]

MIT notes that semi-autonomous vehicles already rely on popular algorithms such as a “multitask deep neural network” to navigate travel using numerous high-resolution cameras feeding constant, real-time information to its system. In one situation, researchers estimated that if an autonomous vehicle used 10 deep neural networks analyzing imagery from 10 cameras while driving just a single hour, it would generate 21.6 million inferences per day. Extrapolate that for 1 billion vehicles, and you get… 21.6 quadrillion inferences. 

“To put that into perspective, all of Facebook’s data centers worldwide make a few trillion inferences each day (1 quadrillion is 1,000 trillion),” explains MIT.

Suffice to say, these are serious hurdles that will need clearing if the automotive industry wants to continue its expansions into self-driving technology. EVs are key to our sustainable future, but self-driving versions  could end up adding to the energy crisis.

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For a while now, gas stoves have come under heat for their health and environmental impacts. However, after Biden-appointed US Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. called gas stoves a “hidden hazard” and remarked that “any option is on the table” to regulate them during a recent interview with Bloomberg, the White House jumped quickly to respond.

A White House spokesperson told CNN on January 11, “The President does not support banning gas stoves – and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric also clarified that he is “not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.”

[Related: Gas stoves could be making thousands of children in America sick.]

“CPSC is researching gas emissions in stoves and exploring new ways to address health risks. CPSC also is actively engage in strengthening voluntary safety standards for gas stoves. And later this spring, we will be asking the public to provide us with information about gas stove emissions and potential solutions for reducing any associated risks,” he added.

Gas stoves can produce and emit dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, methane, benzene, and nitrogen dioxide, especially if they are used in poorly ventilated spaces and aren’t properly maintained. According to a study published in January 2022, they can leak methane (a planet-warming gas) even when they are turned off.

They have also been linked to asthma and other worsening respiratory conditions. A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in December 2022 found that 12.7 percent of cases of childhood asthma in the United States could be due to gas stoves in the home. The study estimates that 650,000 people under 18 could be affected.

Multiple politicians including Democrats Cory Booker from New Jersey, Ted Lieu of California, and Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, also signed a letter to the CSPC saying that adverse reactions from gas stoves are more likely to occur in Black, Latinx, and low-income households since they are either more likely to live closer to a coal ash site or waste incinerator or have poor ventilation in the home.

Gas Stoves have recently become a cultural flash point. Republicans and fossil fuel allies are rallying behind the kitchen appliances, claiming government overreach and pledging to defend the stoves currently in about 40 million homes in the US.

Texas Republican Ronny Jackson tweeted, “I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!” He also encouraged his followers to sign a Republican National Committee petition to protect gas.

[Related: Your gas stove could be hurting everyone around you.]

In addition, 21 states have passed laws that prevent cities from prohibiting gas use in buildings and the gas industry has also paid influencers on Instagram to chalk up the benefits gas stoves in cooking to try to get younger consumers hooked.

Experts still contend that the stoves are hazardous to health and should be phased out in new homes and other buildings. On January 11, New York’s governor called for the country’s most aggressive ban on using fossil fuels in new buildings. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul urged the state legislature to phase out selling fossil fuel heating equipment in existing residential buildings in 2030 and in 2035 in commercial structures. She also proposed a requirement that all new buildings (residential and commercial) by 2025 and 2030.

The changes will also face an uphill climb from powerful industry groups representing fossil fuels.

“Industry groups will push back and fight any proposal to ban gas stove use. Consequently, it will likely be difficult for the commission to ban it outright immediately, but there are other things they can – and should – do,” said University of Massachusetts Lowell researcher David Turcotte in a statement. Turcotte is part of a government initiative studying how the pollutants emitted from gas stoves are affecting asthma rates in those living in public and subsidized rental housing. The research is funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Some of the ways to reduce risks from gas stoves are opening windows when stoves are in use, using an exhaust hood, using the stove less often (electric tea kettle instead of a traditional stove top one), and using an air purifier.

Correction (1/25/23): An earlier version of this post incorrectly listed Ted Lieu as a senator from Hawaii. He is a congressperson from California.

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In 1896, Swedish physicist and chemist Svante Arrhenius predicted that an increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere would lead to a temperature increase. Five years later, his colleague Nils Gustaf Ekholm coined the term “greenhouse effect.” But it took over 80 years for people to seriously begin paying attention to their findings.

In the background, though, researchers were still projecting and collecting data on climate change. Studies published in the 1960s and ‘70s examining carbon dioxide’s relationship to the Earth’s average surface temperature led to the United Nations forming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 and worldwide awareness of the issue.

Unfortunately, not all that data was used for the greater good. In 2015, Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times published an investigative report together detailing oil giant Exxon’s expansive knowledge of the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming way back in 1977. According to the account, the company funded research into carbon dioxide emissions and rising temperatures for about a decade before dramatically curtailing the program and beginning its strategy of climate denial.

ExxonMobil (the two oil companies merged in 1999) responded to the paper with a statement: “We unequivocally reject allegations that ExxonMobil suppressed climate change research contained in media reports that are inaccurate distortions of ExxonMobil’s nearly 40-year history of climate research. We understand that climate risks are real. The company has continuously, publicly and openly researched and discussed the risks of climate change, carbon life cycle analysis and emissions reductions.”

[Related: ExxonMobil’s ‘net-zero’ goals don’t address its biggest source of carbon emissions]

But a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University wasn’t convinced. In 2017, Geoffrey Supran, now an associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami, and his advisor, science historian Naomi Oreskes, published a paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters examining those documents. Supran found just the opposite—that Exxon funded climate change research in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s behind closed doors but questioned the findings publicly.

Five years later, Supran and Oreskes have published a follow-up review outlining exactly what Exxon learned about climate change, regardless of their public statements. It’s the first systematic analysis of any fossil fuel company’s climate projections and was published in the journal Science on January 12. Here are four of the bombshells they found.

1. Exxon’s models on fossil fuels and climate change were super accurate 

Supran says he was taken aback when he first overlaid Exxon’s climate projections with the actual data. “I had this moment of pause when I actually plotted it, and you see all these lines land so tightly around the red line of reality,” he explains.

Over the last 40 years, the company’s models accurately predicted the increase in global surface temperature over time at an average of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. It was also on the ball with projections on the increase in global temperature with radiative forcing, a metric that measures how much of the sun’s energy remains in Earth’s atmosphere. In fact, Exxon’s models performed better than average when compared to other climate projections from that era.   

2. The researchers correctly rejected the global cooling hypothesis, even as the company promoted it

Of the 14 Exxon climate projections that Supran examined for his paper, not a single one was massively wrong. “They all excluded the possibility of no human-caused warming,” he says. “The curves always went up. The only question was exactly how quickly they rose.”

One chart Supran analyzed was a long-term look that tracked global temperature over the last 150,000 years. This graph was presented to Exxon executives in 1977 and accurately mapped the average global temperature. At the meeting, company scientists warned the executives that emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could have catastrophic results. Yet, over the following decades, the company publicly pushed the myth of global cooling.

3. Exxon knew when the world would first notice the effects of climate change

In 1995, the IPCC announced it had irrevocable proof that human activities were fueling climate change, a fact it’s reiterated in each new study. Supran analyzed 10 internal reports and one peer-reviewed publication to find Exxon’s estimate: Eight of the 11 predicted the world would detect changes by 2000. But publicly, ExxonMobil executives only acknowledged human-made climate change in 2007.

4. The commissioned studies correctly described the amount of carbon dioxide that would lead to catastrophic climate change

Climate scientists measure atmospheric carbon dioxide in parts per million, which measures the mass of a particular substance compared to the mass of the mixture it’s a part of. For most of human history, carbon dioxide has remained below 300 parts per million. While the Paris Climate Agreement, which resolved to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, did not set a limit on parts per million of carbon dioxide, another United Nations report found that a level of 450 parts per million would give humanity a 50 percent chance of staying under the Paris temperature threshold.

[Related: Renewable energy is climbing in the US, but so are our emissions—here’s why]

When Exxon scientists wanted to know how much carbon dioxide they could reasonably emit, they opted to use an upper limit of 550 parts per million for 2 degrees Celsius. They calculated that somewhere between 251 and 716 metric gigatons (the world emitted 37 metric gigatons total in 2021) was the most humanity could burn before crossing that threshold. More recent estimates have narrowed that range to between 442 and 651 metric gigatons, showing that yet again, the world’s largest oil and gas company understood climate science as well as anyone.

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There are a multitude of wonderful aspects about electric vehicles—they have a low carbon footprint, are pretty easy to maintain compared to gas guzzlers, and affordable options seem to be expanding. But, just like most solutions, they come with drawbacks—when an EV gets in a crash, it can be more expensive and more destructive than a typical accident. 

One reason why an EV crash can be so disastrous is their weight. To get an electric car from place to place requires energy that utilizes batteries. And for cars that can handle a lot of range and power, those batteries add up. For instance, a GMC Hummer EV weighs over 9,000 pounds, around 2,900 of which is just batteries. Similar distinctions exist between the electric and ICE (internal combustion engine) versions of the Ford F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E, Volvo XC40 EV, and RAV4 EV. These electric versions may have lost the need for gasoline—but they’ve taken on some serious weight in return.  

The startling difference between EVs and their ICE counterparts was the focus of a keynote speech at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting on Wednesday from National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy.

“The U.S. transportation sector accounts for the largest portion of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and I firmly believe it is a human right to breathe clean air,” she said. “But we have to be careful that we aren’t also creating unintended consequences: more death on our roads.”​  

[Related: The 3 most exciting automotive reveals from CES 2023]

These concerns aren’t particularly new, at least when it comes to concerns about heavy vehicles in general. As far back as 2011 Michael Anderson, a University of California professor of economics, published a study that found that being hit by a car 1,000 lbs heavier than your own results in a 47 percent increase in the probability of your fatality. 

Nowadays, when there are not only big cars but big electric cars on the road, it can be worrisome for drivers in small cars, whether they are electric or gasoline powered. “What matters is less the average weight than the heterogeneity,” Anderson told Bloomberg last year. “There could be a window where it’s pretty unsafe to be driving (small, gas-powered vehicles) and getting into multi-vehicle accidents.”

Research is already underway to make EV batteries lighter, denser, and safer. Nevertheless, it’s crucial that policymakers, corporations, and consumers are aware of the risks that EVs pose to everyone on the road.

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Government incentives might encourage you to add another goal to your new year’s resolutions in 2023: reducing your carbon footprint. Starting this year, Americans can take advantage of a stream of tax credits to make their homes, cars, and businesses more sustainable thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The new legislation narrowly passed Congress after a lengthy political battle in the Senate last August. Considered one of President Biden’s signature achievements, the $440 billion package provides money for clean energy and lowers drug costs for older people, among other things. The government plans to pay for the credits through raising taxes on corporations that make over $1 billion in profit per year, taxing stock buybacks and investing in the Internal Revenue Services to catch tax cheats. If all works out as planned, the package will actually bring in $300 billion extra dollars, which will go towards paying off government debt.

Climate policy experts like Rachel Cleetus, the policy director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, see the IRA as the stimulus the country needs to make America’s energy infrastructure more sustainable, even if it’s just an initial step to meeting emission reduction goals. Cleetus says the law is the culmination of years of work.

“It’s a moment of relief, more than anything else,” she says. “Clean energy is already so competitive in the marketplace, here in the US and around the world, and this will really tip the scales in favor of accelerating that momentum around renewable energy, wind, solar, etc.”

With a receipt and tax form, consumers can save up to thousands of dollars on everything from electric cars to solar panels to two-pane windows. As you take stock of your sustainability resolutions this year, review how to apply for IRA credits.

“By being proactive, consumers can have a plan to make the most cost-effective upgrades for their specific housing and local policy circumstances once IRA funding is made available,” says Dan Esposito, a senior policy analyst at the an energy and climate policy think tank, Energy Innovation.

What are the tax credits?

There are two main buckets of credits you might qualify for: electric vehicle credits and home improvement credits. The first is purchasing an electric vehicle. To reap maximum benefits from the credits, you’ll want to make sure that it complies with a long list of technical and trade manufacturing requirements, like making sure the vehicle’s final assembly was in a US facility. 

Consumers should pay special attention to electric vehicle credits because they will most likely give buyers “the biggest bang for their buck,” Esposito wrote in an email to PopSci. A new electric vehicle can qualify for up to a $7,500 credit and used vehicles could be $4,000. (You can find more details about IRA tax credits from electric vehicles in our guide.) 

“The tax credits for electric vehicles are generally most impactful in terms of reducing one’s climate footprint, as the average US passenger vehicle emits roughly 60 percent more greenhouse gases than the average US home using natural gas,” he says. “However, the [exact] climate benefit depends on several factors, such as the vehicle you currently have (hybrid vs. gas guzzler), how often you drive, the climate you live in, and your home’s insulation,” Esposito writes.  

[Related: Check before you buy: Here are the new EVs that qualify for the clean vehicle tax credit]

The second bucket of IRA credits can be collected by reducing your home’s emissions through switching to renewable energy and making it more energy efficient. Consumers can save money on a range of products designed to reduce their home’s reliance on fossil fuels. You can get money for putting a solar panel on your roof. You can also get money from buying energy efficient products like two-pane windows that better insulate your house. You can also receive a $300 tax credit for purchasing a heat pump, instead of the typical furnace or energy inefficient air conditioners that most Americans own. 

If you plan to replace both the furnace and an air conditioning unit, then the tax credit for heat pumps could be worthwhile as well. How much you actually get back in credits, however, will vary from house to house—wiring might need to be upgraded or a heat pump designed to tolerate colder climates. “The timing of when these credits will become available will vary by state, with state energy offices set to play the dominant role in facilitating their rollout,” Esposito writes. “In the meantime, homeowners can assess the state of their house to determine which upgrades to seek out in the coming years.”

While renters might be locked out of some credits that require home ownership, they are still eligible for many incentives. It might be worth it to make the long-term investments if they plan to stay in their rental space for a year or more, Cleetus says.

[Related: How heat pumps can help fight global warming]

“The question for renters is obviously, how long are you going to be in a place? And is that something that you and your landlord want to split the cost?” she says. “In some cases, you can recoup the cost within a year, so even if you’re renting for just a year, it might make sense to do it.”

For example, it might make sense to purchase a more energy efficient air conditioner that will save you money on heating and cooling bills in the long run. And with the insulation-related tax credits, you can recoup the cost faster, perhaps in a year or two, than you would otherwise, according to Cleetus.

What to know before filing for the credits

Consumers should research what tax credits they can take advantage of before they buy any green products, says Susan Allen, senior manager for tax practice and ethics with the American Institute of Certified Professional Accountants (CPA). 

The amount of money you get will differ depending on your income, the number of dependents you have, and if you rent or own your home, so it’s important to do your research before buying anything that could have a tax credit or an upfront discount, Cleetus and Allen say.

“Planning before you buy helps you make the most informed decision on the ultimate savings you can accomplish,” Allen says. “If you can work with a CPA tax or financial planner, wonderful. They can help guide you and maybe save a lot of time and headache while you might be trying to navigate it.”

One of the best ways to make sure you can cash in on the credits is to ask the manufacturer before you make a purchase, Allen says. Car dealers will be aware of which vehicles qualify for the credits and appliance companies that manufacture electric stoves or other green products will likely know how much you can save. 

Cleetus says stores should start adopting labels that indicate if a product is eligible for tax credits. “That’s the kind of thing that will be really impactful, so that people don’t have to search,” she says. 

[Related: The Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS could kick US climate policy back into action]

If you don’t have an accountant, you can also take advantage of a number of government guides, Allen and Cleetus say. Consumers can refer to the White House’s interactive clean energy website, which helps users determine what credits are available to them. The Department of Energy published a list of the credits people can save specifically on green energy and energy-efficient household appliances. The Internal Revenue Services details the cars eligible for electric vehicle credits. For those who want a more thorough breakdown of the credits, the White House also published a 183-page guidebook. And further guidance is still coming out, Cleetus says. 

And while the tax credits can help you save money on clean energy investments, the IRA doesn’t quite live up to what the country promised during global climate negotiations.The US pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030. The package aims to reduce emissions by about 40 percent. “It’s not enough, for sure. From a science perspective, we know we have to go further, faster,” Cleetus says. 

Still, the IRA is a vital step in accelerating the nationwide transition to clean energy infrastructure. “It’s important to think about this in a holistic way,” Cleetus says. “These tax credits will go a long way towards many, many households lowering their carbon footprint. But they’re also part of a broader system that has to shift.”

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Despite increases in renewable energy, a report from the Rhodium Group released on January 10 finds that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States rose by 1.3 percent last year compared to 2021.

GHGs like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide trap some of the Earth’s outgoing energy and cause the atmosphere to retain heat. The excess heat can alter climate and weather patterns around the world, causing stronger hurricanes and more droughts among other destruction. Reducing the amount of GHGs emitted into the air is necessary to avoid some of the most catastrophic effects of climate change in the future.

[Related: Greenhouse gases, sea level rise, and ocean acidification all broke records in 2021.]

“While this is the second year in a row that emissions have increased, it nonetheless marks a change from 2021, when emissions rebounded faster than the economic growth rate,” the group wrote in a statement. “This reversal in 2022 was largely due to the substitution of coal with natural gas—a less carbon-intensive fuel—and a rise in renewable energy generation.”

According to the report, renewable sources of energy like wind, solar, and hydropower generated 22 percent of the country’s electricity, compared to 20 percent from coal, but it was still not enough to curb the rise in emissions.

This new estimate reflects a continued rebound in emissions from the lows seen when the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Emissions plummeted more than 10 percent during the initial outbreaks of the virus and rebounded 6.2 percent in 2021.

For 2022, Rhodium cited economic challenges, uncertainty, and a spike in oil and natural gas prices from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a source of concern for the economy.

Homes and businesses saw the most significant increase in emissions in 2022. These spaces burn fossil fuels such as natural gas in appliances like hot water heaters and furnaces. Emissions in these spaces rose six percent and hit pre-pandemic levels. The report cites colder than average temperatures at the beginning of 2022 driving up heat use as a possible reason for the jump.

This increase puts this US further away from its emission reduction goals. In 2021, President Biden set a goal of reducing GHG emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This amount that is believed to be consistent with limiting global warming to the 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit threshold set in the Paris Agreement. Rhodium’s analysis finds that the US is not on track to meet this target. Rhodium called The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 a significant turning point for reducing emissions, but the legislation is also likely to fall short of closing the gap by 2030.

[Related: The US ban on hydrofluorocarbons is a climate game-changer.]

“In 2023, federal agencies can close this gap further by proposing aggressive regulations that drive down emissions. These actions, together with additional policies from leading states as well as action from private actors, can put the target within reach—but all parties must act quickly,” the report says.

The estimates in the report’s sector-by-sector analysis do not include emissions from two major sources of GHGs: agriculture and wildfires. Wildfires emit carbon dioxide into the air when trees and grasslands burn and farming activities made up about 11.2 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the US in 2020.

One piece of good news from the report is that economic growth actually outpaced emissions growth. Separating fossil fuel consumption from economic growth is a critical component to a more sustainable path towards removing carbon from the economy.

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Wasting resources is a huge cause of environmental degradation. At our current rate, we’re on track to 3.4 billion metric tons of solid trash by 2050. This route is completely untenable for both civilization and the overall environment, but given that roughly only 20 percent of that is currently recycled annually, we’ll need to get really creative quickly to address this issue.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge found a potential solution to this challenge by recently developing a novel process using just energy from the sun to transform plastic trash and greenhouse gasses into sustainable fuel and other valuable materials. As detailed in the journal Nature Synthesis, the team successfully created a solar-powered reactor capable of transforming CO2 into syngas, a pivotal component within sustainable liquid fuels. At the same time, the setup also managed to take plastic bottles and break them down into glycolic acid, a chemical often used within the cosmetics industry.

[Related: A potentially revolutionary solar harvester just left the planet.]

The new integrated reactor contains two compartments, one for the greenhouse gasses and one for the plastic waste, reliant on a new and promising silicon alternative, perovskite, for its solar cells. Persovskite innovations have rapidly improved its efficiency rates from just 3 percent in 2009 to recently over 25 percent. As such, it could soon become a major component of solar power manufacturing, although barriers still need overcoming for its stability, lifespan, and scalability.

From there, researchers created different catalysts for the light absorber, which changed the final recycled product depending on which one was used, including CO, syngas, and glycolic acid. What’s more, the breakthrough reactor pulled all this off with a greater efficiency than standard photocatalytic CO2 methods, all BY simply shining sunlight into the setup.

“A solar-driven technology that could help to address plastic pollution and greenhouse gasses at the same time could be a game-changer in the development of a circular economy,” says the study’s co-first author, Subhajit Bhattacharjee.

[Related: Solar energy company wants to bolt panels directly into the ground.]

Researchers’ ability to fine-tune the integrated reactor’s end result products depending on the input catalyst also shows immense promise for additional outputs. The paper notes that, although the initial studies were limited to simple carbon-based molecules, future experiments could result in far more complex products. Further advancements along these lines could even one day offer a new type of entirely solar-powered recycling plant, ostensibly providing society with a circular economy in which very little, if anything, is wasted.

“Developing a circular economy, where we make useful things from waste instead of throwing it into landfill, is vital if we’re going to meaningfully address the climate crisis and protect the natural world,” said the study’s other co-first author, Motiar Reisner. “And powering these solutions using the Sun means that we’re doing it cleanly and sustainably.”

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This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new standards for how much of the nation’s fuel supply should come from renewable sources. 

The proposal, released last month, calls for an increase in the mandatory requirements set forth by the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS. The program, created in 2005, dictates how much renewable fuels — products like corn-based ethanol, manure-based biogas, and wood pellets — are used to reduce the use of petroleum-based transportation fuel, heating oil, or jet fuel and cut greenhouse gas emissions. 

The new requirements have sparked a heated debate between industry leaders, who say the recent proposal will help stabilize the market in the coming years, and green groups, which argue that the favored fuels come at steep environmental costs. 

Below is a Grist guide to this growing debate, breaking down exactly what these fuels are, how they’re created, and how they would change under the EPA’s new proposal:

The fuels

Renewable fuel is an umbrella term for the bio-based fuels mandated by the EPA to be mixed into the nation’s fuel supply. The category includes fuel produced from planted crops, planted trees, animal waste and byproducts, and wood debris from non-ecological sensitive areas and not from federal forestland. Under the RFS, renewable fuels are supposed to replace fossil fuels and are used for transportation and heating across the country, and are supposed to emit 20 percent fewer greenhouse gasses than the energy they replace.

Under the new EPA proposal, renewable fuels would increase by roughly 9 percent by the end of 2025 — an increase of nearly 2 billion gallons. The new EPA proposal will set a target of almost 21 billion gallons of renewable fuels in 2023, which includes over 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol. By 2025, the EPA hopes to have over 22 billion gallons of different renewable fuel sources powering the nation. 

Advanced biofuel, a type of renewable fuel, includes fuel created from crop waste, animal waste, food waste, and yard waste. This also includes biogas, a natural gas produced from the methane created by animal and human waste. Advanced biofuel can also include fuels created from sugars and starches, apart from ethanol. 

In its newest proposal, the EPA suggests a roughly 14 percent increase in the use of these fuels from 2023 to 2024 and a 12 percent increase the year after that. The EPA wants roughly 6 billion gallons of advanced biofuel in the marketplace by this year.

Nestled inside of the advanced biofuel category is biomass-based diesel, a fuel source created from vegetable oils and animal fats. This fuel can also be created from oils, waste, and sludge created in municipal wastewater treatment plants. Under the new EPA proposal, the agency is suggesting a 2 percent year-over-year increase in these fuels by the end of 2025, which equals a final amount of nearly three billion gallons.

Cellulosic biofuel, another type of renewable fuel, is a liquid fuel created by “crops, trees, forest residues, and agricultural residues not specifically grown for food, including from barley grain, grapeseed, rice bran, rice hulls, rice straw, soybean matter,” as well as sugarcane byproducts, according to the 2005 law.

“In the interim period, there’s going to be a need for lower carbon, renewable liquid fuels”

Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuel Association

The EPA’s recent proposal aims for nearly double the amount of the use of these fuels by 2024. Then a 50 percent increase the year after, equivalent to 2 billion gallons. 

The new RFS proposal also hopes to create a more standardized pathway for renewable fuels to be used in powering electric vehicles, with more and more drivers turning to EVs in recent years. 

“We are pretty pleased with what the EPA proposed for 2023 through 2025,” Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuel Association, an industry group whose members primarily include ethanol producers, but also represent biogas and biomass producers, told Grist. 

Cooper said that the EPA and the Biden administration recognize that alternative fuels are a growing and needed sector while the country tries to move away from fossil fuels. Setting standards for the next three years will help the biofuels industry grow, said Cooper, who predicted more ethanol, biomass, or biogas producers will emerge in the coming years. 

“I think the administration recognizes that you’re not going to electrify everything overnight,” Cooper said, “and in the interim period, there’s going to be a need for lower-carbon, renewable liquid fuels.”

The controversy

While renewable fuel standards have gained a stamp of approval from industry producers and the federal government, environmental groups see increased investment in ethanol, biomass, and biogas as doubling down on dirty fuel. 

“It’s not encouraging because it continues on the false premise that biofuels, in general, are a helpful pathway to meeting our climate goals,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the nonprofit environmental group Center for Biological Diversity. 

Hartl argues that investing in increased corn production to fuel ethanol will continue harmful agricultural practices that erode soil and dump massive amounts of pesticides on corn crops, which causes increased water pollution and toxic dead zones across the country and the Gulf of Mexico. The United States is the world’s largest producer of corn, with 40 percent of the corn produced used for ethanol. 

A study released earlier this year from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that when demand for corn goes up, caused by an increase in blending requirements from the RFS, prices increase as well, which causes farmers to add more fertilizer products, created by fossil fuels, to crops. The EPA’s own internal research has also shown greenhouse gas emissions over the next three years will grow with the increase in blending requirements from the federal mandate.

The Center for Biological Diversity has been critical of the EPA’s past support of renewable fuel without a calculation of the total environmental impacts of how the fuel is produced and is currently in legal battles with the federal agency. They’re not alone in their critiques. 

Tarah Heinzen, legal director for Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit environmental watchdog group, said in a statement that an increase in both industrial corn production and biogas, a fuel created from animal and food waste, are not part of a clean energy future. 

“Relying on dirty fuels like factory farm gas and ethanol to clean up our transportation sector will only dig a deeper hole,” Heinzen said. “The EPA should recognize this by reducing, not increasing, the volume requirements for these dirty sources of energy in the Renewable Fuel Standard.” 

Alternative fuels, like biogas and biomass (a fuel created from trees and wood pulp), have gained steam thanks to the ethanol boom of the renewable fuel category. The biogas industry is set to boom thanks to tax incentives created by the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Biomass is a growing industry in the South, with wood pellet mills popping up in recent years. Scientists from across the globe have decried the industry’s suggestion that burning trees for electricity is carbon neutral, with 650 scientists signing a recent letter to denounce the industry’s claims.

The world’s largest producer of wood pellet biomass energy has come under fire from a whistleblower who said the company uses whole trees to create electricity, despite the company’s claims of sustainably harvesting only tree limbs to produce energy. Wood pellet facilities have faced opposition from local governments and federal legislators, with community members in Springfield, Massachusetts successfully blocking a permit for a new biomass facility in November. 

Despite concerns from environmental groups, the forecasted demands of the EPA show that the nation is pushing for more of these fuels in the coming years. This past spring, a bipartisan group of Midwestern governors asked the EPA for a permanent waiver to sell higher blends of ethanol year-round, despite summer-time smog created by the higher blend of renewable fuel.

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Gas stoves have been used to cook food in American homes since the 1800s, so they are nothing new. An estimated 40 million homes still use them over a century past their introduction. However, scrutiny over the popular appliances for their environmental and health impacts has been steadily building over decades.

A new study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in December 2022 finds that 12.7 percent of cases of childhood asthma in the United States could be due to gas stoves in the home. The researchers from the US and Australia estimate 650,000 people under 18 could be affected. Gas stoves can produce and emit dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, methane, benzene, and nitrogen dioxide, especially if they are used in poorly ventilated spaces and aren’t properly maintained. According to a study published in January 2022, they can leak methane (a planet-warming gas) even when they are turned off.

[Related: Your gas stove could be hurting everyone around you.]

Brady Seals, manager of the carbon free buildings program at RMI and a co-author of the study, told The Guardian that the prevalence of asthma due to gas stoves is similar to the amount of asthma caused by secondhand smoke. She called these findings “eye popping,” adding, “We knew this was a problem but we didn’t know how bad. This study shows that if we got rid of gas stoves we would prevent 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases, which I think most people would want to do.”

The study used 2019 US Census data to determine the proportion of children exposed to pollution from gas stoves, borrowing this method from a 2018 analysis that found that gas cooking ranges in Australia could be attributable for 12.3 percent of childhood asthma cases. The team also used data from an analysis in 2013 that found children in homes with gas stoves were 42 percent more likely to have asthmatic symptoms.

“It’s like having car exhaust in a home,” Seals told The Washington Post. “And we know that children are some of the people spending the most time at home, along with the elderly.”

With this analysis, the authors do mention that their findings are based on multiple assumptions, so there is a possibility that the dangers might be either understated or overstated and that principal axis factoring (PAF) analysis does have limitations.

[Related: Gas stoves are bad for the environment—but what if the power goes out?]

The gas industry has also pushed back against this study, with the American Gas Association saying it used a “headline-grabbing approach” that lacked scientific rigor and that “the claims made in this paper are clearly driven by simple advocacy-based modeling and hypotheticals over the deep and sophisticated analysis we should see in sound science.”

Industry lobbyists and Republican led legislatures have also pushed back hard against plans to phase out the use of gas stoves. Some states and cities like New York have banned the use of gas hookups in new buildings, while others have prevented these changes.

In December 2022, US Consumer Product Safety Commission head Richard Trumka announced that the agency will put out a formal request for information on hazards associated with gas stoves and possible solutions by March.

“We need to be talking about regulating gas stoves, whether that’s drastically improving emissions or banning gas stoves entirely,” Trumka said. “And I think we ought to keep that possibility of a ban in mind, because it’s a powerful tool in our tool belt and it’s a real possibility here.”

The move aligns with efforts to help lower income households and those who rent replace gas stoves. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 does include a rebate of up to $840 for the purchase of new electric induction cooking appliances.

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Following over a decade of research, including two years of testing origami-inspired components, a small prototype satellite designed to harvest solar energy launched yesterday morning aboard SpaceX’s most recent Falcon 9 rocket launch in Cape Canaveral, Florida. If its initial experiments are successful, arrays similar to Caltech’s Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD) could one day beam essentially endless renewable energy back to Earth via microwave transmitters.

After reading a Popular Science article on the concept in 2011, Caltech Board of Trustees lifetime member Donald Bren approached the school in hopes of making the science fiction idea a reality. The resultant Space Solar Power Project, co-funded by defense manufacturer Northrop Grumman alongside the Bren family’s $100 million endowment, saw its first major milestone completion yesterday via the SSPD arrival above Earth.

[Related: This space-adapted solar panel can fold like origami.]

Over the next few weeks and months, the roughly 110-pound prototype will send back data on three main projects. The Deployable on-Orbit ultraLight Composite Experiment (DOLCE) will test lightweight, foldable structures that can unfurl to collect sunlight. Meanwhile, ALBA (Italian for “dawn”), a collection of 32 different varieties of photovoltaic cells, will determine which could work best in the space’s extremely harsh environment. Finally, the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE) will test microwave transmitters that may one day transmit the collected solar power via wireless electricity.

Speaking yesterday with The Los Angeles Times, Caltech senior researcher Michael Kelzenberg explained that the SSPD’s first tests are not meant to supply Earth with solar space energy just yet. Instead, the team hopes to begin determining which materials, designs, and methods could result in the most efficient and affordable solutions in the future.

[Related: Solar energy company wants to bolt panels directly into the ground.]

It’s hard to overstate just how revolutionary the prospect of space solar energy farming could be for humanity’s power needs. In 2007, a study from the National Space Society estimated that a single, half-mile wide band of photovoltaics orbiting above Earth could hypothetically generate the same amount of energy as the entire planet’s remaining oil supplies over the course of just one year. To do this, Popular Science explained in 2011 that high energy lasers could transmit the solar supply back to Earth at roughly 80 percent efficiency to a global network of receivers, thus providing clean power across the world, even to places with previously unreliable electricity grids.

A multitude of hurdles remain, most notably the vast costs attached to any space engineering project. Still, as Ali Hajimiri, Caltech’s Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering and co-director of SSPP, explained in a statement, “no matter what happens, this prototype is a major step forward.” 

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This article was originally featured on The Drive.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has released its list of vehicles that qualify for a clean vehicle tax credit.

The list is available on the IRS website, with the tax credit scheme taking effect from January 1, 2023. Customers purchasing eligible vehicles may be entitled to a tax credit of up to $7,500, depending on certain income tests. Buyers must earn less than $300,000 in household income if in a couple for tax purposes, or $150,000 if single. As covered earlier by The Drive, vehicles aren’t solely eligible based on a make and model basis. The individual vehicle itself must have been assembled in the US, too.

Notably, the tax credit is also only applicable to vehicles under certain price limits. To remain eligible, MSRP must be below $80,000 for vans, SUVs, and pickups, or $55,000 for other vehicles. This has the unintended side effect of creating some weird edge cases. For example, the five-seat model of the Tesla Model Y doesn’t count as an SUV. Thus, with an MSRP of above $55,000, it’s not eligible for the credit. However, the seven-seat models are counted as SUVs, and thus qualify for the credit as the relevant limit is $80,000, instead.

Overall, US manufacturers are well-represented in the list. The Chevrolet Bolt, Bolt EUV, and Cadilliac Lyriq are present for GM. Meanwhile, Ford’s growing range of EVs also makes the list, including the Escape Plug-in Hybrid, F-150 Lightning, and Mustang Mach-E. The Lincoln Aviator and Corsair are present too, both in Grand Touring trim. Tesla’s Model Y and Model 3 are present, as per the above noted price restrictions, as are the Rivian R1S and R1T.

Chrysler and Jeep both make the list too, albeit without any full EVs. Instead, the Stellantis brands instead attract credits for plug-in hybrids, with the Chrysler Pacifica, Jeep Wrangler 4xe, and Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe.

Other manufacturers with vehicles on the list include VW, Volvo, Nissan, BMW, and Audi. Beyond that, other automakers have signed agreements with the IRS to qualify under the scheme. However, they are yet to submit lists of their eligible models to the government agency. This includes Jaguar, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, and Mercedes Benz, among others.

The scheme will face further changes as soon as March, as the Treasury Department firms up battery sourcing requirements. At that point, the rules will shift to consider the source location of battery components and critical minerals used in the vehicle’s construction. Vehicles that don’t comply with the full requirements may only be eligible for a lesser tax credit.

While some countries are rolling back EV credits, the US is currently going full-steam ahead. The aim is to not just spur uptake of electric vehicles. The scheme also hopes to incentivize the construction of both vehicles and the batteries themselves in the US, all the way back to the sourcing of the raw mineral components. In any case, if you’ve got your eye on a particular EV that qualifies for the scheme, you might be best placed to order it sooner rather than later.

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ON A FOGGY midsummer morning 54 miles northwest of Santa Barbara, California, SpaceX engineers hustled through a ritual they’d been through before. They loaded a Falcon 9 rocket with tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene and supercold liquid oxygen, a propellant combo that brought the craft’s nine Merlin engines roaring to life with 1.7 million pounds of thrust. Soon after, the machine shot through the stratosphere, ready to dispatch 46 of the company’s Starlink internet satellites into low Earth orbit. But the rocket made another delivery too: a trail of sooty particles that lingered over the Pacific hours after blastoff.

The launch was the company’s 32nd of 2022, maintaining its current pace of firing off close to one rocket per week. With a record number of rides shuttling equipment, astronauts, and über-rich tourists to and from Earth, the high skies have never been busier. Between government programs like China’s Long March and private shots like SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, the world tallied some 130 successful launches in 2021 and is on pace to finish 2022 with even more. Many trips, however, spew tiny bits of matter into the stratosphere, an area that hasn’t seen much pollution firsthand yet.

Climate scientists are still working to fully understand how rocket residue affects the planet’s UV shield. But even if they find warning signs, some organization or authority figure would have to step up to establish emission standards for the industry. In the meantime, a few aerospace companies are exploring sustainable alternatives, like biofuels, to power their far-flying systems.

The increasing frequency of launches has researchers like Martin N. Ross, an atmospheric physicist and project engineer at the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit research center in California, worried about the future of the stratosphere—and the world. Predictions for rocket traffic in the coming decades point dramatically up, like a Falcon 9 on a pad. Should the sun heat up enough of the particles from the fuel trails, as some computer models suggest it will, space travel could become a significant driver of climate change. “This is not a theoretical concern,” Ross says.

Unless you are reading this while floating aboard the International Space Station, you are breathing air from the troposphere—the bottommost band of the Earth’s atmosphere, which extends upward for several miles. The layer just above that, the stratosphere, sits anywhere from 6 to 31 miles above sea level and is deathly dull by comparison: There are barely any clouds there, so it doesn’t rain. The air is thin and freezing and contains ozone, an oxygen-based gas that protects all life from solar radiation but is toxic to the lungs.

Most greenhouse gases, including the 900 million tons of carbon dioxide produced by the aviation industry each year, trap heat in the troposphere. But rockets rip their vapors at higher altitudes, making them the single direct source of emissions in the upper stratosphere.

Acid in the sky

The stratosphere was people-free until 1931, when Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard and his aide floated nearly 10 miles up, and back down, with a 500,000-cubic-foot hydrogen balloon. They were the first of many. By the 1960s, the US and Soviet space programs were regularly shooting rockets to the edge of the sky.

As astronaut and cosmonaut programs evolved during the Cold War, so did climate change research—especially studies of carbon dioxide pollution and atmospheric degradation. In the 1970s, NASA’s space shuttle program piqued the interest of atmospheric chemists like Ralph Cicerone and Richard Stolarski, who then attempted some of the first investigations into stratospheric rocket exhaust. The shuttle’s solid engines used a crystalline compound called ammonium perchlorate, which releases hydrochloric acid as a byproduct. Chlorine is highly destructive to ozone—the Environmental Protection Agency estimates a lone atom can break down tens of thousands of molecules of the atmospheric gas.

In a June 1973 report to NASA, Cicerone, Stolarski, and their colleagues calculated that 100 shuttle launches a year would produce “quite small” amounts of chlorine-containing compounds. But they warned that these chemicals could build up over time. Cicerone and Stolarski ultimately focused their attention on volcanic eruptions, because those belches represented larger and more dramatic releases of chlorine.

In the 1980s, British meteorologists revealed that the ozone layer in the Antarctic stratosphere was thinning. They identified the culprit as chlorine from aerosol spray cans and to O3-munching chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons from other human-made sources. That hole began to heal only after the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the first international agreement ever ratified by every member state of the United Nations. It phased out the use of CFCs, setting the atmosphere on a decades-long path to recovery.

In the wake of that treaty, “Anything that emitted chlorine was under suspicion,” Ross says. But it remained unclear whether rocket emissions too could alter the ozone layer.

For the following two decades, the US Air Force enlisted the Aerospace Corporation and atmospheric scientists like Darin Toohey, now a University of Colorado Boulder professor, to study the chemical composition of rocket exhaust. Using NASA’s WB-57 aircraft, a jet bomber able to fly 11 miles high and retrofitted for scientific observations, teams directly sampled emissions from American launch vehicles including Titan, Athena, and Delta into the early 2000s.

Freshly collected material from the plumes gave the researchers a firmer grasp on the ways solid propellant interacted with air. For instance, they examined the particles that were expelled when shuttle boosters burned aluminum powder as fuel—and how those bits reacted to ozone. The effect wasn’t as severe as they had feared, Ross says. Though the plumes depleted nearby ozone within the first hour after a launch, the layer was quickly restored after the emissions diffused.

Meanwhile, at the turn of the 21st century, blastoffs were decreasing in the US and Russia. After the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry in 2003, killing its seven-person crew, NASA suspended other flights in the program for two years. Missions using the WB-57 aircraft to observe exhaust came to an end in 2005. Six years later, NASA officially retired the shuttle system.

New rockets, more soot

When SpaceX sent its first liquid-fueled rocket into orbit in 2008, it set the stage for more privately developed spaceflights. But the chemical it pumped into its marquee machines wasn’t anything new. A refined version of kerosene, Rocket Propellant-1 or RP-1, has powered generations of rockets, including the first-stage engines of the spaceships that ferried Apollo astronauts to the moon. It was well known and relatively cheap.

Sensing an aerospace trend, Ross, Toohey, and their colleague Michael Mills calculated what emissions would be produced by a fleet of similarly hydrocarbon-powered rockets anywhere between the Earth’s surface and 90 miles aloft. Their predictions, which they published in 2010 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, turned up something unexpected: an emissions signature full of black carbon, the same contaminant belched by poorly tuned diesel engines on the ground. “It seemed to have a disproportionate impact on the upper atmosphere,” Toohey says.

Those dark particles are “very, very good at absorbing the sun’s radiation,” adds Eloise Marais, an atmospheric chemist at University College London. Think of how you heat up faster on a hot summer day while wearing a black shirt rather than a white one, and you get the idea.

Near the ground, rain or other precipitation will flush dark carbon out of the air. But in the stratosphere, above rain clouds, soot sticks around. “As soon as we start to put things in that layer of the atmosphere, their impact is much greater, because it’s considerably cleaner up there than it is down here,” Marais says. In other words, the pristineness of the stratosphere makes it more vulnerable to the sun’s searing rays.

Black carbon particles can persist for about two years in the stratosphere before gravity drags them back down to the ground. They also heat up as they wait: In a study published this June in the journal Earth’s Future, Marais and her colleagues calculated that soot from rockets is about 500 times more efficient at warming the air than that from planes or emitters on the surface.

Another recent model run by Ross and Christopher Maloney, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chemical Sciences Laboratory, came to a similar conclusion about the dark stuff’s impact on climate change. Should space traffic increase tenfold within the next two decades, the stratosphere will warm by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, they predict.

That uptick is enough that “stratospheric dynamics [will] begin to shift,” Maloney says. Currents carry naturally produced ozone from hotter tropical regions toward cooler poles. If rockets scorch a pool of air above the Northern Hemisphere, where most launches take place, that warm-to-cold path could be disturbed—disrupting the circulation that ferries fresh O3 northward. The upshot: a thinner ozone layer at the higher latitudes and a toastier stratosphere overall.

Sizing up old launches can help clear up some of the gray areas in this process. In a paper published this July in the journal Physics of Fluids, a pair of researchers at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus simulated the plume from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from 2016. According to their model, in the first 2.75 minutes of flight, the craft generated 116 tons of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to a year’s worth of emissions from about 70 cars.

Toohey sees these projections as validation of the black carbon concerns he raised more than a decade ago—but thinks they’re not as compelling as direct observations would be. There has been “basically no progress, except additional model studies, telling us the original hypothesis was correct,” he says. What’s needed, he adds, is detection in the style of the earlier WB-57 missions. For example, spectrometers planted on the sides of spaceships could measure black carbon.

Policy is another limiting factor. The International Air Transport Association, an influential trade organization, has set carbon-neutral goals for airlines for 2050, but there is no comparable target for space—in part because there is no equivalent leader in the industry or regulatory body like the Federal Aviation Administration. “We don’t have an agreed-upon way to measure what rocket engines are doing to the environment,” Ross says.

While there are newer fuels out there, there’s no good way to determine how green they are. Even the one that burns cleanest, hydrogen, requires extra energy to be refined to its pure molecular form from methane or water. “The picture is very complex, as all propellants have environmental impact,” says Stephen Heister, who studies aerospace propulsion at Purdue University.

Atmospheric scientists say solutions to preserve the stratosphere must be developed collaboratively, as with the unified front that made the Montreal Protocol a juggernaut. “The way to deal with it is to start getting people with common interests together,” Toohey says, to find a sustainable path to space before lasting damage is done.

Photo credits for lead image: Left to right, top to bottom: Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images; Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua/Getty Images; Zheng Bin/Xinhua/Getty Images; Yang Guanyu/Xinhua/Getty Images; Cai Yang/Xinhua/Getty Images; Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua/Getty Images; Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua/Getty Images; Korea Aerospace Research Institute/Getty Images; SOPA Images Ltd./Alamy (2); Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post/Getty Images; GeoPix/NASA/Joel Kowsky/Alamy; Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua/Getty Images; Paul Hennessy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images; Zheng Bin/Xinhua/Getty Images

This story originally appeared in the High Issue of Popular Science. Read more PopSci+ stories.

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It’s been a big month for Martian winds. Last week, audio recordings revealed the sounds of an actual dust devil traveling across the Red Planet’s surface. On Monday, a team of researchers released a study in Nature Astronomy detailing how some of these very same breezes could help provide energy to future human settlements at a rate far higher than previously believed.

As also reported in earlier rundowns courtesy of New Scientist and Motherboard, past assessments once deemed the winds of Mars too weak to provide a reliable, major source of power production, especially when measured against alternatives like solar and nuclear energy. This stems from the planet’s relatively thin atmosphere—just 1 percent of the density of Earth’s—which generally results in low force winds capable of moving flecks of dust and rock, but not much else. 

[Related: For the first time, humans can hear a dust devil roar across Mars.]

However, a team led by Victoria Hartwick, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Ames Research Center, used a state-of-the-art Mars climate model adapted from a similar, Earth-focused program to factor in the planet’s landscape, dust levels, solar radiation, and heat energy. After simulating years’ worth of weather and storm patterns, the group found substantial evidence that multiple regions of Mars could provide reliable wind alongside other sources like solar panel arrays. Not only that, but certain areas could generate enough power from wind alone to keep a base up and running.

Particularly suitable locations include crater rims and volcanic highlands, while winds blowing off ice deposits during the northern hemisphere’s winter produce essentially a “sea breeze” effect on the surrounding areas that could also be harvested for energy. In certain locations, average wind power production even came in as much as 3.4 times higher than solar, according to the study. In their findings, Hartwick’s team propose the construction of 160-foot tall turbines in seasonally icy northern regions of places such as Deuteronilus Mensae and Protonilus Mensae, along with similar structures around crater edges and volcano slopes.

[Related: NASA could build a future lunar base from 3D-printed moon-dust bricks.]

Unfortunately, because of traditional turbines’ weight, the additional rocket storage bulk could pose logistical and financial barriers. As such, the group’s paper encourages additional explorations into new construction designs, such as low-volume, lightweight balloon turbines and building from materials harvested on Mars itself—a concept that is already being explored for NASA’s upcoming return to the Moon in anticipation of an eventual permanent lunar base.

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A 600 acre, 1,500 employee electric vehicle battery recycling facility will soon break ground outside of Charleston, South Carolina, providing a major boost in clearing one of the biggest hurdles currently facing EV adoption. Once completed, Redwood Materials’ Battery Materials Campus will break down end-of-life lithium-ion batteries into their raw materials such as copper, cobalt, and nickel within its 100 percent electric factory facilities. From there, new cathode and anode products can be built and subsequently used once again in future EV manufacturing, thus extending material lifespans while lowering overall vehicle costs for consumers.

According to Redwood’s estimates, the campus will eventually be able to provide 100 GWh in recycled components per year—enough to annually power an estimated 1 million EVs—and can eventually scale upwards as demand grows. The startup already has a similar facility in Nevada, which announced its own expansion earlier this year.

[Related: Why solid state batteries are the next frontier for EV makers.]

Redwood’s newest project is located in what is becoming known as America’s Battery Belt—a region stretching from the Midwest to the Deep South increasingly focused on the production of electric vehicles and EV components. Green energy and EV advocates argue that shifting production stateside is crucial for economics, the environment, and human rights. Currently, the vast majority of EV parts such as the rare earth minerals needed for batteries are mined overseas in countries like China, resulting in massive ethical and ecological concerns. As Engadget notes, the company alleges its methods lowers battery component production’s CO2 emissions by around 80 percent when compared to current standard Asian supply chain outputs.

Charleston’s geographic location is a strategic choice, given its ports. As CEO JB Straubel explained in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, there currently aren’t enough recyclable EV materials to meet industry demands, and importation is still a necessary step in the process. Straubel estimates that between 40 and 60 percent of its Redwood Materials’ South Carolina facility products will be made from recycled materials.

[Related: You throw out 44 pounds of electronic waste a year. Here’s how to keep it out of the dump.]

One of the biggest hurdles in electric vehicle adoption is the e-waste generated from depleted “end-of-life” lithium-ion batteries. Thankfully, industry pushes such as Redwoods’ latest venture furthers our capability of breaking down these power sources and recycling the bulk of what would otherwise be relegated as potentially harmful trash. Construction on South Carolina’s Battery Materials Campus is set to begin early next year, with an eye to begin initial recycling processes by the end of 2023.

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Last month, the US Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice announced more than a million dollars in penalties against companies for polluting local waterways. The culprits? Four solar farms in Illinois, Alabama, and Idaho.

“The development of solar energy is a key component of [the Biden] administration’s efforts to combat climate change,” said Larry Starfield, an administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a press release on November 14. “These settlements send an important message to the site owners of solar farm projects that these facilities must be planned and built-in compliance with all environmental laws.”

Each of the large-scale solar projects, which shared a common contractor, violated construction permits and mismanaged storm water controls, causing harmful buildup of sediment in waterways. As private companies race to build renewable capability, the EPA’s case with the four solar farms illustrates a central challenge: While gleaning energy from the sun might be a panacea to overconsumption of fossil fuels, building a clean power grid that can harness solar energy is often more complicated.

[Related: Solar power got cheap. So why aren’t we using it more?]

Experts say a path to net zero emissions will almost certainly require solar energy—and that calls for a hard look at the challenges these sweeping facilities face with clean construction and more ethical production of panels.

Building and recycling solar panels

Most solar panels used in the US today start out as sand. Scientists purify the grains into almost pure crystalline silicon, but the process requires a large amount of electricity. Almost 80 percent of a solar panel’s carbon footprint can come from this purification process alone, according to Annick Anctil, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan State University.

“Where that electricity is coming from is really important,” Anctil says. “If you’re making solar panels in a place where electricity uses coal or natural gas, that makes your solar panels not as green as if you’re able to produce it from solar energy.”

Solar panels are built to last about 30 years. At the end of their lifecycle, installers can either throw them into a landfill or recycle them, but there isn’t much infrastructure for reusing the materials in the panels since the industry is new. 

Government agencies, organizations, research groups, and companies worldwide have begun developing technologies and creating recycling programs to break down solar panels and materials. The US-based Solar Energy Industries Association, for instance, has been creating a network to help consumers identify where they can recycle their solar panels and installers find a place to purchase recycled modules, Anctil explains. The association reports it’s processed over 4 million pounds of solar panels and related equipment since its recycling program launched in 2016. Luckily, if panels wind up in landfills, the glass and silicon materials are not toxic, Anctil says. (She does note that the metal frame needs to be broken down, too.)

There isn’t comprehensive data about how many solar panels are recycled versus thrown away in the US. Large-scale production of solar panels only began about 10 years ago, so it’s likely that most haven’t reached the end of their life cycle yet.

Grading land for solar farms

Solar panels are easier and cheaper to install on leveled ground, which often requires companies to mow down trees and local vegetation. Leveling, or grading, the land can lead to soil erosion and eventually sediment runoff, where storms force eroded soil to travel downhill, sometimes into waterways. Too much soil in bodies of water can disrupt local ecosystems, hurt the plants and animals that live in them, and damage drinking water treatment systems.

In the recent settlement, the EPA and Department of Justice charged the four solar farms with violating the Clean Water Act by failing to prepare for the sediment runoff created during construction. The agencies alleged that two of the farms in Idaho and Alabama even discharged sediment illegally into nearby waterways.

Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San José State University in California whose research focuses on solar energy commodity chains, says these violations appeared to be “really manageable problems” that the companies should have had under control. “Where [solar farms often] go wrong is they assume they understand the landscape,” Mulvaney says. But when building starts, “they run into endangered species conflicts, stormwater issues, and air pollution issues.”

Grading the land for solar farms “is like any other road construction project,” Anctil says. “It’s just unfortunate that some companies in the construction [process] just didn’t care or weren’t careful.” The runoff from building these recent solar farms could have been avoided by, say, planting vegetation to catch some of the soil and water.

Anctil and Mulvaney say that regulations can help prevent these kinds of water and pollution issues from construction projects. While the bidding process for projects varies from state to state, stronger government assessments could ensure that solar companies preserve the environments they’re otherwise capitalizing on.

Since farmland is already flat and offers room to scale up, it’s been a prime candidate for solar projects—with energy companies incentivizing farmers with financial returns. But converting this land into solar farms also presents cultural and wildlife issues. Farmers may be reluctant to see their land converted from rows of crops to rows of synthetic panels. 

While the construction process has the potential to cause significant land disturbance, solar farms do offer some immediate benefits to farmers and the environment, David Murray, director of solar policy for American Clean Power, wrote in a statement to Popular Science. In some setups, growers can plant crops between or alongside the panels. “Ecosystem services are an understated benefit of large-scale solar sites and once operational, solar facilities yield less nutrient runoff and require far less pesticide and herbicides compared to row crop agriculture,” Murray writes. 

Accountability from start to finish

The four solar farms that violated the Clean Water Act are all subsidiaries of international finance and investment companies. But Mulvaney argues that what’s even worse are inexperienced solar developers that build a single arm and then soon disband. He’s seen “quite a few projects” handed to these temporary companies.

“When you have these entities that do one-offs and then vaporize, there’s absolutely no accountability at all,” he says. “That’s a structural problem.”

[Related: Dams show promise for sustainable food systems, but we should tread lightly]

While public and private groups might feel the urgency in building renewable energy systems, it’s important to be cautious about how the systems themselves are built and sourced, Anctil says.

“The problem is people tend to just look at how much electricity is going to be produced,” she explains. “We need to plan and choose panels considering not just the electricity production but the full lifecycle.”

A more environmentally conscious process is needed from start to finish. Sand should be legally and ethically mined, Anctil says. Developers also need to consider how to build sustainable  solar arrays that minimize the impacts on the local habitat. Better recycling plans should be in place for the solar panels once they reach the end of their lives. And like with any other major construction project, renewable energy companies should take heed of state and federal environmental regulations.

“I’m not trying to kill solar,” Anctil says. “It’s making sure that in 5 or 10 years from now, we don’t find out there’s a new environmental disaster.” 

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Solar power grid installation costs have dropped precipitously over the past decade, with arrays averaging nearly 90 percent cheaper in 2021 than in 2010. This is due to a number of key advancements in scalability, materials, and rapidly improving technology—but nothing lasts forever. Industry analysts predict solar power’s cost-benefit ratio is largely stabilizing, and may even backslide as global markets and supply chains constrict.

This also means that for solar power to continue to transition society towards green, renewable energy systems, designers will need to get creative on how to keep costs down while maintaining efficacy.

One potential solution courtesy of the solar installation startup, Erthos, is to embrace a hyper-minimalist approach to their panel arrays. The company recently announced a partnership with Industrial Sun for a radically designed, 100 megawatt (mW) utility-scale solar farm in Texas that does away with traditional elevated, racked setups in favor of installing panels directly across the ground. If successful, it could revolutionize the solar industry—and ease the concerns of understandably critical skeptics.

[Related: These powerful solar panels are as thin as a human hair.]

Picture a standard solar panel setup: the photovoltaic cells framed and propped up above the ground using metal frames and protective glass cases. Currently, the designs required to physically encase and support solar panel farms comprise around 20 percent of their total price tag. If engineers were to do away with them entirely, then overall costs could dramatically decrease while simultaneously cutting down on additional resource mining, production, and consumption. That’s exactly what Erthos aims to do, although there are a few reasons why this has never been tried at scale.

As Canary Media reports, solar experts have pointed towards issues such as the lack of airflow around a ground-installation scenario, which could hypothetically increase humidity and therefore attract organic materials like mold and fungus. Then there’s the ability to access broken panels in the middle of arrays without stepping on or damaging its surrounding siblings. Add ground instability and everyday varmints moseying around the areas, and there could be a recipe for failure.

[Related: This new floating solar farm follows the sun like a flower.]

By removing aluminum and glass racks and trackers, the company asserts it can construct a project in half the time on one-third of the land using 70 percent less cable and trenching. Proper protective fencing will keep critters and plant life away from the paneling, and small, mobile robots will safely traverse across the arrays’ surfaces for cleaning and minor repairs.

No one at Erthos is arguing there won’t be further opportunities for optimization and improvement, but as the company’s chief marketing and product officer, Daniel Flanigan, posited last year, one could look at traditional solar farming methods as the truly inefficient and burdensome approach compared to in-ground alternatives. Traditional methods, he adds, require triple the land, trenching, and cable requirements, large amounts of steel and other natural resources, driving piles into the ground, and all the additional mechanical complexities and issues that come with that.

Research estimates that wind and solar power sources need to comprise at least 40 percent of global energy by 2030 in order to realistically stem the worst effects of climate change—up from the estimated 10 percent currently used today. With such a giant shift, ongoing efforts to diminish the energy sector’s effects on local wildlife are crucial.

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An essential part of any space mission is power. If a spacecraft runs out of energy, the communications go down, the craft becomes unsteerable, and life support systems shut off—a scenario that’s the stuff of sci-fi nightmares. 

For a spacecraft, the sun is a particularly vital supplier of energy, and the recent Artemis I mission proved just how powerful it can be to harness solar energy in space. During the nearly month-long flight around the moon, NASA tested all functions of the uncrewed spacecraft, including the Orion crew capsule’s innovative solar panels. The vehicle’s solar panels exceeded expectations, proving themselves to be a key technology for the future of human space exploration.

“Initial results show that the arrays are providing significantly more power than expected,” says Philippe Berthe, an engineer who manages the Orion European Service Module Project Project at the European Space Agency (ESA).

[Related: Welcome back to Earth, Orion]

Engineers from ESA and the European company Airbus collaborated with NASA and Lockheed Martin to build the Orion spacecraft, the component that separates from the launch rockets and will ferry astronauts to their destination and back during subsequent Artemis flights. The Paris-based agency’s main contribution to Orion is the European Service Module, which houses the solar panels and other critical systems. 

Orion has four wings, each nearly the length of a British double-decker bus, that unfolded 18 minutes into its journey while still in low-Earth orbit. Each of these wings holds three gallium arsenide solar panels, a particularly efficient and durable type of solar cell made for space. Together, the four wings generate “the equivalent of two households’” worth of power, according to Berthe. 

This type of solar cell is commonly used by military and research satellites. What’s innovative about Orion’s panels is how they’re maneuvered. “Usually solar arrays have only one axis of rotation so that they can follow the sun,” says Berthe. The ones on the capsule, however, can move in two directions, folding up to withstand the pressures of spaceflight and the heat of Orion’s powerful thrusters.

During Artemis I’s 26-day mission, the combined NASA and ESA team tested all aspects of the solar panels, including their ability to rotate, unfold, and produce power. According to Berthe, the panels worked so well they provided 15 percent more power than what engineers had projected. That has consequences for future Artemis missions: “Either the size of the solar arrays could be reduced,” he says, “or they could provide more power to Orion.” Smaller solar arrays could reduce the cost of missions, but more power could allow for additional capabilities onboard the crewed spacecraft.

These nimble solar panels are also equipped with cameras on their wingtips, which Matthias Gronowski, Airbus Chief Engineer for the European Service Module, likens to a “selfie stick” for the mission. These cameras have provided incredible images of the spacecraft as it cruised between the moon and Earth, and can even help the mission engineers inspect the spacecraft for damage. Because the arrays are maneuverable, they act like robotic arms, providing a “chance to inspect the whole vehicle,” says Gronowski.

[Related: These powerful solar panels are as thin as human hair]

Artemis I is NASA’s first step in testing the technology needed to return humans to the moon, and eventually venture further to Mars using the Orion crew capsule. The new lunar program plans to carry humans beyond low-Earth orbit, where the International Space Station resides, for the first time since the 1970s, including the first woman and first person of color to set foot on the moon.

The solar panels are one part of the pioneering technology of Artemis and Orion, and this first test flight proves they are a reliable technology for distant space travel. Moveable arrays like those on Artemis I will be key for future missions that require even more powerful engines, allowing the panels to shift into a protective configuration as the spacecraft speeds up. 

“We are very proud to be part of the program,” says Gronowski. “And we are very proud to be basically bringing humans back to the moon.”

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Since the 1950s, scientists have quested to bring nuclear fusion—the sort of reaction that powers the sun—down to Earth.

Just after 1 a.m. on December 5, scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California finally reached a major milestone in the history of nuclear fusion: achieving a reaction that creates more energy than scientists put in.

This moment won’t bring a fusion power plant to your city just yet—but it is an important step to that goal, one which scientists have sought from the start of their quest.

“This lays the groundwork,” says Tammy Ma, a scientist at LLNL, in a US Department of Energy press conference today. “It demonstrates the basic scientific feasibility.”

On the outside, NIF is a nondescript industrial building in a semi-arid valley east of San Francisco. On the inside, scientists have quite literally been tinkering with the energy of the stars (alternating with NIF’s other major task, nuclear weapons research).

[Related: Physicists want to create energy like stars do. These two ways are their best shot.]

Nuclear fusion is how the sun generates the heat and light that warm and illuminate the Earth to sustain life. It involves crushing hydrogen atoms together. The resulting reaction creates helium and energy—quite a bit of energy. You’re alive today because of it, and the sun doesn’t produce a wisp of greenhouse gas in the process.

But to turn fusion into anything resembling an Earthling’s energy source, you need conditions that match the heart of the sun: millions of degrees in temperature. Creating a facsimile of that environment on Earth takes an immense amount of power—far eclipsing the amount of researchers usually end up producing.

Lasers aimed at a tiny target

For decades, scientists have struggled to answer one fundamental question: How do you fine-tune a fusion experiment to create the right conditions to actually gain energy?

NIF’s answer involves an arsenal of high-powered laser beams. First, experts stuff a peanut-sized, gold-plated, open-ended cylinder (known as a hohlraum) with a peppercorn-sized pellet containing deuterium and tritium, forms of hydrogen atoms that come with extra neutrons. 

Then, they fire a laser—which splits into 192 finely tuned beams that, in turn, enter the hohlraum from both ends and strike its inside wall. 

“We don’t just smack the target with all of the laser energy all at once,” says Annie Kritcher, a scientist at NIF, at the press conference. “We divide very specific powers at very specific times to achieve the desired conditions.”

As the chamber heats up to millions of degrees under the laser barrage, it starts producing a cascade of X-rays that violently wash over the fuel pellet. They shear off the pellet’s carbon outer shell and begin to compress the hydrogen inside—heating it to hundreds of millions of degrees—squeezing and crushing the atoms into pressures and densities higher than the center of the sun.

If all goes well, that kick-starts fusion.

A new world record

When NIF launched in 2009, the fusion world record belonged to the Joint European Torus (JET) in the United Kingdom. In 1997, using a magnet-based method known as a tokamak, scientists at JET produced 67 percent of the energy they put in. 

That record stood for over two decades until late 2021, when NIF scientists bested it, reaching 70 percent. In its wake, many laser-watchers whispered the obvious question: Could NIF reach 100 percent? 

[Related: In 5 seconds, this fusion reactor made enough energy to power a home for a day]

But fusion is a notoriously delicate science, and the results of a given fusion experiment are difficult to predict. Any object that’s this hot will want to cool off against scientists’ wishes. Tiny, accidental differences in the setup—from the angles of the laser beams to slight flaws in the pellet shape—can make immense differences in a reaction’s outcome.

It’s for that reason that each NIF test, which takes about a billionth of a second, involves months of meticulous planning.

“All that work led up to a moment just after 1 a.m. last Monday, when we took a shot … and as the data started to come in, we saw the first indications that we’d produced more fusion energy than the laser input,” says Alex Zylstra, a scientist at NIF, at the press conference.

This time, the NIF’s laser pumped 2.05 megajoules into the pellet—and the pellet burst out 3.15 megajoules (enough to power the average American home for about 43 minutes). Not only have NIF scientists achieved that 100-percent ignition milestone, they’ve gone farther, reaching more than 150 percent.

“To be honest…we’re not surprised,” says Mike Donaldson, a systems engineer at General Fusion, a Vancouver, Canada-based private firm that aims to build a commercially viable fusion plant by the 2030s, who was not involved with the NIF experiment. “I’d say this is right on track. It’s really a culmination of lots of years of incremental progress, and I think it’s fantastic.”

But there’s a catch

These numbers only account for the energy delivered by the laser—omitting the fact that this laser, one of the largest and most intricate on the planet, needed about 300 megajoules from California’s electric grid to power on in the first place.

“The laser wasn’t designed to be efficient,” says Mark Herrmann, a scientist at LLNL, at the press conference. “The laser was designed to give as much juice as possible.” Balancing that energy-hungry laser may seem daunting, but researchers are optimistic. The laser was built on late-20th-century technology, and NIF leaders say they do see a pathway to making it more efficient and even more powerful. 

Even if they do that, experts need to figure out how to fire repeated shots that gain energy. That’s another massive challenge, but it’s a key step toward making this a viable base for a power plant.

[Related: Inside France’s super-cooled, laser-powered nuclear test lab]

“Scientific results like today’s are fantastic,” says Donaldson. “We also need to focus on all the other challenges that are required to make fusion commercializable.”

A fusion power plant may very well involve a different technique. Many experimental reactors like JET and the under-construction ITER in southern France, in lieu lasers, try to recreate the sun by using powerful magnets to shape and sculpt super-hot plasma within a specially designed chamber. Most of the private-sector fusion efforts that have mushroomed of late are keying their efforts toward magnetic methods, too.

In any event, it will be a long time before you read an article like this on a device powered by cheap fusion energy—but that day has likely come an important milestone closer.

“It’s been 60 years since ignition was first dreamed of using lasers,” Ma said at the press conference. “It’s really a testament to the perseverance and dedication of the folks that made this happen. It also means we have the perseverance to get to fusion energy on the grid.”

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Six years ago, an MIT engineering team at the university’s Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory (ONE Lab) developed a solar cell so thin it could rest atop a soap bubble. While impressive, the manufacturing requirements and cost unfortunately prohibited any viable large-scale plans. This week, however, ONE Lab revealed a new, similarly ultra-thin solar cell material that is one-hundredth the weight of conventional panels, while also potentially generating 18 times more power-per-kilogram compared to traditional solar technology. Not only that, but its production methods show promising potential for scalability and major manufacturing.

As a press release from MIT explains, powerful solar cells’ fragile natures require thick glass and aluminum encasements for protection, thus limiting their versatility and implementation opportunities. Using semiconducting inks printed onto material thinner than a single strand of human hair, the team was able to subsequently glue the panels onto a layer of Dyneema, a protective, ultra-lightweight composite fabric weighing only 13 grams-per-square meter. The resultant microns-thin sheet could then be laminated atop a variety of surfaces and materials—think tent exteriors to generate power during disaster relief efforts, or drone wings to extend their potential flight times.

[Related: This new floating solar farm follows the sun like a flower.]

Despite its incredibly miniature design, the new material packs a lot of storage potential. Speaking with MIT, Mayuran Saravanapavanantham, one of the team’s paper co-authors and an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student, offered a standard home rooftop solar array for comparison. “A typical rooftop solar installation in Massachusetts is about 8,000 watts,” Saravanapavanantham explained. “To generate that same amount of power, our fabric photovoltaics would only add about 20 kilograms (44 pounds) to the roof of a house.”

Durability is also a key component for any viable solar cell array, a feature the ONE Lab team demonstrated in its new design by reportedly rolling and unrolling the fabric over 500 times, which only resulted in a less than 10 percent loss in potential power generation.

[Related: A tiny, foldable solar panel is going to space.]

Unfortunately, MIT’s impressive solar fabric isn’t quite ready to sew into your clothes just yet. The team is still searching for the right material to encase the product—because the cells are made from carbon-based organic material, exposure to the natural moisture and oxygen in the air would result in a quick decline in capabilities.

“We are working to remove as much of the non-solar-active material as possible while still retaining the form factor and performance of these ultralight and flexible solar structures,” Jeremiah Mwaura, one of the paper’s additional co-authors, explained to MIT. Once that problem is addressed, the solar fabric could find its way onto countless surfaces to add much-needed green, renewable power to daily life.

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Renters, homeowners, and DIY-ers don’t always have the time, money, or skills to accomplish the home improvement tasks on their lists. We get it. Fortunately, one of the benefits of living in a time of rapid innovation is that technology can easily step in where our brains, brawn, and bank accounts fall short. This year, you can upgrade your living space with an easy-install smart showerhead, use spray paint that doesn’t drip, or even consider the most compact in-home water recycling system we’ve ever seen—and that’s just the tip of the screw.

Looking for the complete list of 100 winners? Check it out here.

Grand Award Winner: Smart water recycling by Hydraloop: A compact, easy-to-use gray water recycling system

Hydraloop

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Gray water is the stuff that spirals down your shower and sink drains, and it’s mostly clean, usable H2O that goes to immediate waste. Recycling this wastewater is doable, but the required systems are frequently large, maintenance-intensive, and involve a complicated jumble of pipes and valves. Hydraloop founder Arthur Valkieser changed that by redesigning existing water treatment technology to eliminate filters, and shrinking his device into something that looks a lot more like a modern household appliance. As water fills the Hydraloop’s tank, sediment sinks to the bottom and lighter grime like soap and hair floats to the top, where it foams up and over as waste. Then, a torrent of air bubbles grabs any free-floating solids and removes them, too. The gray water then enters an aerobic bioreactor where live bacteria feast on any remaining organic material and soap. Every four hours after that, UV-C light disinfects the stored water to kill any remaining bacteria, and the non-potable (but sanitized) water is ready to go back into your washing machine, toilet tank, or garden.

Timberline Solar shingles by GAF Energy: Roofing and renewable energy in one

GAF Energy

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Installing traditional rack-mounted solar panels requires drilling through your existing roof, creating holes that can lead to leaks and water damage if they’re improperly sealed. GAF Energy’s Timberline Solar shingles, however, nail down just like regular asphalt roofing, thanks to a flexible thermoplastic polymer backing. With that supporting a durable photovoltaic surface, they’ll hang tight in the rain, hail, and winds up to 130 mph. Even brighter: These shingles have serious curb appeal and you won’t have to choose between spending on a roof replacement or investing in solar—you can do both at the same time.

3-in-1 Digital Laser Measurer by Dremel: Precise measurements of uneven surfaces

Dremel

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Anyone who’s tried to measure an odd-shaped object knows the struggle of fumbling with a flexible tape, laboring through numerous calculations, or painstakingly determining the length of a string that once followed the contours of the piece in question. Dremel’s 3-in-1 digital laser measurer makes this job easier with a snap-on wheel you can roll for up to 65 feet along any surface. On top of that, it’s got a laser measurer that’s accurate within an eighth of an inch, and a 5-foot tape for all your in-home measuring needs.

757 PowerHouse by Anker: A longer-lasting portable power station

Anker

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Whether you need portable outdoor power or are trying to sustain your home through a blackout, the lithium iron phosphate cells inside the Anker 757 PowerHouse will keep your devices juiced for more than 3,000 cycles. That means if you dispense and refill its full 1,500-watt output once a day, this picnic-cooler-sized hub will last for more than eight years. It’s got one car outlet, two USB-C ports, four USB-A connections, and six standard household AC plugs. Bonus: Its flat top allows it to double as a sturdy off-grid table.

Glidden Max-Flex Spray Paint by PPG: Drip-proof spray paint

PPG

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Few things are more disheartening to a DIY-er than completing a project, shaking up a can of spray paint, and then seeing your first coat start dripping all over your masterpiece. Applying a smooth sheen of color takes practice, and PPG seems to understand that not everyone has the time to learn the fine points of pigment application. The company’s Glidden Max-Flex all-surface paint eschews the traditional conical spray for a unique wide-fan pattern that not only refuses to drip, but dries in minutes. The lacquer-based formulation works on wood, glass, and metal and is available in 16 matte shades ranging from “In the Buff” to “Black Elegance.”

M18 18V Cordless Tire Inflator by Milwaukee: Faster, cooler roadside assistance

Milwaukee

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It goes without saying that cordless inflators produce lots of air, but they also generate a bunch of heat. That’s a problem when your pump conks out after 5 minutes and you have to wait for it to cool down before you can keep filling your tires. Not only will Milwaukee’s M18 cordless tire inflator push out 1.41 standard cubic feet of air per minute—making it the fastest 18-volt cordless tire inflator around—but its internal fan will keep it chugging along for up to 20 minutes. You might not even need to use it that long, either: It’ll top off a 33-inch light duty truck tire in less than a minute.

Smart Showerhead by hai: No plumber necessary

hai

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Smart showerheads frequently require skilled experts to install, and some even feature components that are built into the wall of your bathroom. That’s not accessible for the everyday homeowner. You don’t need tools or special skills to hook up Hai’s smart Bluetooth showerhead, though. Just unscrew the old head, twist on the new one, connect the app, and you’ve got immediate control over both temperature and flow. Use the adjustable spray slider on the head to go from a high-pressure stream to a light mist, and choose your preferred heat level from the app. Plus, customizable LED lights will let you know when you’ve reached your self-imposed limit, saving water.

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British airplane engine maker Rolls-Royce and low-cost airline easyJet announced this week that they had successfully powered a modern airplane engine using 100% hydrogen fuel. The test took place at a military facility in the UK, with the engine remaining stationary on the ground. 

Since the aviation industry currently produces about 2% of global carbon emissions, there are serious reasons to develop a greener way to fuel planes. Rolls-Royce (the aerospace and defense contractor, not the similarly named car brand that is owned by BMW) is hoping that hydrogen might hold the answers it needs to keep selling its turbofans and other engines into the future. 

Most airplane engines run on jet fuel, which is based on kerosene. Unfortunately for the climate, that’s a fossil fuel that releases CO2 when burned. Some airlines mix in sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) that are chemically identical to kerosene, though are manufactured from renewable starting materials like used cooking oil, food scraps, and corn stover (the remains of corn cobs after the harvest). Still, because SAFs are chemically the same as kerosene, they release just as much CO2 when they are burned—the benefits are just that the processes required to manufacture them may be more environmentally sustainable.

Hydrogen offers a potentially better option as it contains no carbon. When it’s burned, the main byproduct is water vapor (though there are still some pollutants like nitrous oxide). As long as the hydrogen is produced using wind, wave, or other renewable forms of electricity, it can legitimately be a carbon-neutral fuel. For this test, Rolls-Royce used “green hydrogen” from the European Marine Energy Centre in the Orkney Islands. It was produced using tidal energy, rather than reconstituted from methane gas.

Hydrogen can potentially power planes in two different ways: As the fuel source for an electricity generating fuel cell that powers an electric motor, or by being directly burned. Rolls-Royce and easyJet took the second approach using a Rolls-Royce AE 2100-A regional aircraft engine that had been modified to burn hydrogen instead of jet fuel. Given the success of this test, they plan to work up to a full-scale ground test using a Rolls-Royce Pearl 15 jet engine and eventually a flight test using civil aero engines.

Of course, hydrogen comes with its own host of problems. It is significantly less energy dense than kerosene, so aircraft would have to carry larger amounts of fuel to cover the same distance. It’s also a gas at temperatures above −423°F (−253°C), which makes storing it more challenging. For Rolls-Royce’s test engine, it was compressed to 200 bar (roughly 100 times the typical tire pressure of a car). This makes it significantly more viable for short haul flights, rather than trans-oceanic and other long haul routes. 

Still, there are promising signs that hydrogen could have a future in the world of aviation—especially as the industry strives to be carbon neutral by 2050. Johan Lundgren, the CEO of easyJet, called it “a huge step forward” in the press release. Similarly, Grazia Vittadini, the Chief Technology Officer of Rolls-Royce, said, “The success of this hydrogen test is an exciting milestone… We are pushing the boundaries to discover the zero carbon possibilities of hydrogen, which could help reshape the future of flight.”

Rolls-Royce isn’t the only aerospace company exploring hydrogen as an option. Airbus has plans to get an A380 in the air with a hydrogen engine by 2026. The European Union hopes that by 2035, short-range flights would be possible, and that by 2050 up to 40 percent of flights in Europe would be powered by hydrogen. 

But make no mistake: No matter how successful Rolls-Royce and easyJet’s tests are, we are still a long way from large numbers of hydrogen-powered jets taking to the skies. 

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Two researchers at the University of Notre Dame in collaboration with South Korea’s Kyung Hee University recently utilized quantum computing to help develop a new transparent window coating capable of blocking solar heat. In findings published in ACS Energy Levels, Tengfei Luo, Notre Dame’s Dorini Family Professor of Energy Studies, and postdoctoral associate, Seongmin Kim, worked together to devise their transparent radiative cooler (TRC) layer, which only permits external visible light that doesn’t raise indoor temperatures, thus cutting buildings’ cooling costs by as much as a third of current rates. According to the International Energy Agency, air conditioning and electric fans comprise 20 percent of buildings’ energy costs around the world—roughly 10 percent of human electricity consumption.

To determine the absolute best materials configuration, the team relied on machine learning and the promising field of quantum computing for a solution. Although in its relatively early phases of development, quantum computing offers immense potential due to its ability to far surpass traditional computing methods. Currently, even the most advanced of classical supercomputers rely on a binary state—representing information as 1’s and 0’s—to do all their calculations, meaning that there are limits to what they can and can’t achieve. Quantum computing, in contrast, can represent information as either 1, 0, or a combination of the two. This hypothetically gives scientists a massive advantage in numerous fields, such as natural science simulations and nuclear fusion research.

[Related: In photos: Journey to the center of a quantum computer.]

In order for Luo and Kim’s TRC design to work properly, incredibly thin layers of materials needed to be compiled in an exact way to ensure optimal heat reduction. In this case, machine learning and quantum computing teamed up to test models within fractions of a second, parsing through virtually ever possible mixture and material combination to find the best one.

The result is a 1.2 micron-thick layering of silica, alumina, and titanium oxide upon a glass base that is then coated with the same polymer used in contact lenses. The new combination subsequently outperformed other heat-reduction glass coating currently available. “I think the quantum computing strategy is as important as the material itself,” Luo said in a press release from the University of Notre Dame yesterday. “Using this approach, we were able to find the best-in-class material, design a radiative cooler and experimentally prove its cooling effect.”

As advancements progress, these kinds of transparent heat-reducing layers can be increasingly applied to windows and glass structures in order to help dramatically lower energy emissions as the world races to stave off climate change’s worst potential futures.

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Nearly every new home and commercial building in Washington state will be required to install a heat pump in under a year. This follows the Climate Commitment Act signed into law in the state last year, which aims to limit pollution to meet greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals. 

Back in April, the Washington State Building Code Council (SBCC) voted to require the installation of heat pumps for new commercial and multi-family buildings. The council recently voted in favor of requiring it for new residential construction as well, both of which are expected to go into effect in July 2023. 

These updates to the state’s commercial and residential codes encourage building electrification, which is a major step in phasing out the use of fossil fuels for heating and cooling.

A heat pump can ideally replace both a heater and an air conditioner because the technology allows it to absorb heat energy and move it from one place to another. Compared to standard gas heating equipment like furnaces, air-source heat pumps are more energy-efficient because they use electricity to transfer heat from outdoors to indoors when heating and vice versa for cooling. 

[Related: How heat pumps can help fight global warming.]

“Since they move heat around rather than generating it from burning something, they are much more efficient than combustion heating,” says Jonathan J. Buonocore, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health at the Boston University School of Public Health. “By replacing a natural gas furnace, oil heater, wood stove, or some other combustion source, you’re benefiting the environment by replacing a source of emissions of greenhouse gasses or other air pollution.”

A 2021 study published in Environmental Research Letters found that 70 percent of US households could reduce climate damages caused by CO2 emissions related to the house’s energy consumption by simply installing a heat pump. For instance, if all single-family homes used heat pumps, residential carbon emissions may be reduced by 32 percent. The adoption of heat pumps may also reduce financial costs for about 32 percent of households.

“In new construction, installing a heat pump can be cheaper than extending a natural gas connection, installing a furnace, and installing an air conditioner,” says Parth Vaishnav, assistant professor of sustainable systems at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability who was involved in the study.

About 88 percent of single-family, new construction homes in Washington already use some sort of electric primary space heating in 2018, according to a report from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. With the High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Act (HEEHRA), low-income households who want to move away from combustion heating may be able to get a rebate covering the cost of a heat pump installation up to $8,000.

In a recent Scientific Reports study, Buonocore and his co-authors analyzed building energy data and identified the ‘Falcon Curve,’ the monthly profile of US energy consumption. Peak total energy consumption occurred in December and January for heating and July and August for cooling.

[Related: Energy costs hit low-income Americans the hardest.]

Policymakers can anticipate this coming electricity demand by putting more non-combustion renewable sources on the grid to supply electricity during the winter, says Buonocore. The installation of heat pumps would be an efficient electrification technology for building decarbonization.

Without energy storage or other ways to manage the grid load, meeting the winter peak in electricity demand with renewable energy would require a 28-fold increase in January wind generation or a 303-fold increase in January solar energy generation. However, if buildings were to have efficient technologies like air source or ground source heat pumps, only 4.5 times more winter wind generation or 36 times more solar energy would be needed to meet the winter peak, ideally flattening the Falcon Curve to an extent.

“Heat pumps make it possible to efficiently use electricity for heating,” says Vaishnav. “If that electricity is produced cleanly—by wind, solar, or nuclear power—then we can eliminate the CO2 emissions that come from burning fossil fuel in a furnace.”

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It’s hard to look around and not see it. Maybe if you’re in the middle of the woods, or high up on a mountain. But even then, plastic is everywhere. 

Each year, companies produce billions of pounds of plastic waste., and the majority of single-use plastics are produced by just a handful of groups. Still, corporate accountability isn’t always robust. Even in the cases where companies do make commitments to reduce plastic consumption, in actuality, the burden often falls on the consumer, and promises frequently don’t reduce virgin plastic consumption, a new study published Friday in One Earth shows.

“We need to turn off the tap of plastic pollution,” Zoie Diana, author of the study and PhD candidate at Duke University tells PopSci. “The transparency has to start from the companies.”

The team at Duke studied commitments from 974 of the world’s largest companies, including  Amazon, ExxonMobil, and Johnson & Johnson, and found that instead of reducing virgin plastic, corporations opted for promoting recycling or lightweighting their packaging. These options are not good solutions for several reasons, Diana says. 

Currently, only nine percent of plastic waste is actually recycled globally, and it may be even lower in the US. “And of that nine percent, only ten percent has been recycled more than once in the past 50 years,” Diana says. When we put plastic in the recycling bin, very little of what we intend to recycle actually end up reused. “Recycling just delays plastic disposal,” Diana says. 

The other big commitment the researchers observed is lightweighting—where companies make their products or packaging using less plastic. You may have noticed Coca-Cola bottles lining shelves become less heavy or smaller over time. Or, packaging for products found in Walmart stores may have become lighter too. These companies are just some of the groups who have opted to lightweight their products in an attempt to reduce plastic pollution.  

[Related: A close look at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch reveals a common culprit]

While making individual bottles less plastic-intensive may sound good in theory, but isn’t as sweet as it sounds. “If you’re producing more and more plastic bottles overall, or reinvesting any cost savings from lightweighting into new products that are made of plastic, then that’s an insufficient response. That’s not going to get us to reduce plastic pollution overall,” Diana says. 

Beyond deficient strategies, the researchers also found ambiguity to be a challenge. Although 72 percent of the companies studied did make a commitment to reducing plastic use, their commitments often involved insufficient strategies like these or were too vague to be assessed for progress. “89 percent made at least one commitment that was neither time-bound nor measurable,” Diana says.

On top of this, the majority of companies studied did not link plastic pollution with climate change. Beyond killing wildlife, accumulating in our food, and being linked to cancer and hormone disruption, plastic uses a lot of fossil fuels. Virgin plastic is quite literally made out of fossil fuels—crude oil is heated and distilled to turn into the material. And as fossil fuel use, which is the primary cause of climate change, continues to increase, commitments by companies considering their impacts on climate change are important, Diana says.

But there is hope in the form of legislation, Diana says. The United Nations Environment Assembly is working to have an international plastics treaty in place in 2024, which Diana hopes will work to target virgin plastic production. “I do think we need more emphasis on the ties between plastic pollution and climate change,” she says. “There’s a lot of overlap there. The treaty is definitely making me hopeful and excited.”

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On Sunday, the United Nations’ annual climate change conference came to a close in Sharm el-Shieth, Egypt, following two weeks of meetings and talks by over 200 countries. Issues ranging from funds for climate justice to maintaining the goals set by the 2015 Paris Climate Accords were on the to do list, and the conference was attended by more than 45,000 people.

Here are three of the main takeaways following year’s meeting.

A climate justice fund is finally in motion

After years of debate and resistance from wealthier countries, a deal was signed to create a fund to help developing countries pay for damages and losses due floods, storms, and drought that are made worse by climate change. The decision, called the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan, calls for a committee with representatives from 24 countries to figure out what form the fund should take, the countries should contribute, and where the money should go over the next year.

Countries primarily from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South Pacific, and Latin America fought to add this fund on the formal agenda, and maintained a pressure campaign on the matter of climate justice. Developing countries do little to contribute to the climate crisis, while facing the worst effects of it.

“The announcement offers hope to vulnerable communities all over the world who are fighting for their survival from climate stress, and gives some credibility to the COP process.”” said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s minister for climate change. Pakistan lead a group of 134 developing nations pushing for loss and damage payments, following the country’s devastating flooding over the summer. The devastating floods pushed one-third of the country under water and was exacerbated by global warming. It was responsible for 1,500 deaths and caused roughly $30 billion in damages, all as Pakistan contributes less than 1 percent of the world’s emissions.

Fossil fuel presence is seen on the ground and in the agreements at COP 27

Roughly 636 representatives from fossil fuel companies were part of representative delegations and trade teams, much to the frustration of climate activists. A final deal brokered by the host Egyptian delegation did not explicitly put phasing down fossil fuels in the final text of this year’s agreement. The final agreement instead encourages “efforts towards the phase down of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”

The deal also calls for the phasing down of unlimited fossil fuel powers and some fossil fuel subsidies, but the use of fossil fuels was affirmed for the near future, with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan saying the UAE would continue to deliver oil and gas “for as long as the world is in need.” The UAE, which produces an average of 3.2 million barrels of oil per day, will host next year’s climate summit (COP28) in Dubai.

The tepid language and incomplete fossil fuel reduction was seen as not enough by many attendees.

“Over the past year, our climate leadership has been tested in many ways,” said Dan Jorgensen, acting climate and energy minister for Denmark. “We are not calling for any sudden disruption of energy supplies, but we must equally recognize that the energy crisis is driven by the dependency on fossil fuels.”

[Related: Three nations pledge to reverse decades of destruction in the rainforest.]

Many countries are still committed to the 2.7 Fahrenheit (1.5 Celsius) target

Desipe a 50/50 chance that the world will exceed the 2.7 Fahrenheit (1.5 Celsius) of warming over the next five years, many more developed countries showed a commitment to strengthening the promise to keep that goal set in 2015 alive.

However, the final agreement did not include a reference to the phasing out of all fossil fuels, which many scientists believe is necessary to advance the decision made during COP26 in 2021 to phase down the use of coal.

“The current text is not enough. But we’ve shown with the loss and damage fund that we can do the impossible. So we know we can come back next year and get rid of fossil fuels once and for all,” said Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, the Climate Envoy of the Marshall Islands, who along with other island states fear near total destruction if temperatures rise above this threshold.

Commitment and belief in this temperature threshold appears to be a difference between different major players. China has several concerns about the 1.5 goal. Li Shuo, a policy adviser for Greenpeace based in Beijing told The New York Times that the goal would put pressure on the Chinese government to implement a more stringent target for cutting greenhouse gases in China, which the government wants to avoid. Meanwhile, representatives from the United States and the EU both said that any final agreement must underscore the importance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees.

[Related: Why the 1.5-degree-Celsius climate goal still matters.]

Other key moments include the US and China re-kindling cooperation around climate change and Brazil’s president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declaring “Brazil is back” in the global climate fight. Lula defeated right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, who refused to hold the 2019 climate summit that was originally planned for Brazil and presided over mounting destruction of the rainforest.

The post 3 of the biggest climate decisions from COP27 appeared first on Popular Science.

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A new solar power farm prototype bobbing atop the waters of a large lake in the southwest Netherlands is stalking the sun’s movements to make the most out of its energy capabilities. As BBC News explained yesterday, a company called SolarisFloat‘s artificial island—dubbed Proteus after the Greek sea god—is a 38-meter-wide circular system comprised of 180 interconnected modular panels that not only produces around 70 kilowatts of peak power (kWp), but makes the most of its position by slowly following the sun’s trajectory as it arcs across the sky.

[Related: A tiny, foldable solar panel is going to space.]

Much like flowers shifting position as the day progresses, Proteus’ onboard technology allows its double-sided panels to turn in tandem with the sun’s movement in order to consistently generate as much solar power as possible. Because of this, SolarisFloat estimates Proteus can generate as much as 40 percent more energy than nonmoving arrays on land. Another benefit comes from its ability to maintain lower temperatures than land-based counterparts thanks to the water-cooled air underneath it.

There are a few limitations to a sun-tracking solar farm, however. For one thing, location matters—Proteus’ onboard tracking systems won’t mean much anywhere near the Equator, where the panels would stay virtually horizontal the entire day. Additionally, the setup would need to be installed in areas with comparatively weaker tidal currents and fair weather.

[Related: ‘Workhorse of batteries’ could give California tribe’s new clean-energy microgrid a jolt.]

Still, projects like Proteus can potentially help overcome one of the chief barriers to widespread solar power adoption—the comparatively massive amounts of space that panel arrays require to harvest their energy. One study from Leiden University in The Netherlands even estimates that solar farms need somewhere between 40-50 times the area of coal plants, and 90-100 times the land needed by the gas providers. Land value will only increase as the world continues transitioning towards completely renewable energy, meaning it’s likely that solar projects will compete against other vital usages like sustainable farming and forest seeding. Situating solar farms atop otherwise unused bodies of water could be a relatively simple, effective way to allow space for all of the required projects needed to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

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California is taking a small step towards its long-term goal of reaching 100 percent clean electricity by 2045 with a big investment in a hybrid energy storage system. Earlier this month, the California Energy Commission (CEC) awarded a $31 million grant towards the development of a microgrid for the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians. It’s one of the largest sums the CEC has given to a tribal government and the first award allocated from the state’s new $140 million Long-Duration Energy Storage Program, according to a November 3 announcement from the commission.  

The funding will support the creation of a long-duration storage system with the capacity to provide up to 10 hours of microgrid power on-demand. The goal is for this to serve as backup energy for the Viejas community to utilize during power outages, with the bonus potential of the tribe being able to use this system instead of the statewide electric grid when that source is under stress. John Christman, Chairman of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, also noted the importance of such a system that provides clean, renewable energy. 

“As a large-scale electricity consumer, we recognize our responsibility to lead by example in lessening our burden on the electric grid, and it is our sincere hope that the demonstrated financial and environmental merits of this project will serve as a repeatable model for others,” Christman said in the CEC statement.

Indian Energy, a Native American-owned microgrid developer and systems integrator, will lead production of the hybrid energy system. The CEC said it will be “one of the first of its kind in the country,” utilizing a network of solar panels and two different types of long-duration storage batteries to generate and capture clean energy. Indian Energy will supply around 30,000 solar panels to generate 15 megawatts of energy, while Eos Energy Enterprises will contribute a 35 megawatt-hour (MWh) zinc-based battery and Invinity Energy Systems will contribute a 10 MWh vanadium redox flow battery that can reserve the energy before it needs to be used. Utility Dive reports the tribe will later supply an additional 15 MWh of storage capacity, creating a 60 MWh system overall.

Part of what makes this system unique is the use of non-lithium ion batteries, which have become the go-to source of power for many of the devices we’ve come to rely on in our daily lives—from vacuums to electric cars. However, their ubiquity means they are in high-demand, and using them for large-scale storage can be expensive. Plus, as Larry Zulch, the CEO of Invinity Energy Systems explained to Popular Science, they are known to be flammable and lose their effectiveness over time.  

Zulch calls vanadium redox flow batteries like the one his company is devising for this grid “the workhorse of batteries” since they don’t have the same fire risks as lithium batteries and can last for more than two decades. However, they do take up a lot more space—Zulch says their redox flow battery units are about the size of a shipping container—so they work best in situations where there is significantly more room available, compared to something like a cell phone battery. 

[Related: How the massive ‘flow battery’ coming to an Army facility in Colorado will work]

Here’s how this “workhorse” provides power: the shipping container-like unit holds six modules. Each module has two liquid electrolyte-filled tanks and two cell stacks, which are the key components to create and store energy. The electrolytes are pumped into the stacks of electrochemical cells, passing through membranes that facilitate an ion exchange. 

Though other elements can be used in flow batteries, such as iron, Zulch says vanadium is particularly conducive to use as the electrolyte in this process since it can exist in four different oxidation states with four types of electrical charges. This state change is reversible so the electrical energy can be both stored and returned, which is what allows for redox flow batteries to last so long. 

“Fundamentally, vanadium flow batteries don’t wear out the vanadium because it’s changing various states back and forth,” Zulch said, noting that some maintenance is, however, required from time to time for the mechanical components of the battery. 

While Invinity recently installed another such battery for the Soboba Fire Station in California, this project for the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians grid will be their biggest vanadium flow battery yet and the largest battery of its kind in North America. Utility Dive says the hybrid system is expected to be operational by next summer.