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Plants Paying For Biofuels | Earth Wise

May 7, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Biofuels are an important element in broader strategies to replace petroleum in transportation fuels like gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The idea is that biofuels recycle carbon by getting it from growing plants rather than from fossil sources. The biggest problem with biofuels is that they cost more than conventional petroleum fuels, so there is economic incentive to keep burning the fossil fuels.

One strategy to make biofuels cost competitive is to have the plants provide additional economic benefits beyond being a feedstock for fuel. This in principle can be done by engineering plants to produce valuable chemical compounds, or bioproducts, as they grow. Bioproducts include such things as flavoring agents and fragrances as well as biodegradable plastic. These bioproducts can be extracted from the plants and then the remaining plant material can be converted to fuel.

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently published a study to determine what quantities of bioproducts plants need to produce to result in cost-effective biofuel production.

The study looked at a compound called limonene, which is used for flavoring and fragrance. They calculated that if this compound was accumulated at 0.6% of the biomass dry weight, it would offer net economic benefits to biorefineries. This corresponds to recovering 130 pounds of limonene from 10 tons of sorghum on an acre of land.

Such quantities are completely practical but, on the other hand, none of these substances are needed in huge quantities. Just six refineries could supply the world with limonene. So, fuel crops would need to be engineered to produce a broad range of bioproducts to enable a viable cost-effective biofuel industry.

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Making Biofuels Cheaper by Putting Plants to Work

Photo, posted September 28, 2019, courtesy of Michele Dorsey Walfred via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Building The World’s Largest Battery Energy Storage Plant | Earth Wise

April 6, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Monterey County Planning Commission has unanimously approved a joint project between Tesla and Pacific Gas and Electric to turn the Moss Landing Power Plant in California into the world’s largest battery energy storage facility.

The Moss Landing Power Plant is a natural gas-powered electricity generation plant located at the midpoint of California’s Monterey Bay. At one time, it was the largest power plant in the state of California with a generation capacity of 2560 MW but has been gradually shutting down over time.

The new facility will incorporate 1.2 GWh of storage capacity for energy generated by solar and wind systems. The stored energy will be available for use during periods of high energy demand and lower output. This is about ten times larger than Tesla’s Hornsdale energy storage project in Australia, which was three times bigger than any other batter storage facility when it was built a few years ago. In 2018, the battery system at Hornsdale made back a third of its cost in just one year. The systems make use of Tesla’s Megapack battery products which come in pre-assembled units that provide 3 MWh of energy storage capacity.

The project will make use of existing power lines to transmit energy around Monterey County and parts of Silicon Valley. Tesla and PG&E hope to break ground in early spring with completion scheduled for the end of the year. California has been adding massive amounts of wind and solar power to its electrical grid and incorporating energy storage is an important step towards creating a truly resilient power system.

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Humongous Tesla Battery Plant Approved In California Is 10× Bigger Than World’s Biggest Battery Plant

Photo, posted September 22, 2019, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Foods of the Future? | Earth Wise

March 27, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In a world where many go hungry in the context of rapidly changing environments, many experts contend that alternative food sources will be necessary to solve global food security problems. So-called novel food sources are central to this conversation, defined as foods with no history of consumption in a region – or perhaps anywhere.

Three popular examples are lab-grown meat, insect farming, and seaweed aquaculture. Each of these offer opportunities as well as challenges.

Lab-grown meat can refer to actual animal tissues raised in vats as well as the increasingly common cultured plant products made to resemble meat. Lab-grown meat faces push back from the livestock industry that contends it should not be labeled as any kind of meat. While results to date are positive, barriers still remain including concerns over product taste, healthiness, and cost. And while less land- and water-intensive than conventional livestock, cultured meat production is still energy intensive.

Insects do form a significant part of diets across the globe but have yet to be embraced in any substantial way in western cultures. Nutritionally, numerous species of insects are rich in key proteins, micronutrients, and minerals. But the “yuck factor” is a big barrier to cross.

Seaweed is a long-established part of many East Asian diets and has many potential dietary uses. Several selectively bred varieties of seaweed supply a range of valuable nutrients. Growing seaweed does not tax freshwater and terrestrial resources. But intensively cultivated seaweeds would have potential negative effects on local marine ecosystems.

There is no single solution to complex issues like food security. Novel foods may very well form part of the solution to a growing food crisis.

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Insects, seaweed and lab-grown meat could be the foods of the future

Photo, posted March 12, 2009, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

An Ecological Trap For Polar Bears | Earth Wise

March 17, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Climate change has been shrinking Arctic sea ice and this is causing changes in the behavior of polar bears. The Southern Beaufort Sea, located where the northern edges of Alaska and Canada meet, is home to one of the 19 population groups of polar bears. Historically, the polar bears in this region remained on sea ice year-round. But in recent decades, about a quarter of them have chosen to come on land instead of staying on the shrinking summer ice platform.

A recent study by San Diego Zoo Global, the U.S. Geological Survey, and Polar Bears International looked at the energetic consequences of the bears’ behavior. The decision of each individual bear to stay on the ice or move to land appears to be linked to the energetic cost or benefit of the choice.

Bears who moved to land expended more energy during the summer than bears that remained on the sea ice. In late summer, as the ice became even more restricted, a greater amount of energy was expended by bears swimming to land. So, the immediate energy cost of moving to land is much greater than remaining on the receding pack ice.

On the other hand, bears on land in this region have access to whale carcasses in the summer while bears on the sea ice appear to be fasting. As a result, it may be the case that the declining population of bears in this region is in part caused by the ecological trap of bears staying on the ice to avoid expending all the energy needed to move to land. The shrinking polar ice is a real problem for polar bears.

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Energetics Study Indicates that Shrinking Sea Ice Is Creating an Ecological Trap for Polar Bears

Photo, posted October 30, 2011, courtesy of Martin Lopatka via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Cost Of Air Pollution | Earth Wise

March 12, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels are a dominant topic. The increasing changes in the climate have far-reaching effects across the globe and are a growing geopolitical crisis. But the climate effects of fossil fuel emissions are by no means the only problem they cause.

A new report by the Center for Research on Energy and Clear Air has, for the first time, attempted to quantify the global economic and health impacts of fossil fuel-caused air pollution. In total, the estimate is that the economic and health costs of air pollution from burning fossil fuels totaled $2.9 trillion in 2018, calculated in the form of work absences, years of life lost, and premature deaths. The cost represents 3.3 percent of global GDP, or about $8 billion per day.

The study focused on the health impacts of three specific types of pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and fine particulate matter, which has the greater impact. Collectively, these pollutants cause about 1.8 billion days of missed work due to disease and $2.2 trillion in air pollution costs every year. Together, air pollution from these three pollutants is responsible for 4.5 million premature deaths around the world each year.

According to the report, the most premature deaths from fossil fuel-related air pollution in 2018 were in mainland China (1.8 million), India (1 million), and the United States (230,000). As a result, those three countries also faced the highest annual costs: $900 billion in China, $600 billion in the U.S., and $150 billion in India.

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Toxic Air: The Price of Fossil Fuels (Full Report)

Photo, posted November 17, 2019, courtesy of Kristoffer Trolle via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

American Households and Food Waste | Earth Wise

February 12, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Food waste is a big problem. According to the United Nations, approximately one-third of the food produced globally – more than 1.4 billion tons – goes to waste. If food waste was a country adding carbon to the atmosphere, it would be the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases – behind only the U.S. and China. All of this food waste takes place in a world where 815 million people – more than 10% of the people on the planet – are chronically undernourished.

A new study recently published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics has analyzed the level of food waste for individual American households. It found that American households waste, on average, nearly one-third of all the food they acquire. This wasted food has an estimated aggregate value of $240 billion annually. Divided by the number of U.S. households, this food waste could be costing the average household about $1,866 per year.

According to researchers, the households with higher household incomes generate more food waste. Those with healthier diets, which include more perishable fruits and vegetables, also waste more food.

Meanwhile, households with greater food insecurity, especially those that participate in the federal SNAP food assistance program, as well as those households with a larger number of members, were associated with less food waste. Households that use shopping lists and those that travel further to reach the grocery store were also associated with lower levels of food waste.

When food is wasted, the resources used to produce food, including land, energy, water and labor, are wasted as well. We have to do better.

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SAVE FOOD: Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction

US households waste nearly a third of the food they acquire

Photo, posted March 22, 2009, courtesy of Nick Saltmarsh via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Hydrogen From The Ocean

November 15, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Hydrogen is frequently touted as an excellent source of clean energy that could be used as a fuel in vehicles, or as a storage medium for energy generated by wind and solar power. The challenge is that hydrogen is rather difficult and expensive to attain, and the most economical methods are not clean and green.

Most industrial hydrogen is produced by reforming natural gas, which has the drawback that carbon dioxide is generated in the process. The environmentally friendly way to produce hydrogen is via electrolysis, in which a chemical reaction is triggered by a catalyst enabling electricity to split water into its constituent elements of oxygen and hydrogen.

The best performing catalyst for electrolysis is platinum, but its high price is a big drawback for the economics of making hydrogen. Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found a pairing of minerals that may solve the problem. Testing a molybdenum-phosphide catalyst with wastewater in a small reactor called a microbial electrolysis cell revealed that the new catalyst actually worked better than platinum.

Even better, the molybdenum-phosphide catalyst worked well with seawater. If hydrogen can be produced using seawater, there would be a pretty much unlimited resource for making it. By eliminating the use of platinum catalysts, it may be possible to reduce the cost of hydrogen made by electrolysis to a competitive level.

Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel currently costs about twice as much as gasoline on an energy-equivalent basis. Given that running cars from batteries is considerably cheaper than using gas, the cost of hydrogen needs to come down considerably for it to be a viable vehicle fuel.

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Ditching Platinum for the Ocean Could Make Hydrogen Cheap

Photo, posted July 19, 2011, courtesy of Heather Paul via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Cost Of Rising Seas

October 1, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Coastal cities in the United States are grappling with the need for extensive infrastructure projects to protect against rising seas and worsening storms. The cost of these projects will be enormous, and it is unclear how to pay to them.

Boston has many neighborhoods in low-lying areas, and it is estimated that $2.4 billion will be needed to protect the city from flooding. The city abandoned plans to build a harbor barrier that would have cost $6 to $12 billion because it was economically unfeasible.

Charleston, South Caroline needs $2 billion to reduce flooding that occurs regularly during high tides. The Houston, Texas area needs $30 billion to provide protection against a 100-year flood. Hurricane Harvey caused $125 billion in damages in Texas in 2017. New York City is considering a $10 billion storm surge barrier and floodgates to shield parts of the city from rising waters.

Florida faces the greatest exposure to flooding with an estimated $76 billion in costs to address some of its problems.

At the federal level, multiple agencies represent potential funding sources, but none offer the kind of money required to address the need. This places a heavy burden on state and local governments. Various states have passed legislation related to shoreline resiliency and flood abatement, but relatively little funding has been approved. Some bond measures have passed, but the totals are small compared with what is needed.

Educating people about the costs of not doing anything or not doing enough soon enough is essential. As Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, not spending a large amount of money on resilience can result in having to spend a colossal amount of money on recovery.

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Who Will Pay for the Huge Costs of Holding Back Rising Seas?

Photo, posted December 26, 2013, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Capital Region Community Solar

July 19, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

New York’s Capital Region is getting a major new community solar farm. A community solar farm is a solar power installation whose output is shared by multiple community subscribers who receive credit on their electricity bills for their share of the power produced. The primary purpose of community solar is to allow members of a community to have the benefits of solar power even if they cannot or prefer not to install solar panels on their own property.

US Light Energy has broken ground on the Sugar Hill Solar Farm, to be located on 40 acres of land on the Sugar-Hill/Sugar-View Farm in Clifton Park. The 7-megawatt, ground-mounted solar project will include nearly 20,000 solar modules. When fully operational later this year, the facility is expected to produce more than 8.6 million kilowatt-hours of energy a year.

The farm will be part of New York state’s Community Solar Program, and the electricity it generates can be supplied to customers anywhere in National Grid’s existing distribution system. Residential and commercial properties in Clifton Park will have 30 days to subscribe before the solar energy generated by the farm is opened to the general public. Subscribers of community solar farms typically save 10% on their electricity bills.

There are already community solar programs in operation in several Capital Region communities, but this is the first one in the Clifton Park Area. Apart from providing savings on utility bills, community solar allows consumers to support clean, locally generated power with little or no upfront costs. Not everyone is in a position to put solar panels on their roof, but community solar is increasingly an option for New York residents.

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Construction begins on 7-MW community solar farm in New York

Photo, posted March 19, 2012, courtesy of Kate Ausburn via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Getting Rid Of Plastic Here And Abroad

May 23, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Efforts in the fight against plastic pollution are really stepping up these days.

New York State lawmakers have agreed to impose a statewide ban on most types of single-use plastic bags from retail sales. The ban would be the second statewide ban after California, which banned the bags in 2016. Hawaii effectively also has such a ban since all of the state’s counties have their own bans.

The New York ban would begin next March and would forbid stores from providing customers with single-use plastic bags. There are a number of exceptions, including food takeout bags in restaurants, bags used to wrap deli or meat counter products, and newspaper bags. New York counties could opt into a plan to charge a 5-cent fee on paper bags, with proceeds going to the state’s Environmental Protection Fund. Some environmentalists point out, however, that paper bags have their own issues. While they do decompose in landfills, they have a substantial carbon footprint since they are made from wood and being heavier, they are more costly to ship. Business groups are concerned about the forthcoming ban based on increased costs.

Meanwhile, European Union member states have reached a provisional agreement to introduce restrictions on single-use plastic products. In 2021. European citizens will say goodbye to plastic cutlery, plastic plates and plastic straws among other products.

According to the European Commission, plastics make up 85% of beach litter in the Mediterranean. Large plastic pieces injure, suffocate, and often kill marine animals but microplastics have reached record levels of concentration – over a million fragments per square kilometer – in the Mediterranean.

Both here and abroad, the war on plastics is heating up.

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Plastic Bags to Be Banned in New York; Second Statewide Ban, After California

The End Of Plastic Cutlery, Plates And Straws: EU Market Says Goodbye To Single-Use Plastic Products

Photo, posted March 20, 2007, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Building For Climate Change

May 13, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The manifestations of climate change are creating increasingly familiar images: floodwaters rising up house windows, charred buildings in the wake of wildfires, and homes and businesses demolished by storm winds. As these sorts of calamities become ever more common, changes to how houses are built are going to be necessary.

How can homes become more resilient against severe and unpredictable weather?

Research at Carlton University’s Sprott School of Business looks at this issue.

As an example, houses can be framed and finished in certain ways that help protect them from wind and flooding. But such methods are currently only happening in the custom-build fringes of the housing sector. Widespread adoption will require, at the minimum, significant changes to building codes.

Revising building codes is not an easy matter. The codes themselves are highly technical and complex, and beyond that, the process Is often politicized.

Even simple things like hurricane ties, which are small pieces of hardware that prevent a roof from lifting during a severe wind are not now included in building codes. Insurance companies support their use as inexpensive protection for houses. But even though the overall cost is relatively minor, the building industry pushes back at the additional expense.

The need to reduce carbon emissions has created a push for sustainable housing. But the increasingly erratic weather means that houses also need resilience and adaptation. These features will inevitably add costs and incorporating them into building codes requires producing convincing business cases.

The U.S. experienced 394 natural catastrophe events last year costing $225 billion in damage. Finding ways to make homes and businesses more resilient is not just a good idea; it is essential.

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How to Start Weather-Proofing Homes for Unpredictable Weather

Photo, posted June 12, 2008, courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Misconceptions About Electric Cars

February 8, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Tesla’s Model 3 was one of the best-selling cars in the United States last year, eclipsing all but a handful of sedans. This was the first time that an electric car had that honor and is indicative of how electric cars are finally becoming mainstream. A host of other new electric models from multiple manufacturers will be the entering the market over the next couple of years.

Despite all of this progress, there is still a great deal of misinformation about electric cars. A new study commissioned by Volkswagen revealed some of the widespread misconceptions about the vehicles.

Some people believe that electric cars can’t be driven through puddles. Nearly one in five people believe that electric cars slow down as the battery depletes. Many people believe that electric cars are fundamentally less safe than gas-powered cars.

More generally, people are unaware of how far current electric cars can drive on a charge. More and more models can go 200 and even over 300 miles between charging sessions. People also don’t know how quickly cars can charge up either. Fast chargers like Tesla’s Superchargers can add 200 miles worth of charge in about 20 minutes. And people don’t know what it costs to charge electric cars. In most places, it is only a fraction of what it costs to drive the same distance using gasoline.

Despite their limited knowledge about electric cars, the 2,000 people surveyed in Britain were positively disposed towards them with nearly 6 in 10 saying that they would like to own an electric car some day and would even consider one as their next vehicle.

Electric cars will become more familiar and less exotic as more and more of them are on our roads and highways.

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Major misconceptions prevent drivers from buying electric cars, study claims

Photo, posted April 6, 2018, courtesy of Brian Doyle via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/electric-cars-misconceptions-battery-charging-safety-volkswagen-study-results-a8700536.html

A Disastrous Year

February 5, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The number and economic impact of natural disasters around the world have increased dramatically over the past 30 years. In dollar terms, the amount has actually more than doubled. While 2017 and especially 2011 hold the records for worldwide economic damage, 2018 was pretty disastrous in its own right, totaling at least $160 billion.

The year was dominated by costly wildfires in California and tropical storms in the United States and Asia. According to a recent report by the reinsurance company Munich Re, the Camp and Woolsey fires in California alone caused losses of $21.7 billion, $16.5 billion of which was insured.

Overall, insurance companies paid out $80 billion in damage claims from natural disasters last year. This was less than the $140 billion in 2017 but is still double the 30-year average.

Losses from wildfires have increased dramatically in recent years and summers continue to get hotter and dryer, a likely consequence of climate change. These mounting costs bring into question whether people can continue to build in high-risk wildfire areas without dramatic changes in materials and the aggressive use of other protective measures.

Twenty-nine natural disaster events in 2018 caused more than a billion dollars in damage each. Tropical storms including hurricanes Michael and Florence in the United States and three Asian typhoons caused $57 billion in damage.

A severe drought in Europe that set off major wildfires and caused agricultural losses caused $3.9 billion in losses. Only about $280 million of this damage was covered by insurance companies since farmers in Europe don’t typically purchase insurance against drought. For them, 2018 was truly a disastrous year.

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Natural Disasters Caused $160 Billion in Damage in 2018

Photo, posted July 26, 2018, courtesy of Bureau of Land Management California via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A New Way to Make Hydrogen

January 31, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Many people consider hydrogen to be the fuel of the future, both for powering vehicles and for storing energy generated by renewable sources. Hydrogen itself is a clean and green fuel. Generating energy from it using fuel cells results in only water as a byproduct.

The biggest problem with hydrogen is that the most economical way to produce it and therefore the way most hydrogen is produced today, is by reforming natural gas, which is a process that generates carbon emissions.

The desirable way to make hydrogen is to produce it by breaking apart water into its hydrogen and oxygen components, a process known as electrolysis. There are many ways to do it, but none of them to date measures up in terms of efficiency, cost, and longevity.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have recently developed a new catalyst that uses abundant, low-cost elements to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The catalyst is made from copper, nickel, and chromium, all of which are more abundant and less costly than platinum, which is the usual electrolysis catalyst.

The new catalyst performs well under pH-neutral conditions, which means it could even work on seawater without incurring the expense of desalination. The Toronto researchers also believe their catalyst could be used as part of a process to make hydrocarbon fuels from hydrogen and CO2₂. Their group is among the five finalists in the Carbon XPrize competition, which has a grand prize of $7.5 million for finding a way to convert waste CO2 into fuel.

Finding a low-cost, energy-efficient, and reliable way to make hydrogen out of water will be a big deal if it can be done on an industrial scale.

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U of T researchers discover low-cost way to produce hydrogen from water

Photo, posted July 23, 2015, courtesy of Magnus Johansson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A See-Through Heat Shield

January 8, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

It is estimated that air conditioners use about 6% of all the electricity produced in the United States for an annual cost of $29 billion. With rising temperatures, this expense is only going to get larger.

A significant part of the heat load in buildings arises from heat coming through windows. It turns out that for every square meter of window, about 500 watts of heat energy can be brought in by sunlight, equivalent to 5 old-fashioned light bulbs.

Researchers at MIT and the University of Hong Kong have developed a heat-rejecting film that can applied to a building’s windows that will reflect 70% of the sun’s incoming heat. The film is similar to transparent plastic wrap. It remains highly transparent at temperatures below 89 degrees Fahrenheit. Above that temperature, tiny microparticles embedded in the film shrink and the film becomes more translucent or frosted, still letting in a good amount of light, but rejecting a lot of heat.

There are already so-called smart windows on the market, similar to the electrochromic mirrors in cars that darken to prevent trailing headlights from blinding drivers. But that technology is not very effective in rejecting heat and it requires power to operate, which means you would have to pay to turn windows opaque.

Tests of the new film demonstrated its ability to reject heat and lower temperatures. The researchers estimate that if every exterior-facing window in a building were covered in the heat-rejecting film, the building’s air conditioning and energy costs could drop by 10%. Saving ten percent of tens of billions of dollars is no minor matter.

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