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Electric Mail Trucks | Earth Wise

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The US Postal Service recently announced that it plans to buy at least 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028.  With more than 231,000 total vehicles, the Postal Services operates one of the largest civilian vehicle fleets in the world.

Last February, the Postal Service announced a plan to replace up to 165,000 older mail trucks, many of which are as much as 30 years old.  The gas-powered trucks get an estimated 8.6 miles per gallon when air conditioning is running.  The plan was for only 10% of the new trucks to be electric, citing the high upfront costs of electric vehicles even though they generally make up the difference by saving on fuel and maintenance costs over time. 

Facing strong criticism from the Biden administration, the Postal Service shifted course and in July announced that 40% of the new trucks would be electric. With passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August, the Postal Service received $3 billion for fleet electrification and has once again changed its plans.  It also announced that it intends to stop buying gas-powered delivery trucks altogether after 2026.

As part of the new plan, the Postal Service plans to upgrade hundreds of facilities across the country to accommodate electric vehicles.  This will include installing chargers and streamlining delivery operations to reduce unnecessary trips.

The Postal Service is no alone in working to clean up its fleets.  FedEx says it plans to completely electrify its pickup and delivery fleet by 2040.  Amazon has ordered 100,000 electric vans from the start-up company Rivian.

Electrifying the postal delivery system makes abundant sense.  Postal routes are predictable and there is ample charging time to meet the power needs of the fleet.

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Your Mail Truck Is Going Electric

Photo, posted January 18, 2017, courtesy of Rusty Clark via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Deforestation-Free Pledges | Earth Wise

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Deforestation is the purposeful clearing of forested land. Forests are cut down to make space for animal grazing, agriculture, and to obtain wood for fuel, manufacturing, and construction. Deforestation has greatly altered landscapes around the world and continues to do so today. 

Deforestation is the second largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, trailing only fossil fuel use. Deforestation can lead to all sorts of problems, including biodiversity loss, soil erosion, desertification, and flooding.  Deforestation also threatens peoples’ livelihoods and increases inequality and conflict.

As a result, many companies around the world have made pledges to remove deforestation from their supply chains.  In fact, more than 94 companies had adopted zero-deforestation commitments by 2021.  But while these companies are talking the talk, they don’t seem to be walking the walk. 

According to a new study recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, companies’ deforestation-free supply chain pledges have barely impacted forest clearance in the Amazon. 

The research team from the University of Cambridge, Boston University, ETH Zurich, and New York University found corporate pledges to not purchase soybeans grown on land deforested after 2006 have only reduced tree clearance in the Brazilian Amazon by 1.6% between 2006 and 2015.  The researchers found that if these pledges had been implemented, the current levels of deforestation in Brazil could be reduced by approximately 40%.  

According to the research team, the findings of the study indicate that private sector efforts are not enough to stop deforestation. Political leadership will also be vital to forest conservation efforts.

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Companies’ ‘deforestation-free’ supply chain pledges have barely impacted forest clearance in the Amazon, researchers say

Photo, posted November 18, 2020, courtesy of Ivan Radic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Fuel From Coffee Grounds | Earth Wise

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The world drinks a lot of coffee.  Americans alone consume 400 million cups a day.  Each cup of coffee results in about half an ounce of coffee grounds.  Adding that up, this country produces over 6,000 tons of coffee grounds each day.  While coffee grounds are not particularly harmful, that is an awful lot of waste that mostly ends up in landfills or is incinerated.

Researchers at Aston University in the UK have developed a method of producing high-quality biodiesel fuel from coffee grounds.  Their study was published in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.

The technique consists of growing a particular species of microalgae (Chlorella vulgaris) directly on spent coffee grounds.  The coffee grounds provide both the nutrients for the microalgae and a structure upon which it can grow.   Exposing the algae to light for 20 hours a day and dark for just four hours a day produced the best quality biodiesel.

Microalgae is well-known as a feedstock for biodiesel production.  Previously, it has been grown on materials like polyurethane foam or nylon which don’t provide any nutrients.   Using the coffee grounds as the substrate for growth means that no external nutrients are needed.

The resultant enhanced biodiesel produces minimal emissions and good engine performance and meets both US and European specifications.  This feedstock for producing biodiesel is ideal since it doesn’t require any competition with food crops and instead makes use of a widely available waste product.  The hope is that it may reduce the cutting down of palm trees to extract oil for biofuel.  In southeast Asia, this has been a major source of deforestation and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

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Aston University researchers ‘feed’ leftover coffee grounds to microalgae to produce low emission biodiesel

Photo, posted October 13, 2007, courtesy of David Joyce via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

What Is Healthy Soil? | Earth Wise

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Soil supports life by providing many critical ecosystem services.  For example, soil acts as a water filter, a growing medium, and provides habitat for billions of organisms.  Soil is also the foundation of our cities and towns, and the basis of global agroecosystems, which provide humans with feed, fiber, food, and fuel.

For all of these reasons and many more, having healthy soil is vital.  But what does soil health mean? And how should it be measured?

According to new analysis by researchers from Cranfield University and Nottingham University in the U.K., how we think about, measure, and study soil must change in order to better understand how to manage this resource effectively. 

While the term ‘soil health’ is widely used, it means different things to different people.  There is no single agreed upon way to gauge the overall health of soil. 

Current approaches to assess soil health measure individual soil properties and use findings  to assign a single number giving an overall score.  But according to the research team, this does not reflect the wider system perspective that’s needed to fully evaluate the health of soil over time.

Instead, the researchers propose a new system to assess soil health based on a hierarchical framework that takes in several measures, including signs of life, signs of function, signs of complexity, and signs of emergence, which is the extent to which soils recover from multiple stressors. 

This new approach, which can be applied to all soils, moves us closer to an interdisciplinary understanding of the whole picture of soil health.  After all, healthy soil is fundamental to our survival.

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We need to change how we think about soil

Photo, posted April 8, 2008, courtesy of Brian Boucheron via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Alaskan Wildfires | Earth Wise

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Alaska is on a pace for a record fire season this year.  As of mid-July, more than 2.7 million acres had burned, which is more than 10 times the total area burned in all of 2021.

Alaskan fires have been spurred on by warm temperatures, a diminished snowpack, and an unusually large number of lightning strikes.  May was one of the warmest and driest on record leading to lots of fires in June.  More than 300 wildfires ignited during June.  Many were sparked by nearly 5,000 lightning strikes early in the month.

There have already been some very large fires, including the East Fork Fire, near the Yukon Delta which had burned more than 250,000 acres by the beginning of July, and the Lime Complex Fire, in the southwest part of the state, which had burned more than 865,000 acres by mid-July.

The all-time record fire season in Alaska was 2004, when more than 6 million acres went up in flames.   Wildfires are a natural part of the Boreal North ecosystem: the great northern forest region.  But the fires occurring now are very different from those of a century ago and more.   The combination of more fuel in the form of dry vegetation, more lightning strikes, higher temperatures, and lower humidity leads to fires that burn hotter and burn deeper into the ground.  Such fires don’t just scorch trees and burn the undergrowth.  They consume everything leaving a barren landscape of ash.  Million-acre fires occur more than twice as often as they did before 1990.

The state may set a new record for wildfire acreage before the season is over.  Nearly 6,000 firefighters and support personnel continue to battle blazes across the state.

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Alaska Is on Track for a Record Fire Season

Photo, posted June 18, 2022, courtesy of Ryan McPherson/BLM Alaska Fire Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Space Tourism And The Climate | Earth Wise

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Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes.  A few well-known billionaires have taken rocket rides in recent years and at least a dozen companies are at the vanguard of what they are expecting to be a burgeoning industry.  If space tourism truly takes off – pun intended – it could be a serious threat to the climate and the environment.

Black carbon – essentially soot – is emitted when fossil fuels, including rocket fuels, are burned.  Black carbon absorbs light from the sun and releases thermal energy, making it a powerful climate warming agent.  At lower altitudes, black carbon quickly falls from the sky, remaining in the atmosphere for only a matter of days or weeks.

Rockets are another story entirely.  They dump black carbon into the stratosphere as they blast into space, and up there black carbon is 500 times worse for the climate and sticks around for several years.

A detailed study by researchers at University College London looked at the climate impact of present-day space launches compared with the potential massive expansion of launches from a large space tourism industry.

The overall result is that current space launches are not a significant source of emissions, but space launches would become incredibly significant if projections of tourist space flights proved to be true.  Currently, there are roughly 100 space launches a year world-wide.  If that number becomes thousands, the impact on the climate would be substantial.

The same researchers looked at the ozone impact of rocket launches and reached a similar conclusion.  The current impact of spaceflights is not very significant, but a massive increase in launches could have a major impact on atmospheric ozone concentrations.

Space tourism may be exciting, but it also could be very dangerous for the planet.

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Space Tourism Poses a Significant ‘Risk to the Climate’

Impact of Rocket Launch and Space Debris Air Pollutant Emissions on Stratospheric Ozone and Global Climate

Photo, posted May 30, 2020, courtesy of Daniel Oberhaus (2020) via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Fires Are Larger And More Frequent | Earth Wise

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According to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder, wildfires have gotten much larger and much more frequent across the United States since the year 2000.  The rise in wildfires in recent years has been attributed to the changing climate and the new research shows that large fires have become more common and have been spreading into new areas that previously did not burn.

The researchers analyzed data from over 28,000 fires that occurred between 1984 and 2018 using satellite imagery along with detailed state and federal fire history records.

The results are that there were more fires across all regions of the contiguous U.S. from 2005 to 2018 compared to the previous 20 years.  In the West and East, fire frequency doubled, and in the Great Plains, fire frequency quadrupled.  The amount of land burned each year at least tripled in those regions.

The team discovered that the size of fire-prone areas increased in all regions of the contiguous U.S. in the 2000s, meaning that the distance between individual fires has been getting smaller than it was in previous decades and the fires have been spreading into areas that did not burn in the past.

This comprehensive study confirms what has been assumed by the media, public, and firefighting officials.  The results also align with increasing risk trends such as the growing development of natural hazard zones. Projected changes in climate, fuel, and ignitions suggest that there will be more and larger fires in the future.  More large fires plus intensifying development mean that the worst fire disasters are still to come.

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U.S. Fires Four Times Larger, Three Times More Frequent Since 2000

Photo, posted May 3, 2013, courtesy of Daria Devyatkina via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Corn Ethanol And The Climate | Earth Wise

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The Renewable Fuel Standard legislation, first passed in 2005 and updated in 2007, requires billions of gallons of renewable fuel to be added to the country’s transportation fuel supplies.  It created the world’s largest biofuels program.

The standard was hailed as a major victory for the climate as well as a way to reduce our dependence upon foreign oil.

The intent of the legislation was to encourage various forms of renewable fuels – especially cellulosic ethanol from plant and wood fiber – to become an increasing part of the fuel mix.  That has yet to happen.  Instead, corn ethanol has been the backbone of the program.

Back in 2007, the EPA determined that ethanol from corn would lead to a 20% reduction in greenhouse gases compared to gasoline.  But the next year, a study published in the journal Nature projected that corn ethanol would double greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years because demand for corn would drive farmers to plow up increasing amounts of carbon-rich forest and grassland.

A new study published by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has again concluded that corn-based ethanol may actually be worse for the climate than fossil-based gasoline as well as having other environmental downsides.  According to the study, since the fuel standard was passed, farmers have expanded corn production on nearly 7 million acres each year, causing the conversion of lands to cropland.  The result is that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol could be as much as 24% higher than gasoline.

The issue is still being debated in Congress, but if these results are verified, the time has come to revamp the terms of the renewable fuel standard.

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Corn-Based Ethanol May Be Worse For the Climate Than Gasoline, a New Study Finds

Trots den höga effektiviteten leder inte vissa patienter som tar läkemedlet till en förbättring av erektion. Detta beror på felaktig användning av medicinen eller på att ED helt enkelt är en följd online apotek viagra av en annan sjukdom. I sådana fall är det obligatoriskt att konsultera och undersöka en läkare.

Photo, posted October 23, 2011, courtesy of the United Soybean Board via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Cheaper Electric Cars | Earth Wise

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The price of the batteries that power electric cars has fallen by about 90% since 2010.  This continuing trend will eventually make EVs less expensive than gas cars.

For many years, researchers have estimated that when battery packs reach the price of $100 per kilowatt-hour of energy storage, electric cars will cost about the same as gasoline-powered vehicles.  In 2021, the average price of lithium-ion battery packs fell to $132 per kilowatt-hour, down 6% from the previous year.  According to analysts, batteries should hit the average of $100 as soon as 2024.

It is not the case that as soon as the $100 level is reached, EVs will abruptly reach cost parity.  Across different manufacturers and vehicle types, the price shift will occur at different rates.  However, by the time batteries reach $60 a kilowatt-hour, EVs will be cheaper than equivalent gasoline models across every vehicle segment.

It is not known exactly when EVs will cost less than gasoline models, but there is little doubt that this point is coming.  We have only been talking about the purchase price of a new vehicle.  When one looks at the total cost of ownership of a vehicle, including fuel, insurance, maintenance, and depreciation, it is a different story.

Because of savings on fuel and maintenance, EVs are already in many if not most cases cheaper to own than gas-powered cars.  The Department of Energy provides an online calculator to help consumers estimate the cost differences between gasoline and electricity.

In any case, the number of electric cars on the market is increasing and the number of gas-powered cars will be shrinking.  Sooner or later, we will all drive electric.

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Inside Clean Energy: Batteries Got Cheaper in 2021. So How Close Are We to EVs That Cost Less than Gasoline Vehicles?

Photo, posted July 29, 2017, courtesy of Steve Jurvetson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Batteries On Wheels | Earth Wise

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Transportation accounts for nearly a quarter of the direct carbon dioxide emissions coming from burning fuel.  As a result, electrification of transport is one of the major ways we can reduce emissions.  Increasing the number of electric vehicles over time is essential for meeting emissions targets.

But electric vehicles have the potential to do more than deliver emissions reduction; they can also provide other energy services.

More and more electric cars provide over 200 miles of driving range, but most cars are actually driven no more than 30 miles a day.  As a result, the fleet of electric cars represents a huge bank of energy stored in battery packs and mostly sitting around unused.  This presents an opportunity to leverage this resource.

Car battery packs could be used to absorb excess renewable energy generated in the middle of the day (for example from solar installations) or at night (from wind farms) and potentially then to export stored energy to power homes and support the grid.  This energy system is known as V2G, or vehicle-to-grid technology.

The University of Queensland in Australia has launched a unique international trial to see if the spare battery capacity in vehicles could be used for these purposes.  The university has partnered with Teslascope, which is an online analytics platform used by Tesla owners to track the performance of their cars.  Tesla owners wishing to be part of the study authorize the collection of their data and, in turn, receive a free 12-month subscription to the Teslascope service.  The study will collect data from Tesla owners in Australia, the US, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the UK.

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Can EV spare battery capacity support the grid?

Photo, posted February 8, 2009, courtesy of City of St Pete via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Wastewater And Ammonia | Earth Wise

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Ammonia is the second most produced chemical in the world.  More than half of it is used in agriculture to produce various kinds of fertilizer, to produce cotton defoliants that make cotton easier to pick, and to make antifungal agents for fruits.  Globally, ammonia represents more than a $50 billion a year market.

Current methods to make ammonia require enormous amounts of heat – generated by burning fossil fuels – to break apart nitrogen molecules so that they can bind to hydrogen to form the compound. Ammonia production accounts for about 2% of worldwide fossil energy use and generates over 400 million tons of CO2 annually.

Engineers at the University of Illinois Chicago have created a solar-powered electrochemical reaction that uses wastewater to make ammonia and does it with a solar-to-fuel efficiency that is 10 times better than previous comparable technologies.

The process uses nitrate – which is one of the most common groundwater contaminates – to supply nitrogen and uses sunlight to power the reaction.  The system produces nearly 100% ammonia with almost no hydrogen side reactions.  No fossil fuels are needed, and no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases are produced.  The new method makes use of a cobalt catalyst that selectively converts nitrate molecules into ammonia.

Not only is the reaction itself carbon-neutral, which is good for the environment, but if it is scaled up for industrial use, it will consume wastewater, thereby actually being good for the environment.  The new process is the subject of a patent filing and the researchers are already collaborating with municipal corporations, wastewater treatment centers, and others in industry to further develop the system.

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Combining sunlight and wastewater nitrate to make the world’s No. 2 chemical

Photo, posted August 29, 2018, courtesy of Montgomery County Planning Commission via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Spending Habits And Carbon Emissions | Earth Wise

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According to a new Swedish study recently published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, men spend their money on greenhouse gas-emitting goods and services, such as meat and fuel, at a much higher rate than women. 

The study looked at the carbon emissions created by consumption among categories like food, clothing, furniture, and vacations to see if households could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by buying different products and services.  The research team reviewed Swedish government data through 2012 and analyzed the spending habits of households, single men, and single women. 

According to the study, single Swedish men spent about 2% more money overall than single Swedish women.  But the stuff that the men bought created 16% more greenhouse gases than the stuff that the women bought.  That’s because men were more likely to spend money on high-emitting categories, like fuel for cars, while women spent more on less-emitting categories like furniture, health care, and clothing. 

For both men and women, vacations were a major source of emissions, accounting for approximately one-third of their total carbon footprint. 

While the carbon impact of men’s and women’s diets were nearly equal, men spent more money on meat while women spent more on dairy.  Both meat and dairy production are major sources of global greenhouse gas emissions.   

The study found single people were responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than married people or people in households. 

According to the research team, people could decrease their carbon emissions nearly 40% by making more environmentally-friendly choices, including switching to plant-based foods and traveling by train as opposed to flying or driving when possible. 

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Men have a bigger carbon footprint than women, climate study finds

Photo, posted June 17, 2012, courtesy of Stephen Ausmus/USDA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

New York And Green Hydrogen | Earth Wise

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In July, outgoing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans for the state to explore the potential role of green hydrogen as part of New York’s decarbonization strategy.

Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced using renewable energy, such as wind, solar, and hydro power.  While hydrogen itself is a carbon-free fuel, most of the hydrogen produced today is made with a process called natural gas reforming which has byproducts of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.  As a result, the environmental benefits of using hydrogen are largely lost.  Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe but extracting it for use as a fuel is not easy.

Green hydrogen is obtained by splitting water molecules into their constituent hydrogen and oxygen parts.  In principle, oxygen is the only byproduct of the process.  The main drawback of electrolysis, as this process is called, is that it is energy intensive as well as being expensive.  But if that energy comes from renewable sources, then it is a clean process.

New York’s announcement is that the state will collaborate with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and join two hydrogen-focused organizations to inform state decision-making, as well as make $12.5 million in funding available for long duration energy storage techniques and demonstration projects that may include green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen has the potential to decarbonize many of the more challenging sectors of the economy.  Hydrogen is a storable, transportable fuel that can replace fossil fuels in many applications.  Many experts believe that the so-called hydrogen economy could be the future of the world’s energy systems.  For that to happen, green hydrogen will need to be plentiful, sustainable, and inexpensive.

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New York announces initiatives to explore green hydrogen for decarbonization

Photo, posted October 26, 2019, courtesy of Pierre Blache via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Overwintering Fires | Earth Wise

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Fires that go on for long periods of time, surviving the snow and rain of winter to reemerge in the spring, are becoming more common in high northern latitudes as the climate warms.  Such fires are called holdover fires, hibernating fires, overwintering fires, or even zombie fires.  Whatever people choose to call them, this type of wildfire is occurring more often.

These smoldering fires start out as flaming fires but then enter an energy-saver mode.  They start above ground but then smolder in the soil or under tree roots through the winter.  They barely survive based on the oxygen and fuel resources that they have but can transition back into flaming fires once conditions are more favorable.

Dutch researchers used ground-based data with fire detection data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instruments on the Terra and Aqua satellites to study fires in the boreal forests of Alaska and Canada’s Northwest Territories.  They found a way to identify overwintering fires based on their unique characteristics.  

Their data indicates that overwintering fires tend to be linked to high summer temperatures and large fire seasons.  Between 2002 and 2018, overwintering fires generally accounted for a small amount of the total burned area in the region but in individual years with hot and severe fire seasons, the number can escalate.  In 2008 in Alaska, for example, overwintering fires accounted for nearly 40% of the burned area.

Early detection of these overwintering fires could help with fire management and reduce the amount of carbon – which is stored in large amounts in the region’s organic soils – that gets released to the atmosphere during fires.

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Overwintering Fires on the Rise

Photo, posted September 14, 2017, courtesy of Andrew R. Mitchell/USDA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Aircraft Emissions And Climate Change | Earth Wise

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The aviation industry accounts for about 2.4% of global carbon dioxide emissions.  If the aviation industry was a country, it would place sixth in emissions, between Japan and Germany.

According to scientists at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, aviation industry emissions could be reduced by simply better surfing the wind.  The researchers found that commercial flights between New York and London could have used up to 16% less fuel if they had made better use of the fast-moving winds at altitude.

The study, which was recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analyzed approximately 35,000 flights in both directions between New York and London last winter.  The researchers compared how much fuel was burned during these flights to how much less fuel would have been burned by flying into or around the eastward jet stream air currents. 

They found that taking better advantage of the winds would have saved about 125 miles worth of fuel per flight on average.  The fuel saving per flight was 1.7% when flying west to New York, and 2.5% when flying east to London. 

New satellites will soon allow transatlantic flights to be tracked more accurately.  This should afford aircraft more flexibility in their flight paths, allowing them to better follow tailwinds and avoid headwinds. 

Upgrading aircraft or switching to greener fuels are two other ways that the aviation industry can reduce emissions, but those things are costly and take time to implement.  Optimizing flight paths is cheaper and offers immediate benefits.  

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Aircraft could cut emissions by better surfing the wind

Photo, posted May 16, 2011, courtesy of Cory W. Watts via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Renewable Energy And Green Ammonia | Earth Wise

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Several different clean technology trends may come together on farms across the country where wind turbines could power devices that produce green ammonia for fertilizer and zero emission fuel.

Distributed wind is a kind of renewable energy that doesn’t get much attention.  It refers to turbines that are used to generate electricity for on-site use, as for a factory or a farm.  It typically involves smaller turbines than the behemoths that are used in giant wind farms.

Installing a wind turbine or two on a farm could be quite valuable if the electricity generated could be used to make green ammonia.  Such an application would eliminate the problem of “stranded wind”, which is when a location has lots of wind but lacks access to the electricity transmission infrastructure.

If farmers could utilize wind energy to produce ammonia, they could make their own fertilizer as well as fuel and get relief from price spikes and uncertainties in the commodities market.  Of course, they would also make use of the electricity they generate on site.

Most ammonia is produced using a proven technology called the Haber-Bosch process.   Ammonia contains only nitrogen and hydrogen, both of which can be extracted from the air.  The trick is how to do it efficiently using renewable electricity.   The Department of Energy has a program called the REFUEL Initiative, which aims at deploying renewable energy to produce ammonia.  The University of Minnesota, among other places, has multiple programs dedicated to green ammonia technology. 

There is encouraging progress being made that may ultimately result in a common sight of wind turbines on farms producing fertilizer, fuel, and electricity.

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The Renewable Energy Cows Come Home, Now With Green Ammonia

Photo, posted July 15, 2009, courtesy of Daniel_Bauer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Hydrogen-Powered Jetliners | Earth Wise

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Airbus, the giant European aerospace company, hopes to have hydrogen-powered commercial airliners in the sky by 2035.  Such planes would have no carbon dioxide emissions.

Greenhouse gas emissions from commercial aviation have been a rapidly increasing contribution to the global total.  Of course, the Covid-19 pandemic has drastically reduced air travel, so emissions are currently lower than they have been in a very long time.  But at some point, they will resume at previous levels and continue to increase.

Planes themselves produce over 2% of global CO2 emissions, and between the climate effects of contrails and the emissions associated with the rest of the air travel industry, commercial aviation drives about 5% of global warming.

Airbus is studying design concepts in which planes run off of hydrogen and oxygen fuel and have no carbon exhaust.   Making such planes practical and environmentally advantageous requires solving an array of complex technical challenges. 

One of the biggest challenges is that the hydrogen on the market today is considered to be “brown” rather than green, meaning that it is not a sustainably produced energy source.  Almost all hydrogen produced today comes from natural gas reforming, which results in carbon emissions.  A viable hydrogen-powered aviation technology assumes that producing hydrogen by splitting water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen using renewable energy becomes the standard source for it.

There have been test flights of small planes and drones powered by hydrogen, but Airbus expects that intensive research and development for the next five years will be required to evolve its current preliminary designs to a stage where they could be developed for future use in its product line.  It won’t happen overnight, but according to Airbus, hydrogen planes are coming.

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Airbus Hopes to Be Flying Hydrogen-Powered Jetliners With Zero Carbon Emissions by 2035

Photo, posted April 15, 2019, courtesy of Olivier Cabaret via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Fuel From Lignin | Earth Wise

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Lignin is an organic polymer that provides the rigid structure of plants and is what gives wood and bark their characteristic properties.  Lignin typically comprises between 20 and 35% of the mass of wood.  The two major substances extracted from trees, grasses, and other biomass materials are cellulose and lignin.  Cellulose is used to make paper, bioethanol, and other products, but lignin is largely unused because it is difficult to break down into useful substances such as feedstocks for fuels.  As a result, lignin is largely wasted.  Worldwide, some 50 million tons of lignin are produced from paper and bioethanol manufacturing each year and almost all of that is simply burned to generate heat.

Lignin can be broken down using pyrolysis techniques at high temperatures to create bio-oils, but those oils lack sufficient hydrogen and contain too much oxygen to be useful as fuels.  There is a process called hydrodeoxygenation that adds hydrogen and removes oxygen, but it requires high temperatures and very high pressures as well as producing char and tar that reduces the efficiency of the process.

Researchers at Georgia Tech recently published work describing a new process for turning lignin into useful products.  They developed a dual catalyst system of super-acid and platinum particles that adds hydrogen and removes oxygen from lignin bio-oil and makes it useful as a fuel and source of chemical feedstocks. 

The new process could help meet the growing demand for bio-based oils as well as helping the forest product, paper, and bioethanol industries by providing an additional revenue stream from what previously was a waste product.

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New Process Boosts Lignin Bio-oil as a Next-Generation Fuel

Photo, posted August 16, 2017, courtesy of evcabartakova via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Plants Paying For Biofuels | Earth Wise

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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.

A New Membrane For Converting Carbon Dioxide | Earth Wise

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Methanol is a valuable chemical used as fuel in the production of countless products. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that is produced by countless industrial processes.  Carbon dioxide can be converted into methanol, which is one way all that CO2 can be put to good use instead of causing harm. 

In research recently published in Science, chemical engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a process that converts CO2 to methanol in a more efficient way by using a highly effective separation membrane they produced.  

The chemical reaction responsible for the transformation of CO2 into methanol also produces water, which severely restricts the continued reaction. The Rensselaer team has found a way to filter out the water as the reaction is happening, without losing other essential gas molecules. 

They produced a membrane made up of sodium ions and zeolite crystals that was able to carefully and quickly permeate water through small pores — known as water-conduction nanochannels — without losing gas molecules. The sodium ions effectively only allow water to go through. When water was effectively removed from the process, the team found that the chemical reaction was able to happen very quickly. By removing the water, the equilibrium shifts, which means more CO2 will be converted and more methanol will be produced.  

The team is now working to develop a scalable process and a startup company that would allow this membrane to be used commercially to produce high purity methanol.  This membrane could also be used to improve a number of other reactions. 

In industry there are many reactions limited by water and this RPI membrane could be an important enhancement for many of them. 

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Water-Conducting Membrane Allows Carbon Dioxide To Transform into Fuel More Efficiently

Photo courtesy of RPI.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

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