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Climate-smart coffee

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Do you crave that morning cup of coffee?  You’re not alone, and not by a long shot.  In fact, more than 2.2 billion cups of coffee are consumed globally every day. 

The existing coffee market is dominated by two species: Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora (the latter commonly called robusta).  Historically, coffee drinkers have preferred Arabica beans for their specific flavor and aroma. 

But climate change is threatening many crops around the world, and maybe none more so than coffee.  In fact, an alarming 50% of suitable coffee-growing land is projected to be lost by 2050.  As a result, scientists see two alternatives to supplement Arabica: either adapt coffee farming practices to new environments, or focus on coffee species that are more resilient.

According to a new study led by researchers from the University of Florida, Robusta coffee might be a good candidate to augment Arabica.   The researchers evaluated Robusta and Arabica for multiple traits in three high-altitude locations in Brazil over five years.

The study, which was recently published in the journal Crop Science, found that Robusta is highly adaptable and grows in high-altitude regions, which means it combines good production and flavor scores.  According to the researchers, Robusta can combine the following three elements for coffee cultivars: Sustainability (produce more with fewer inputs), quality (good flavor to meet consumer demand), and plasticity (capacity to adapt to new production systems).

Following these favorable findings with Robusta in Brazil, the scientists will test whether the species can grow in Florida.

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Robust and smart: Inference on phenotypic plasticity of Coffea canephora reveals adaptation to alternative environments

UF scientists study how to bring you ‘climate-smart coffee’

Photo, posted May 23, 2013, courtesy of McKay Savage via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Deep sea mining

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Deep sea mining is the extraction of minerals from the ocean floor at depths greater than 660 feet and as much as 21,000 feet below the surface.  Active or extinct hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor create sulfide deposits which collect metals such as silver, gold, copper, manganese, cobalt, and zinc.  This forms polymetallic nodules – potato-sized rocklike deposits containing these valuable minerals.  There are literally trillions of these things scattered over wide areas of ocean floor.  The largest of these deposits are in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico in the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone.

Mining companies argue that land-based sources for valuable metals are running out and are critically needed for green technologies like batteries for electric vehicles and manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines.  They also claim that mining in the deep sea will be less environmentally damaging than land-based mining.

The deep sea is viewed by many as kind of a watery desert but there are actually diverse and rich ecosystems down there.  Most of the animals living in the depths are tiny, but that doesn’t make them any less important.  Many can live for a very long time.  Some invertebrates live for thousands of years.

There are currently no commercial deep sea mining operations underway.  Many countries have outlawed them.

The deep seas are the last mostly unexplored part of the Earth.  Deep sea mining will unquestionably be highly destructive to these environments.  We don’t really know what the impact of widespread deep sea mining might be, but the world continues to edge ever closer to allowing it to happen.

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Can We Mine the World’s Deep Ocean Without Destroying It?

Photo, posted March 30, 2018, courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Barley plastic

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The durability, malleability, and low cost of plastics have made them ubiquitous.  Plastics are everywhere:  in packaging, clothing, and an endless variety of products.  As a result, they are everywhere in the environment and they tend to stay there, contaminating land and sea.  They are tough to recycle, and their production emits more carbon dioxide than all air traffic combined.  The search for viable substitutes for plastic is global and intensive.

Most common bioplastics are not an ideal solution.  They don’t break down that easily when tossed into the natural environment.  The process can take years. 

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have invented a new material made from modified starch that can completely decompose in nature and can do so in only two months.  The material is made using natural plant material from crops and could be used for food packaging as well as many other things.

The new material is a biocomposite composed of several substances that decompose naturally.  The main ingredients are amylose and cellulose, common in many plants.  Amylose is extracted from crops like corn, potatoes, wheat, and barley.

The Danish researchers have developed a barley variety that produces pure amylose in its kernels.  Pure amylose is ideal because it is less likely to turn into a paste when it interacts with water. 

Combining the amylose with cellulose forms long, strong molecular chains, resulting in a durable, flexible material that can replace plastic in many applications.  The research team has founded a spinoff company and have applied for a patent for the new material.  It is unclear when the biofriendly barley-based plastic might be commercialized, but its potential is quite good.

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Researchers invent one hundred percent biodegradable “barley plastic”

Photo, posted May 20, 2010, courtesy of Frederick Lang Jr. via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Species range and climate change

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The geographic range of a particular plant or animal species is the area in which it can be found during its lifetime.  The range of most species is limited by climatic factors, including temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, humidity, and wind.  Any changes in the magnitude or variability of these factors will impact the species living there. 

For example, a species sensitive to temperature may respond to a warmer climate by moving to cooler locations at higher latitudes or elevations. 

But not all species are able to move at the same speed.  According to an international research team led by scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, non-native species are expanding their ranges many times faster than native species.

The researchers found that land-based plant and animal species need to be shifting their ranges by about two miles per year just to keep up with the rapid pace of the changing climate.  Marine species need to be moving about 1.7 miles per year.  However, native species are only managing to move about one mile per year on average.  

Non-native species, on the other hand, are spreading nearly 22 miles each year on their own.  Additionally, when the role humans play in assisting the spread of non-native species is factored in, the rate jumps to a whopping 1,170 miles per year.  This is more than 1,000 times faster than the rate at which native species are spreading.   

The researchers conclude that there is no chance for native species to keep up with climate change without human help.  Assisted migration needs to be on the table if native plants and animals are to survive.   

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Non-Native Plants and Animals Expanding Ranges 100 Times Faster than Native Species

Photo, posted April 10, 2011, courtesy of Bri Weldon via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Averting a mass extinction

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There has been widespread concern that biodiversity is under siege and that we are in the beginnings of a sixth mass extinction in the long history of the Earth, this time caused by the actions of humanity.  There has been considerable debate about what can be done about it and solutions generally involve protecting large areas of the planet from human disruptions.  Some countries have set a target of protecting 30% of land and sea.

A new study by a broad coalition of conservation organizations and published in Frontiers in Science, concludes that humans can preserve much of the great diversity of life on Earth by setting aside just 1.2% of the planet for protection.

The experts mapped the wilderness available to rare and threatened plants and animals.  They then identified specific hotspots for rare wildlife that have yet to be protected.  They found a total of 16,825 such sites which nevertheless all together add up an area smaller than the state of Wisconsin.

Some scientists have been warning that by focusing too much on the size of protected lands, we are not necessarily safeguarding areas that are especially rich in wildlife.  The new study pushes for prioritizing hotspots for rare species, which the authors claim would be sufficient to stave off a sixth mass extinction.  The truth is that most species on Earth are rare, meaning that they are few in number or cover a small range, or both.

The study estimated that the cost of protecting the identified hotspot sites would be $263 billion, which is certainly a large amount of money.  But the authors point out that this sum to save global biodiversity is less than the yearly revenue of Shell Oil.

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To Avert a Mass Extinction, Protect 1 Percent of Earth

Photo, posted April 20, 2018, courtesy of Per Harald Olsen / AfricanBioServices via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Potential for floating solar

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As installations of utility-scale solar power continue to expand around the world, there is the issue of where to put them.  They do take up considerable amounts of space and, in many places, available land is at a premium.

An alternative to taking up available land with solar panels is to deploy them on the surfaces of lakes and reservoirs.  A study by researchers at Bangor and Lancaster Universities in the UK calculated the potential electrical output for floating photovoltaic installation on nearly 68,000 lakes and reservoirs around the world.  The lakes and reservoirs selected were no more than 6 miles from a population center, were not in a protected area, and didn’t dry up and didn’t freeze for more than six months each year.  The calculations were based on covering just 10% of the surface area of the bodies of water.

The calculations were evaluated country-by-country.  Five countries could meet their entire electricity needs by floating installations including Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, and Rwanda.  Many countries, mostly in Africa, South America, and Central Asia, could get between 40% and 70% of their electricity this way.  Most European countries could only meet a few percent of their electricity needs from floating solar, but even that could be significant. 

There are other benefits to floating solar apart from freeing up land.  The panels stay cooler, making them more efficient, and reservoirs lose less water through evaporation and the growth of algal blooms is reduced because there is less light reaching the water.

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Some countries could meet their total electricity needs from floating solar panels, research shows

Photo, posted November 25, 2015, courtesy of Smabs Sputzer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Wind farms and land use

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Wind power has become one of the most affordable ways to generate electricity as well as being renewable and not contributing to global warming.  But there has been the perception that wind farms require a lot of land compared with fossil fuel power plants. This issue of land use has made decision-makers reluctant to invest in wind energy in many instances.

A new study by McGill University in Montreal looked at this issue and has found that land use for wind power is far more efficient than previously thought.  The study combined data from geographic information systems with machine learning models to assess land usage associated with nearly 16,000 wind turbines in the western U.S.

The study assessed the land use of 320 wind farms.  They found that wind power infrastructure (mostly the turbines themselves and the roads that lead to them) typically only uses 5% of the land area of a wind farm.  If the wind farm is sited in locations with existing infrastructure, such as on agricultural land, then it can be as much as seven times more land-efficient – meaning the amount energy produced in a given area of land impacted by the infrastructure – than a wind farm that is developed on unused land.

Previous studies of wind farm land usage assumed that all of the land where the wind farm was located was devoted to energy generation.  In reality, most of land in question is often used for other purposes, such as agriculture.

The methods developed by the researchers are potentially useable for future assessments of various energy technologies in terms of their environmental sustainability.

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Clearing the air: wind farms more land efficient than previously thought

Photo, posted September 29, 2009, courtesy of Tim Green via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Plastic food packaging

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Reducing the use of plastic is an important environmental goal.  Plastic is made from fossil fuels and plastic pollutes the land and the oceans.  It is estimated that 40% of plastic waste comes from packaging.  Plastic packaging is extremely common in the supermarket and there is a growing desire to reduce its use.  But it isn’t that easy.

Plastic packaging works well to slow the decay of vegetables and fruit.  Its use results in less produce being tossed into the garbage, where it creates almost 60% of landfill methane emissions.  In fact, food is the most common material in landfills.  The average American family of four spends $1,500 a year on food that ends up uneaten and nearly half of all household food waste is fruits and vegetables.

Products like bagged salads, berries in plastic clamshells, and plastic sealed potatoes and cucumbers are popular with shoppers because they stay fresh longer.  They are popular with grocers because the items don’t have to be weighed.  But all these things result in plastic waste.  It is a tradeoff that is difficult to make between food quality and safety vs. the environmental harm caused by plastic.

There are a variety of alternatives to plastic packaging of food that are being explored.  They range from biodegradable, organic coatings that can take the place of plastic films, to cardboard and paper produce packaging. 

But practically, there is yet no affordable and biodegradable plastic alternative that keeps fruits and vegetables safe and fresh.  Solving the food packaging problem is not easy.

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So Much Produce Comes in Plastic. Is There a Better Way?

Photo, posted July 1, 2007, courtesy of Brian via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Climate change and Antarctic meteorites

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Researchers from Switzerland and Belgium have investigated the effects of the warming climate on access to meteorites in Antarctica.  Meteorites are of great scientific interest because they provide unique information about the makeup of our solar system.  Of all the meteorites that people have found, 62.6% of them were found in Antarctica.

Why is this?  It is not because more meteorites land in Antarctica.  Statistically, they can land anywhere on earth.  Most end up in the ocean since the world’s oceans cover 70% of the planet. 

Meteorites in Antarctica are more visible because environmental conditions are favorable for their preservation and their visibility.  The arid and cold Antarctic environment helps to preserve meteorites and the lack of rocks and contrast with ice makes spotting meteorites much easier.  The flow of ice sheets tends to concentrate meteorites in so-called meteorite stranding zones where the dark colored space rocks can be easily detected.

There are an estimated 300,000 to 800,000 meteorites in Antarctica.  When meteorites warm up, they can transfer heat to the ice, which locally melts.  Eventually, the meteorites sink beneath the surface.  A recent study using satellite imagery, climate model projections, and AI predicts that for every tenth of a degree of increase in global air temperature, an average of 9,000 meteorites in Antarctica will disappear from the surface and will no longer be able to be found. 

The study estimates that a quarter of Antarctic meteorites will be lost to glacial melt by 2050.  If warming continues to accelerate, closer to three-quarters of the meteorites on the continent will be lost. 

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Climate change threatens Antarctic meteorites

Photo, posted April 21, 2005, courtesy of Kevin Walsh via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Canadian zombie fires

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Canada’s 2023 wildfire season was the most destructive ever recorded.  Over 6,000 fires burned nearly 71,000 square miles of land from the West Coast to the Atlantic provinces.  The burned areas are roughly the size of the entire country of Finland and represent almost triple the amount burned in the previous year, which itself was a lot. Smoke from Canadian fires, particularly those in Quebec, blanketed many cities in the United States and made its way as far south as Florida.

An alarming aspect of the Canadian fire season is that it didn’t ever really end.  Late in the winter, 149 active wildfires are still burning across Canada.  92 are in British Columbia, 56 in Alberta, and one in New Brunswick.  In these places, the wildfire season is yearlong.

These overwintering fires have come to be known as zombie fires.  They burn slowly below the surface during the winter.  Many areas in the north contain porous peat and moss ground cover and these act as underground fuel for smoldering fires.

Wildfires have become more prevalent in Canada because the changing climate has brought about increases in the hot, dry, and gusty conditions that lead to drought.

Many of the zombie fires don’t pose an increased threat of triggering wildfires in the spring because they are in places that are already so charred that there is nothing left to burn.  But others are in drought areas that are basically tinder boxes ready to burst into flame once spring arrives.

Overall, Canadian government officials are warning that this year’s wildfire season is likely to be even worse than last year’s, particularly in the Western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.

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As ‘Zombie Fires’ Smolder, Canada Braces for Another Season of Flames

Photo, posted June 30, 2023, courtesy of P. McCabe / EU via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Golf courses gone wild

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Golf courses are a significant burden on the environment.  The US has 16,000 golf courses which use 1.5 billion gallons of water a day and are treated with 100,000 tons of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium each year.  In recent years, the golf industry has taken steps to lighten its environmental toll by using less water, introducing pollinator-friendly plants, and decreasing pesticide and fertilizer use.  The US has more golf courses than any other country, accounting for 42% of all courses worldwide.

There is really an oversupply of golf courses and, as a result, more golf courses have closed than have opened since 2006.  Most closed golf courses end up in the hands of commercial or residential developers, but some of them are allowed to return to nature.

For this to happen, there has to be a willing seller and, more importantly, a conservation-minded buyer who can afford both to purchase the land and to restore it to a natural state.  There have been 28 former golf courses transformed into public green spaces between 2010 and the end of 2022.  But that number seems to be growing.

In 2023, the former Cedar View Golf Course on the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake in upstate New York was bought by the Finger Lakes Land Trust.  In California, places like Santa Barbara, Marin County, and even Palm Springs have all undertaken the transformation of former golf courses into public parklands.

Rewilding a golf course is undoubtedly a disappointment to local golfers, but it can bring big benefits to animals, plants, and people. 

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After Shutting Down, These Golf Courses Went Wild

Photo, posted October 19, 2016, courtesy of Cabo Girao via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Polar bears and the changing climate

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The changing climate poses a major threat to polar bear survival.  Polar bears, whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, depend on sea ice for nearly all of their lifecycle functions.  Rising global temperatures are causing this sea ice to disappear.

With less sea ice, polar bears are forced to stay longer on land.  However, according to a new study led by researchers from Washington State University, more time stranded on land leads to a greater risk of polar bear starvation. 

During three summer weeks in Manitoba, Canada, 20 polar bears observed by researchers tried different strategies to maintain energy reserves.  But the research team found that nearly all of them lost weight – losing about 2.2 pounds per day on average.     

Some scientists have speculated that polar bears might be able to adapt to the changing climate by acting more like grizzly bears by either resting or eating terrestrial food.  But the polar bears tried versions of both strategies – with little success.

Polar bears can weigh nearly twice as much as grizzly bears.  To maintain this size, polar bears rely on the energy-rich fat of seals, which they best catch on ice.

In the study, which was recently published in Nature Communications, the researchers found that some polar bears laid down to conserve energy, while others searched on land for food.  But neither the activity nor the lack thereof paid off.  In fact, only one bear out of the 20 gained weight after stumbling across a dead marine mammal on land.

Polar bears across the Arctic are at risk of starvation as the ice-free period continues to grow.

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Polar bears unlikely to adapt to longer summers

Photo, posted November 16, 2015, courtesy of Anita Ritenour via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Flower power in agriculture

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Agriculture is the world’s largest industry.  When managed sustainably, agricultural operations can provide many environmental benefits, such as protecting watersheds and habitats, and improving soil health and water quality.  Sustainable agriculture also embraces biodiversity by minimizing its impact on wild ecosystems and incorporating numerous plant and animal varieties into farm ecosystems.

A new study of farms in India has demonstrated the power of incorporating flowers into farming practices.  According to the research by ecologists from the University of Reading in the U.K. and the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in India, planting flowers beside food crops attracts bees, boosts pollination, and improves both the yield and quality of crops.

 The study, which was recently published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, is the first of its kind in India.  The researchers focused on moringa – which is a nutrient-packed superfood native to South India, and bees – the plants’ essential pollinators. 

Working alongside farmers, the researchers planted marigold and red gram crops alongside moringa trees across 12 moringa orchards.  They found that flower-visiting insect numbers and diversity were 50% and 33% higher, respectively, in orchards with floral interventions compared to those without them.  Floral interventions also led to larger moringa pods and a 30% increase in harvestable fruits.

India has many crops of high economic and nutritional value.  The study highlights how farmers can significantly improve crop pollination services and boost yields, while also managing their lands in a more sustainable manner.

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Flower power on Indian farms helps bees, boosts livelihoods

Floral interventions on farms boost pollinators and crop yields

Photo, posted June 24, 2008, courtesy of Jim via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Does vertically-grown food taste different?

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Vertical farming is a method of producing crops in vertically stacked layers or surfaces typically in a skyscraper, used warehouse, or shipping container.  Modern vertical farming uses indoor farming techniques and controlled-environment agriculture technology. 

Vertical farming has the potential to be one of the solutions to food insecurity in parts of the world where crop production is limited by climate change or other environmental factors.  Vertical farming reduces water and land use, reduces nutrient emissions, and could eliminate the need for pesticides.  It also allows more food to be grown locally and with higher yields.

But some critics of vertically-grown veggies say they look pale, artificial, and taste bland.  In the first study of its kind, a research team led by scientists from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark sought to investigate whether these consumer prejudices hold true.

The research team asked 190 participants to blind taste test arugula, baby spinach, pea shoots, basil, and parsley grown in vertical farming and compare the taste and appearance to those same leafy greens grown organically in soil. 

Overall, the organic greens grown traditionally narrowly beat out the vertically-grown ones in the study, but it was very close.  For example, when asked to rate arugula on a scale of 1-9 with 9 being best, the participants gave both types a 6.6.  There was no clear winner between basil, baby spinach, and pea shoots.  The only clear winner was organically-grown parsley. 

The study debunks some myths about vertically-grown food and should help pave the way for more widespread adoption of this efficient method to grow tasty and nutritious food. 

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A delicious surprise: Vertically farmed greens taste as good as organic ones

Photo, posted May 11, 2009, courtesy of Cliff Johnson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Food and the climate crisis

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Agriculture is a major part of the climate problem and remains one of the hardest human activities to decarbonize.  It’s responsible for approximately 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

Many experts contend that alternative food sources – like insect farming and seaweed aquaculture – are part of the solution.  Additionally, expanding production of climate resilient food crops, including quinoa, kernza, amaranth, and millet, likely also have a role to play. 

But according to a new study led by researchers from the University of California – Irvine, another solution to this problem may be to eliminate farms altogether.  In the study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Sustainability, the research team explored the potential for wide scale synthetic production of dietary fats through chemical and biological processes.  The materials needed for this method are the same as those used naturally by plants: hydrogen (in water) and carbon dioxide (in the air).   

The research team highlighted some of the potential benefits of farm-free food, including reduced water use, less pollution, localized food production, and less risk to food production from weather. 

Cookies, crackers, chips, and many other grocery products are made with palm oil, a dietary fat that continues to be a major driver of deforestation around the world.  However, it remains to be seen how consumers would react if the oil used to bake their cookies came from a food refinery up the road instead of a palm plantation in Indonesia.     

According to the researchers, depending on food refineries instead of tropical plantations for dietary fats could mitigate lots of climate-warming emissions while also protecting land and biodiversity.

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UC Irvine-led science team shows how to eat our way out of the climate crisis

Photo, posted July 15, 2008, courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Farming the frozen north

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Agriculture is the primary cause of land-based biodiversity loss.  As the global population grows, agricultural production needs to keep pace.  Estimates are that production needs to double by 2050.  How this can be accomplished without doing further harm to the environment and biodiversity is extremely challenging.

Climate change adds further complications to the challenge.  As the climate warms in the middle latitudes, agricultural zones may need to shift northward to regions which have evolved to have more suitable climates.  This represents a very real threat to the wilderness areas of Canada, Russia, and Scandinavia.  These places represent a significant fraction of the world’s wilderness areas outside of Antarctica.

According to researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK, if the forces driving climate change are not diminished, over the next 40 years warming temperatures are expected to make more than 1 million square miles newly suitable for growing crops.  As cropland goes barren in areas that have warmed too much, northern wilderness could be turned over to farming.  The vital integrity of these valuable areas could be irreversibly lost.

The study, published in the journal Current Biology, also says that climate change will shrink the variety of crops that can be grown on 72% of the land that is currently farmed worldwide.  Given this situation along with the rising global population, it is essential that land be used more efficiently.  We can feed a larger population from the farmland we already have, but people need to reduce meat consumption, cut food waste, and grow crops suited to their local climate.

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Warming Could Make Northern Wilderness Ripe for Farming, Study Finds

Photo, posted September 7, 2016, courtesy of Scott via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Who wins: Wind or solar?

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A new study by the University of Exeter in the UK suggests that the world may have crossed a tipping point that will inevitably make solar power our main source of energy.  This data-driven model of technology seems to fly in the face of the current situation in which wind power contributes considerably more generation than solar power – by a factor of 3 in the U.S. and nearly double worldwide.

Wind and solar power both have advantages and disadvantages.  Solar power is quiet, requires little maintenance, and presents little danger to wildlife.  It is also practical for individual homes.  Residential wind power is not really a viable option for most people in most places.  But on the other hand, wind energy can produce more power than solar, can work both day and night, and can be located offshore far away from people.  On land, both wind and solar power take up lots of space and compete with other land use needs as well as countering people’s aesthetic preferences.

Both technologies continue to get cheaper over time, although solar has especially seen significant cost reductions.  The cost of solar power, which is already the cheapest form of electricity production, is estimated to fall to as low as $20 per megawatt hour over time from the current level of $40 per megawatt hour.

Wind and solar energy are on track to account for more than a third of the world’s electricity by 2030, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute.  Despite the predictions of various studies and the ambitions of specific technologies, it seems likely that wind and solar power will both play an expanding role in our energy systems for a long time to come.

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World may have crossed solar power ‘tipping point’

Photo, posted November 22, 2008, courtesy of Oregon Department of Transportation via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Powering Britain with sun and wind

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The United Kingdom is quite small in size compared with the US, but its population of 67 million makes it a fairly large country with substantial energy needs.  A recent study by Oxford University looked at the ability of wind and solar power to provide for those energy needs over the course of time.

According to the study, Britain’s energy needs could easily be met entirely by the two sources of clean power.  Wind and solar can provide significantly more energy than the highest energy demand forecasted for 2050 and nearly 10 times the current electricity demand. 

Britain currently requires 299 TWh per year.  The Oxford study found that wind and solar could generate as much as 2,896 TWh per year. Furthermore, the researchers stated that these estimates are intentionally conservative, taking into account concerns around land use and the visual impact of installations.

The analysis assumes that offshore wind would produce nearly three-quarters of the energy required.  Onshore wind would contribute about 7%, while taking up only 0.07% of the country’s land.  Utility-scale solar would add about 19% of the power.  The small remainder comes from rooftop solar.  The researchers do point out that the power grid would require significant upgrades to handle all this renewable energy and that there would need to be appropriate quantities of energy storage. 

According to the authors of the study, achieving these results is a question of ambition rather than technical feasibility.  So far, the UK government has not been aggressive in making the transition to renewable energy.

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Wind and solar power could significantly exceed Britain’s energy needs

Photo, posted November 4, 2021, courtesy of Steve Knight via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The Climate Impact Of Diets | Earth Wise

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The food system is responsible for 70% of the world’s freshwater use and almost 80% of freshwater pollution.  About three-quarters of the ice-free land area of the planet has been affected by human use, primarily for agriculture.  Land-use change such as deforestation is a major source of biodiversity loss.  What we choose to eat has a major effect on how the food system impacts the environment.

A comprehensive study by researchers at several UK universities has found that a plant-based diet yields one-fourth as much greenhouse gases as a diet rich in meat.  Vegan diets produce 75% less heat-trapping gas, generate 75% less water pollution, and use 75% less land than meat-rich diets.

Just going to a low-meat diet cuts the environmental cost of a high-meat diet in half.  Pescatarian diets perform better than low-meat diets, and vegetarian diets do even a little better than that.

There are a variety of reasons why many people won’t, can’t, or even shouldn’t become vegans.  What should be learned from this study is that our dietary choices have a major environmental impact.  So, taking actions like cutting down the amount of meat and dairy – which most people can do with relative ease – can be valuable.

There are many choices with respect to where we live, how we get from place to place, where we get our food, and, yes, what food we eat, that impact the environment.  We are not all going to do the best possible thing in all these cases, but if we each make some choices that at least help, it can make a big difference.

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Vegan Diets Have One-Fourth the Climate Impact of Meat-Heavy Diets, Study Finds

Photo, posted November 5, 2017, courtesy of Stephanie Kraus via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Beaver Believers | Earth Wise

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Beavers are ecosystem engineers based on their ability to construct dams and create ponds.  By doing so, they create wetland habitat for other species.  They create biodiversity by allowing plant species to emerge in new places as they clear out existing trees and other plants.  Beavers improve water quality and their dams store water during droughts.  Their handiwork minimizes flood risk and mitigates flooding impacts.

Before beavers were widely trapped, there were beaver dams just about everywhere in the American west.  Now beaver rewilding is trying to restore many western ecosystems. In places like Idaho, ranchers have gone from seeing beavers as a nuisance to actually recruiting them onto their land.  One cattle rancher began stream restoration on his land with beaver rewilding in 2014.  By 2022, he was a firm “beaver believer”.  There are now over 200 beaver dams along Birch Creek near Preston, Idaho, and the stream now flows 40 days longer into the year.

NASA has established a team to investigate the extent to which beavers can have an outsized and positive impact on local ecosystems.  The team is using NASA’s Earth Observation satellites to observe the effects beavers are having.  Satellites can collect data from large areas and can pass over the same areas regularly and across seasons.  The goal is to support people on the ground who are implementing beaver rewilding efforts to increase water availability and to increase habits for fish and other species.  NASA’s project will run through 2025 and it plans to expand it to other states with similar terrain and water management strategies.

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Web Links

Researchers Become “Beaver Believers” After Measuring the Impacts of Rewilding

Photo, posted February 23, 2021, courtesy of Deborah Freeman via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

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