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More eco-friendly desalination

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There are about 16,000 operational desalination plants, located across 177 countries, which generate an estimated 25 billion gallons of fresh water daily.

For every gallon of drinking water produced at a typical desalination plant, one and a half gallons of brine are produced.  Much of it is stored in ponds until the water evaporates, leaving behind solid salt or concentrated brine for further treatment.  There are various other techniques for concentrating brines, but they are energy-intensive and environmentally problematic.  The process called electrodialysis uses electrified membranes to concentrate salts. 

Water flows into many channels separated by membranes, each of which has the opposite electrical charge of its neighbors.  Positive salt ions move towards negatively charged electrodes and negative ions move toward positive electrodes.  Two streams result, one containing purified water and one containing concentrated brine.

This eliminates the need for evaporation ponds, but existing electrodialysis membranes either result in leakage of salts into the environment or are too slow, making the process impractical for large-scale use.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new kind of membrane for electrodialysis.  The new membranes don’t leak and are ten times more conductive than those on the market today which means that they can move more salt using less power.  The membranes can be customized to suit a broad range of water types, which may help make desalination a more sustainable solution to the world’s growing water crisis.

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Making desalination more eco-friendly: New membranes could help eliminate brine waste

Photo, posted February 4, 2012, courtesy of David Martinez Vicente via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Relocating native plants

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Climate change is endangering many native plant species.  As the climate warms, many species will need to establish themselves in new places that are more hospitable than their historic ranges.  But many native plants in the U.S. cannot move themselves by natural forces quickly enough to avoid climate-change driven extinction.  For such plants to survive into the future, they will need human help to move into adjacent areas, a process called “managed relocation.”

Such a process has its problems.  There is no guarantee that a plant will thrive in a new area.  On the other hand, relocating plant species historically has often had disastrous consequences.  Consider, for example, the story of kudzu in the American south.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have studied this problem in detail and reported the results in the journal Global Change Biology.

The issue is how to help plants move successfully without their causing harm in their new locations.  The study found that some plant traits can lead to success and some to ecological disaster.  In some cases, the same traits that help plants to establish themselves in a new location make them powerful invasive species.  Traits like having a large size predispose a plant to not only establish itself but spread wildly. 

The study recommends that people managing relocation need to focus on plants whose traits they have determined to be conducive to successful relocation but more unlikely to cause harm in their new environment. 

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If Native Plants Are Going to Survive Climate Change, They Need Our Help to Move—Here’s How to Do It Safely

Photo, posted August 17, 2012, courtesy of Joshua Mayer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Hurricanes and wildfires

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Early March saw more than 200 wildfires break out in the southeastern U.S. – a busy start to the region’s annual fire season.  One fire in the Carolina Forest near Myrtle Beach scorched over 2,000 acres over a two-week period and firefighters were busy containing it and many other blazes.

Strong winds and an unusually long dry period have made fires more likely to ignite and be spread.  Lightning strikes, power line sparking, backyard fire pits and leaf burning all can lead to wildfires under these conditions.

A weather disaster last year may be helping to make this fire season worse than usual.  Hurricane Helene ravaged the Southeast last September, dumping more than a foot of rain in some locations and knocking over hundreds of thousands of acres of trees across the region.

Lots of dead trees lying on the ground allow sunlight to reach the ground and dry out all the biomass, including the trees.  All of this desiccated plant material acts as kindling, providing fuel for wildfires.  Fallen trees can be a fire nuisance for years after a hurricane, especially in the Southeast, where dried out pine needles are highly combustible.  All it takes is an ignition.

In addition, all the fallen trees represent an access issue for firefighters as the logs block roads needed to reach the fires.

Research has shown that climate change is fueling more intense fires in the West.  Whether the changing climate is having a major effect in the Southeast isn’t clear.  But droughts are expected to become more intense and more frequent in the Southeast because of climate change and that isn’t good news for the likelihood of wildfires.

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How Hurricanes Can Fuel Wildfires in the Southeast

Photo, posted March 5, 2025, courtesy of the U.S. Army National Guard / Roberto Di Giovine via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Planting trees in Europe

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Planting lots of trees is one of many strategies being pursued to combat climate change.  Trees are storehouses of carbon from the atmosphere and planting more of them helps remove carbon dioxide.  But trees do more than that.  Trees are natural air conditioners in cities.

Trees significantly cool urban environments by providing shade and via a process called evapotranspiration by which they release water vapor into the air, which provides cooling.  This helps mitigate the urban heat island effect. Areas under trees in cities can be as much as 25 degrees cooler than in unshaded areas covered in asphalt.

The city of Paris has laid out a plan to help the city prepare for increasing amounts of extreme heat.  The goal is to replace 60,000 parking spaces across the city with trees by the end of this decade.  The plan to rip up parking spaces is part of a greater aim to create more than 700 acres of green space by 2030.  The Paris plan also includes creating more car-free zones and installing reflective roofs on 1,000 public buildings.  Nearly 80% of the buildings in Paris have zinc roofs – an affordable, corrosion-resistant and pretty much inflammable innovation of the 19th century.  However, these roofs can heat up to 194 degrees on a summer day, transferring heat into largely uninsulated top-floor garrets below.

Elsewhere in Europe, Danish lawmakers have agreed on a plan to rewild 10% of the country’s farmland and plant one billion trees.   According to the Danish government, this plan would bring about the biggest change to the Danish landscape in over 100 years.

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To Cope with Extreme Heat, Paris Will Swap Parking Spaces for Trees

Photo, posted April 11, 2014, courtesy of Val H. via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A solar peaker plant

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Peaker plants are power plants that the grid makes use of during times of particularly high electricity demand.  The power they supply is typically high in cost and usually high in greenhouse gas emissions.  When operating the electricity grid, power sources are generally called upon in order of marginal cost.  Only when demand is very high do grid operators make use of the highest-cost assets that tend to be fossil-fueled power plants that can start and ramp up quickly. 

For years, there has been the idea that solar-powered peaker plants could eventually replace the polluting fossil-fueled ones.  Recently, the renewable energy developer, owner, and operator Arevon Energy began commercial operations of the Vikings Solar-plus-Storage Project in Imperial County, California.  It is the first utility-scale solar peaker plant in the United States.

The plant utilizes a 157-megawatt solar array combined with 150 MW and 600 MWh of battery energy storage.  It can shift low-cost daytime solar energy to higher-cost peak demand periods.  The result is a lowered cost of electricity for nearly one million customers of San Diego Community Power.

The project contradicts the often-held notion that renewable energy is inherently unreliable.  It can provide carbon-free electricity at specific times of critical need.  Typical hybrid solar + storage plants provide electricity during daylight hours and store only excess generation in their battery systems.  The Vikings project is specifically designed to shift the entirety of its generation from solar hours to the peak demand period.

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Arevon fires up the first solar + storage peaker plant in the U.S.

Photo, posted October 15, 2024, courtesy of Jay Inslee via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Extreme geothermal power

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Krafla is one of the most explosive volcanoes in Iceland, which is home to many active volcanoes, including one recently in the news near Reykjavik that hadn’t erupted for 800 years .  Krafla is the site of the Krafla Magma Testbed, which may end up being for geoscientists what the Large Hadron Collider has been for particle physicists. 

For over a decade, researchers have been drilling straight into the ground at Krafla to study what goes on deep beneath an active volcano.  Ten years ago, they encountered an unexpected magma chamber a little over a mile down.  Their equipment was destroyed but the researchers decided that they had uncovered a unique opportunity to study magma dynamics and potentially be able to tap into a significant new energy source.

The plan is to use the tremendous heat energy contained in magma to dramatically improve the production of geothermal energy.  Krafla is already the site of a geothermal energy plant that makes use of the heat beneath the surface to boil water that then drives turbines to generate electricity.

Forthcoming drilling projects will make use of new equipment that can handle the harsh conditions that will be encountered in the magma chamber.  The goal is to tap directly into the magma to produce superheated steam that could produce ten times more power than conventional geothermal systems.  Conventional systems access temperatures around 200 to 300 degrees; the magma is at 1,800 degrees.

It will take a few years to complete the project, but if it is successful, it could have implications well beyond Iceland.  There are many active volcanoes all over the world.

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Drilling into magma: Risky plan takes geothermal to supercritical extremes

Photo courtesy of Landsvirkjun.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A giant solar project for Google

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One of the largest solar projects in the US has recently come online in Texas.  Three solar farms built side-by-side in Buckholts, Texas by SB Energy can provide 875 megawatts of electricity, nearly the size of a typical nuclear power plant.  The project will supply the largest solar energy purchase ever made by Google and the electricity generated will be used to power its new operations in the area.  Google will use about 85% of the project’s solar power for data centers in Ellis County and for cloud computing in the Dallas Region.

In total, Google has contracted with clean energy developers to bring more than 2,800 megawatts of new wind and solar projects to Texas.  Google expects to spend $16 billion through 2040 to purchase clean energy for its global operations.

According to the International Energy Agency, data centers’ total electricity consumption could reach more than 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, which is more than double the amount used in 2022.  One terawatt-hour is enough energy to power 70,000 homes for a year.  So, it is not surprising that large technology companies are investing heavily in energy technologies.

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have all recently announced investments in nuclear energy to power data centers.  These companies all have made commitments to seek sources of carbon-free electricity to power their data centers and their increasing efforts in artificial intelligence.  Because of the rise of artificial intelligence, the large companies are not meeting their commitments to reduce their carbon emissions and are needing to greatly increase their efforts to obtain clean power.

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One of the largest solar projects in the US opens in Texas, backed by Google

Photo, posted March 27, 2016, courtesy of Ben Nuttall via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Reducing emissions from cement

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Cement production accounts for about 7% of global carbon emissions.  It is one of the most difficult challenges for emissions reduction.  The emissions associated with producing cement come from both the energy used to provide heat for the process and from the chemical reactions that take place in the formation of cement.  Cement is an essential building block of society, and its use is not expected to decline over time.

A German company called Heidelberg Materials is embarking on an ambitious project to reduce carbon emissions from a cement plant in Norway.  They are building a facility to use absorbent chemicals to capture large quantities of carbon dioxide emitted through cement production.  More than half a ton of carbon dioxide arises from every ton of cement produced at the plant.

Once the carbon dioxide is captured it will be chilled to a liquid, loaded onto ships, and carried to a terminal farther up the Norwegian coast.  From there, it will be pumped into undersea rocks located 70 miles offshore and a mile and a half below the bottom of the North Sea.

With all of this complicated process going on, cement from the plant is likely to be quite expensive.  It might even be two or three times the price of ordinary cement.  Heidelberg Materials is counting on customers’ willingness to pay much more for cement that comes with green credentials. 

Can this be economically viable?  Heidelberg estimates that cement accounts for only about 2% of the cost of a large building project but as much as 50% of the emissions.  As a result, using carbon-free cement could be a relatively inexpensive way for builders to reduce emissions.

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Cement Is a Big Polluter. A Plant in Norway Hopes to Clean It Up.

Photo, posted May 7, 2016, courtesy of Phillip Pessar via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A dangerous invasive species

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Weeds are the bane of every gardener’s existence.  They pop up, uncontrolled and unwelcome, and must be tediously managed time and time again.  But in some cases, weeds are more than just a nuisance.  Some are a public health hazard. 

Meet giant hogweed.  Native to Europe’s Caucasus Mountains, giant hogweed belongs to the carrot family. The plant resembles Queen Anne’s Lace – on steroids. Giant hogweed can grow up to 15 feet tall with three inch stems, five-foot-wide leaves, and an umbrella-like canopy of white flowers.

Botanists brought giant hogweed to England as an ornamental plant in the 1890s.  It made its way to the U.S. via horticultural channels.  In fact, one of the first specimens was planted in a Victorian garden near Rochester, NY.  

As with most invasive plants, it quietly escaped cultivation. In the U.S., giant hogweed can be found in New England, the Mid-Atlantic Region, and the Northwest, with plants preferring moist habitat near roadside ditches and stream banks.   

While a seemingly innocent flowering plant, giant hogweed is actually one of the most hazardous plants in the U.S.  Brushing against or breaking the plant releases sap that, when combined with sunlight and moisture, can cause severe burn-like lesions, blistering sores, and purplish or blackened scars.  Getting sap in your eyes can result in temporary or even permanent blindness.

With each plant dropping up to 120,000 seeds, it’s no surprise that giant hogweed is proving difficult to eradicate.

If you suspect giant hogweed is growing near you, photograph the plant from a safe distance and report the sighting to local environmental authorities. 

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Plant Pest Risk Assessment for Giant Hogweed

Giant Hogweed

Photo, posted March 22, 2021, courtesy of Scottish Invasive Species Initiative via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Wildfires and carbon storage

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Forests are known to be a key natural solution to the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  For this reason, there are widespread efforts to plant more trees around the world and to prevent increasing deforestation for development and agriculture.  But a new study has highlighted the fact that wildfires in the western US are degrading the potential for forests to help curb climate change.

The study has established a baseline for how much carbon is currently stored in Western forests, how that amount is changing, and how fires and droughts are affecting the ability of the forests to mitigate climate change.

The study made use of survey data collected by the US Forest Service to estimate how much carbon is stored in 19 ecoregions across the West.  These ecoregions range from hot and dry areas in the Southwest to the wet and cool regions of the Pacific Northwest.

The study reveals that the carbon stored in living trees declined across much of the Western US between 2005 and 2019.  Carbon stored in dead trees and woody debris increased.  These things do not provide long-term carbon storage.  Instead, they release it back into the atmosphere through decomposition or combustion in forest fires.

The increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires, especially since 2020, indicate that the decline in live carbon stored in the forests will become increasingly pronounced.  The result, according to the study’s authors, is that we cannot rely on increasing carbon storage in Western US forests.  It may be possible to increase the stability of carbon storage in the forests with mechanical thinning and prescribed burning, but the carbon carrying capacity of those forests is not likely to be what is needed.

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Forest carbon storage has declined across much of the Western US, likely due to drought and fire

Photo, posted July 25, 2021, courtesy of Felton Davis via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The largest carbon removal plant

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Direct air capture (DAC) is process that removes carbon dioxide out of the air and stores it away where it can no longer trap heat in the atmosphere.  It is intended to be a way of getting rid of the greenhouse gases that have built up in the atmosphere.  In principle, it’s a great idea.  In practice, it is a huge challenge.

In 2017, a company called Climeworks became the first company to take carbon dioxide out of the air and sell it as a product for use in carbonated drinks and in greenhouses.  In 2021, the company opened a DAC plant called Orca in Iceland that captures CO2 and permanently stores it underground.  Clients like Microsoft pay Climeworks for doing this as a way of offsetting their own emissions.

Recently, Climeworks has started operating a new plant called Mammoth – also in Iceland – that will be able to capture about 10 times more carbon dioxide than Orca.  Iceland is a prime location for DAC technology because its abundant geothermal energy makes powering it cheap and environmentally friendly.

Mammoth, when fully operational, will remove about 36,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, the largest DAC system in the world.  But there is a long, long way to go.  Microsoft alone emits nearly 13 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

There are multiple DAC projects in development including several in the United States being funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.  The four DAC hubs being developed under the program are each supposed to have the capacity to capture at least a million metric tons of CO2 a year.

Whether DAC can make a real difference remains to be seen.

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The world’s largest carbon removal plant is here, and bigger ones are on the way

Photo credit: Climeworks

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The world’s largest energy plant

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The largest energy plant in the world is being built in India.  In an area of barren desert in western India near the Pakistani border, Adani Green Energy Limited (or AGEL) is building a sprawling solar and wind power plant that will cover more than 200 square miles.  It will be five times the size of Paris and will produce enough electricity to power 16 million homes.

The Khavda Renewable Energy Park will cost about $20 billion to build and will take about five years to complete.

The success of the plant is critical to India’s efforts to reduce pollution and meet its climate goals.  India is the world’s third-largest energy consuming country.  Even though its energy use and emissions per person are less than half the global average, its enormous population offsets that advantage and its expanding economy and ongoing modernization are driving rapid growth of energy demand.  Energy demand has doubled since 2000 and 80% is still being met by coal, oil, and solid biomass.  India uses massive amounts of coal, and, in fact, the Adani Group of companies is India’s biggest coal importer and a leading miner of the fossil fuel.   Adani represents two sides of the coin.

More than 600 million people in India will be coming into middle and upper income over the next 10 to 15 years and they will have increasing energy needs.  India is in a race to develop clean energy capacity.  If it simply follows the torturous path that China, Europe, and US all have done, the prospects for the global climate are bleak.

Building the world’s largest clean energy plant is just a first small step in the necessary direction.

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A coal billionaire is building the world’s biggest clean energy plant and it’s five times the size of Paris

Photo, posted February 25, 2010, courtesy of Bhavin Toprani via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A common plant could be a valuable food source

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A new study by researchers at Penn State University has found that a common water plant in the eastern U.S. could be a valuable green fertilizer, a feed for poultry and livestock, and even a life-saving food for people in the event of a catastrophe or disaster.

The plant is the Carolina azolla.  It is sometimes called mosquito fern, fairy moss, or water fern. It is a water plant that grows very rapidly; it can double its biomass in two days.   There are many varieties of azolla, but the Carolina strain is more digestible and nutritious for people than any of the others.

Azolla species have been used across the world for centuries as a livestock feed and as a fertilizer.  They have not been good for human consumption because of high polyphenolic content, which can be 10 times more than that of common food plants.  Polyphenols are abundant compounds in many plants and, in low concentrations, are beneficial antioxidants.  But in high concentrations they act as antinutritional agents.

It turns out that the Carolina azolla – described as having a crisp texture and neutral taste – has a polyphenolic content comparable to many fruits, nuts, and vegetables.  Furthermore, cooking significantly decreases the polyphenolic content in foods.

Carolina azolla has significant nutritional value including high mineral yields and calories,  and moderate protein content.  Whether it is used as a quick-fix in a disaster situation or as part of a long-term resilience plan, the study concludes that Carolina azolla holds excellent potential for use as a fast-growing, short-season crop that requires minimal effort to grow and process and could be used to increase food security in a hungry world.

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Common plant could help reduce food insecurity, researchers find

Photo, posted October 8, 2020, courtesy of Dana L. Brown via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Small changes can yield big results

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Global food production is one of the largest contributors to climate change.  In fact, one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions result from food production and agriculture.  Be that as it may, we still have to eat.  But what we choose to eat has a major impact on the environment.

According to a new study by researchers at McGill University in Canada and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the U.K., partially replacing red and processed meat with plant-based proteins can increase lifespan and mitigate climate change. 

In the study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Food, the researchers drew data from a national nutrition survey to analyze Canadians’ dietary records. The study modeled partial replacements (25% and 50%) of either red and processed meat or dairy with plant protein foods like nuts, seeds, legumes, and tofu, on a combination of nutrition, health, and climate outcomes.

In the study, the researchers found that a person’s diet-related carbon footprint plummets by 25% when they replace half of their intake of red and processed meats with plant protein foods. However, dairy substitutions showed smaller reductions of up to just 5%.

Meat and dairy-rich diets are known to increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. The researchers also estimated that if half of the red and processed meat in a person’s diet was replaced with plant protein foods, life expectancy would increase nearly nine months on average, due to a reduced risk of chronic disease.

The research team hopes its findings will help people make healthier and more sustainable food choices. 

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Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions

Small dietary changes can cut your carbon footprint by 25%

Photo, posted November 24, 2019, courtesy of Theo Crazzolara via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A giant underground battery

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Two up-and-coming energy technologies are coming together near a tiny town in central Utah.  Outside of the town of Delta, population 3,600, two caverns, each as deep as the Empire State Building, are being created from an underground salt formation to be used to store hydrogen gas.  The gas will be used as a fuel in a new electricity generation plant.

The plant will replace an aging local coal-fired power plant.  The new plant will burn a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen – green hydrogen produced without emitting greenhouse gases. To produce the hydrogen, the facility will operate 40 giant electrolyzers that will use excess solar and wind power generated at times of low demand to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

The caverns were created by a process called solution mining in which high-pressure water is pumped down into salt deposits that are dissolved. The resulting caverns are 200 feet in diameter and 1,200 deep and lie 3,000 to 4,000 feet below the surface.  Hydrogen cannot escape through the thick salt layers.

The amount of energy that can be stored in the form of hydrogen fuel in these caverns is massive – far more than all the battery storage installed in the U.S. to date.  Chevron has a majority stake in one of the projects and will supply the natural gas.  The facility is expected to go online in 2025.

While this will produce far fewer emissions than existing coal plants, it is not carbon-free.  Currently, turbine technology cannot operate with pure hydrogen fuel.  The Delta plant will run on only 30% hydrogen.  The hope is that turbine technology will improve in the future and permit operation on pure hydrogen.

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A Huge Underground Battery Is Coming to a Tiny Utah Town

Photo, posted September 9, 2013, courtesy of Scott via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Tracking down PFAS toxins

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PFAS – per- and polyfluoralkyl substances – are a group of organic compounds that have been extensively used to provide water-, oil-, and dirt-resistance to a wide range of products ranging from non-stick pans, clothing, and packaging to paint, car polish, and fire-suppressant foam.  Exposure to specific PFAS compounds is associated with multiple adverse health effects, including altered immune and thyroid function, liver disease, kidney disease, poor reproductive and developmental outcomes, and cancer.  PFAS compounds do not break down in the environment and therefore, over time, become concentrated in plants, animals, and people.

Government agencies such as the EPA in this country and the EU have set strict limits for allowable levels of PFAS in drinking water.  Testing water for the trace amounts of PFAS that constitute the limits is time-consuming and expensive and requires complex equipment and experienced personnel.

Researchers at MIT have now introduced a technique for making a portable, inexpensive test that can easily and selectively detect PFAS in water samples.  The test makes use of a special polymer containing fluorinated dye molecules that cause the polymer to fluoresce red.  If PFAS are present in the sample, they enter the polymer and displace the dye molecules and switches off the red fluorescence. 

The new technique is suitable for on-site detection in highly contaminated regions.  Detecting smaller concentrations can be achieved with sufficient precision after pre-concentrating the samples using the process of solid-phase extraction.

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Tracking down Environmental Toxins

Photo, posted October 16, 2021, courtesy of Nenad Stojkovic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Protecting berries with sunflower extract

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Many of us buy blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and more in those little clear plastic clamshell boxes.  We try to check them out at the store to make sure they are ok and even if are, many soon end up coated with gray mold and other fungi.  It is a problem that is both disappointing and expensive.

Researchers from several Chinese Universities recently reported that compounds extracted from sunflower crop waste are quite effective at preventing rotting in blueberries.  They suggest that the food industry could use these natural compounds to protect berries from postharvest diseases.

Sunflowers are grown globally for their seeds and oil.  The flower stems themselves are generally considered to be a waste product.  Sunflowers are known to be particularly resistant to many plant diseases so the researchers decided to investigate whether there might be chemical constituents within the plants that are responsible for the protective property.

Their research led to the isolation of 17 different compounds known as diterpenoids, including four that have never been identified before.  They found that 4 of the compounds, including 2 of the newly discovered ones, were effective at preventing the growth of fungus on the blueberries. 

Berries were wetted with the compounds and then dried off and injected with mold spores.  Half of the treated berries were protected from the mold.

There is no reason that the method couldn’t be applied to a variety of crops.  There is great appeal in the concept of using a harmless extract from a plant to render a food crop safe from fungal infestation.  The technique holds great promise in preventing postharvest disease in fruit.

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Sunflower extract fights fungi to keep blueberries fresh

Photo, posted August 26, 2006, courtesy of Liz West via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Fossil-free fertilizer

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Ammonia is a major industrial commodity.  About 70% of it is used to make fertilizer, with the rest for a wide range of industrial applications.  Ammonia is the starting point for all mineral nitrogen fertilizers. 

Typically, ammonia is a byproduct of isolating hydrogen from natural gas, which releases large amounts of carbon dioxide.  On a global scale, the climate impact of ammonia production is comparable to that of air travel.  The world needs more ammonia but really cannot afford the emissions that come with its production.

There are also political implications of ammonia production.  Because it relies so heavily on natural gas, ammonia supply is vulnerable to disruptions from events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Sanctions imposed after the invasion have hindered fertilizer exports, driving up costs, especially in places like Africa.

A small fertilizer plant near Nairobi, Kenya will be the first farm in the world to produce its own nitrogen fertilizer on site that is free of fossil fuels.  The plant is being built by an American startup company Talus Renewables and will use solar power to strip hydrogen from water.  The hydrogen will then bond with nitrogen from the air to form liquid ammonia.  The plant will produce one ton of ammonia each day.

The typical bag of fertilizer in sub-Saharan Africa travels 6,000 miles to get there, which of course only adds to the environmental burden of using it as well as its cost.  By building a small green ammonia plant like the one coming online in Kenya, it is possible to locally produce a critical raw material in a carbon-free manner.

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Farm in Kenya First to Produce Fossil-Free Fertilizer On Site

Photo courtesy of Talus Renewables via LinkedIn.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Storing Energy In Abandoned Mines | Earth Wise

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An international study led by researchers from Austria has developed a novel way to store energy by transporting sand into abandoned underground mines.  The technique is called Underground Gravity Energy Storage or UGES.

As the world deploys growing amounts of wind and solar energy, it is increasingly important to find ways to accessibly and efficiently store that energy to eliminate the inherent variability of the generation.  There are many ways to store energy on a short-term basis – most commonly in batteries – but cost-effective long-term storage is still in its early stages.

The UGES technique generates electricity by lowering sand into an underground mine thereby converting the potential energy of the sand into electricity by the same regenerative braking effect used in hybrid and electric cars.  The lowering sand operates a generator.   Storing energy is accomplished by lifting the sand from the mine with electric motors to an upper reservoir where it is ready for the next cycle.  By its nature, this storage technique has an indefinite duration, unlike batteries, for example, which lose energy to self-discharge.

The main components of UGES are the mineshaft, motor/generator, sand storage sites, and mining equipment.  The deeper and broader the mineshaft, the more power can be extracted from the plant, and the larger the mine, the more energy can be stored. Mines generally already have the basic infrastructure needed and are connected to the power grid.  The researchers estimate that there is global potential of 7 to 70 TWh of storage. Total global generating capacity is currently at the lower end of that range.

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Turning abandoned mines into batteries

Photo, posted October 21, 2020, courtesy of Christine Warner-Morin via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Why Was the Summer So Hot? | Earth Wise

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Many places around the world have experienced extraordinary heat waves this summer.  The 31 days of high temperatures 110 degrees or more in Phoenix is a prime example but many other places suffered from extreme and relentless heat.  Why did this happen?

The overarching reason is climate change, which has warmed the Earth by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit since the preindustrial era.  This change on a global level is enough to make heatwaves far more likely.  For example, the concurrent heatwaves in Europe and North America were 1000 times more likely to have occurred because of climate change.

But there hasn’t been a sudden increase in global temperature that would make this summer so much hotter.  Instead, what really has happened is three other factors all came into play at the same time.

The first is the 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha-apai, which is an underwater volcano in the South Pacific.  That eruption did not produce much in the way of planet-cooling aerosols in the atmosphere.  Instead, it vaporized huge amounts of seawater, sending water vapor into the atmosphere, which helps trap heat.

The second is a change in the amount of energy radiating from the sun.  That actually rises and falls a small amount every 11 years.  Currently, it is in the upswing and will reach its next peak in 2025.

Finally, there is the arrival of the El Niño in the Pacific, whose balmy ocean waters radiate heat into the air.

The combination of all these factors when added to the already warming climate is a recipe for temperatures to soar to uncharted highs.  We can expect more heat waves, forest fires, flash floods, and other sorts of extreme weather.

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It’s Not Just Climate Change: Three Other Factors Driving This Summer’s Extreme Heat

Photo, posted February 27, 2017, courtesy of Giuseppe Milo via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

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