https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... -heartlandAustralia’s first “hydrogen valley” would be created in New South Wales and run entirely on renewable energy under a $2bn proposal supported by local and global energy companies.
Led by renewables advisory business Energy Estate, the consortium says it plans to produce green hydrogen with wind and solar energy and use it as a feedstock for mining, transport and industrial users in the upper Hunter Valley, spruiking it as a potential replacement for the region’s coal industry.
If successful, a second stage would pipe hydrogen to Newcastle, where it could be used to help run a clean energy industrial precinct. Vincent Dwyer, a principal at Energy Estate, said it could provide zero-emissions feedstock for chemical manufacturing and allow the development of green ammonia for export.
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-discovery ... egies.html
For the first time, Penn State researchers have identified a gene that controls flowering in cacao, a discovery that may help accelerate breeding efforts aimed at improving the disease-ridden plant, they suggested.
Characterizing the Flowering Locus T gene in cacao, responsible for the production of florigen—a protein that triggers flowering in most plants—is important, according to study co-author Mark Guiltinan, J. Franklin Styer Professor of Horticultural Botany and professor of plant molecular biology. He expects this advancement to enable scientists to develop disease-resistant trees faster, which is critical because 20% to 30% of the world's cacao crop is lost to disease annually.
"Breeding tree crops like cacao is very slow and can take 20 or more years to release a new variety," he said. "Knowledge of the mechanisms of flowering may lead to methods to accelerate cacao breeding and to develop trees that produce fruit sooner than conventional varieties, which takes two to four years. Each year we move closer to these goals as we continue to explore the molecular biology of the cacao tree."
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-rivers-co ... stics.htmlA team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the Netherlands and one in Germany has created a list of the 1000 rivers around the globe that are pouring the most plastics into the world's oceans. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of the factors that introduce plastics into the ocean, and the methods they used to figure out which rivers were the largest contributors.
Prior research has shown that an enormous amount of man-made plastic makes its way into the world's oceans. And many studies have shown the kinds of impacts such plastics can have on the creatures that live in the sea, particularly those exposed to microplastics. In this new effort, the researchers have attempted to find the major sources for plastics in the ocean.
To trace the path of plastics from where they are used to the ocean, the researchers looked at possible routes and found three main drivers: wind and various forms of precipitation that move plastics from one area to another; the way land is used and its geography—different types of terrain can make it easier for plastics to be moved by natural forces; and the distance plastics have to travel to get to the sea.
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-zin ... cells.htmlZinc-air batteries (ZABs) are among the most promising next-generation battery technologies due to their many advantageous characteristics. Most notably, these batteries have unique half-open structures, a significant theoretical energy density (1,086 and 1,370 Wh kg−1 when including and excluding oxygen, respectively), flexible electrodes and an inherently aqueous electrolyte. Moreover, in contrast with other materials used in batteries, Zinc (Zn) is less harmful for the environment and more abundant.
Researchers at Hanyang University in South Korea recently designed a new type of zinc-air pouch cell that can outperform other commercially available battery technologies. These pouch cells, presented in a paper published in Nature Energy, use (101)-facet copper phosphosulfide [CPS(101)] as a cathode, anti-freezing chitosan-biocellulosics as super-ionic conductor electrolytes, and patterned Zn as the anode.
"Previous ZABs employing liquid (6 M KOH) electrolytes failed because of the sluggish kinetics for the oxygen reduction and evolution reactions (ORR/OER) and irreversibility of Zn accompanying the parasitic reactions over wide temperatures," Jung-Ho Lee, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. "This feature inspired us to develop solid-state electrolytes, such as functionalized biocellulose, capable of transferring OH- ions effectively without parasitic reactions."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -from-2024Tue 18 May 2021
Sales of peat compost to gardeners will be banned from 2024, the government has said. Ministers will also give £50m to support the restoration of 35,000 hectares of peatland by 2025, about 1% of the UK’s total.
The UK’s peatlands store three times as much carbon as its forests. But the vast majority are in a degraded state, and are emitting CO2, which drives the climate crisis.
The environment secretary, George Eustice, announced £500m to fund a tripling of tree planting in England to reach 7,000 hectares a year by 2024 and said a new 2030 target for wildlife populations would be set. A species reintroduction taskforce was also unveiled, to take forward work on recovering species lost to England, such as wildcats and beavers.
Restoring peatlands and increasing woodlands are vital to tackling global heating and boosting biodiversity. In terms of wildlife and wild spaces preserved from human activity, the UK is ranked 228th in the world, out of 240 countries and territories, according to the RSPB.
https://news.sky.com/story/oil-and-gas- ... e-12309593Tuesday 18 May 2021
No new fossil fuel boilers should be sold from 2025 if net-zero emissions goals are to be met by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says.
The Net Zero by 50 report published on Monday said no new coal mines are needed from now on as coal demand is on the decline, and there is also no place for oil or gas exploration or supplies.
By 2035, it said the sale of new petrol and diesel cars around the world would end.
https://news.sky.com/story/scientists-s ... t-12311065Wednesday 19 May 2021
Engineers have begun drilling three miles into the Earth's crust in search of sustainable round-the-clock energy for the world-famous Eden Project.
The 450-tonne rig is hammering through the Cornish granite to reach hot rocks that form a spine along the South West Peninsula.
Surveys suggest that water pumped down the borehole and back to the surface could reach 180C, enough to heat the domed glass biomes of exotic plants - and drive a 4-megawatt steam turbine to produce all the electricity the site needs.
The surplus could also heat 4,000 local houses.
Sir Tim Smit, the co-founder of the Eden Project, told Sky News: "It's going to provide baseload, which is the holy grail of energy.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... te-importsWed 19 May 2021
Turkey is banning the import of most plastic waste after an investigation revealed British recycling was left to burn or be dumped on beaches and roadsides.
Greenpeace visited 10 sites in the southern city of Adana in March. Investigators found waste including British supermarket packaging in waterways, on beaches and in illegal waste mountains.
Britain exports more plastic waste to Turkey than any other country since China banned imports in 2018. UK exports to the country increased from 12,000 tonnes in 2016 to 209,642 tonnes in 2020, about 30% of the UK’s plastic waste exports.
But Turkey has a recycling rate of just 12%, and investigators found plastic packaging from Tesco, Asda, Co-op, Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Lidl and Marks & Spencer dumped, left in bags or burned. Plastic from retailers such as B&Q, Debenhams, Poundland and Spar was also found.
https://newatlas.com/energy/maxeon-air- ... ar-panels/
Singapore's Maxeon Solar Technologies reckons that it's come up with a way to install photovoltaic panels on the roofs of commercial buildings that may not be able to support conventional setups. The company has created frameless, thin and lightweight panels that can be adhered directly to a roof.
"The Maxeon Air technology platform continues our 35-year legacy of solar panel technology innovation and once again demonstrates the ability of our R&D team to develop leading edge, disruptive technology," said Maxeon CEO, Jeff Waters.
"For close to 50 years, the solar power industry has almost exclusively utilized glass superstrate panel construction. As solar panels have increased in size, and the cost of solar cells has been dramatically reduced, the cost of transporting, installing and mounting large glass panels has become a relatively larger portion of total system cost. With Maxeon Air technology, we can now develop products that reduce these costs while opening up completely new market opportunities such as low-load commercial rooftops."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... generationFri 21 May 2021
Powerful gusts of wind sweeping across Britain have helped the country reach a new all-time high for electricity generated from wind turbines.
A new record was set in the early hours of Friday for the share of wind power in the generation mix, with wind providing nearly two-thirds of Britain’s electricity, according to provisional data from National Grid.
Between 2am and 3am, wind was contributing 62.5% to Britain’s electricity mix, beating the previous record of 59.9% from August last year, when gale-force winds brought by storms Ellen and Francis hit the country.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... oss-the-ukMon 24 May
Climate-heating carbon dioxide will be sucked from the air using trees, peat, rock chips, and charcoal in major new trials across the UK.
Scientists said the past failure to rapidly cut emissions means some CO2 will need to be removed from the atmosphere to reach net zero by 2050 and halt the climate crisis. The £30m government-funded project will test ways to do this effectively and affordably on over 100 hectares (247 acres) of land, making it one of the biggest trials in the world.
Degraded peatlands will be re-wetted and replanted in the Pennines and west Wales, while rock chips that absorb CO2 as they break down in soil will be tested on farms in Devon, Hertfordshire and mid-Wales. Special charcoal called biochar will be buried at a sewage disposal site, on former mine sites and railway embankments.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... stic-wasteMon 24 May 2021
Campaigners are urging the UK government to ban the export of plastic waste to all countries, invest in a domestic recycling industry, and set a binding target for plastic reduction.
Activists are pushing for the environment bill – which is returning to parliament on Wednesday – to be strengthened to tackle more effectively the global plastic waste crisis.
Greenpeace, which revealed last week how plastic waste from seven major UK supermarkets was being burned and dumped in Turkey rather than being recycled, wants ministers to ban all exports of plastic by 2025. Other campaigners also support prohibition of all plastic waste exports. But some warned that without adequate enforcement, this kind of ban would be merely “headline grabbing”.
New research shows that concentrations of the toxic element mercury in rivers and fjords connected to the Greenland Ice Sheet are comparable to rivers in industrial China, an unexpected finding that is raising questions about the effects of glacial melting in an area that is a major exporter of seafood.
"There are surprisingly high levels of mercury in the glacier meltwaters we sampled in southwest Greenland," said Jon Hawkings, a postdoctoral researcher at Florida State University and and the German Research Centre for Geosciences. "And that's leading us to look now at a whole host of other questions such as how that mercury could potentially get into the food chain."
