It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, August 19, 2021
AI,AUTOMATION,ROBOTICS TAKE LONGSHOREMAN JOBS
Fully automated container storage system makes first successful trial
August 19, 2021
DP World has completed testing of the Boxbay fully automated container storage system at its Jebel Ali terminal in Dubai, accomplishing more than 63,000 container moves since the facility was commissioned earlier this year.
The facility, which can hold 792 containers at a time, exceeded expectations, delivering faster and more energy-efficient than anticipated, the Dubai-headquartered terminal operator said.
The solar-powered system stores containers in slots in a steel rack up to eleven high. DP World claims Boxbay delivers three times the capacity of a conventional yard in which containers are stacked directly on top of each other, reducing the footprint of terminals by 70% and energy costs by 29%. Boxbay delivered 19.3 moves per hour at each waterside transfer table to the straddle carrier and 31.8 moves per hour at each landside truck crane.
Boxbay is a joint venture between DP World and the German industrial engineering specialist SMS group. The system moves containers in, out and between slots with fully electrified and automated cranes built into the structure and can access them without moving any others.
“This test proves that Boxbay can revolutionise how ports and terminals operate. The technology we have developed with our joint venture partner SMS group dramatically expands capacity, increases efficiency, and makes the handling of containers more sustainable,” said Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, group chairman and CEO of DP World.
Solar farms are often bad for biodiversity — but they don’t have to be
Yes, we can have clean energy and tortoises too.
An endangered tortoise hunkers under desert foliage outside of the BrightSource Ivanpah Solar construction site in an area deemed safe, in November 2011.
Aug 18, 2021 This story is part of Down to Earth, a Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis.
Every several years — sometimes just once a decade — when the rains come in just the right amounts and at just the right times, rare flowers speckle the Mojave Desert in California. Some, like the Barstow woolly sunflower, emerge from plants no larger than a thumbnail. They spring forth from seeds that have persisted in the dry soil for years, waiting for just such a sporadic event.
In these brief “super-blooms,” the desert floor looks “like a carpet of wildflowers unfurled across the landscape,” said Karen Tanner, a researcher at University of California, Santa Cruz. The quick flash of flora helps replenish the seeds for future generations.
At other times, large sections of this deceptively fragile ecosystem look “like the moon,” Tanner said. Which, under the punishing sun, makes it seem like an ideal place to build large solar installations. Swaths of the desert, which spans four states, have already been converted to solar facilities, and more are on the way — in the Mojave and across the US. More than 4,600 square miles of land is projected to be covered by solar installations by 2030.
A massive expansion of solar electricity is a crucial part of US plans to reach 80 percent renewable energy by the beginning of the next decade. This is essential to cutting carbon emissions and slowing catastrophic climate change — which poses a dire threat to plants and animals the world over, humans included.
But the race to erect large-scale, maximally efficient solar operations could hurt local ecosystems if operators aren’t careful. Based on her research, Tanner suspects many of these solar projects as they are traditionally executed are causing more local harm than some realize. She has spent nearly a decade closely studying — often on hands and knees with a magnifying glass — experimental solar plots in the Mojave, all located within six miles of four large solar installations. Her most recent findings, published earlier this year, have noted that solar panels changed the immediate microhabitat and had a detrimental impact on rarer plants, such as the Barstow woolly sunflower.
One thing is clear to her: “It’s just not enough to do one survey in one year and be like, ‘Oh yeah, there’s nothing here. Go ahead and install the infrastructure,’” she said.
Solar doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game that prioritizes either clean energy or biodiversity, scientists told Vox. Many projects and studies are currently looking for ways that solar installations can better protect — and potentially even improve — local ecosystems, along with the bottom lines of operators and even nearby landholders like farmers. These solutions can be as simple as prioritizing native plants or picking a location that’s already been disturbed by humans.
The rare and tiny Barstow woolly sunflower in the California Mojave Desert germinates only in exceptional years and would be easily missed by even a year-long environmental site survey for a new solar development, of which there are many in the area. Karen Tanner/UC Santa Cruz
The darker side of solar
Solar installations, on the scale needed to supply power grids, are massive by necessity, transforming the lands where they’re located into a new kind of built environment. They can alter everything from sun exposure to moisture to surface temperatures. This can have unintended and unexpected impacts on local plants, animals, and even the area’s microbiome. Photovoltaic panels shade the land while blocking some areas from rainfall and dousing others with heavy runoff. This changes the growing conditions for plants, with implications for other connected species. The other prominent form of solar, concentrating solar — in which mirrors focus the sun’s rays — generates so much heat that it “can incinerate insects and burn the feathers of birds that fly through,” Jeffrey Lovich, a research ecologist with the US Geological Survey who studies the environmental impacts of these installations, wrote to Vox.
In areas like the US Southwest, solar installations appear to contribute to bird mortality. Scientists aren’t entirely sure why this is, but one prevailing idea, known as the “lake-effect” hypothesis, is that migrating waterfowl making their way through the arid landscape mistake the installations for bodies of water and crash into them.
Large solar facilities in particular can also fragment important wildlife habitat or migration corridors via fences and landscape alteration, and can restrict gene flow for animal as well as plant populations.
Operators of these installations are generally keen to cut the costs of construction and maintenance, so most solar facilities replace the existing land cover with graded packed dirt, gravel, or mowed grass, further harming local biodiversity. “‘Blade-and-grade’ site prep that removes all vegetation clearly has a negative effect on biodiversity,” Lovich said. He expects mowed grass would “stress plant communities and the animals that use them.”
The Desert Sunlight Solar Farm is a 550-megawat solar power plant in the Mojave Desert. Tim Rue/Corbis/Getty Images
Many of the impacts remain unknown. It’s often difficult for researchers to gain access to solar facilities and the environmental data they collect — “even though the majority of facilities are situated on publicly owned lands,” Lovich and colleagues noted in a 2017 paper.
But it’s possible to dial down the potential harms of big solar farms. The type of solar infrastructure — whether concentrated solar or photovoltaic, and whether panels are fixed or rotating, high, or low — affects the potential downsides of large-scale installations. So does the nature of the landscape itself.
How solar can help native plants and crucial pollinators
Some solar operators are reimagining their facilities as prime protected habitats for native plants, bringing back key local species and potentially improving lands that humans have already disturbed. “Solar can be a net benefit in terms of restoring a native habitat and improving ecosystem services, like storm water control and carbon storage and sequestration,” said Leroy Walston, a landscape ecologist with Argonne National Laboratory who studies the relationship between renewable energy and the environment.
One in-vogue mitigation measure is pollinator-friendly foliage. At one experimental solar installation in Minnesota, pollinator-friendly plants helped boost energy yields a tad (by making the microclimate a touch cooler) and slightly reduced long-term maintenance costs (due to less-frequent mowing), according to a 2019 analysis from the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale University. The report also noted bigger wins: The plants helped reduce erosion, increasing groundwater stores and bolstering crop yields.
“SOLAR CAN BE A NET BENEFIT IN TERMS OF RESTORING A NATIVE HABITAT AND IMPROVING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES” —LEROY WALSTON
Experts have brought up concerns that solar operators will use a few flowers to green the image, but not the substance, of their operations. To help prevent this, some 15 states now have pollinator-friendly solar scorecards that aim to measure the actual impact of solar projects on the crucial creatures that carry pollen from plant to plant.
“They are voluntary, but they do help solar facilities to attain an objective certification that they’re pollinator-friendly, that’s been helpful to encourage some use of pollinator habitat at solar facilities,” said Heidi Hartmann, a colleague of Walston who works as a program manager for land resources and energy policy at Argonne. For example, the California renewable electricity provider MCE is now asking its facilities on arable land to use “reasonable efforts” to hit a certain score on these pollinator tallies.
Walston calls for an even broader approach to solar — one that focuses not only on bees and butterflies, but on native habitat restoration overall. Native plants are keenly tuned to the local environment, thriving in specific climate conditions, improving soil retention, and often benefiting the widest range of other area species, in ways non-native, flashy pollinator species might not.
Hartmann and Walston have modeled the impact of switching from maintained grass to native plantings. They found that in the US Midwest, native plants would bring in three times the number of pollinators. They’d also boost the carbon storage potential of the soil by 65 percent and would be more effective, once established, at keeping weeds at bay, which could reduce the need for harmful herbicide use.
Solar photovoltaic panels generate electricity at an Exelon solar power facility on September 1, 2010, in Chicago. Scott Olson/Getty Images
“The equation is complex,” said Alyssa Edwards, vice president of environmental affairs at solar producer Lightsource BP, about the company’s impact on local habitats. Lightsource advertises itself as protecting ecosystems and boosting biodiversity. “Pollinator habitat, considerations of seed availability, vegetation height, insurance requirements, fire risk, and cost all come into play. Not to mention that pollinator habitat may not be the right choice for all sites, as other initiatives may be more valuable contributions to sustainability.” The company, a joint venture with the oil and gas giant BP, says it’s working on various solar projects that incorporate pollinator habitat, conservation of short-grass prairie land, and even animal grazing.
Wildlife corridors are another way solar installations could help support biodiversity. But for large sites to become a part of corridors, they may require substantial adjustments to fencing and other built infrastructure (and even then, they’d probably pose barriers to some larger species).
As more sites incorporate biodiversity as a benchmark, the devil is in the details. Tanner and others have found that solar panels can actually increase the number of plant species that grow beneath them, especially in harsh environments like the desert. However, some of these additional species are invasive or threaten to outcompete the smaller, rarer native ones that could tolerate such extreme desert conditions.
These kinds of wrinkles make it all the more important that scientists and operators actually measure their impact on ecosystems — that they’re “pausing for a moment and considering what sort of species we are considering that are making up the diversity,” Tanner said. Build solar on lands that humans have already messed with, one expert says
Solar operators tend to look for new sites based on sun and climate conditions, but also proximity to the existing power grid — and a utility company in the market for their energy. Scientists told Vox that firms should also look for places that humans have disturbed, because the local ecosystem may have less to lose.
Lovich suggests siting more solar farms on “brown fields, roof tops, abandoned agricultural fields, dry lakes, and even airports — where wildlife are unwanted.” They’re also well-suited for canals and human-made reservoirs, where they’re sometimes called “floatovoltaics,” not least because they can slow water loss by evaporation. These less-conventional arrangements may have higher up-front costs, but the eventual environmental costs will be lower.
A solar thermal tower at Ivanpah Solar Project Bechtel in the Mojave Desert.
Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
A desert tortoise with radio transmitters installed on his back, in Joshua Tree National Park, California, May 2017. Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Building on an ecologically sensitive site can also be costly. Take for example BrightSource Energy, which spent at least $56 million relocating threatened desert tortoises from its Ivanpah solar development site in the Mojave Desert. Although these efforts allowed the project to go through, scientists are still learning about the consequences. An early study found that the relocated tortoises needed more time and effort to settle into normal movement patterns, potentially exposing them to additional threats. But as Lovich pointed out, “since tortoises are long-lived, results for the long term are not yet available.”
Such experiences have not deterred other desert sun-seeking operations. “Solar farms are operating or planned in excellent tortoise habitat affecting hundreds to thousands of tortoises,” Lovich said. Simply moving the tortoises — pricey as it may be — is not a sure cure. “Translocation has a checkered history of success,” he said.
Lovich is currently studying the impact of the Gemini Solar Project in Nevada, which would cover 11 square miles of publicly owned tortoise habitat and is home to hundreds of these long-lived, vanishing animals. For this project, the plan is to capture the animals, place them in a holding center for up to two years during construction, and then release them into the facility grounds “to see how they fare,” Lovich said.
“All energy sources will come with a cost to some wildlife,” Lovich and his colleagues noted in a 2020 paper. “The best mitigation strategy is to avoid developing sensitive and pristine areas.”
Other landscapes would not only tolerate solar farms, but could benefit from them. For example, a pollinator-friendly solar installation could add yield for farmers whose soy, citrus, almonds, cotton, or alfalfa needs some pollination help. More than 500 solar facilities already exist within easy buzzing-distance — less than a mile — from these crops in California, Massachusetts, and North Carolina, respectively, according to a 2018 study by Walston, Hartmann, and their colleagues. Nationally, more than 1,350 square miles of cropland would benefit if existing solar installations added pollinator-friendly plants, they concluded.
As solar has moved into lands that could otherwise be farmed, it has caused some tension with local residents. But solar farms and actual farms don’t necessarily need to be in opposition. It’s possible to co-locate solar and crops into “agrivoltaic systems,” which can feature grazing grass, corn grown for biogas, and even lettuce and tomatoes that may flourish under solar panels. Other crops could even be grown under semi-transparent solar panels.
Solar can protect plants and animals while it helps the planet
Redesigning solar developments — and steering them to the places where they won’t cause harm — isn’t easy. Maximizing energy output means finding locations with the right combinations of sun, temperature, wind, and humidity (one study pegged the best spots as croplands, grasslands, and wetlands) and packing solar-harvesting devices as densely as possible. All of these often work at cross-purposes with supporting a diverse range of plant and animal species.
Bureau of Land Management biologist Larry LaPre and BrightSource biologist George E. Keyes Jr. check on the tortoise population in protective pens at the BrightSource Ivanpah Solar construction site in 2011. Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Additionally, permits for these facilities are typically done at a very local level. (President Barack Obama had instructed these sorts of projects on federal lands to have a mitigation strategy — an order that President Donald Trump struck down his second month in office.) So it’s a patchwork of different levels of regulations and approval processes, some of which are more in tune with thoughtful evaluation of sites and long-term impacts. There is “more education that can be done at local government levels,” Hartmann said.
Without more thorough before-and-after research, we may remain in the dark about how these large facilities are changing the landscapes they cover. If site evaluations are performed over a relatively brief period of time — such as a single season in the run-up to the construction of a solar farm — operators could easily miss key aspects of biodiversity, like the Barstow woolly sunflower, which waits for just the right pattern of rare desert rain to emerge.
“We’re just starting to scratch the surface and determine how different organisms are likely to respond” to solar, said Tanner, the UC Santa Cruz researcher. For now, it behooves us to mess with their environment as little as possible, she noted, and to preserve as much as we can. “Especially in a context of climate change, we don’t know what species are going to be able to pass through that aperture in the future.”
As the world barrels toward climate catastrophe, scaling up carbon-neutral energy production as quickly as possible couldn’t be more urgent. “We need all the help we can get, and we need to move quickly,” Tanner said. On a planetary scale, clean electricity can help safeguard all species, and could arguably be worth the trade-off if it harms a few local species in the process.
But maybe there doesn’t need to be a trade-off, Tanner suggested. “I’m not sure it’s an either-or question,” she said.
Small changes in diet can yield substantial gains for the environment and human health
Eating a hot dog could cost you 36 minutes of healthy life, while choosing to eat a serving of nuts instead could help you gain 26 minutes of extra healthy life, according to a University of Michigan study.
The study, published in the journal Nature Food, evaluated more than 5,800 foods, ranking them by their nutritional disease burden to humans and their impact on the environment. It found that substituting 10% of daily caloric intake from beef and processed meats for a mix of fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and select seafood could reduce your dietary carbon footprint by one-third and allow people to gain 48 minutes of healthy minutes per day.
“Generally, dietary recommendations lack specific and actionable direction to motivate people to change their behavior, and rarely do dietary recommendations address environmental impacts,” said Katerina Stylianou, who did the research as a doctoral candidate and postdoctoral fellow in the the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at U-M’s School of Public Health. She currently works as the Director of Public Health Information and Data Strategy at the Detroit Health Department.
This work is based on a new epidemiology-based nutritional index, the Health Nutritional Index, which the investigators developed in collaboration with nutritionist Victor Fulgoni III from Nutrition Impact LLC. HENI calculates the net beneficial or detrimental health burden in minutes of healthy life associated with a serving of food consumed.
Calculating impact on human health
The index is an adaptation of the Global Burden of Disease in which disease mortality and morbidity are associated with a single food choice of an individual. For HENI, researchers used 15 dietary risk factors and disease burden estimates from the GBD and combined them with the nutrition profiles of foods consumed in the United States, based on the What We Eat in America database of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Foods with positive scores add healthy minutes of life, while foods with negative scores are associated with health outcomes that can be detrimental for human health.
Adding environmental impact to the mix
To evaluate the environmental impact of foods, the researchers utilized IMPACT World+, a method to assess the life cycle impact of foods (production, processing, manufacturing, preparation/cooking, consumption, waste), and added improved assessments for water use and human health damages from fine particulate matter formation. They developed scores for 18 environmental indicators taking into account detailed food recipes as well as anticipated food waste.
Finally, researchers classified foods into three color zones: green, yellow and red, based on their combined nutritional and environmental performances, much like a traffic light.
The green zone represents foods that are recommended to increase in one’s diet and contains foods that are both nutritionally beneficial and have low environmental impacts. Foods in this zone are predominantly nuts, fruits, field-grown vegetables, legumes, whole grains and some seafood.
The red zone includes foods that have either considerable nutritional or environmental impacts and should be reduced or avoided in one's diet. Nutritional impacts were primarily driven by processed meats, and climate and most other environmental impacts driven by beef and pork, lamb and processed meats.
The researchers acknowledge that the range of all indicators varies substantially and also point out that nutritionally beneficial foods might not always generate the lowest environmental impacts and vice versa.
“Previous studies have often reduced their findings to a plant vs. animal-based foods discussion,” Stylianou said. “Although we find that plant-based foods generally perform better, there are considerable variations within both plant-based and animal-based foods.”
Based on their findings, the researchers suggest:
Decreasing foods with the most negative health and environmental impacts including high processed meat, beef, shrimp, followed by pork, lamb and greenhouse-grown vegetables.
Increasing the most nutritionally beneficial foods, including field-grown fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts and low-environmental impact seafood.
The urgency of dietary changes to improve human health and the environment is clear. Our findings demonstrate that small targeted substitutions offer a feasible and powerful strategy to achieve significant health and environmental benefits without requiring dramatic dietary shifts.”
Olivier Jolliet, U-M professor of environmental health science and senior author of the paper
The project was carried out within the frame of an unrestricted grant from the National Dairy Council and of the University of Michigan Dow Sustainability Fellowship. The researchers are also working with partners in Switzerland, Brazil and Singapore to develop similar evaluation systems there. Eventually, they would like to expand it to countries all around the world.
Stylianou, K.S., et al. (2021) Small targeted dietary changes can yield substantial gains for human and environmental health. Nature.doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00343-4.
OLD KING COAL
Just 5% of the world’s power plants produce 73% of the global electricity emissions
These hyper-polluters are truly atrocious.
Despite its bad name, China only has one plant on the “worst offenders” list.
Belchatow, the world’s most polluting power plant. Image via Wikipedia.
We’re not really doing a great job at reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, we’re doing a pretty lousy job. Achieving net-zero emissions in a couple of decades seems like a pipe dream at this point, so researchers are looking for ways to at least tackle the worst emitters.
University of Colorado Boulder researchers Don Grant, David Zelinka, and Stefania Mitova used data from 2018 to look at the power plants that produce the most carbon dioxide emissions. They started from the 2009 Carbon Monitoring for Action database (CARMA) and built a more recent update.
Unsurprisingly, coal plants are the worst of the worst. Sure, renewables aren’t perfect and every form of energy comes with its own set of challenges, but coal plants come at a massive environmental cost. Even while some are a bit more efficient than others, even new coal plants produce massive emissions. According to the findings, just 5% of the world’s power plants produce almost three-quarters of the planet’s electricity emissions.
Eight out of the ten worst offenders are in Asia. South Korea has three plants in the “worst” top ten, India has two, and China has one.
The plant with the highest emissions is in Poland.
Rank Plant Name Country Tons of CO2 Primary Fuel Age Capacity (MW)
1 Belchatow Poland 37,600,000 coal 27 5298 2 Vindhyachal India 33,877,953 coal 14 4760 3 Dangjin South Korea 33,500,000 coal 10 6115 4 Taean South Korea 31,400,000 coal 12 6100 5 Taichung Taiwan 29,900,000 coal 22 5834 6 Tuoketuo China 29,460,000 coal 10 6720 7 Niederaussem Germany 27,200,000 coal 38 3826 8 Sasan Umpp India 27,198,628 coal 3 3960 9 Yonghungdo South Korea 27,000,000 coal 9 5080 10 Hekinan Japan 26,640,000 coal 21 4100
Total 303,776,581 Total 51793
What is perhaps even more encouraging is that by addressing these “worst of the worst”, we could reduce emissions significantly, without adding very much pressure on global energy markets. 5% of the electricity, 75% of the emissions
The authors looked at how much of a country’s electricity pollution was produced by the worst 5% of all its power sector.
“Contrary to the received wisdom that greater environmental harm is a function of greater economic activity, emerging scholarship suggests that polluting releases are disproportionally distributed across units of production,” the study reads.
China has plenty of coal plants, but rather surprisingly, not too many huge offenders. The worst 5% in China accounted for around 25% of the country’s emissions. But in countries like the US, South Korea, Australia, Germany, or Japan, 5% of their plants accounted for around 90% of the carbon emissions in the power sector. Globally, the worst 5% of power plants produce 73% of the emissions.
Of course, these worst 5% of plants tend to produce more than 5% of the electricity — but this is good news, because shutting down a relatively low amount of polluting plants could mitigate a larger part of our emissions. This won’t be easy, but it’s the type of action we need to take as quickly as possible to address man-driven climate heating.
“As the fossil-fuel-burning energy infrastructure continues to expand and the urgency of combating climate change grows, nations will likely need to consider more expedient strategies of this sort,” the authors conclude.
To keep rising temperatures (and all the other effects of climate change) in check, we need to achieve carbon neutrality as quickly as possible — the year 2050 is a commonly mentioned target. But before we can even dream of that, we need to look at the low-hanging fruits and see what we can do about them.
The study has been published in Environmental Research Letters.
CANADA
Nuclear waste-storage research gets $3.3M grant
Western scientists engage with best international minds to ensure safe storage of used nuclear fuel
Western researchers Jamie Noel, Lyudmila Goncharova and Des Moser each hold items pertinent to their work in safeguarding storage of used nuclear fuel. Their team, including professor emeritus Dave Shoesmith (not shown) has been awarded a $3.3-million research grant. Submitted photo
With a new $3.3-million research grant, Western is solidifying its role as a global, interdisciplinary powerhouse in understanding how to store nuclear fuel waste as safely as possible.
“We’re already recognized as experts in this research. This collaboration makes us a powerhouse and it solidifies our international reach.,” said Noël, an electrochemist and member of the Surface Science Western research group.
The grant includes partnerships with Western chemistry professor emeritus David Shoesmith, a pioneer in Western’s work with the NWMO; and with physics professor Lyudmila Goncharova and earth sciences professor Des Moser.
It also includes partner nuclear waste management organizations in Sweden, Switzerland, Japan and Canada.
Western electrochemist Jamie Noël
“This makes a lot of sense because this work is an international issue; it’s not proprietary to Canada. There’s a very good incentive for collaboration among countries because everyone wants this done in the safest and best way possible,” he said.
Canadian strategy
Including Canada, 32 countries worldwide generate some power from nuclear sources. Unlike using fossil fuels, nuclear energy doesn’t contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. But it does leave a problem of how to manage the still-radioactive fuel pellets, rods or bundles.
Canada’s innovative plan includes a multiple barrier system of loading fuel bundles into steel canisters, electrochemically coated with copper three millimetres thick – about the thickness of two stacked pennies – and then encasing them in a buffer of compacted bentonite clay in a deep vault in bedrock 500 metres below the surface.
The addition of Moser and Goncharova to the team provides an even more comprehensive scope, Noël said.
Spent nuclear fuel rods would be placed in a rolled steel canister, coated in electroplated copper about 3mm thick. The canister would then be surrounded by dense bentonite clay and buried in a deep geologic repository as part of a plan to dispose safely of Canada’s radioactive nuclear waste. Supplied photo
Moser’s research, for example, is investigating corrosion-proof analogs that already exist. “Nature put copper out there a billion years ago and it’s still good today, so we know it can be done. Des’s work can help show us how,” Noël said.
He said the team is also working with Indigenous Peoples to integrate into research their long-time traditional relationship with the land, to understand where copper deposits are and how they historically interact with Indigenous culture as well as with surrounding geology and hydrology. Getting it right
The five-year grant “is a huge investment” of money and public trust, Noël said.
“We want to make sure, really sure, that if we’re going to have a nuclear waste repository that it is safe, and safe the first time around – because there will be no second time.” ~ Western electrochemist Jamie Noël
Some of the joint research includes validating the efficacy of a three-millimetre copper coating, which is unique to Canada, and understanding fuel chemistry and to ensure different forms of nuclear-fuel waste are made both stable and insoluble before long-term storage.
Faculty of Science dean Matt Davison said the long-term international relationships and collaborations Noël continues to build are invaluable in this research.
Laurie Swami, president and CEO of the NWMO, highlighted that the research funding from the organization has been leveraged into additional support from NSERC and other organizations, here and around the world. “It’s important that that work is supported not only in Canada, but internationally.”
The Top Five Nations Leading in Solar Energy Generation
It is estimated that the amount of sunlight that hits the Earth's surface in one and a half hours is enough to power the entire world's electricity consumption for a year.
For centuries, the world has used energy generated from fossil fuels. However, fossil fuels have imposed enormous environmental and economic costs. Amid rising awareness and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, solar energy has risen as one of the most popular alternatives. Countries are starting to adopt renewable energy as they work towards cutting carbon emissions.
Here’s a look at the top five nations leading in solar energy generation.
1. China
China is a leader in solar industry. China added 48.2 gigawatts (GW) during 2020, bringing its cumulative installed capacity to 253.4 GW. It now dominates 35% of the global market. The country’s annual PV installations grew 60% year-over-year in 2020, representing more than one-third of annual global deployment.
The country is the world’s largest energy market and the highest emitter of GHG. China alone is responsible for more than 27% of total global GHG emissions.
The country has set ambitious goals for its climate action.
In September 2020, the United Nations General Assembly, President Xi Jinping said, “We aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.”
This was followed by an announcement in December 2020 to enhance its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) under the Paris Agreement for 2030. China announced that it will lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by over 65% from the 2005 level and increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 25%.
2. United States
In the U.S., solar has experienced an average annual growth rate of 42% in the last decade. The U.S. stood second with a cumulative installed capacity of 93.2 GW at the end of 2020. Policies like the solar investment tax credit, declining costs, and rising demand across the private and public sector for clean electricity have spurred the solar industry. The installed solar capacity of U.S. increased from just 0.34 GW in 2008 to more than 100 GW (as of June 2021).
Today, more than 3% of U.S. electricity comes from solar energy, a sector which provides employment to around 230,000 Americans. According to Wood Mackenzie’s 10-year forecast, the U.S. solar industry will install a cumulative 324 GW of new capacity to reach a total of 419 GW over the next decade. The U.S. is the second highest GHG emitter, responsible for 11% of the global emissions.
3. Japan
Japan ranks third in terms of GW cumulative capacity. The country installed an estimated 8.2 GW annual installed capacity, taking the total installed capacity to 71.4 GW.
In a policy speech made in October 2020, Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide announced Japan’s resolve to reduce GHG emissions to zero, making Japan a carbon-neutral and decarbonized society by 2050. In April 2021 at the climate summit in the U.S., Prime Minister Suga said that Japan will aim for a 46% cut in GHG emissions from 2013 levels by 2030.
According to Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) Kajiyama Hiroshi, “Japan has adopted a new growth strategy of taking on the challenges of carbon neutrality to maximize our resources to create a virtuous economic and environmental cycle.”
4. Germany
Germany, the largest economy of Europe, ranks fourth in terms of installed solar capacity. During 2020, Germany added 4.9 GW of installed capacity, taking the total installed capacity to 53.9 GW.
In May 2021, Germany revised the Climate Change Act by setting a target to become climate neutral by 2045, which is five year earlier than its previous target of 2050, and has outlined a path to achieve this with binding targets for the 2020s and 2030s. The interim target for 2030—currently 55%—has been increased to a 65% GHG reduction compared to 1990, while a new interim reduction target of 88% has been set for 2040. The market for solar energy in Germany is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 6.12% in the forecast period of 2020 to 2025.
The European Union (EU), as a part of the European Green Deal, has raised the target for 2030 GHG emissions to at least 55% compared to 1990.
5. India
Globally, India stands fifth in solar power installed capacity. In 2020, India added 4.4 GW capacity, bringing the total installed capacity to 47.4 GW. Under the NDC under the Paris Agreement for 2021 to 2030, India aims to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33% to 35% by 2030 from 2005 level and achieve about 40% cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030.
Back in 2015, India set a target of installing 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by the year 2022, which included 100 GW from solar power. The target has now been raised to 227 GW by 2022, which includes 114 GW from solar energy. India ranks third in terms of highest global GHG emitters at 6.6%, slightly above the EU at 6.4%. Italy, Australia, Vietnam, South Korea and the United Kingdom are also part of the list of top ten nations in terms of cumulative installed solar capacity.
Disclaimer
The report has been based on data and inputs from International Energy Agency (IEA), U.S. EIA, IRENA, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). The report has been carefully prepared, and any exclusions or errors in it are totally unintentional. The author has no position in the index or stocks mentioned. Investors should consider the above information not as a de facto recommendation, but as an idea for further consideration.
Arctic Ocean fossils suggest climate change might not be so great for plankton
Some scientists have predicted shrinking sea ice and more light reaching the Arctic Ocean's surface could mean more plankton. New research suggests otherwise.
Shrinking sea ice may not benefit plankton after all.
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Climate change is warming the Arctic Ocean and causing sea ice to shrink. Some of these changes will be irreversible but scientists have predicted the lack of sea ice could see more light reach the ocean's surface, unwittingly leading to a boon in plankton. The tiny organisms sit at the bottom of the food web and are critical for fish and other sea life to feed on.
A team of scientists led by Princeton University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry used fossilized plankton and ice cores to examine the history of sources and supply rates of nitrogen, a vital nutrient for plankton, to the western and central open Arctic Ocean.
Their research suggests with global warming, these waters will have less nitrogen -- negatively affecting plankton productivity.
"Looking at the Arctic Ocean from space, it's difficult to see water at all, as much of the Arctic Ocean is covered by a layer of sea ice," said Jesse Farmer, lead author of the study, geoscientist at Princeton University and visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, in a statement. That sea ice naturally expands in the winter and contracts in the summer. In recent decades, global warming has led to a rapid drop in summer sea ice coverage, with that ice cover now being around half of what it was in 1979.
While melting sea ice should mean photosynthesizing plankton making up the base of Arctic food webs could reap the benefits of having more light, there's a catch, according to contributing author Julie Granger, an associate professor of marine sciences at the University of Connecticut.
"These plankton also need nutrients to grow and nutrients are only abundant deeper in the Arctic Ocean, just beyond the reach of the plankton," Granger said. Whether plankton can get those nutrients is a matter of how "stratified" the upper ocean is, or how much it's separated into layers. The upper 600 feet of the ocean is made up of layers of water with varying densities, based on temperature and saltiness.
"When the upper ocean is strongly stratified, with very light water floating on top of dense deep water, the supply of nutrients to the sunlit surface is slow," Farmer said.
New research found the amount of nitrogen in the Arctic has changed since the last ice age, showing the history of stratification in the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic is where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet. Fresh Pacific water flows over the saltier water from the Atlantic, which leaves the western Arctic packed with nitrogen flowing in from the Pacific. It wasn't always like that.
"During the last ice age, when the growth of ice sheets lowered global sea level, the Bering Strait didn't exist," Daniel Sigman, professor of geological and geophysical sciences at Princeton, said in a statement. Back then, the Bering Strait was instead the Bering Land Bridge, which connected Asia and North America and allowed humans to migrate to the Americas.
At the end of the ice age 11,500 years ago, when ice sheets melted and sea levels went up, the Bering Land Bridge was submerged, allowing nitrogen from the Pacific to creep into the open western Arctic basin.
During the last ice age and under colder climate, stratification in the Arctic was weak. After the ice age, central Arctic stratification became stronger, peaking during a time of naturally warmer Arctic summer temperatures some 10,000 and 6,000 years ago, a time known as the Holocene Thermal Maximum. Since then, stratification in the central Arctic has grown weaker, which has allowed the deeper nitrogen to move up towards the surface, where it can be used by plankton.
The climate crisis is seeing warmer temperatures in the Arctic, returning it to a climate similar to the Holocene Thermal Maximum. Although some scientists have suggested increasing amounts of sunlight touching the ocean could make Arctic plankton more productive, scientists from Monday's study found this isn't likely because of nitrogen availability in open regions of the Arctic. Low nitrogen means poor plankton productivity and hurts one of the foundational organisms in the ecosystems food web.
"Given our data, a rise in open Arctic productivity seems unlikely," Farmer said. "The best hope for a future rise in Arctic productivity is probably in the Arctic's coastal waters."
First published on Aug. 16, 2021
The Arctic Ocean's deep past provides clues to its imminent future
Global climate change is warming the Arctic Ocean and shrinking sea ice. Here, the blue-white ice cap shows the coverage of sea ice at its smallest extent in summer 2020, and the yellow line shows the typical Arctic sea ice minimum extent between 1981 and 2010. Some have proposed that the newly exposed sea surface will lead to a plankton population boom and a burgeoning ecosystem in the open Arctic Ocean, but a team of Princeton and Max Planck Institute for Chemistry scientists say that’s not likely. They have examined the history and supply rate of nitrogen, a key nutrient. Their recent work finds that stratification of the open Arctic waters, especially in the areas fed by the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait, will prevent surface plankton from receiving enough nitrogen to grow abundantly. Credit: Jesse Farmer, Princeton University; modified from Rebecca Lindsey and Michon Scott, “Climate change: Arctic sea ice,” NOAA Climate.gov
As the North Pole, the Arctic Ocean, and the surrounding Arctic land warm rapidly, scientists are racing to understand the warming's effects on Arctic ecosystems. With shrinking sea ice, more light reaches the surface of the Arctic Ocean. Some have predicted that this will lead to more plankton, which in turn would support fish and other animals.
Not so fast, says a team of scientists led by Princeton University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.
They point to nitrogen, a vital nutrient. The researchers used fossilized plankton to study the history of sources and supply rates of nitrogen to the western and central open Arctic Ocean. Their work, detailed in a paper in the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, suggests that under a global warming regime, these open Arctic waters will experience more intense nitrogen limitation, likely preventing a rise in productivity.
"Looking at the Arctic Ocean from space, it's difficult to see water at all, as much of the Arctic Ocean is covered by a layer of sea ice," said lead author Jesse Farmer, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University who is also a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. This sea ice naturally expands during winters and contracts during summers. In recent decades, however, global warming has caused a rapid decline in summer sea ice coverage, with summer ice cover now roughly half that of 1979.
As sea ice melts, photosynthesizing plankton that form the base of Arctic food webs should benefit from the greater light availability. "But there's a catch," said contributing author Julie Granger, an associate professor of marine sciences at the University of Connecticut. "These plankton also need nutrients to grow, and nutrients are only abundant deeper in the Arctic Ocean, just beyond the reach of the plankton." Whether plankton can acquire these nutrients depends on how strictly the upper ocean is "stratified," or separated into layers. The upper 200 meters (660 feet) of the ocean consists of distinct layers of water with different densities, determined by their temperature and saltiness.
These white lumps are fossilized foraminifera from an Arctic Ocean sediment core, magnified 30 times. The researchers used organic material inside these “forams” — plankton that grew in surface waters, then died and sank to the sea floor — to measure the isotopic composition of nitrogen. Credit: Jesse Farmer, Princeton University
"When the upper ocean is strongly stratified, with very light water floating on top of dense deep water, the supply of nutrients to the sunlit surface is slow," said Farmer.
New research led by scientists from Princeton University shows how the supply of nitrogen to the Arctic has changed since the last ice age, which reveals the history of Arctic Ocean stratification. Using sediment cores from the western and central Arctic Ocean, the researchers measured the isotopic composition of organic nitrogen trapped in the limestone fossils of foraminifera (plankton that grew in surface waters, then died and sank to the sea floor). Their measurements reveal how the proportions of Atlantic- and Pacific-derived nitrogen changed over time, while also tracking changes in the degree of nitrogen limitation of plankton at the surface. Ona Underwood of the Class of 2021 was a key member of the research team, analyzing western Arctic Ocean sediment cores for her junior project.
Where the oceans meet: Pacific waters float above saltier, denser Atlantic waters
The Arctic Ocean is the meeting place of two great oceans: the Pacific and the Atlantic. In the western Arctic, Pacific Ocean waters flow northward across the shallow Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Siberia. Arriving in the Arctic Ocean, the relatively fresh Pacific water flows over saltier water from the Atlantic. As a result, the upper water column of the western Arctic is dominated by Pacific-sourced nitrogen and is strongly stratified.
However, this was not always the case. "During the last ice age, when the growth of ice sheets lowered global sea level, the Bering Strait didn't exist," said Daniel Sigman, Princeton's Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences and one of Farmer's research mentors. At that time, the Bering Strait was replaced by the Bering Land Bridge, a land connection between Asia and North America that allowed for the migration of humans into the Americas. Without the Bering Strait, the Arctic would only have Atlantic water, and the nitrogen data confirm this.
Study co-author Julie Granger sampled water from the Arctic Ocean aboard the US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy. Credit: Julie Granger, University of Connecticut
When the ice age ended 11,500 years ago, as ice sheets melted and sea level rose, the data show the sudden appearance of Pacific nitrogen in the open western Arctic basin, dramatic evidence of the opening of the Bering Strait.
"We had expected to see this signal in the data, but not so clearly!" Sigman said.
This was just the first of the surprises. Analyzing the data, Farmer also realized that, prior to the opening of the Bering Strait, the Arctic had not been strongly stratified as it is today. Only with opening the Bering Strait did the western Arctic become strongly stratified, as reflected by the onset of nitrogen limitation of plankton in the surface waters.
Heading eastward away from the Bering Strait, the Pacific-sourced water is diluted away, so that the modern central and eastern Arctic are dominated by Atlantic water and relatively weak stratification. Here, the researchers found that nitrogen limitation and density stratification varied with climate. As in the western Arctic, stratification was weak during the last ice age, when climate was colder. After the ice age, central Arctic stratification strengthened, reaching a peak between about 10,000 and 6,000 years ago, a period of naturally warmer Arctic summer temperatures called the "Holocene Thermal Maximum." Since that time, central Arctic stratification has weakened, allowing enough deep nitrogen to reach surface waters to exceed the requirements of plankton.
Global warming is quickly returning the Arctic to the climate of the Holocene Thermal Maximum. As this warming continues, some scientists have predicted that reduced ice cover would enhance the productivity of Arctic plankton by increasing the amount of sunlight reaching the ocean. The new historical information acquired by Farmer and his colleagues suggests that such a change is unlikely for the open basin waters of the western and central Arctic. The western Arctic will remain strongly stratified due to persistent inflow of Pacific water through the Bering Strait, while the warming will strengthen stratification in the central Arctic. In both of these open ocean regions, slow nitrogen supply is likely to limit plankton productivity, the researchers concluded.
"A rise in the productivity of the open Arctic basin would likely have been seen as a benefit, for example, increasing fisheries," said Farmer. "But given our data, a rise in open Arctic productivity seems unlikely. The best hope for a future rise in Arctic productivity is probably in the Arctic's coastal waters."
Shiv Priyam Raghuraman et al, Anthropogenic forcing and response yield observed positive trend in Earth's energy imbalance,Nature Communications(2021).DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24544-4
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