Monday, August 02, 2021

CO2 as a raw material for plastics and other products

by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Light micrograph of cells of the gram-negative bacterium 
Methylorubrum extorquens AM1. Credit: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Carbon dioxide is one of the main drivers of climate change—which means that we need to reduce CO2 emissions in the future. Fraunhofer researchers are highlighting a possible way to lower these emissions: They use the greenhouse gas as a raw material, for instance to produce plastics. To do this, they first produce methanol and formic acid from CO2, which they convert via microorganisms into building blocks for polymers and the like.

As fossil-based raw materials are burned, CO2 is released into the air. So far, the CO2 concentration in the earth's atmosphere has already risen to around 400 parts per million (ppm) equivalent to 0.04 percent. In comparison: Until the middle of the 19th century, this value was still in the range of 280 ppm. The increased level of carbon dioxide has a significant impact on the climate. Since January 1, 2021, CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels have thus been subject to carbon pricing—meaning that manufacturing companies have to pay for their CO2 emissions. As a result, a large number of companies are looking for new solutions. How can the costs associated with CO2 emission pricing be reduced? How can CO2 emissions be reduced through biointelligent processes?

Catalytic chemistry and biotechnology—a winning combination

Researchers are currently developing approaches to this in the EVOBIO and ShaPID projects at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB. They are working on both projects in collaboration with several Fraunhofer Institutes. "We use the CO2 as a raw material," says Dr. Jonathan Fabarius, Senior Scientist Biocatalysts at Fraunhofer IGB. "We're pursuing two approaches: First, heterogeneous chemical catalysis, by which we convert the CO2 with a catalyst to methanol. Second, electrochemistry, by which we produce formic acid from CO2." However the unique feature lies not in this CO2-based methanol and formic acid production alone, but in its combination with biotechnology, more specifically with fermentations by microorganisms. To put it more simply: The researchers first take the waste product CO2, which is harmful to the climate, to produce methanol and formic acid. In turn, they use these compounds to "feed" microorganisms that produce further products from them. One example of this kind of product is organic acids, which are used as building blocks for polymers—a way to produce CO2-based plastics. This method can also be used to produce amino acids, for example as food supplements or animal feed.

The novel approach offers a host of advantages. "We can create entirely new products, and also improve the CO2 footprint of traditional products," Fabarius specifies. While conventional chemical processes require a lot of energy and sometimes toxic solvents, products can be produced with microorganisms under milder and more energy-efficient conditions—after all, the microbes grow in more environmentally friendly aqueous solutions.

Isolated dye from bioreactor cultivations of M. extorquens AM1 on methanol as a substrate or on formic acid (formate) as a substrate. Credit: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Separation smear for isolation of single colonies of M. extorquens AM1 on a methanol-containing minimal medium agar plate. Credit: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Detailed view of a bioreactor for growing large amounts of biomass of M. extorquens AM1. Credit: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft


Metabolic engineering makes it possible

The research team uses both native methylotrophic bacteria, i.e. those that naturally metabolize methanol, and yeasts that cannot actually metabolize methanol. The researchers also keep a constant eye on whether new interesting organisms are discovered and check them for their suitability as "cell factories." But how do these microorganisms actually make the products? And how can we influence what they produce? "In principle, we use the microorganism's metabolism to control product manufacture," explains Fabarius. "To do so, we introduce genes into the microbes that provide the blueprint for certain enzymes. This is also known as metabolic engineering." The enzymes that are subsequently produced in the microorganism catalyze the production of a specific product in turn. In contrast, the researchers specifically switch off genes that could negatively influence this production. "By varying the genes that are introduced, we can produce a wide range of products," Fabarius says.

The research team is working on the entire production chain: starting with the microorganisms, followed by the gene modifications and the upscaling of production. While some manufacturing processes are still at the laboratory stage, other products are already being produced in bioreactors with a capacity of ten liters. As for the industrial application of such processes, Fabarius envisages their implementation in the medium to long term. Ten years is a realistic time horizon, he says. However, pressure on industry to establish new processes is increasing.
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A super-short gamma-ray burst defies astronomers’ expectations

The high-energy flash came from an imploding star, not colliding neutron stars

When the core of a massive star collapsed in a distant galaxy, the implosion produced high-speed jets giving off powerful gamma rays (illustrated).
NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER, CHRIS SMITH/KBRWYLE


By Maria Temming

19 HOURS AGO


A surprisingly short gamma-ray burst has astronomers rethinking what triggers these celestial cataclysms.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a single-second-long blast of gamma rays, dubbed GRB 200826A, in August 2020. Such fleeting gamma-ray bursts, or GRBs, are usually thought to originate from neutron star smashups (SN: 10/16/17). But a closer look at the burst revealed that it came from the implosion of a massive star’s core.

In this scenario, the core of a star collapses into a compact object, such as a black hole, that powers high-speed particle jets. Those jets punch through the rest of the star and radiate powerful gamma rays before the outer layers of the star explode in a supernova (SN: 5/8/19). That process is typically thought to produce longer GRBs, lasting more than two seconds.

Discovering such a brief gamma-ray burst from a stellar explosion suggests that some bursts previously classified as stellar mergers may actually be from the deaths of massive stars, researchers report online July 26 in two studies in Nature Astronomy.

The first clues about GRB 200826A’s origin came from the burst itself. The wavelengths of light and amount of energy released in the burst were more similar to collapse-related GRBs than collision-produced bursts, Bing Zhang, an astrophysicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and colleagues report. Plus, the burst hailed from the middle of a star-forming galaxy, where astronomers expect to find collapsing massive stars, but not neutron star mergers — which are generally found on the fringes of tranquil galaxies.

Another group, led by astronomer Tomás Ahumada-Mena of the University of Maryland in College Park, searched for the supernova that’s expected to follow a GRB produced by a collapsing star. Using the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii to observe GRB 200826A’s host galaxy, the team was able to pick out the telltale infrared light of the supernova. The burst may have been so brief because its jets had just barely punched through the surface of the star before they petered out and the star blew up, Ahumada-Mena says.
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Quake-Measuring Device Looks at Inside of Mars
August 01, 2021


In this undated photo made available by NASA on Thursday, July 22, 2021, clouds drift over the dome-covered SEIS seismometer of the InSight lander on the surface of Mars.


by VOA

A quake-measuring device on Mars is providing the first close look at the inside of the planet. The findings show a surprisingly thin crust and a hot, molten core beneath the Martian surface.

Scientists recently reported that the Martian crust is about the same thickness as Earth’s. The Martian mantle, the area between the crust and core, is about half as thick as Earth’s. And the Martian core is bigger than what the scientists expected. However, it is still much smaller than Earth’s core.

These new studies confirm that the Martian core is molten. But scientists say more research is needed to know whether Mars has a solid inner core like Earth’s, surrounded by a molten outer core.

Stronger marsquakes could help identify any multiple core layers, the scientists said.

The findings are based on about 35 marsquakes recorded by a French seismometer on the American space agency NASA’s InSight spacecraft. A seismometer is a device that responds to ground noises and shaking. InSight arrived on Mars in 2018.

The seismometer on InSight has detected 733 marsquakes so far. But the 35 with magnitudes from 3.0 to 4.0 served as the basis for these studies. Most of the sizable quakes came from a volcanic area 1,600 kilometers away where lava may have flowed millions of years ago.

Mark Panning is with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and took part in the crust study. He said even the biggest marsquakes are so weak they would barely be felt on Earth. He is hoping for a bigger quake which would make it easier to process the information and describe the inside of Mars.

Current measurements show Mars’ crust possibly reaching as deep as 20 kilometers to 37 kilometers. The mantle extends down nearly 1,600 kilometers. And the relatively lightweight core has a radius of 1,830 kilometers.

Earth’s crust ranges from a few kilometers beneath the oceans to more than 70 kilometers beneath the Himalayan mountains in Asia. Earth is almost double the size of Mars.

Panning said, “By going from cartoon understanding of what the inside of Mars looks like, putting real numbers on it...we are able to really expand the family tree of understanding” how our solar system’s rocky planet formed.

The InSight mission has been extended by another two years. But in recent months, InSight has had power issues. Dust covered its solar panels, just as Mars was approaching the farthest point in its orbit around the sun. Solar panels are large, flat pieces of equipment that use the sun's light or heat to create electricity.

Flight controllers have increased power by using the spacecraft’s robotic arm to release sand into the wind to remove some of the dust on the panels. The seismometer has continued working. But all other science instruments have been temporarily stopped because of the power issues. A German heat-seeking device, however, was declared dead in January after it failed to dig more than half a meter into the planet.

I’m Jonathan Evans.



Marcia Dunn reported on this story for the Associated Press. Jonathan Evans adapted this story for Learning English. Susan Shand was the editor.
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This Spacecraft Accidentally Flew 

Through a Comet’s Tail and Took 

a Crazy Photo

SUZANNE HUMPHRIES  @yeah_books
Remains of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) swooping past sun
NASA/NRL/STEREO/Karl Battams

Sometimes, when you’re in the wrong place at just the right time, something magical can happen. At least that’s what happened when the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter accidentally passed through a comet’s tail and snapped the jaw-dropping photo up above.

The Solar Orbiter was simply minding its own business in its mission to orbit the sun. Meanwhile, comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) broke apart just before it was set to pass near Earth (and be visible in the night sky). A piece of the tail continued on through our Solar System, and things lined up perfectly, where the Solar Orbiter ventured behind the comet’s tail.

Although the Solar Orbiter wasn’t designed for this purpose, its research team decided to power on its instruments and see what they could detect once the two crossed paths. The comet disintegrated before they were able to meet, but the team simply adjusted because it had already turned on the Orbiter’s instruments and prepared for the encounter. And, in addition to capturing that stunning shot (which you can see a short video of on NASA’s site), they were also able to detect something fascinating.

“We have identified a magnetic field structure observed at the beginning of June 4th 2020, associated with a full magnetic field reversal, a local deceleration of the flow and large plasma density, and enhanced dust and energetic ions events,” wrote the team, led by Lorenzo Matteini of University College London.

“We interpret this structure as magnetic field draping around a low-field and high-density object, as expected for a cometary magnetotail. Inside and around this large-scale structure, several ion-scale fluctuations are detected that are consistent with small-scale waves and structures generated by cometary pick-up ion instabilities.”

Simply put, the Orbiter’s instruments detected a magnetic field in the comet’s tail, which was embedded in the ambient interplanetary magnetic field. The probe’s findings are in line with data found from other similar encounters, and the scientists were excited to have the opportunity to study the unique event and learn from it.

via Science Alert

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Opinions|Environment

Corporate courts vs the environment

Corporate courts were invented to protect the West’s control of the world against decolonisation. They are now undermining attempts to halt climate change.


  • Nick Dearden
    The director of UK campaigning organisation Global Justice Now.
2 Aug 2021

Some members of the European parliament protest against the trade and investment agreement known as the "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS), which creates a "corporate court" allowing multinational corporations from a trade partner country to sue a government in a tribunal for any law or regulation they regard as unfair.[Frederick Florin/Pool via Getty]


Some members of the European parliament protest against the trade and investment agreement known as the "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS), which creates a "corporate court" allowing multinational corporations from a trade partner country to sue a government in a tribunal for any law or regulation they regard as unfair.[Frederick Florin/Pool via Getty]

Any day now, Italy expects to be ordered to hand millions of dollars over to an oil exploration corporation, following the Italian government’s decision to ban such exploration off its coast.

The ruling will be handed down not by a judge in anything approaching a normal Italian or European court, but rather by a secretive arbitration process open only to big business, with Italy having no right to appeal. These “corporate courts” stem back to the 1950s, created by rich countries and oil multinationals to protect Western interests against the decolonisation sweeping the world at that time.

Italy’s decision to ban oil exploration came after Italians, fearing the impact of oil drilling off the beautiful Adriatic coast, protested in their thousands. They won. In December 2015, Italy’s parliament banned oil and gas projects within 20km (12 miles) of the coast.

That’s when British company Rockhopper, which has been exploring that same coast, sued Italy using an arbitration clause in a trade and investment agreement known as the “investor-state dispute settlement” or ISDS. The “compensation” being claimed totals about $350 million – seven times what the corporation invested in the exploration project. Worse still, it is being brought under an investment deal that Italy is no longer even a part of. But, as so often with such agreements, Italy is still bound by the terms of the ISDS system for 20 years after its exit.

In essence, ISDS creates a “corporate court”, allowing multinational corporations from a trade partner country – in this case Britain – to sue a government in a tribunal for any law or regulation they regard as unfair. These cases are often heard in secret, overseen by corporate lawyers who don’t have to worry about the impact of their decisions on society, human rights or the environment – only investment law. These “courts” usually have no right of appeal, and they can only be utilised by foreign investors.

Corporate courts have been used by tobacco corporations to challenge governments which want to ensure cigarettes are sold only in plain packaging. They’ve been used to challenge increases to the minimum wage. But increasingly, they’re being used to challenge all manner of environmental regulations necessary to halt climate change. In fact, they’re becoming a major barrier to the climate action governments must undertake to keep our planet habitable.

Recently two energy corporations – RWE and Uniper – challenged the Netherlands over that country’s plans to phase out the burning of coal for electricity by 2030. Both corporations run coal-fired power stations in the country and are claiming billions of dollars in compensation, in a case that will clearly make governments think twice before enacting the most important changes we currently need to deal with climate change – a phase-out of fossil fuel use.

Meanwhile, in North America, Biden’s administration is being sued after it announced it was cancelling a deeply controversial pipeline due to bring hundreds of thousands of barrels of tar sands into the US. Tar sands are one of the most polluting fossil fuels we possess, and parts of Canada have been turned into a desolate moonscape as it’s been extracted from the ground. Biden’s decision is right – we must stop exploiting tar sands. But the decision could cost him billions of dollars.

These corporate courts are not new, though their use is growing rapidly. Rich countries started inserting the system into trade and investment deals as long ago as the 1950s. And that’s important, because it gives us a clue as to what the purpose of these corporate courts originally was.

Nicolás Perrone has written a new book digging into the history of ISDS, and he finds that it was invented by oil industry executives precisely to protect their interests overseas. In the 1950s onwards, with governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America increasingly able and willing to stand up to the power of the US and Europe and make their economies work in their own national interest, the rich world was concerned. How could it protect its economic interests around the world, built up in an age of empire, from these new governments? How would oil corporations protect their ability to exploit global resources? As Perrone states “Decolonization was a risk to their business model.”

A flashpoint came in 1951 when Iran’s parliament voted to nationalise the country’s oil sector which was under the control of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, a forerunner of British Petroleum. Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a US-British coup. From this point, Britain started inserting corporate courts into investment deals with countries, replacing the increasingly difficult ‘gunboat diplomacy’ with a legal regime which served Britain’s imperial interests just as well.

While ISDS wasn’t extensively used in its early days, from the 1990s it was added to hundreds of deals. A legal industry built up around the system, finding ever more innovative ways of bringing a claim. And claims reached absurd levels – far beyond any investment the litigating corporation has invested in a project.

Business started claiming that any regulatory change which effected its long-term expectation of profit was essentially expropriation of its assets. Hedge funds even got in on the act, funding corporate court cases so they could keep going for longer, in the hope of wearing a government down and achieving a very profitable payout.

We now have enough cases on file to know just how serious a challenge these corporate courts are to our urgent need to halt climate change. Governments have been sued for placing a moratorium on fracking and for forcing power stations to improve their environmental standards. One tribunal ruled that the Canadian government had violated a corporation’s “rights” simply by carrying out an environmental impact assessment, a judgment that even one of the arbitrators said “will be seen as a remarkable step backwards in environmental protection”.

Corporations are also using this system to evade accountability for environmental devastation. Between 1972 and 1993, US oil giant Texaco (later acquired by Chevron) dumped over 30 billion gallons of toxic waste and crude oil into the Amazon rainforest in the northeast of Ecuador, in one of the world’s greatest ever environmental disasters. A legal case brought by 30,000 Indigenous and small-scale farmers found Chevron guilty of “extensively polluting” the region and ordered the corporation to pay $18bn in compensation.

In 2009, Chevron launched a corporate court claim, saying it had been treated unfairly, and the case involved corruption. In September 2018, the ISDS found in Chevron’s favour – overruling Ecuador’s domestic law, and demanding that Ecuador pay Chevron! Shell is now taking a similar case against Nigeria, attempting to overturn a compensation award for an oil spill dating back to 1970.

Not only does this system make it harder for governments to take the sort of action they desperately need to protect the planet, it actually maintains the profits of the most reckless parts of the fossil fuel industry. The power stations in the Netherlands were established long after it became clear that coal would need to be phased out. But corporate courts essentially made the decision to establish them risk-free for the company. Or take Rockhopper, suing Italy for its exploration ban. A financial analyst told the Guardian that a payout in the case would be “tremendously helpful” in funding a further oil exploration off the coast of the Falkland Islands.

In other words, these corporate courts allow corporations to make utterly irresponsible decisions without consequence. Fortunately, the backlash is well underway, with countries from Bolivia to South Africa to Indonesia ripping up bilateral trade deals that contain corporate courts, and refusing to sign new ones. Here in Britain, Boris Johnson’s government is one of the most gung ho in the world when it comes to ISDS, trying to insert corporate courts into every trade deal they sign. But he’s already been beaten in the Australian and New Zealand deals, where it seems ISDS has been dropped from the negotiations. Meanwhile, across Europe a major campaign is underway to force governments to withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty, one of the most egregious corporate court systems, responsible for many of the cases referred to here.

There are less than 100 days to go until the UN climate conference – COP26 – meets in Glasgow. Whatever commitments delegates make there could be seriously undermined unless we change the way our global trade system works. Abandoning the corporate court system should be a top priority.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

  • Nick Dearden
    Nick Dearden
    The director of UK campaigning organisation Global Justice Now.

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The Oil Industry’s New Climate Change Solution Is More Pipelines

Fossil fuel companies and their executives are banking on carbon capture as a boon for the green economy. 

Environmentalists say this is a climate myth.

AC
By Audrey Carleton
2.8.21

Two controversial new projects propose laying thousands of miles of pipe through America’s Corn Belt, carrying liquid carbon dioxide across five states, from Iowa to the Dakotas, where they’d wind through prairies, piercing waterways and twisting around farm land.

For residents of the rural Midwest, this sight would be nothing new; the region is already home to a network of crude and refined oil and gas pipelines. But these tubes wouldn’t be carrying oil and gas recently drilled from the ground; they would move it in the opposite direction. The miles of steel cylinder would transport carbon dioxide that’s been sucked from industrial facilities into storage, where it would be reused for oil drilling or pumped back into the earth.

This is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)—the process of removing carbon dioxide from industrial sources before it has the chance to enter the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. And it’s the latest project proposed by the oil and gas industry to garner controversy for its dubious efficacy and unknown risks.

Navigator CO2 Ventures and Summit Carbon Solutions, two carbon capture companies, have both proposed pipelines to carry captured carbon dioxide through the Midwest into permanent underground sequestration sites. Neither project has been permitted yet, but both are gaining traction and hope to be in operation by 2024, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. (ExxonMobil has also proposed a similar plan along the Houston Ship Channel in Texas that it claims would cost $100 billion to complete and would store 100 million metric tons of CO2 per year.)

Navigator bills its 1,200-mile pipeline as a “solution for a greener planet.” But a growing coalition of progressive environmental groups in the U.S. believe this sentiment is a myth.

CCS has come under severe scrutiny from climate activists in recent months as the Department of Energy has greenlit millions for its research and development and the Biden administration has proposed investing billions in it through the Infrastructure Plan and the 2022 Federal Budget. On July 19, hundreds of environmental groups in the U.S. and Canada co-signed an open letter to federal legislators in both countries expressing concern over carbon capture, calling it “unnecessary, ineffective, exceptionally risky, and at odds with a just energy transition and the principles of environmental justice.”

“Transporting and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) involves a massive network of perilous pipelines connected to underground injection sites, each with their own set of dangers,” the letter says, citing threat of leak or rupture, drinking-water contamination, explosions, and air quality concerns over the release of compressed CO2, which can cause asphyxiation. (Other critics have also expressed concern over limited space for underground storage and the likelihood that said storage will inevitably fail.)

Despite these risks, CCS is lauded by many—including federal regulators, large environmental nonprofits and the fossil fuel and coal industries—as a reasonable solution to the growing problem of atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions.

Though the technology has splintered environmentalists, large green groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council have both endorsed carbon capture as a key to reducing U.S. emissions. Their support is driven in part by a recommendation from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international authority that has cited carbon capture as necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

But many environmentalists lambast this as a “false promise,” one that’s peddled by polluting industries in a bid to extend their lives. With growing public interest and investment in renewables and the crash of oil following COVID-19, critics believe carbon capture offers fossil fuel interests a new technology through which to solicit public funding while allowing them to continue extracting and burning dirty fuels.

“There's a ton of climate disinformation around carbon capture, and for obvious reasons, because the fossil fuel industries benefit from this,” said Dr. Tamra Gilbertson, carbon pricing education coordinator at the Indigenous Environmental Network. “[This] technology is not going to benefit the climate at all. It's benefiting the private industries and these big multinational corporations. They know exactly what they're doing.”

CCS is one of a few different types of technologies that claims to reduce or mitigate levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—this one, by collecting it directly at industrial facilities, compressing, cooling and converting it to a liquid state and relocating it elsewhere for storage underground. Though it can be carried out in a few different ways, the most common technique for carbon capture involves collecting exhaust or flue gas directly from plants through a vent, where it’s carried to cooling towers and run through a chemical solution that binds CO2 molecules to amines while separating out all other compounds. What’s separated out is vented into the atmosphere while the distilled carbon dioxide is sent into a compressor, where it’s converted into a fluid to be transported on trucks or in pipelines to sequestration sites.

Another method, Carbon Capture/Utilization and Storage (CCUS), effectively does the same thing, but sends the product to oil and gas fields, where it’s used as drilling fluid to revive depleted oil and gas reservoirs in a process called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). Direct Air Capture (DAC), or Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), claims to collect carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere—but this technology has yet to be rolled out at scale.

Navigator CO2 advertises its infrastructure as “forward-thinking.” The company is currently gauging commercial interest from industrial clients, from whom they’d collect emissions straight from the source to send to a permanent underground sequestration site. Summit Carbon Solutions, slightly further along in its commercial process, has secured partnership to sequester carbon from 31 ethanol refineries throughout the midwest.

(Both companies are headed up by former oil industry executives: Navigator CEO Matt Vining came to the company after leading business development at TPF Gas Services, while Summit COO James Powell joined the company after years working with Kinder Morgan and BP. Neither company responded to Motherboard’s request for comment.)


In theory, this technology could solve the world’s climate woes. In practice, opponents like Gilbertson say it’s expensive and ineffective. Existing CCS plants have only had the capability of capturing a fraction of the emissions their facilities created, while simultaneously requiring immense energy on its own. A 2020 literature review by June Sekera, visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research, found that carbon capture technology emits more than it sequesters. Her paper concludes that carbon storage through direct air capture facilities powered by renewable energy sources is the only industrial method that could meaningfully reduce atmospheric CO2 removal. But this comes with its risks, and Sekera, herself, believes there are safer ways to achieve the same ends, like investing in tree-planting and forest fire mitigation to replenish earth’s natural carbon stores.

Focusing public resources on building out carbon capture at scale distracts from these causes, she says. Removing 1 gigaton of CO2 (around a sixth of the greenhouse gas volumes the US emitted in 2019) from the atmosphere, Sekera’s paper notes, would require pipelines in numbers well beyond existing oil infrastructure and land 10 times the size of the state of Delaware.

“The amount of pipelines are enormous,” Sekera said, which is risky, because these pipelines have been known to leak. Last year, a pipeline owned by EOR company Denbury Resources Inc., carrying CO2 through Yazoo County, Mississippi, ruptured; 45 people living near the incident were sent to the hospital, where they were treated for exposure to dangerously high levels of CO2. Authorities reported victims looking dazed, some foaming at the mouth, others acting “like zombies,” the Clarion-Ledger reported at the time. Sekera found a number of other CO2 pipeline rupture incidents like this one in her research, and is wary of the health implications of a mass buildout of carbon capture facilities.

“It's inevitable, somebody is going to be killed,” Sekera said.

Yet, for all of its pitfalls, carbon capture has maintained a strong reputation as a green tech boon. Sekera and Gilbertson believe this is part of a broader disinformation effort by the coal and fossil fuel sectors, which are grasping at straws to stay alive and see building costly plants to slice their emissions as a way to do so. (In the case of EOR, in which liquid CO2 is used to resuscitate once-dead oil and gas wells, this technology is quite literally being used to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry.)

Gilbertson points to the San Juan Generating Station, a coal-fired facility in New Mexico that is slated to close in 2022 unless a proposed carbon-capture tack-on is approved: “The corporation is pushing for CCS [because it] gives that generating facility another lifeline," she said."So it will stay open longer, as long as the CCS infrastructure is being built into it. It legitimizes itself based on the input of CCS.”

Gilbertson, for her part, sees the allocation of federal funding to carbon capture as no different from any other bailout to polluting industries. But she also notes that CCS plants will only further entrench environmental inequalities in the U.S.: By nature of being glommed onto existing industrial facilities, CCS plants will only multiply the amount of pollution that primarily burdens low-income, Indigenous and communities of color.

“This is further entrenching inequalities and sacrifice zones, and is a further expansion of climate and environmental racism,” Gilbertson said.

Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, echoes the sentiment, noting that the Summit and Navigator pipelines would likely tear through tribal lands in the midwest. For a technology that she sees as yet to have proven to be scientifically viable, this sacrifice isn’t worth it.

“There is no scientific demonstration that carbon capture works, or that carbon sequestration works, that we know how to do it, that we know what the longer-term effects might be,” Shepard said. “Why would we invest more money in an unproven technology when we can invest money in technologies that we know will work?”

As chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC), Shepard recently helped pen a list of recommendations to the Biden administration as it narrows in on its #Justice40 commitments—a series of steps in line with the goal of devoting 40 percent of federal climate investments to frontline communities that have historically borne the brunt of the consequences of environmental degradation. Second on a list of projects that “will NOT benefit a [environmental justice] community,” the recommendations say, is CCS. Third on the list is direct air capture.

But for all the risks that the two midwest pipelines pose to the communities that WE ACT was founded to protect, there are countless more in the thousands of miles of additional pipeline gaining traction in the US Department of Energy (DOE).

A recently formed group called the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), headed up by Obama-era Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who has long had financial ties to the oil industry, recently built a blueprint for a network of carbon capture pipelines that is twice the size of the current U.S. oil and gas pipeline network, DeSmogBlog recently reported. The proposal includes plans to build out carbon trapping and transportation hubs in the Ohio River Valley, the Gulf Coast, and Wyoming, each reducing local emissions by hundreds of metric tons.

This, the blueprint claims, will aid the Biden Administration in reaching its goal of reducing 50 percent of economy-wide emissions by 2030 and going net-zero by 2050, all while preserving jobs in “hard-to-decarbonize sectors.” It also encourages the federal government to extend the $8-billion in funding for carbon capture that the Trump administration allocated last December through the Energy Act of 2020.

Gilbertson is skeptical of anything that aims to multiply pipeline infrastructure in the U.S., noting that there are real risks to doing so. Leaks, blowouts, and the like are “common, rather than exceptional,’ in legacy oil and gas infrastructure, one 2019 study states, and CCS infrastructure is not immune from this. EFI’s blueprint dismisses these hazards, citing an IPCC prediction that “it is very likely that 99 percent of CO2 injected for underground storage would be secure for 100 years.” (Motherboard reached out to EFI, and their representatives declined to comment.)

What the EFI proposal does drive home, however, are the jobs that tripling U.S. pipeline volumes would protect. The first backer on the plan is AFL-CIO, a federation of 56 labor unions that has long vocally supported building out carbon capture technology as a climate solution.

“Organized labor looks and sees its proposals for 68,000 miles of CO2 pipelines and thinks those are jobs,” said Mitch Jones, policy director at Food and Water Watch, a nonprofit environmental watchdog organization.

Opponents like Jones see the jobs argument as a tired one: Countless proposals for the buildout of renewables include well-paying jobs. Hiring specialized talent to build solar panels and wind turbines is a surer bet than putting faith in carbon capture, which has yet to be successful at scale in the U.S.

“Every time the industry tries to set up a big demonstration to show finally that carbon capture is going to work, it's been a colossal failure,” he said.

Jones notes that a failed experiment in Texas is a prime example of this. In 2017, NRG Energy and Japanese Mining and Metals company JX Nippon poured $1-billion (alongside $195-million in funding from the DOE) into building Petra Nova, a carbon capture plant poised to suck 4.6 million short tons of carbon dioxide emissions directly from a coal-fired power plant 30 miles southwest of Houston, Texas. Petra Nova was designed to capture one-third of the coal plant’s emissions and send them through a pipeline for 81 miles to the West Ranch Oil Field, where the captured carbon would be injected into the ground to continue supporting fossil fuel extraction.

Around the time of its construction, it represented a new beacon of green energy infrastructure. The world’s largest installation of carbon capture on a power plant, Petra Nova was the “poster child of what carbon capture could do,” Daniel Cohan, a professor of environmental engineering at Rice University told Gizmodo in February.

But over the course of its three year life, the plant suffered outages on 367 separate days, falling short of its emissions storage goals by 17 percent, Reuters reported last year. It was shut down for good in May, 2020 following the crash of oil in response to COVID-19. NRG continues to advertise the short-lived project as a success.

Continuing to put faith in a technology that’s only ever failed is wasteful, Shepard says. She fears that a large-scale federal funding for carbon capture through the infrastructure bill or federal budget would throw a lifejacket to the oil and gas and coal industries while diverting funds from other, more essential projects, like renewables.

“These are solutions that we think distract us from actually doing the hard work of reducing emissions,” Shepard says.

“People talk about them as transitional technologies,” she continued. “But these are technologies we don't think we need to be spending money on. Public funds should be spent on solutions that create jobs, that really transition fossil-dependent workers to renewable energy jobs.”

Shepard is instead devoting her attention to passing a federal clean energy standard—an accepted definition of renewable energy that does not include controversial “bridge” technologies like carbon capture or nuclear power, as some localized ones do.

And Gilbertson, who is similarly dismayed to see continued funding proposed for carbon capture, is also throwing her support behind small-scale renewables.

“A lot of the funding that could be used for small scale and renewable energy projects is being funneled away to support the fossil fuel industries, and that is real climate crime,” she said. “We don't have the time for this. The CCS battle, we're losing really, really rapidly.”
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PLANET IN PERIL
SATELLITE IMAGES REVEAL A CLIMATE CRISIS NIGHTMARE IN SIBERIA


Understanding this study’s findings “may make the difference between catastrophe and apocalypse.”

Dimitar Dilkoff/Getty Images

TARA YARLAGADDA


TRAVERSE DEEP INTO NORTHERN SIBERIA, and you’ll find the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin. As of late, this remote part of the world is predominantly known for two things: its untapped potential as a massive source of oil and gas, and its proximity to the wildfires that have raged in Siberia this summer.

Now, scientists suggest another factor that demands our attention: According to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, considerable amounts of methane are being released from a previously unexplored source.

Arctic methane is typically connected to two sources: organic matter in permafrost and methyl clathrate (molecules of methane frozen in ice crystals). This study spotlights a third — one released from fractures and pockets in the permafrost zone that’s become unstable due to warming.

As the climate crisis worsens, understanding this study’s findings “may make the difference between catastrophe and apocalypse,” lead author Nikolaus Froitzheim, a professor at the University of Bonn’s Institute of Geosciences in Germany, tells Inverse.


Permafrost melts into the Kolyma River in Siberia during July 2019. Record-breaking heat waves increase permafrost thaw, triggering the release of methane and contributing to global warming. Getty

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW FIRST — The thawing of the Siberian permafrost — a mixture of rock, ice, soil, and the organic remains of animals and plants — is associated with the release of methane in the atmosphere. Global warming has led to an increased thawing of the permafrost.


Methane is a potent greenhouse gas emission with 84 to 86 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

After conducting a satellite analysis of the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin, Froitzheim and colleagues found we’ve been overlooking another crucial source of methane emissions from the Siberian permafrost: sites of “thermogenic methane.”

HOW THE DISCOVERY WAS MADE— The researchers used an interactive satellite mapping technology, known as PULSE, to calculate methane emissions in the air above the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin in Siberia.
“THERE IS A LOT OF NATURAL GAS IN THE SUBSURFACE OF SIBERIA.”

The researchers looked specifically at methane emissions following a heat wave in Siberia in June 2020, as well as methane emissions in the area in spring 2021. They also compared the methane emissions on the satellite map to a geological map showing where certain rock formations occur.

The researchers then made an alarming discovery:

“We found that two elongated areas of elevated methane concentration on the PULSE map perfectly coincide with two stripes where limestone formations occur in the subsurface,” Froitzheim says.


Satellite imagery shows atmospheric methane concentrations during May and August 2020 over the Taymyr Peninsula in Northern Siberia. Nikolaus Froitzheim, Dmitry Zastrozhnov, and GHGSAT.


WHAT’S NEW — Those limestone formations are likely sites of “thermogenic methane” or natural gas deposits of methane hidden deep underneath the permafrost. Natural gas, the team writes, can be “trapped under or within the permafrost layer and released when it thaws.”

The methane couldn’t have come from the usual microbes breaking down organic matter in the soil, since there is very little soil in these limestone formations.
HEAT “MADE THIS MIXTURE UNSTABLE AND OPENED PATHWAYS.”

Instead, Frotzheim suspects record-breaking temperatures disturbed fractures in the limestone, providing an opportunity for natural gas from deeper within the permafrost to escape into the atmosphere.

“Our hypothesis is that the heat made this mixture unstable and opened pathways through which natural gas from depth could reach the surface,” Frotzheim says. “There is a lot of natural gas in the subsurface of Siberia, and some of these reservoirs may have been tapped.”

Comparing maps over a one-year period between May 2020 and May 2021, the scientists found that “atmospheric methane concentrations have increased considerably during and after the 2020 heat wave.”

“After” is key: The increase in methane was highest in June/August 2020 as well as in March/April 2021, demonstrating how warming can trigger methane release long after the initial heat wave.

WHY IT MATTERS — The events in Northern Siberia are all, in a way, connected: the fires, the hunt for natural fuel, and the release of a powerful greenhouse gas.


Methane traps heat in the atmosphere and plays a major role in climate change. The heat wave that ignited Siberia’s wildfires is part of a trend driven by human-induced climate change — so is the thawing of Siberia’s permafrost. The extraction of oil and gas also releases methane. These factors are all connected.

It’s a domino effect that doesn’t appear to be slowing down: Record-breaking temperatures hit Siberia in 2020 and once again in the summer of 2021.


In July 2021, a couple attempts to evade smoke hanging over the city of Yakutsk, in Siberia. Dimitar Dilkoff/Getty Images

As temperatures continue to skyrocket due to the climate crisis, the permafrost thaw may unleash unknown quantities of this deep methane gas into the atmosphere. In 2018, NASA predicted a possible “future boost” of methane from Arctic permafrost — that prediction is coming true.

Based on their findings, the researchers conclude: “As a result, the permafrost–methane feedback may be much more dangerous than suggested by studies accounting for microbial methane alone.”


WHAT’S NEXT — Methane may be coming from deep within the Siberian ice, but scientists are still scratching the surface of permafrost research.

Froitzheim and his colleagues still aren’t sure why methane emissions began spiking more than half a year after the summer 2020 heat wave.

The team calls on more scientists to conduct research to “find out how fast and how much methane may be emitted this way,” including an analysis of methane in air samples and calculations of methane gas destabilization in the rocks.

While these measures are a way for scientists to better understand the exact amount of methane released due to permafrost, they’re not a solution.

These findings don’t necessarily mean the permafrost is beyond repair, the scientists suggest. The amount of methane being released from these deep methane reserves are relatively small compared to, say oilfields in Libya or wetlands in India, Froitzheim says. To have any chance of halting the release of methane from the permafrost we need to immediately begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and other industries.

“I do not think that these particular observations mean that we have passed a point of no return,” Frotzheim says.

Abstract: 

Anthropogenic global warming may be accelerated by a positive feedback from the mobilization of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost. There are large uncertainties about the size of carbon stocks and the magnitude of possible methane emissions. Methane cannot only be produced from the microbial decay of organic matter within the thawing permafrost soils (microbial methane) but can also come from natural gas (thermogenic methane) trapped under or within the permafrost layer and released when it thaws. In the Taymyr Peninsula and surroundings in North Siberia, the area of the worldwide largest positive surface temperature anomaly for 2020, atmospheric methane concentrations have increased considerably during and after the 2020 heat wave. Two elongated areas of increased atmospheric methane concentration that appeared during summer coincide with two stripes of Paleozoic carbonates exposed at the southern and northern borders of the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin, a hydrocarbon-bearing sedimentary basin between the Siberian Craton to the south and the Taymyr Fold Belt to the north. Over the carbonates, soils are thin to nonexistent and wetlands are scarce. The maxima are thus unlikely to be caused by microbial methane from soils or wetlands. We suggest that gas hydrates in fractures and pockets of the carbonate rocks in the permafrost zone became unstable due to warming from the surface. This process may add unknown quantities of methane to the atmosphere in the near future.

Methane release from carbonate rock formations in the Siberian permafrost area during and after the 2020 heat wave

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PNAS August 10, 2021 118 (32) e2107632118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2107632118

  1. Edited by Thure E. Cerling, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, and approved July 2, 2021 (received for review April 22, 2021)

Abstract

Anthropogenic global warming may be accelerated by a positive feedback from the mobilization of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost. There are large uncertainties about the size of carbon stocks and the magnitude of possible methane emissions. Methane cannot only be produced from the microbial decay of organic matter within the thawing permafrost soils (microbial methane) but can also come from natural gas (thermogenic methane) trapped under or within the permafrost layer and released when it thaws. In the Taymyr Peninsula and surroundings in North Siberia, the area of the worldwide largest positive surface temperature anomaly for 2020, atmospheric methane concentrations have increased considerably during and after the 2020 heat wave. Two elongated areas of increased atmospheric methane concentration that appeared during summer coincide with two stripes of Paleozoic carbonates exposed at the southern and northern borders of the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin, a hydrocarbon-bearing sedimentary basin between the Siberian Craton to the south and the Taymyr Fold Belt to the north. Over the carbonates, soils are thin to nonexistent and wetlands are scarce. The maxima are thus unlikely to be caused by microbial methane from soils or wetlands. We suggest that gas hydrates in fractures and pockets of the carbonate rocks in the permafrost zone became unstable due to warming from the surface. This process may add unknown quantities of methane to the atmosphere in the near future.

In a warming world, the release of CO2 and methane from thawing permafrost to the atmosphere may lead to a positive feedback by increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases (1⇓–3). Methane is particularly critical because of its high global warming potential per mass unit. In review articles on this subject, the focus is mainly on organic matter stored in frozen soils and its microbial decay and release as microbial methane upon thawing (1⇓–3). However, thermogenic methane, i.e., natural gas from the deeper subsurface, may also contribute to the feedback. A proportion of thermogenic methane in addition to the dominant microbial methane was found in gas emission craters in Western Siberia (4). For the subsea permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, it was argued that thawing can make the permafrost layer permeable for gas stored as hydrates or as free gas within the permafrost layer and also for subpermafrost gas (5). Isotopic signatures of methane released in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are consistent with an origin as old, deep, and likely thermogenic methane (6).

In 2020, Siberia saw an extreme heat wave (7). The maximum of the annual surface temperature anomaly, of up to 6 °C above the 1979–2000 baseline, was located on the Taymyr Peninsula in North Siberia (https://climatereanalyzer.org/). The atmospheric concentrations of methane in northern Siberia show a marked increase since June 2020, revealed by the PULSE map of methane concentrations (https://pulse.ghgsat.com/). The increase was strongest in July/August 2020 and in March/April 2021. During summer, 2020, two conspicuous elongated areas of increased methane concentration (in the following: “elongated maxima”) appeared (Fig. 1), approximately parallel to each other, several hundred kilometers long, and trending SW–NE. In early 2021, methane concentration increased over the entire area. In the present communication, we demonstrate the geological significance of these maxima and discuss possible reasons for the increased methane concentrations, as well as consequences for the permafrost–methane feedback.

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.

Atmospheric methane concentrations in North Siberia during 2020–2021, from PULSE map (https://pulse.ghgsat.com/). Note two elongated maxima of methane concentration (arrows) coinciding with carbonate outcrop areas (Fig. 2), and region-wide concentration increase in March to April 2021. See Fig. 2 for location. Curve shows monthly means of 2-m temperature in Siberia (55°N–76°N, 70°E–180°E) during the study period (https://climatereanalyzer.org/).

Results

The two elongated methane concentration maxima correlate well with two stripes characterized by outcrops and stone runs of carbonate rocks (Fig. 2). In these two areas, soil is thin to nonexistent, i.e., the carbonate rocks crop out at the surface, vegetation is scarce, and the proportion of wetlands is low. The northern lineament coincides with the Early Paleozoic Siberian passive-margin carbonate succession. The southern lineament mimics outcrops of Paleozoic carbonates covering the rim of the Siberian Craton. The area between the two lineaments is occupied by Late Paleozoic and Mesozoic, predominantly clastic sedimentary rocks of the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin (8). The region is underlain by continuous permafrost about 700 m thick in the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin (9).

Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.

Geology of the Taymyr Peninsula in North Siberia. (A) Satellite image (ArcGIS World Imagery). Carbonate rock formations on both sides of the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin visible as light-colored stripes. Outlines of atmospheric methane concentration anomalies (Fig. 1) indicated as yellow dashed lines. (B) Simplified geological map (modified from ref. 8). Note close coincidence of carbonate formations and methane anomalies.

We studied the evolution of methane concentrations using PULSE, an interactive map of atmospheric methane concentrations launched in 2020 and based on satellite spectroscopy. PULSE shows monthly concentration averages with a 2 × 2-km resolution. The map for a certain date shows concentration averaged over the preceding month. Absolute concentrations are only approximate, but spatial and temporal concentration gradients are well displayed. In May 2020, methane concentrations were low (∼1,800 ppb) and rather uniform in the area of interest. On June 26, near the climax of the heat wave (T curve in Fig. 1), the southern lineament was for the first time clearly visible as an elongated maximum in methane concentration.

In August, the southern maximum was strongest and the northern maximum appeared, and in the following became approximately as strong as the southern one. The situation remained unchanged until March 2021, when concentration started rising across the entire area and the two maxima partly disappeared in the increased background concentrations. On April 10, 2021, almost the entire area showed concentrations around 1,900 ppb. Comparison of the maps for May 16, 2020, and May 15, 2021, shows the significant increase of methane concentration within 1 y, focused on northern Siberia.

Discussion

The almost perfect coincidence between the stripes where carbonate rocks crop out and the elongated concentration maxima strongly suggests that the maxima result from geologically controlled methane emissions from the ground. These cannot represent microbial methane from the decay of soil organic matter because soils are thin to nonexistent, nor can they come from wetlands because there are relatively few wetlands on the carbonate rocks, nor from vegetation because there is hardly any. Consequently, the source must be thermogenic methane from the subsurface. The Paleozoic carbonates are potential hydrocarbon reservoir rocks (10). This opens the possibility that methane was emitted from gas stored in the carbonates, probably in the form of gas hydrate. The permafrost in North Siberia contains pockets and layers of gas hydrate, which have caused blowouts during drilling. Hydrates also exist metastably above the hydrate stability zone (11). The shallowest gas blowouts occurred at only 20-m depth (11). Eruption of gas from the mobilization of gas hydrates is assumed to have caused the formation of a gas eruption crater in the Patom hills, further south in Siberia but still in the permafrost zone (12). Importantly, this crater is on Neoproterozoic carbonate rocks, showing that the process of gas eruption does occur in carbonate rocks.

Ice-bonded permafrost is virtually impermeable for gases, leading to permafrost-capped gas reservoirs (9). In the hydrate stability zone, comprising the lower part of the permafrost and several 100 m below, methane and water form gas hydrate. Hydrates located above the present-day stability zone either formed due to ice load during glaciations, which raised the upper boundary of the stability zone to the ground surface, or because of a pressure increase due to freezing of water in pores and closed cavities (5, 11). We suggest that the mobilization of gas hydrate in fractures at shallow level, caused by warming from above during the heat wave, reduced the pressure on deeper gas hydrate, which was then mobilized, and so on, opening vents for increasingly deeper-seated gas. This process can occur in any fractured rock but is expected to be much faster in carbonate rocks, with their network of interconnected fractures and karst cavities, than in other rock types. This may explain why the maxima over the limestone appeared soon after the beginning of the heat wave. Rock composition may also play a role: Increased temperature in the gas-hydrate–hosting carbonates may mobilize hydrous fluid carrying dissolved CO2, which would cause CH4–CO2 replacement in analogy to the guest gas replacement technique applied to hydrate reservoirs, additionally speeding up the methane mobilization process.

The spring 2021 concentration increase is unusual because the area was still snow-covered and temperatures were low (curve in Fig. 1). Methane emissions during spring thaw are known from Arctic permafrost but these occur generally later, around end of May (13). The area of maximum spring 2021 concentration increase coincides with the maximum of 2020 temperature anomaly, i.e., the Taymyr Peninsula and surroundings, making a link between summer 2020 heat wave and spring 2021 methane emission plausible. The spring concentration increase, which is not restricted to the carbonates but occurred in the entire Yenisey-Khatanga Basin and surroundings, may at least partly also reflect gas hydrates from the permafrost. The reason for the delay of approximately half a year is unclear and requires further research.

To conclude, our observations hint at the possibility that permafrost thaw does not only release microbial methane from formerly frozen soils but also, and potentially in much higher amounts, thermogenic methane from reservoirs below and within the permafrost. As a result, the permafrost–methane feedback may be much more dangerous than suggested by studies accounting for microbial methane alone. Gas hydrates in Earth’s permafrost are estimated to contain 20 Gt of carbon (14). Additionally, subpermafrost natural gas reservoirs may be tapped. To clarify how fast methane from these sources can be transferred to the atmosphere, further research is urgently required, including monitoring of air composition, tracking of air movement, collection of air samples for analysis of tracers of thermogenic venting, and modeling of the hydrate destabilization process.

Materials and Methods

We used freely accessible online resources, the PULSE map for methane concentrations (https://pulse.ghgsat.com/) and the Climate Reanalyzer (https://climatereanalyzer.org/) for temperature and snow cover data.

Data Availability

All study data are included in the article and/or supporting information.

Acknowledgments

We thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments.

Footnotes

  • Author contributions: N.F. designed research; N.F., J.M., and D.Z. performed research; D.Z. analyzed data; and N.F. and J.M. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no competing interest.




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