Hidden away: An enigmatic mammalian brain area revealed in reptiles

by Max Planck Society FEBRUARY 13, 2020

The Australian bearded dragon Pogona vitticeps. 

Credit: Dr. Stephan Junek, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research.

Reptiles have a brain area previously suspected to play a role in mammalian higher cognitive processes, and establish its role in controlling brain dynamics in sleep.

The state of unified perception, which is characteristic of a conscious state in humans, appears to require widespread coordination of the forebrain, and thus, the existence of a physical and anatomical substrate for this coordination. The mammalian claustrum, a thin sheet of brain tissue hidden beneath the inner layers of the neocortex, is widely interconnected with the rest of the forebrain (a fact known from classical neuroanatomy). For this reason, the claustrum has been seen as a good candidate for such widespread coordination and hypothesized to mediate functions ranging from decision-making to consciousness. Until now, a claustrum structure had been identified only in the brains of mammals.

The laboratory of Professor Gilles Laurent, director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, studies brain function, dynamics, evolution and sleep. His group works on several animal model systems that now include reptiles (turtles and lizards) and cephalopods (cuttlefish). A few years ago, the Laurent lab provided evidence for the existence of rapid-eye-movement (REM) and non-REM sleep in the Australian bearded dragon pogona vitticeps, suggesting that the two main brain sleep states (REM and non-REM) date back at least to the time when vertebrate animals first colonized the terrestrial landmass over 300 million years ago.

In a paper in the upcoming issue of Nature, the researchers have identified a homolog of the claustrum in the pogona dragon and in a freshwater turtle using single-cell RNA sequencing techniques and viral tracing of brain connectivity. This is the first evidence of the existence of a claustrum in non-mammalian animals. Its discovery was entirely fortuitous; the investigators' attention was initially drawn to this region following functional investigations of brain activity during sleep.

Postdoctoral fellows Hiroaki Norimoto and Lorenz Fenk were recording brain activity in dragons during sleep and observed that events characteristic of non-REM sleep appeared to be initiated in a small and anterior region of the brain, whose exact identity was unknown. "Our initial goal was to study information processing during sleep," explains Norimoto. "Our approach was very explorative to begin with."

At the same time, postdoctoral fellow Maria Antonietta Tosches (now assistant professor at Columbia University in New York) was analyzing cell-molecular data taken from the dragon forebrain and noticed that a small anterior region of the brain, corresponding precisely to where electrophysiological recordings had been made, had a distinct molecular identity. By comparing this identity to published RNA-sequencing data from mice, she identified this area as equivalent to the mammalian claustrum. Fenk and graduate student Hsing-Hsi Li then used viral tracing methods to map the connectivity of this reptilian claustrum to the rest of the brain and found, as is known in mammals, that it is widely interconnected with the rest of the forebrain.

"Interestingly, we found that the claustrum was also connected with areas of the mid- and hindbrain that have been implicated in the regulation of sleep in mammals. This is consistent with the idea that the claustrum may play a role in controlling brain dynamics characteristic of sleep," says Fenk.

Indeed, the Laurent lab then showed that the claustrum underlies the generation of sharp waves during slow-wave sleep. The researchers foudn that uni- or bilateral lesions of the claustrum suppressed sharp-wave ripple production during slow-wave sleep uni- or bilaterally, respectively, but did not affect the regular and rapidly alternating sleep rhythm characteristic of pogona sleep. The claustrum is thus not involved in sleep-rhythm generation itself, but rather in generating a particular dynamic mode during non-REM sleep, which it then broadcasts widely in the forebrain.

"The fact that we find a claustrum homolog in reptiles suggests that the claustrum is an ancient structure, likely present in the brains of the common vertebrate ancestor of reptiles and mammals," says Laurent. "While our results have not answered the question as to whether the claustrum plays a role in consciousness or higher cognitive functions, they indicate that it may play an important role in the control of brain states (such as in sleep), due to ascending input from the mid- and hindbrain, to its widespread projections to the forebrain and to its role in sharp-wave generation during slow-wave sleep," Laurent concludes.

More information: Hiroaki Norimoto et al. A claustrum in reptiles and its role in slow-wave sleep, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-1993-6

Pension funds get tough on climate laggards

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

ImpactAlpha, Jan. 30 – As CO2 levels this week were projected to see their steepest annual rise ever, three large pension funds warned that they would crack down on companies and asset managers who are not doing enough to transition to a low-carbon future.  

The Brunel Pension Partnership, which manages a £30 billion pool of local pension funds in the U.K., issued a stark rebuke to the asset management industry, which it called “not fit for purpose” when it comes to addressing climate change.

“Climate change is a rapidly escalating investment issue. We found that the finance sector is part of the problem, when it could and should be part of the solution for addressing climate change,” said chief investment officer Mark Mansley. “How the sector prices assets, manages risk, and benchmarks performance all need to be challenged.”

Stern warning

As part of an ambitious new climate plan, the partnership said it would size up the efforts of both asset managers and portfolio companies to contain global warming within the benchmarks of the Paris climate agreement.

“Managers that fail to do so face the threat of having their mandates removed,” the statement said. Companies, meanwhile, could face votes against their directors’ re-appointments or divestment.

Burying coal

The New York State Common Retirement Fund put 27 thermal coal mining companies on notice to demonstrate their readiness to transition to a low-carbon environment or be dropped from the $210 billion fund. Ceres’ Mindy Lubber said the move by the country’s third largest state pension system would help it reduce climate risks and “ensure that the Fund invests in transition-ready companies.” Thermal coal mining, she said, “has a dim future in light of the accelerating transition to a sustainable, net-zero emissions economy.”

Passive aggressive

The Church of England Pensions Board has moved £600 million into a new passive index it created with the London Stock Exchange. The FTSE TPI Climate Transition Index is based on Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI), an asset owner-led initiative that tracks whether companies are aligned with Paris goals. In: Shell and Repsol. Out: ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP.

“The message is clear to all publicly listed companies: put in place targets and strategies aligned to Paris and be rewarded with inclusion in the Index, or work against the long term interests of beneficiaries and wider society, and be excluded,” said the pension board’s Adam Matthews.

Real estate risk

PGGM, a €160 billion Dutch pension manager and one of the world’s largest real estate owners, announced it would work with Munich Re to analyze each of the assets in its portfolio, from companies to real estate holdings, to identify those with the most climate risk. 

Cash is hot: 

Investors find new options to put deposits to work for community development

Native American Holy Land, Devil's Tower, Wyoming (photo: Woody Hibbard)

ImpactAlpha, February 12 – Denver-based and Native-owned Native American National Bank serves Native communities, governments and enterprises across the U.S. To boost the bank’s lending power, RSF Social Finance, Candide Group’s Olamina fund and other impact investors have created deposit accounts and CDs at the bank.

“The best way to support our bank is through deposits,” the bank’s Tom Ogaard said on a webinar hosted by Transform Finance.

Such community banks, along with credit unions and community development financial institutions, are increasingly attracting foundations, impact funds and other investors looking for a way to drive impact, even with their idle cash. The capital allows bankers serving low-income and underserved areas that bigger financial institutions pass over to expand their community lending.

Financial intermediaries are innovating on plain-vanilla savings and checking accounts to overcome barriers such lenders have faced in attracting customers, including limits on federal deposit insurance.

Oakland-based CNote’s new Promise Account lets accredited investors divvy up to $3 million into insured deposit accounts across multiple CDFIs and low-income credit-unions, while managing their cash through a single interface on CNote’s platform. It follows the company’s high-yield, uninsured “savings account” for retail investors introduced in 2017. The opportunity is significant, CNote’s Catherine Berman tells ImpactAlpha, especially among foundations, who must have large amounts of cash on hand for grantmaking.

“The culture of impact investing has mostly lent itself to private deals,” says Berman. “But cash is the low hanging fruit.”

Tiedemann Advisors and StoneCastle Cash Management launched a similar cash management solution that allocates cash balances across insured deposit accounts at high-need community banks and credit unions. “It’s funny that there hasn’t been as much conversation over the years about cash,” says Tiedemann’s Brad Harrison. “It’s been overlooked”

Native American National Bank operates in “Indian Country,” the 3% of U.S. land, mostly sparsely populated and overwhelmingly low-income, that is populated by tribal and Alaskan natives. The bank has lent $128 million to support $250 million in projects in the last five years, including for affordable housing, grocery stores and native-owned enterprises. Financing for such projects often requires more complex capital stacks and longer timeframes than conventional banks are willing to underwrite.

For the Olamina fund, which was created last year to address the lack of access to capital in Black and Native American communities, keeping its cash with the bank “is a way for us to say, we see you and want to be able to support the work you are doing,” said the fund’s Lynne Hoey.

GREEN CAPITALISM
After Building SunEdison, Jigar Shah Eyes $1 Trillion Opportunities

Agents of Impact  |  February 12, 2015 

A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real solutions to climate change.

“Impact to me means $1 trillion,” says Jigar Shah, president and co-founder of Generate Capital, a new specialty finance company that works with project developers and technology manufacturers to finance what he calls “the resource revolution.”

Shah knows of what he speaks. As the founder of solar giant SunEdison, Shah cracked the code and laid the foundation for the explosive growth of not only SunEdison, now worth more than $5.5 billion, but also Elon Musk’s SolarCity and others. His no-money-down, pay-as-you-save business model unlocked the hundreds of billions in secondary financing that has driven the quadrupling of installed US solar capacity in the past five years. Last year, solar and wind together accounted for more than half of new U.S. electrical generating capacity. “Impact means people follow you,” Shah adds.

Since he left SunEdison five years ago, Shah has worked through outfits such as Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room, where he was the founding CEO, to build the business case for scaling up other clean-tech industries.

At the Carbon War Room, Shah became known as a champion of the “gigaton throwdown,” a 2009 challenge to reduce annual carbon emissions by 17 gigatons (from 36 gigatons today), in order to avoid a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. Shah focused on the 10 or so “wedges” that each have potential for one-gigaton carbon reductions, including energy, water, waste, transportation, and agriculture.

The required changes are massive. Each wedge represents an investment opportunity of $1 trillion or more, according to multiple estimates, in order to bring sustainable infrastructure to billions of people around the world. A one-gigaton reduction in transportation, for example, would require swapping out a billion cars that get 20 miles per gallon for ones that get 40 mpg.

This is what Shah calls “creating climate wealth,” the title of his 2013 book in which he lays out the roadmap for approaches that can more than pay for themselves, but require massive infusions of upfront capital. Though renewables such as solar cost less over time, consumers had a hard time justifying, if even affording, the upfront costs of the equipment and installation.

At SunEdison, Shah helped introduce the 20-year power purchase agreements that bring together customers, investors, clean-tech manufacturers, and government regulators with terms they all can understand. SunEdison would install and service the equipment, ensure it performed as expected and deliver reliable, long-term dividends to investors.

Generate Capital, launched last year by Shah and co-founders Scott Jacobs and Matan Friedman, aims to demonstrate the investment opportunities in other proven approaches in renewable energy, energy storage, and energy efficiency. The firm already has north of $100 million to begin underwriting clean-tech projects. Though some impact-driven family offices are on board, Shah is seeking mainstream investor capital.

In a statement, Generate Capital says, “The goal here is to bring project finance to the hundreds of technologies that cost more upfront but save money over time that are either too confusing or too small for the traditional players to invest in.”

Unlike many investors, Shah is not looking for technology breakthroughs. The key to large-scale deployment, he says, is the availability of proven, battle-tested technologies such as photovoltaic solar panels, developed in the 1950s by Bell Labs.

“We believe that the biggest impacts in sustainability will be found in scaling the adoption of existing technology,” says Greg Neichin, an investor in Generate Capital as director of Ceniarth, LLC a single family office. “While significant capital has flowed to inventing new venture-backed technologies, we believe that the best risk-adjusted returns are available in financing the deployment of proven products and services.”

Shah and his team have already identified nearly a billion dollars worth of project-finance opportunities in the U.S. alone, an amount, the firm says, that is growing every day. Generate targets projects of between $2 million and $20 million, offering short-term asset-based financing, equipment leasing and other forms of project finance.

“Everything we have on the planet is old right now. It all has to get rebuilt. We can either rebuild it the right way or the wrong way,” Shah says. “It’s the largest wealth-creation opportunity of our lifetime.”

Government Agency Warns Global Oil Industry Is on the Brink of a Meltdown

We are not running out of oil, but it's becoming uneconomical to exploit it—another reason we need to move to renewables as quickly as possible.
By Nafeez Ahmed Feb 4 2020

IMAGE: CARINA JOHANSEN/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

A government research report produced by Finland warns that the increasingly unsustainable economics of the oil industry could derail the global financial system within the next few years.

The new report is published by the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), which operates under the government’s Ministry of Economic Affairs. GTK is currently the European Commission’s lead coordinator of the EU’s ProMine project, its flagship mineral resources database and modeling system.

The report was produced as an internal research exercise for the Finnish government, which until 2019 held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Signed off by GTK’s director of scientific research Dr Saku Vuori, the report is written by GTK senior scientist Dr Simon Michaux of the Ore Geology and Mineral Economics Unit. It conducts a comprehensive global assessment of scientific research into the state of the global oil industry with goal of determining how the risks of a global supply gap could impact mining and mineral production.

The peer-reviewed report calls for the European Commission to consider oil as the world’s most important "critical raw material." Despite offering a scathing critique of conventional peak oil theory, the report arrives at the shock conclusion that the economic viability of the entire global oil market could come undone within the next few years.
Oil, oil everywhere, too costly to drill

The plateauing of conventional crude oil production in January 2005 was one of the triggers of events leading to the 2008 global financial crash, according to the report. As debt built-up in the subprime mortgage sector, the crude oil plateau drove up the underlying energy costs for the entire economy making that debt more difficult to repay—and eventually resulting in catastrophic defaults. The report warns that “unresolved” dynamics in the global energy system were only temporarily relieved due to "Quantitative Easing"—the creation of new money by central banks. A correction is now overdue, it warns.

The report says we are not running out of oil—vast reserves exist—but says that it is becoming uneconomical to exploit it. The plateauing of crude oil production was “a decisive turning point for the industrial ecosystem,” with demand shortfall being made up from liquid fuels which are far more expensive and difficult to extract—namely, unconventional oil sources like crude oil from deep offshore sources, oil sands, and especially shale oil (also known as "tight oil," extracted by fracking).

These sources require far more elaborate and expensive methods of extraction, refining and processing than conventional crude mined onshore, which has driven up costs of production and operations.

Yet the shift to more expensive sources of oil to sustain the global economy, the report finds, is not only already undermining economic growth, but likely to become unsustainable on its own terms. In short, we have entered a new era of expensive energy that is likely to trigger a long-term economic contraction.
The coming crash

‘Quantitative Easing’ or QE as it’s often known in shorthand, consists of massive programs of money creation through central banks purchasing government debt. But the report warns that the scale of QE could pave the way for another financial crash as oil markets become unstable, most likely within half a decade.

The role of QE in propping up the oil industry and wider global economy was not anticipated in traditional peak oil theory, which failed to predict the low oil prices endangering profitability. The report concludes that: “The era of cheap and abundant energy is long gone… Money supply and debt have grown faster than the real economy. Debt saturation and paralysis is now a very real risk, requiring a global scale reset.”

Although the world therefore needs to urgently transition away from fossil fuels, it may well be too late to do so in a way that avoids an economic crisis. And doing so will require industrial civilization as we know it to be fundamentally transformed:

“To phase out petroleum products (and fossil fuels in general), the entire global industrial ecosystem will need to be reengineered, retooled and fundamentally rebuilt," the report notes. "This will be perhaps the greatest industrial challenge the world has ever faced historically.”

Professor Nate Hagens, a former Vice President at investment firms Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers who now teaches ecological economics at the University of Minnesota, said he "finds the report quite plausible."

"But our institutions and policies and expectations are ‘energy blind’,” he told me. He believes that the report’s warning of a coming economic crisis is very likely.

“We optimize around growth, which requires energy which requires carbon energy,” he said. “We have created approaching 300 trillion dollars in financial claims, on a finite amount of high quality resources... All in all, we’ve created too many claims for future energy and resources to support.”
From Saudi peak to shale bubble

The report offers the first independent public government assessment concluding that Saudi Arabia, once the world’s largest oil producer, is now probably approaching (and may already have passed) a production peak.

The study cites accelerating rig counts amid disproportionately low oil output as mounting evidence of the Saudi oil sector’s declining productivity. It also cites data from the recent IPO held by the Saudi national oil firm, Aramco, indicating that production levels from the country’s largest field, Ghawar, is 1.2 million barrels lower than previously claimed, suggesting the field is nearing maturity.

Meanwhile, as Saudi Arabia has been unable to keep up with demand, US shale has stepped in, contributing to the vast bulk of new global oil supply since 2005—71.4 percent of it to be exact

The rest of the international oil market is dominated by Russia and Iraq, with other members of the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) consortium of Middle East oil producers overall contributing just 22 percent of total supply, barely enough to cover losses from countries whose production has been declining.
A bubble ready to burst

The report warns that global production growth may therefore soon stall due to the dodgy debt-driven economics of the US shale industry. While Saudi Arabia will no longer be able to ramp up production much, the US shale oil sector could be on the brink of unravelling due to massive unrepayable debts, declining production rates, and poor well quality.

While the productivity of shale oil wells has increased at first glance, the report says this has come at the expense of “observable decreases in real productivity.” Increasing production “has come at a cost of increased lateral drilling per hole and the increase of water, chemical, and proppant.”

So while average production from fracked US shale wells increased between 2010 and 2018 by 28 percent, in the same period water injection, chemical and proppant use increased by 118 percent. The report says this indicates the huge spike in extraction costs.

Meanwhile, the report warns that most shale oil companies experience negative cash flow due to mounting unrepayable debt levels. As a result, we are fast approaching a point where investors are losing faith in the industry, which is now running out of money to sustain continued operations amidst declining profitability.

The exact date of a peak in US shale oil production is difficult to estimate, but the report concludes that production “is likely to be in terminal decline within the next 5 to 10 years, with the possibility that it has already peaked due to contraction of upstream capital investment.”

If that happens, it would mean we can no longer rely on the principal source of oil behind global production growth.

According to World Oil, two major oil industry service providers, Halliburton and Schlumberger, already believe that despite production reaching record highs, US shale oil fracking has already peaked and is in a period of sustained contraction.
A global peak?

The report is heavily critical of conventional peak oil theory, which predicted that global oil production would peak and decline shortly after 2000 due to ‘below-ground’ geological depletion, leading to permanently spiralling oil prices. The approach is described as “too simplistic” for overlooking “the complex and dynamic interactions of a number of issues around the oil industry (most notably geopolitical actions and the effect on Quantitative Easing).”

But the report also dismisses the now fashionable rejection of the entire relevance of peak oil. Although there is “plenty of oil left,” it is “increasingly expensive to access”.

The current economic system cannot sustain oil prices above $100 a barrel and keep growing, while producers for most new fields cannot sustain profits at prices as low as $45 a barrel without more borrowing.


According to Dr. Michaux, the global economy is therefore caught between a rock and a hard place. “Oil prices will be held low for a time,” he explained. “The problem is all consumers at all scales in all sectors are saturated with debt. Costs are going up, while the ability to generate wealth is contracting.”

This means that although the oil industry can’t cope with the lower prices, the global economy can’t cope with high prices. “I now see peak oil as being defined by a contracting window between an oil price high enough to keep producers in business and a price low enough for consumers to access oil derived goods and services,” said Michaux.

As a result of this combination of geological challenges and above-ground market constraints, Michaux’s government study warns that a global peak in total oil production is either “imminent” over the next few years, or may already have happened, possibly in November 2018. But we will only be able to fully confirm the peak around five years after the fact.

More than half the world’s oil producing countries are now in decline, the report claims, with the bulk of new production concentrated among just six main producers. When looking specifically at crude oil operations, the report says, about 81 percent of the world’s oil fields are now in decline, with the rate of discoveries of new oil fields declining to record lows.

By 2040, this means the world would need to replace over four times the current crude oil output of Saudi Arabia, just to keep output consistently flat.

Rather than global oil supply being constrained simply by the volume of oil deposits in the ground, as conventional peak oil theory assumes, the report says that it is instead constrained “by the number of economically viable projects available to be developed at a low enough production cost.”

Currently, the bulk of continued expansion in global supply is dependent on the United States. With the US shale sector on the verge of breakdown, the report warns that the “window of oil market viability is closing, which suggests the resumption of the 2008 correction will be soon.”

According to Dr. Hagens, this new analysis confirms that “‘peak oil’ is now really about ‘peak credit.’ If we can somehow continue to keep growing our financial claims to allow us access to future energy today, we’ll continue to be able to extract the next most costly tranche of hydrocarbons.”

But as debt levels are becoming dangerously unstable, this can only continue for so long; and only pushes the problem forward, making future oil decline rates steeper. Eventually the situation will become unworkable. He argues that it’s the “global credit orgy of the last 50 years,” but especially since 2008, that has kept the growth engine growing.

I asked Hagens whether he agrees with the report’s verdict that an overall peak could therefore be imminent. “I find it extremely plausible,” he said.
Global reset and the need for a new industrial paradigm

Because we are “using finance to paper over this biophysical gap”, he added, this will eventually “lead to a deflationary pulse in global economies.”

Levels of global debt are now thoroughly out of control, the report says—finding that US government debt creation has been approximately twice the rate of economic growth over the last 40 years. By increasing the volume of debt, countries were able to maintain growth as costs of energy went up. As a result, most national economies now have debt to GDP ratio exceeding 90 percent, which means that they need to go further into debt just to keep their economies functioning while maintaining debt repayments.

Growth in GDP therefore amounts to a “debt fueled mirage,” according to the report. As we have not properly planned for the possible phasing out of fossil fuel energy, it is entirely possible that as energy systems, oil in particular, come to contract, we could witness “the peak of industrial output per capita sometime in the next few years.”

As oil markets become unreliable, the report urges, the world needs to develop “an entirely new energy system based around an entirely different paradigm.” The report calls on technical professionals and policymakers to focus on how “to create a high technology society” based on a smaller clean energy footprint that isn’t reliant on endless material growth. “If this is not achieved, the alternative is the degradation (and fragmentation) of the current industrial ecosystem.”

In short, this means we need an extremely rapid shift to renewables, along with a total reorganization of how our societies function for the coming post-fossil fuels world.

All major industrial nations need to “work together in how to transition away from oil and fossil fuels in general,” the report concludes, warning: “The alternative is conflict.” Industrial civilization will need to “evolve” into “a lower energy consumption profile with less complexity,” based on a “complete restructure of the demand side of energy requirements.”

Right now, though, “no one is preparing for this,” said Hagens. “Not only are we speeding, but we are wearing energy blind-folds at the same time. But the momentum of our current system forces us to have conversations about a bigger system not a smaller one—so the correct and valid plans and blueprints are not discussed… It is a perfect storm—and when the waters recede we are going to have smaller, simpler and more local, regional economies.”

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

New material created to clean up fossil fuel industry

by University of Sydney

Credit: Pixabay

Researchers at the University of Sydney have created a new material that has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions released during the refinement process of crude oil by up to 28 percent.

Silica-alumina materials are among the most common solid acids that have been widely commercialised as efficient and environmentally-friendly catalysts in the petrochemical and bio-refinery industries.

In a world first, a team of researchers at the University of Sydney led by Associate Professor Jun Huang, have produced a new amorphous silica-alumina catalyst with stronger acidity than any other silica-alumina material created before.

"This new catalyst can significantly reduce the amount of CO2 emitted by oil refineries, which has the potential to make the fossil fuel industry much greener and cleaner," Associate Professor Huang from the Faculty of Engineering and Sydney Nano Institute said.

A significant amount of carbon is emitted during the refinement of crude oil to produce products like petroleum, gasoline and diesel. Estimates suggest 20 to 30 percent of crude oil is transferred to waste and further burnt in the chemical process, making oil refineries the second largest source of greenhouse gases behind power plants.

Credit: University of Sydney

Silica-aluminas with strong Brønsted acidity—a substance that gives up or donates hydrogen ions (protons) in a chemical reaction—are becoming increasingly important to various sustainability processes, including the fields of biomass conversion, CO2 capture and conversion, air-pollution remediation, and water purification.

"Renewable energy is important to achieving a more sustainable energy supply, but the reality is that we will still be reliant on fossil fuels in the foreseeable future. Therefore, we should do all we can to make this industry more efficient and reduce its carbon footprint while we transition to renewable energy sources

"This new catalyst offers some exciting prospects, if it were to be adopted by the entire oil refinery industry, we could potentially see a reduction of over 20 percent in CO2 emissions during the oil refinement process. That's the equivalent of double Australia's crude oil consumption, over 2 million barrels of oil per day."

"The new catalyst also has the potential to develop the biomass industry. We can now look to biomass material like algae to be part of sustainable energy solutions."

The next steps for the researchers are to work on manufacturing the new catalyst at a large, industrial scale.

A greener, simpler way to create syngas

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More information: Zichun Wang et al. Acidity enhancement through synergy of penta- and tetra-coordinated aluminum species in amorphous silica networks, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13907-7

Resurrecting A World War II Fuel To Fight Flight Shaming

By Julianne Geiger - Feb 06, 2020

A “green” jet fuel based on a chemical process created by the Germans for the Luftwaffe air force during World War II may have just found a new purpose in the burgeoning era of flight shaming; but is it commercially viable?

German scientists think so.

Today, German scientists are working together to revive an old kerosene project that could make a commercially viable synthetic jet fuel in a move that will hopefully save airlines from the latest air travel trend - flight shaming.  

Of course, the 1925 kerosene creation wasn’t the green version - it relied on coal and other fossil fuels to create the kerosene. But today’s version of the kerosene project would see this kerosene derived from water.

What’s more, this green version actually pulls carbon dioxide out of the air during the creation process.

If successful, the process could not only put an end to the rising emissions from air travel, but it could also strip away demand for crude oil should the current fossil-fuel based jet fuel be replaced.

How it Works

The process for making this power-based fuel is a methanol synthesis process that produces synthetic methanol. It is derived from water, which is then fractured into oxygen and hydrogen, and then combined with carbon.

This synthetic methanol is then refined into a product such as kerosene.

Compared to another synthetic-producing process called Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, this synthetic methanol process allows the manufacturer to better tailor the end product and reduce any unwanted by-products, according to Heide.

Still, the process will take a huge amount of electricity. In order to be carbon neutral, this electricity would need to come from renewable sources. This is a big ask, but one that scientists say is doable, even on a commercial scale.

German scientists are working on the latest iteration of this process, working under the direction of Bremen University in a project called KEROSyN100. Related: Are Oil Markets Overreacting To The Coronavirus?

While there are other synthetic aviation fuel projects currently underway, Heide believes it is the only one using a methanol synthesis process.

Decades ago, US Navy scientists made headway in a similar project, creating jet fuel from seawater. However, they have failed to reach any large scale - yet.

The Navy’s project involved a cell that pulled pure and concentrated carbon dioxide from the seawater - a superior source than the carbon dioxide from flue or stack gases produced from burning fossil fuels. The process also simultaneously produces hydrogen, which helps to recover the CO2. The two gases are slammed together to create fuel. This is the same basic principle as the Heide project.  

This unit the Navy was using was able to capture 92% of carbon dioxide from the seawater, where it is 140 times more concentrated than in the air. The energy supplied to the cell went 100% towards making hydrogen - not the extracting process. Then, the gases are converted into olefins using an iron catalyst. 

In 2013, the Navy produced one liter of fuel a day this way. Small potatoes, but a success nonetheless. The Naval Research Laboratory hoped the seawater fuel would reach commercial viability in 10 to 15 years. That puts the target between 2023 and 2028.

American Money

This newest iteration of “green” jet fuel is being made at Klesch Group’s Heide oil refinery - a refinery that American billionaire Gary Klesch purchased from Royal Dutch Shell in 2010 at a time when oil companies were looking to shed European downstream assets as refining margins shrunk.

At the time of Klesch’s purchase, Heide, a landlocked refinery in Heide Germany near the North Sea, was capable of processing 93,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Banking on downstream’s long-term prospects, Klesch snapped up or built multiple refineries around the world, including a 300,000 bpd refinery in Libya. The group’s latest move was a deal in December to take over operations from PDVSA for Venezuela’s Isla refinery in Curacao.

Lufthansa has signed an agreement with the Heide refinery to produce and use this environmentally friendly kerosene, which will be made from surplus wind energy. The kerosene is still in the R&D phase now a Heide spokesperson told Oilprice.com, but it has plans to deliver first synthetic kerosene by 2023, and to supply 5% of Hamburg airport’s jet fuel supply with synthetic kerosene by 2024.

The HangUps

In its 2009 project, the US Navy ran into some snags. First, while concentrations of carbon dioxide in water are many times greater than those in the air, it’s still a small amount, at just 100 milligrams per liter. To put this into perspective, you would have to process nine million cubic meters (almost 2.4 billion gallons) of water to make just 100,000 gallons of fuel. 

Second, the water needs to be pumped into the cell - ostensibly using some form of energy. And if the vessel uses fuel to make that electricity, well, the whole process would be a wash and have no value. Related: Energy Stocks Retreat On Poor Earnings

The third hangup was that the process produced methane. Most of the gas was converted, but some was not.

The fourth hangup is that when the fuel is burned, it does release carbon. The Navy mentioned that this would be a constant state of equilibrium; with carbon released into the air before being recycled from the sea again.

The latest project hopes to resolve some of the hangups by using wind energy to power the process.

If the current project to use renewable energy as a means of creating this greener jet fuel is successful on a large scale, mass adoption is a near certainty. While the transportation sector is busy converting ICE vehicles into electric ones to combat climate change, no current alternative to fossil fuel-powered air travel is viable. And never has it been more imperative for the transportation sector to figure out how to duck the climate change blow.  

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

JANUARY 7, 2020

A greener, simpler way to create syngas

by Matthew Chin, University of California, Los Angeles

Schematic showing the atomic structure of the copper-ruthenium nanoparticle catalyst. Credit: John Mark Martirez/UCLA

Researchers from UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, Rice University and UC Santa Barbara have developed an easier and greener way to create syngas.

A study detailing their work is published today in Nature Energy.

Syngas (the term is short for "synthesis gas") is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases. It is used to make ammonia, methanol, other industrial chemicals and fuels. The most common process for creating syngas is coal gasification, which uses steam and oxygen (from air) at high temperatures, a process that produces large amounts of carbon dioxide.

One more environmentally friendly way to create syngas, called methane dry reforming, involves getting two potent greenhouse gases to react—methane (for example, from natural gas) and carbon dioxide. But that process is not widely used at industrial scales, partly because it requires temperatures of at least 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius) to initiate the chemical reaction.

Over the past decade, researchers have tried to improve the process for creating syngas using various metal alloys that could catalyze the required chemical reaction at lower temperatures. But the tests were either inefficient or resulted in the metal catalysts being covered in coke, a residue of mostly carbon that builds up during the process.

In the new research, engineers found a more suitable catalyst: copper with a few atoms of the precious metal ruthenium exposed to visible light. Shaped like a tiny bump about 5 nanometers in diameter (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter) and lying on top of a metal-oxide support, the new catalyst enables a chemical reaction that selectively produces syngas from the two greenhouse gases using visible light to drive the reaction, without requiring any additional thermal energy input.

In addition, in principle, the process requires only concentrated sunlight, which also prevents the buildup of coke that plagued earlier methods.

"Syngas is used ubiquitously in the chemical industry to create many chemicals and materials that enable our daily life," said Emily Carter, a UCLA distinguished professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and a corresponding author of the paper. "What's exciting about this new process is that it offers the opportunity to react captured greenhouse gases—reducing carbon emissions to the atmosphere—while creating this critical chemical feedstock using an inexpensive catalyst and renewable energy in the form of sunlight instead of using fossil fuels."