Earth’s Most Important Biochemical Reaction: Photosynthesis Breakthrough for Increasing CO2 Uptake in Plants

By UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN DECEMBER 18, 2021

Plant cells Plant cells inside a leaf seen through a microscope.

A group of proteins in plant cells plays a vastly more important role in regulation of photosynthesis than once thought, according to new research at the University of Copenhagen. The research is an important step towards fully understanding photosynthesis regulation and increasing CO2 uptake in plants to benefit the climate.

Photosynthesis Facts

• Photosynthesis is one of the most important biological processes on Earth, as it produces most of the oxygen in our atmosphere, upon which nearly all life depends.
• Photosynthesis takes place in green plants, algae and some bacteria, when solar energy converts carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and organic matter in the form of glucose.
• Glucose is then converted into nutrients and used by the plants themselves and animals
  Source: Den Store Danske

Imagine being able to grow plants that could absorb even more CO2 from Earth’s atmosphere and thereby help solve the world’s climate problems. Humans have selected, bred and optimized plants to increase food production and ensure our survival for thousands of years.

But the most important and fundamental function of life on Earth – photosynthesis – has not been relevant with regards to plant selection or breeding until now, an age when greenhouse gas emissions from human activities threaten our planet. With new technologies at hand, scientists around the world are now working to understand the internal processes of plants that drive photosynthesis.

In a new study published in the scientific journal PNAS, researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences have just discovered that a group of proteins in plant leaf cells, called CURT1, plays a much more important role in photosynthesis than once thought. 

“We have discovered that CURT1 proteins control a plant’s development of green leaves already from the seed stage. Thus, the proteins have a major influence on how effectively photosynthesis is established,” explains Associate Professor Mathias Pribil, the study’s lead author.

Proteins that kickstart photosynthesis

CURT1 Protein Facts

• URT1 is a protein group which coordinates structural processes of the internal chloroplast membrane that makes photosynthesis function more efficiently.
• It was once thought that this protein group was only present in plants with mature leaves, and that the protein played a less important role. Scientists now know that the protein group is central to managing photosynthesis.
• The protein group also helps plant leaves increase or decrease their light-harvesting ability depending upon sunlight strength.
• Plants with a misbalanced CURT1 protein content – whether too many or too few – had a higher mortality rate and generally poorer growth.

CURT1 proteins were previously believed to play a more modest role and only be present in fully-developed leaves. But using state-of-the-art Imaging techniques (photography and computer equipment), the researchers zoomed 30,000x in on the growth of a series of experimental thale cress (Arabidopsis) plants. This allowed them to study the plants at a molecular level. The researchers could see that CURT1 proteins were present from the earliest stages of their plants’ lives.

“Emerging from the soil is a critical moment for the plant, as it is struck by sunlight and rapidly needs to get photosynthesis going to survive. Here we can see that CURT1 proteins coordinate processes that set photosynthesis in motion and allow the plant to survive, something we didn’t know before,” explains Mathias Pribil.

Photosynthesis takes place in chloroplasts, 0.005 mm long elliptical bodies in plant cells that are a kind of organ within the cells of a plant leaf. Within each chloroplast, a membrane harbours proteins and the other functions that make photosynthesis possible.

“CURT1 proteins control the shape of this membrane, making it easier for other proteins in a plant cell to move around and perform important tasks surrounding photosynthesis, depending on how the environment around the plant changes. This could be to repair light harvesting protein complexes when the sunlight is intense or to turn up a chloroplast’s ability to harvest light energy when sunlight is weak,” explains Pribil.

Plants with a misbalanced CURT1 protein content – whether too many or too few – had a higher mortality rate and generally poorer growth.

Improved CO2 uptake in the future

The new finding provides deeper insight into Earth’s most important biochemical reaction. Indeed, without plants, neither animals nor humans would exist on our planet. Thus far, the result only applies to the thale cress plant, but Pribil would be “very surprised” if the importance of CURT1 proteins for photosynthesis didn’t extend to other plants as well.

“This is an important step on the way to understanding all of the components that control photosynthesis. The question is whether we can use this new knowledge to improve the CURT1 protein complex in plants in general, so as to optimize photosynthesis,” says Mathias Pribil, who adds:

“Much of our research revolves around making photosynthesis more efficient so that plants can absorb more CO2. Just as we have selected and bred the best crops throughout the history of agriculture, it is now about helping nature become the best possible CO2 absorber,” says Mathias Pribil.

Reference: “Curvature thylakoid 1 proteins modulate prolamellar body morphology and promote organized thylakoid biogenesis in Arabidopsis thaliana” by Omar Sandoval-Ibáñez, Anurag Sharma, Michal Bykowski, Guillem Borràs-Gas, James B. Y. H. Behrendorff, Silas Mellor, Klaus Qvortrup, Julian C. Verdonk, Ralph Bock, Lucja Kowalewska and Mathias Pribil, 19 October 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2113934118

New Research Shows Plants Are Photosynthesizing More in Response to More CO2 in the Atmosphere

By LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY DECEMBER 17, 2021

A new study finds that plants are photosynthesizing more in response to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but nowhere near enough to remove all emissions.

Plants Buy Us Time to Slow Climate Change – But Not Enough to Stop It

New research from Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley shows that plants are photosynthesizing more in response to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Because plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into food, forests and other similar ecosystems are considered to be some of the planet’s most important carbon sinks. In fact, the United States and many other countries that participated in last month’s UN Climate Change Conference have made nature-based solutions a critical feature of their carbon dioxide mitigation framework under the Paris Agreement.

As human activities cause more carbon dioxide to be emitted into the atmosphere, scientists have debated whether plants are responding by photosynthesizing more and sucking up even more carbon dioxide than they already do – and if so, is it a little or a lot more. Now an international team of researchers led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have used a novel methodology combining remote sensing, machine learning, and terrestrial biosphere models to find that plants are indeed photosynthesizing more, to the tune of 12% higher global photosynthesis from 1982 to 2020. In that same time period, global carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere grew about 17%, from 360 parts per million (ppm) to 420 ppm.

The 12% increase in photosynthesis translates to 14 petagrams of additional carbon taken out of the atmosphere by plants each year, roughly the equivalent of the carbon emitted worldwide from burning fossil fuels in 2020 alone. Not all of the carbon taken out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis is stored in ecosystems, as much is later released back to the atmosphere through respiration, but the study reports a direct link between the increased photosynthesis and increased global carbon storage. The study was published in Nature.

“This is a very large increase in photosynthesis, but it’s nowhere close to removing the amount of carbon dioxide we’re putting into the atmosphere,” said Berkeley Lab scientist Trevor Keenan, lead author of the study. “It’s not stopping climate change by any means, but it is helping us slow it down.”

Measuring photosynthesis

Because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere decades longer than other greenhouse gases driving global warming, efforts to reduce it are critical to mitigating climate change. Plants, through photosynthesis, and soils sequester roughly a third of carbon dioxide emissions released into the atmosphere each decade from the burning of fossil fuels.

During photosynthesis, plants open tiny pores on their leaf surfaces to suck carbon dioxide from the air and produce their own food. To measure this photosynthetic activity, scientists can put a leaf in a closed chamber and quantify the dropping carbon dioxide levels in the air inside. But it’s far more difficult to measure how much carbon dioxide an entire forest takes up.

Through initiatives such as AmeriFlux, a network of measurement sites coordinated by the Department of Energy’s AmeriFlux Management Project at Berkeley Lab, scientists from across the world have built over 500 micrometeorological towers in forests and other ecosystems to measure the exchange of greenhouse gases between the atmosphere and the vegetation and soil. While these flux towers can help estimate photosynthesis rates, they’re expensive and thus limited in their geographic coverage, and few have been deployed long-term.

This explains why scientists rely on satellite images to map how much of the Earth is green and thus covered by plants, which allows them to infer global photosynthetic activity. But with rising carbon dioxide emissions, those estimates based solely on greenness become problematic.

Bringing history in the picture

Satellite images can capture the extra green to account for additional leaves plants put out due to accelerated growth. But they often don’t account for each leaf’s increased efficiency to photosynthesize. Also, this efficiency doesn’t increase at the same rate at which carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere.

Previous efforts to estimate how photosynthesis rates respond to increased carbon dioxide concentrations found widely varying results, from little to no effects on the low end, to very large effects on the high end.

“That magnitude is really important to understand,” said Keenan, who is also an assistant professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. “If the increase [in photosynthesis] is small, then we may not have the carbon sink we expect.”

So Keenan and his team of researchers took a new approach: they looked back at nearly three decades of carbon sink estimates made by the Global Carbon Project. They compared these with predictions from satellite images of the Earth taken between 1982 and 2012 and models using carbon exchange between the atmosphere and land to make carbon sink estimates.

“Our estimate of a 12% increase comes right in the middle of the other estimates,” he said. “And in the process of generating our estimate, it allowed us to re-examine the other estimates and understand why they were overly large or small. That gave us confidence in our results.”

While this study highlights the importance of protecting ecosystems that are currently helping slow down the rate of climate change, Keenan notes that it’s unclear how long forests will continue to perform this service.

“We don’t know what the future will hold as far as how plants will continue to respond to increasing carbon dioxide,” he said. “We expect it will saturate at some point, but we don’t know when or to what degree. At that point land sinks will have a much lower capacity to offset our emissions. And land sinks are currently the only nature-based solution that we have in our toolkit to combat climate change.”

Reference: “A constraint on historic growth in global photosynthesis due to increasing CO₂” by T. F. Keenan, X. Luo, M. G. De Kauwe, B. E. Medlyn, I. C. Prentice, B. D. Stocker, N. G. Smith, C. Terrer, H. Wang, Y. Zhang and S. Zhou, 8 December 2021, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04096-9

The study was supported in part by NASA and the DOE Office of Science. Among the co-authors were Berkeley Lab postdoctoral fellows Nicholas Smith, Yao Zhang, Xiangzhong Luo, and Sha Zhou, all now at other institutions.

Trees Are Biggest Methane “Vents” in Wetland Areas – Significant Emissions Even When They’re Dry

By UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM DECEMBER 18, 2021

Most of the methane gas emitted from Amazon wetlands regions is vented into the atmosphere via tree root systems – with significant emissions occurring even when the ground is not flooded, say researchers at the University of Birmingham.

In a study published in the Royal Society journal, Philosophical Transactions A, the researchers have found evidence that far more methane is emitted by trees growing on floodplains in the Amazon basin than by soil or surface water and this occurs in both wet and dry conditions.

Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas and much of our atmospheric methane comes from wetlands. A great deal of research is being carried on into exactly how much methane is emitted via this route, but models typically assume that the gas is only produced when the ground is completely flooded and underwater.

In wetland areas where there are no trees, methane would typically be consumed by the soil on its way to the surface, but in forested wetland areas, the researchers say the tree roots could be acting as a transport system for the gas, up to the surface where it vents into the atmosphere from the tree trunks.

Methane is able to escape via this route even when it is produced in soil and water that is several meters below ground level.

This would mean that existing models could be significantly underestimating the likely extent of methane emissions in wetland areas such as the Amazon basin.

To test the theory, the team carried out measurements across three plots on the floodplains of three major rivers in the central Amazon basin. The same trees were monitored at each plot at four time points over the year to capture their response changing water levels associated with the annual flood. Methane emissions were measured using a portable greenhouse gas analyzer and then calculations were done to scale the findings up across the Amazon basin.

Overall, the team estimate that nearly half of global tropical wetland methane emissions are funneled out by trees, with the unexpected result that trees are also important for emissions at times when the floodplain water table sits below the surface of the soil.

Lead author, Professor Vincent Gauci, in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham (and the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research), says: “Our results show that current global emissions estimates are missing a crucial piece of the picture. We now need to develop models and methods that take into account the significant role played by trees in wetland methane emission.”

Reference: “Non-flooded riparian Amazon trees are a regionally significant methane source” by Vincent Gauci, Viviane Figueiredo, Nicola Gedney, Sunitha Rao Pangala, Tainá Stauffer, Graham P. Weedon and Alex Enrich-Prast, 6 December 2021, Philosophical Transactions A.
DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2020.0446

The team was led by the University of Birmingham and included researchers from the University Federal of Rio de Janeiro, the Met Office Hadley Centre, Lancaster University, and Linköping University. It was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (part of UK Research and Innovation), along with the Newton Fund, the Royal Society and Brazilian funding agencies CNPq, CAPES and FAPERJ.

Snap, crackle, stop: Kellogg’s should come to the table and deal, not terminate striking workers

By DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL BOARD
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 18, 2021 

For workers around the country, there’s a certain pride that often comes from laboring on the same factory floor as one’s parents and even grandparents, making the same goods in the same way, belonging to the same union. That’s been the case for employees of the multinational food company Kellogg’s, which has been headquartered in Battle Creek, Mich., since its founding more than a hundred years ago.

Yet like workers at many iconic American firms, Kellogg’s employees say they have seen their quality of life and working conditions markedly decline compared to their forebears doing the same work in years past, part of a general trend of flat wages and the erosion of work-life balance. Some were reportedly working averages of around 80 hours a week, almost year-round, under pressure of being fired. The company recently pushed through a tiered system for workers, with newer hires receiving significantly reduced pay and benefits.


Kirk Peters waves to passing cars as they honk in support of Kellogg's workers on strike along I Street in Omaha, Neb. on Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021.

 (LILY SMITH/THE WORLD-HERALD/AP)

About 1,400 workers affiliated with the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union walked off the job at four plants in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Tennessee in early October. Earlier this month, they rejected a new contract, extending the strike. While it would have included a 3% raise, it contained poison pills like strictly limiting the percentage of workers who could move from the lower tier to the higher tier in a given year.

In the wake of that loss, Kellogg’s put in place the extreme strategy of attempting to permanently replace its striking workforce. It’s bad enough to bring in workers to temporarily circumvent a labor action, but here the company is effectively trying to terminate workers en masse who have toiled throughout the pandemic to keep producing the packaged foods that people around the country relied on, while the pandemic remains ongoing. And just in time for Christmas. Even conservative Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts has urged the company to come back to the negotiating table. Kellogg’s should reverse course immediately. These workers deserve respect, not pink slips.

Leaked email exposes union-management conspiracy to defeat Kellogg’s strike as Sanders attempts to deflect anger towards Mexico

James Martin, Tom Hall
WSWS.ORG

A leaked management email has revealed the existence of a conspiracy between the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union and Kellogg’s management to force an end to the two-and-a-half-month strike by 1,400 US cereal workers. On Thursday, Kellogg’s and the union announced a new tentative agreement which is almost identical to the one which workers rejected two weeks ago, and which allows for the unlimited expansion of the company’s use of lower-paid second tier “transitional” workers. A snap vote has been called for this Sunday.

Leaked Kellogg’s management email

The email, first reported by the pseudo-left More Perfect Union, was apparently sent to several members of plant management. It declares, “In short, overall bucket of money (cost) stays the same. Just shifts money from one bucket to another.” It adds with malicious satisfaction, “No gain overall for them [Kellogg’s workers] with 3 more weeks of strike and no income. No ratification bonus.

“We are confident this will pass,” the emails add because “most of the union’s negotiating committee is for this and plans to recommend it. (emphasis added). I know everyone is tired and tense in the plant, please try to focus on what we need to do. Please try to keep negotiations talk to a minimum in the plant around the workers.”

While More Perfect Union’s reporting ignored the key reference to the union, the email exposes BCTGM as complicit in management’s attempt to break the strike, and that management is relying upon the union to “pass” a contract which workers already rejected. Moreover, the instructions to fellow managers to keep radio silence around workers on the contract is a clear signal that they are relying principally on the union to browbeat opposition on their own behalf.

Workers should respond by rejecting the entire fraudulent framework of this so-called “collective bargaining,” which is exposed as, in reality, a union-management conspiracy to break their courageous struggle. The entire bargaining committee should be kicked out, and a new bargaining committee elected consisting of the most trusted rank-and-file workers from the shop floor.

Last week, the World Socialist Web Site warned that the silence from the BCTGM in response to management’s threat to fire workers en masse following the last contract vote amounted to tacit consent, and that the union was working with management to overcome workers’ resistance through a combination of threats and intimidation. This has now been proven beyond a doubt, first by the “new” tentative agreement itself, and now by the leaked email.

In the days leading up to the election, the BCTGM is engaged in a massive campaign of censorship. Only hours after the TA was announced, it archived several local Facebook groups with thousands of members in order to prevent workers from speaking to each other and building up opposition to the contract. In this, they are taking a page out of the playbook of the United Auto Workers, which used similar methods this fall to force through a re-vote of a contract which workers had also rejected in order to end a month-long strike at John Deere.

Despite these moves, workers remain defiant. “I’m still a NO vote,” said one veteran worker. “Kellogg’s is getting desperate. The big shots came through Battle Creek this morning. I don’t think they liked what they saw. They’re manipulating stock prices, acting like we’ve given up. I hope the members are smarter than the leadership on this BS agreement.

“This contract would make me lots of money,” he added, “and get me the four years I need to retire, but I don’t care about that right now. I’m sick of seeing the young people getting screwed. This is still not good for them. I’m voting NO. If it goes down, [Kellogg’s] will bring another before this quarterly report comes out.”

Another striking Kellogg’s worker said, “This contract is the same as the last one, just a few words changed around. If we vote it in now, this whole strike will have been for nothing. I hope we vote NO!”

The worker denounced the BCTGM’s losing strategy. “It’s like the Detroit Lions. How many years have they played ‘not-to-lose’ and they end up losing every time. You can only win if you play to win.”

“We’ve seen this type of stuff before,” he said. “In the 2015 contract, when they started the transitional lower tier, a lot of people were talking about the shady deals that BCTGM had taken.”

But in spite of determination of the workers, the strike is in danger as long as conduct is left in the hands of the union bureaucracy. Now more than ever, workers must move to take struggle into their own hands by forming a rank-and-file strike committee to oppose betrayals of union, appeal for broadest possible support and develop a strategy for victory.

Bernie Sanders stumps for the union, promotes “America First” nationalism at Battle Creek rally

Earlier in the day, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan in an effort to drum up support for the union and divert workers’ anger. The event, which lasted less than thirty minutes and was largely comprised of the same demagogic phrases which Sanders has employed for years, had an unreal character to it, presenting the BCTGM officialdom as the vanguard of the fight against Kellogg’s even as they are deep in a campaign to force through a sellout contract. The very existence of the tentative agreement went almost entirely unmentioned except for a brief reference to it by Local 3G President Trevor Bidelman, who made certain muted criticisms of the deal, suggesting he expects the contract will be voted down.

Sanders attempted to present the central issue of the strike as a disloyal US-based company threatening to ship American jobs to Mexico. At the climax of his speech, he declared,“If you love America, you love the workers. And if you love American workers, you don’t ship their jobs to desperate people in Mexico and pay them 90 cents an hour.”

This reactionary “America First” nationalism is no different in principle from that of Donald Trump and extreme right. In fact, Breitbart, whose former editor Steve Bannon is a key Trump ally, is attempting to capitalize upon the BCTGM's own anti-Mexican campaign to bolster the credibility of its own fascistic politics.

This anti-Mexican demagogy serves only to isolate the strike from its most powerful reservoir of support, the international working class. For all of his demagogy against the “billionaire class,” Sanders’ presentation of “disloyal” Kellogg’s management leaves open the possibility of “loyal” American exploiters whose interests are united with the workers. Indeed, at the end of his speech, Sanders called on the crowd to appeal to the corporate oligarchy itself to “create an economy that works for all of us, and not just the few.” This has particularly dangerous implications as US capitalism is preparing for military conflict against nuclear-armed Russia and China in a desperate attempt to maintain its world supremacy.

In fact, “America First” nationalism has been a longstanding and central element in Sanders’ politics. In 2015, he denounced open borders as a “Koch Brothers” proposal which would “make everyone in America poorer.” When he returned to this theme in 2019, he earned praise from neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer, who organized the fascist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia. Sanders is not a Nazi, buts his promotion of anti-Mexican nationalism serves only to disarm the working class and lend political legitimacy to the far right.

No matter how it is presented, the promotion of the possibility of the identity of interests between the corporations and the workers, within the framework of the national state, can only serve to bind workers hand and foot to their “own” native exploiters. This is why, in the midst of a demagogic speech attacking Kellogg’s, Sanders also praised the “sacrifice” made by Kellogg’s workers in laboring for weeks at a time without a single day off as having helped “save America during the pandemic.” This is a lie which has been promoted by the food production industry itself to justify its enforcement of brutal overtime and its refusal to shut down production during the pandemic.

In fact, independent studies have shown that the American food supply was never under any danger even in the early stages of the pandemic. However, by keeping workers on the job as long as possible, Kellogg’s and other major food companies have seen their profits soar, even as tens of thousands of food workers have been infected and hundreds have died.

In contrast to the economic nationalism of Sanders, many Kellogg’s workers see workers in other countries as their natural allies. As one worker noted, “The support we have been receiving from all over the country, all over the world—it is really moving. We are being followed by a lot of people, and I don’t know what will happen if we win or if we lose, but it is very powerful to see Palestinian workers in Israel holding up a banner in support of our strike.”

Kellogg’s workers have enormous support in the US and internationally. But to win their struggle, they must take it out of the hands of the BCTGM and fight to build independent rank-and-file committees that can develop a strategy to win the strike. Their strike is part of a growing rebellion of workers all across the world against pandemic conditions and decades of capitalist exploitation.

“Something big has got to happen,” the Kellogg’s worker concluded. “And it’s coming: a revolution.”

IGNORE KENNEY
Experts urge extra caution as Omicron cases rise in Alberta
Author of the article: Dylan Short
Publishing date: Dec 18, 2021 • 

Sofia Leuchter walks by a store window while Christmas shopping on 11 St. S.W. COVID cases continue to rise in Calgary as Omicron threatens to play the role of Grinch in upcoming holiday celebrations. 

PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK /Postmedia

Events are starting to be postponed or cancelled in Calgary and forecasters are calling for caution as active COVID-19 cases and Omicron cases appear to be on the rise in Alberta.

Alberta has recorded three straight days of active COVID-19 case increase as Wednesday, Thursday and Friday saw infections rise to 4,430 from 4,016, according to numbers posted on the provincial governments website Wednesday. This past week also saw the number Omicron variant cases rise to 173 on Friday, up from 30 that had been identified at the start of the week.

Tyler Williamson, a biostatistician at the University of Calgary, said the rise was an upturn and implications of the increase are still unknown at this point. He said the blip could be an indicator a plateau that followed a large decrease in cases is over in Alberta given what is happening around Canada in relation to the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus.

“The implications of this slight upturn are still uncertain,” said Williamson. “I think we need to be very careful over these next few days. By careful, I think we need to watch things closely and be ready to adjust our activities accordingly.”

Data projections out of British Columbia show Alberta, along with several other provinces, could see exponential growth in cases and hospitalizations due to the Omicron variant, beginning later this month. However, Dean Karlen, one of the forecasters behind the project, said Alberta does not yet have a clear signal in available data for Omicron. Based on what happened in other provinces, he said, Omicron will have an effect on case counts when it becomes dominant.

He said the picture in Alberta should be more clear next week.

Currently, Ontario and Quebec are seeing cases increase significantly as Omicron has taken root in those provinces. Both have implemented new public health measures around social gatherings. Ontario has limited mass gatherings and Quebec has introduced new capacity rules around several types of businesses.

This week Alberta changed rules around indoor gatherings to allow 10 people to get together from any number of households. Previously only 10 people from two households could attend a gathering. Unvaccinated people are also allowed to gather in groups of up to 10. They previously were not allowed to gather at all indoors.

Alberta also began to roll out take home COVID-19 test kits on Friday .

Williamson suggested Alberta should continue to vaccinate as many people as possible and to accelerate the rollout of third doses, and added rapid antigen tests should be used properly.

He also said large events should be approached with caution. Williamson said hard lockdowns also have consequences and decision-makers need be careful as they move forward.

“Personal responsibility needs to be an important part of the dialogue, too,” said Williamson. “However, that is falling on many deaf ears.”

The Calgary Flames are currently facing a COVID-19 outbreak within their locker room as a nearly all of the players have entered the league’s COVID-19 protocol . Several staff members have also tested positive. The team’s games have been postponed until after Christmas.

The Edmonton Oilers have also seen several players enter the protocol while on a road trip and Canada’s World Junior Championship team has cancelled pre-tournament games ahead of the main tournament being hosted in Red Deer and Alberta.

It is not only the sports world struggling with the rising case numbers. Organizers of several events planned over the next few months have begun to pull the plug.

A private shopping spree for children facing severe illness that was set for Sunday was cancelled. A charity country concert that was scheduled for Monday was postponed.

The Calgary International Auto and Truck Show that was scheduled to be held in March was also cancelled.

Organizers of each event signalled COVID-19 trends as reasons for cancelling. Several organizers also cited changing public health measures as another consideration in their decision.

dshort@postmedia.com

Europe’s largest inland port to become hydrogen pioneer

 December 17, 2021

Rolls-Royce says it will ensure a climate-neutral energy supply at the container terminal currently under construction at the Port of Duisburg in Germany.

Rolls-Royce’s Power Systems business unit is supplying its latest mtu hydrogen technology for this purpose, in order to supply the future terminal with electrical energy and heat in a sustainable manner: mtu fuel cell solutions for electrical peak load coverage as well as mtu hydrogen heat and power generation station. To this end, Duisport, one of the world’s largest inland ports, is working with several partners to build a hydrogen-based supply network by 2023.

Hydrogen technology is no longer a dream of the future

The largest container terminal in Europe’s hinterland, enerport II, is currently being built on a former coal island, once a transshipment point for bulk cargo.

The hydrogen-powered mtu fuel cell solutions supply electrical power as soon as the public power grid reaches its limits, for example for the on-board power supply of ships berthed in the port or in the event of other load peaks. In addition, two combined heat and power plants with mtu hydrogen engines of the 4000 series convert hydrogen energy into electrical energy, which is fed into the supply network of the future container terminal or into the public grid. The waste heat is used for process heat or for heating buildings in and around the port. Furthermore, photovoltaic systems and battery storage are integrated into the local supply network, which is being realised by the port operator Duisport, Westenergie Netzservice, Netze Duisburg, Stadtwerke Duisburg and Stadtwerke Duisburg Energiehandel together with the Fraunhofer Institute Umsicht. The project is being funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy for a period of four years as part of the government’s so-called Hydrogen Technology Offensive.

“Hydrogen technology is no longer a dream of the future, but hydrogen technology will prove itself in everyday use in Duisburg. The parallel use of fuel cell solutions and hydrogen engines shows that we have taken the right path with our technology-open approach to the development of new solutions for the energy supply of the future,” said Andreas Schell, CEO of Rolls-Royce Power Systems.

Ballard to Power Talgo Fuel Cell Passenger Train in European Trial, Ahead of Planned 2023 Launch


VANCOUVER, CANADA and HOBRO, DENMARK – Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ: BLDP; TSX: BLDP) today announced that the Company has signed an Equipment Supply Agreement to provide 8 of its 70-kilowatt FCmoveTM-HD fuel cell modules to Talgo S.A. (Talgo; www.talgo.com) – a leader in the design, manufacture, and maintenance of high-speed light rail trains, headquartered in Madrid, Spain – for trials of its Talgo Vittal-One commuter and regional passenger train. Talgo plans to conduct their demonstration in early 2022 in Spain, with expected commercialization in 2023.

Talgo has an industrial presence in Spain, Germany, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., and is recognized worldwide for its capacity for innovation, unique and distinctive technology and reliability.

Emilio Garcia, Talgo Innovation Director said, “Green hydrogen is no longer the future, it is a reality. The implementation of hydrogen trains, such as the one Talgo is developing, will improve mobility and have a positive impact on the environment by replacing diesel technology. It will allow us to make the most of the non-electrified railways in many countries, while reducing the carbon footprint.” Mr. Garcia continued, “The announcement earlier this year of EU policies to accelerate decarbonization further validate this key step in early adoption of hydrogen trains in order to achieve these greenhouse gas reduction goals.”

Oben Uluc, Ballard Director of Sales for EMEA and India noted, “We are excited to be working with Talgo through the testing phases of its Talgo Vittal-One train. This relationship is another sign of the growing momentum in deployment of zero-emission fuel cell propulsion solutions in the rail industry across numerous geographies. Fuel cell systems enable conventional rail networks to realize the benefits of electrification without the cost and infrastructure challenges of overhead catenary wiring.”

The modular system being designed by Talgo is intended for installation on all types of passenger trains, as well as in upgrades or retrofits from diesel to hydrogen power. The innovative system utilizes hydrogen and fuel cells for propulsion, complemented by batteries that assist the train from a standing start and take advantage of the braking system for recharging. Hydrogen technology is an appropriate solution for heavy transport applications such as trains, where railway lines do not currently have catenary electrification systems and depend on diesel engines.

About Ballard Power Systems

Ballard Power Systems’ (NASDAQ: BLDP; TSX: BLDP) vision is to deliver fuel cell power for a sustainable planet. Ballard zero-emission PEM fuel cells are enabling electrification of mobility, including buses, commercial trucks, trains, marine vessels, passenger cars and forklift trucks. To learn more about Ballard, please visit www.ballard.com.

Forward-looking statements

This release contains forward-looking statements concerning the development and delivery of fuel cell products, and the benefits and anticipated market adoption of them. These forward-looking statements reflect Ballard’s current expectations as contemplated under section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Any such statements are based on Ballard’s assumptions relating to its financial forecasts and expectations regarding its product development efforts, manufacturing capacity, and market demand. For a detailed discussion of the factors and assumptions that these statements are based upon, and factors that could cause our actual results or outcomes to differ materially, please refer to Ballard’s most recent management discussion & analysis. Other risks and uncertainties that may cause Ballard’s actual results to be materially different include general economic and regulatory changes, detrimental reliance on third parties, successfully achieving our business plans and achieving and sustaining profitability. For a detailed discussion of these and other risk factors that could affect Ballard’s future performance, please refer to Ballard’s most recent Annual Information Form. These forward-looking statements are provided to enable external stakeholders to understand Ballard’s expectations as at the date of this release and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Readers should not place undue reliance on these statements and Ballard assumes no obligation to update or release any revisions to them, other than as required under applicable legislation.

– Green hydrogen Gigafactory to be built at the University of Sheffield Innovation District

Reddit

18 November 2021

The University of Sheffield and ITM Power have launched a pioneering collaboration to advance the hydrogen sector, including an agreement for a new ITM Gigafactory.

(Credit: University of Sheffield)

ITM Power has reached an agreement on Heads of Terms with the University to acquire a substantial site at its Innovation District for the company’s second UK factory in Tinsley, Sheffield. The Gigafactory, which is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2023, will manufacture electrolysers that split water into molecules of hydrogen and oxygen using renewable power. The resultant zero-carbon green hydrogen can then be used to decarbonise industrial processes, transport and heating, and will play a major role in achieving net zero. 

The partnership between ITM Power and the University will also include the development of a new National Hydrogen Research, Innovation and Skills Centre, which will lead to the creation of new jobs at all levels of the hydrogen sector as well as training and career development, and the promotion of hydrogen domestically and internationally.

Professor Koen Lamberts, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield said: “We are very pleased to be launching this partnership with ITM Power. Hydrogen is one of the most exciting and promising clean energy solutions and ITM is at the forefront of green hydrogen manufacturing. This partnership is a milestone for both partners and the region in leading the way to achieving net zero through technological innovation.”

The new factory will also include office space for manufacturing staff and will be a low environmental impact building, using the best of current low carbon technologies. ITM Power will work closely with a developer, to be appointed once planning permission has been received, to incorporate low carbon footprint materials and facilities. 

Sir Roger Bone, Chairman of ITM Power, said: “The opportunity to partner with the University of Sheffield, recognised for its excellence in all aspects of industrial research, will enable both parties to train the next generation of hydrogen engineers and scientists, and continue to grow the company and the economy in the region. I look forward to seeing this relationship develop and prosper in the years ahead”

The National Hydrogen Research, Innovation and Skills Centre, which will also be located at the University of Sheffield Innovation District, neighbouring ITM Power’s proposed new site, is expected to include research into the safe and efficient manufacture of hydrogen using renewable energy and/or nuclear power; research into improving hydrogen system manufacturing processes; and research into the use of ‘digital twins’ (as already in use with ITM Power) to enhance manufacturing of hydrogen equipment. 

Professor Dave Petley, Vice-President for Innovation at the University of Sheffield said: “The University of Sheffield has world renowned expertise in energy innovation, and we recently announced a new Sustainable Aviation Fuels Innovation Centre, adjacent to our Translational Energy Research Centre, both housed at the University of Sheffield Innovation District. Our experience in bringing together academic research and industrial expertise is helping to solve the world’s biggest problems, and our partnership with ITM Power to advance the hydrogen sector will help make net zero a reality.” 

Dr Graham Cooley, CEO of ITM Power, said: “I am delighted to be working more closely with the University of Sheffield and that our second UK factory site is in Sheffield. Both initiatives will support the local economy through job creation and supply chain support.

“The planning and construction of our second, 1.5GW capacity, factory marks the next step on delivering on our strategic plan to create a blueprint for a more automated PEM electrolyser manufacturing facility to be rolled out internationally. Our focus now is on increasing utilisation and throughput at our Bessemer Park Gigafactory as we prepare for the next step change in capacity.”

Plans for 'world’s first carbon-negative green hydrogen project' unveiled in US

Orchard tree debris near Wasco, California

Los Angeles, California-based start-up Mote will convert wood waste into H2 and capture and store the CO2 — but it might not be the first to do so

A US start-up says it will produce carbon-negative green hydrogen from wood waste at a plant in Bakersfield, California, as soon as 2024.

By utilising biomass that has absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it grew, and then capturing and storing that CO2, the process actually removes carbon from the air.

“Biomass is heated in a limited-oxygen environment to above 1500°F [815°C], converting it to a mixture of gases,” the Los Angeles-based start-up explains on its website. “In a series of operations, the mixture is reacted, separated, and purified into hydrogen for sale as a transportation fuel and CO2 for storage. We recover the small amount of remaining ash and sell it as an additive for fertilizer.”


‘We will produce carbon-negative green hydrogen at a third of the price of standard renewable H2’

Climate saviours? The five leading carbon-negative solutions needed to reach net-zero emissions

Engineering work for the first facility is already under way, with plans for the plant to produce 7,000 tonnes of H2 annually as soon as 2024, while removing 150,000 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.

The company says its hydrogen will have a “producer sale price and carbon intensity score significantly lower than its competitors”, due to its dual revenue stream of H2 and carbon credits.


“As the world’s first carbon removal project converting biomass to hydrogen, we are addressing the ever-growing demand for renewable hydrogen with a carbon-negative approach,” says co-founder and CEO Mac Kennedy. “With this new facility, Mote is laying the groundwork for affordable hydrogen offerings on a global scale while also supercharging natural carbon-removal processes.”

Although Mote claims its project will be a world-first, a Singaporean venture called CAC-H2 announced in October that it would produce carbon-negative green hydrogen from biomass using a “unique gasification process“ in Australia by 2023.

Mote says the extracted CO2 will be “permanentaly placed deep underground for ecologically safe storage”, but does not explain how it will do so.

However, the company adds that is in discussions with CarbonCure Technologies to permanently store the CO2 in concrete.

Mote was formed by Kennedy and his friend Joshuah Stolaroff, who was formerly head of the carbon capture programme at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Stolaroff co-authored a landmark report into carbon-removal technologies in 2019, which found that gasifying waste biomass to hydrogen was the cheapest and most scalable option for removing CO2 from the air.


World's largest 'green hydrogen' offtake deal signed in California by waste-to-H2 start-up

“After spending the last 20 years researching carbon capture and clean energy, it's amazing to have a solution that can address both and even divert waste to a beneficial use,” said Stolaroff, who is now Mote’s chief technology officer.

Mote is co-developing its pilot plant with engineering giant Fluor and gasification system provider SunGas Renewables.

Investors in the start-up include climate-focused angel investor Preston-Werner Ventures, and carbon-removal investment firm Counteract.

Biomass plant near Bakersfield would bury or seal carbon in concrete

By JOHN COX jcox@bakersfield.com


A Southern California company proposes to build a project near Bakersfield that would gasify woody waste from local ag operations. Hydrogen from the process would be used to fuel vehicles, while byproduct carbon dioxide would be buried deep underground or stored in concrete.

Graphic courtesy of Mote

Kern's carbon management rush has a new entrant with a Southern California company's proposal to gasify local ag waste for production of hydrogen and carbon dioxide that can be injected underground or, in a novel twist, stored in concrete.

The startup, Mote, announced Wednesday engineering work has begun on a $100 million facility proposed outside Bakersfield that would capture 150,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year — roughly equivalent to taking 33,000 cars off the road — and 7 million kilograms of hydrogen for transportation starting as soon as 2024.

Combining existing technologies with local access to biomass waste and ideal geological formations, the proposal is the latest carbon burial project seeking federal tax credits and different state financial incentives for fighting climate change.

"Carbon removal and clean hydrogen are booming markets right now," Managing Partner Andy Bonsall at London-based climate action investor Counteract, a Mote shareholder, said in Wednesday's news release. "Mote is extraordinarily positioned to scale quickly for huge impact."

Other active proposals by much larger companies aim to accomplish similar goals in Kern but on a larger scale and higher cost, sucking air out of the atmosphere directly or removing it from the emissions stream of a power plant in western Kern. At least one other project unveiled recently would gasify biomass and bury CO2 with no mention of concrete sequestration.

Mote has not applied for the environmental, injection, air and water permits it would require before beginning operation. But the company said it has a prospective partner developing the CO2 storage site, whose location it declined to disclose.

The county's top planner and energy-permitting specialist, Lorelei Oviatt, said she has seen more of this sort of thing lately as companies announce agreements and investments without taking initial steps toward the conditional use permits and environmental reviews they would need.

"All the companies are doing this," she said. "It's fine. But no, I've never talked with these particular people."

The county has received a single application for carbon capture and sequestration, from California Resources Corp. The Santa Clarita-based oil producer has disclosed plans for solar- and natural-gas-fueled plants that would either take carbon directly out of the air or remove it from the exhaust of a power plant it operates in Elk Hills.

Oviatt has also heard CO2 injection proposals from Bakersfield-based Aera Energy LLC, San Ramon-based Chevron Corp. and Bakersfield-based Jaco Oil Co. Others hoping to inject carbon underground in unincorporated Kern "need to come talk to me," she said.

Mote finished top in its class at the Rice University Clean Energy Accelerator. This fall, it announced receiving investor seed money.

The company said it will combine commercial technologies with new efficiency that can be replicated at a scale that lowers the cost of fighting climate change.

Trimmings and wood from Central Valley orchards and vineyards have posed problems in California for years. Almond growers and vineyards in particular generate large amounts of wood that if left to decompose produces the potent greenhouse gas methane.

Many power plants that used to burn biomass to generate electricity and steam closed several years ago in the face of competition from solar and wind farms.

Open burning has since increased but its imminent prohibition is expected to result in more whole-orchard recycling in which biomass is shredded and incorporated back into the soil where it originated. Some environmental groups prefer that option to the emissions that come with gathering and transporting biomass — plus, it's another form of carbon sequestration.

Besides federal tax credits, Mote expects to receive recurring revenue from California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. It also hopes to win grant money from the California Energy Commission's financial support for production of renewable hydrogen.

Mote is in talks with Canadian-based CarbonCure Technologies on potentially storing carbon dioxide in concrete at construction sites.

The company said by email all the energy it would need for carbon storage would come from biomass, but that if it needs to liquify hydrogen it may need to bring in external electricity.

Mote said it expects to put out minimal emissions. Its largest source would be related to wood handling.

To Find the Very Highest-Energy “Ghost” Particles in the Universe, a New Detector Will Soar Over Antarctica

By LOUISE LERNER, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO DECEMBER 16, 2021

A rendering of what PUEO may look like when deployed. Each white dish is a radio antenna; the signals from each antenna are combined in order to pick up signals from high-energy neutrinos passing through Antarctic ice. Credit: Rendering courtesy of Christian Miki at the University of Hawaii

NASA gives go-ahead for $20M multi-institution balloon experiment led by UChicago scientists.

Sometimes a question is so big that it takes a continent to answer it.

University of Chicago physicist Abby Vieregg is leading an international experiment that essentially uses the ice in Antarctica as a giant detector to find extremely energetic particles from outer space. Recently approved by NASA, the $20 million project will build an instrument to fly above the Antarctic in a balloon, launching in December 2024.

“We are searching for the very highest-energy neutrinos in the universe,” said Vieregg, an associate professor in the Department of Physics. “They are made in the most energetic and extreme places in the cosmos, and these neutrinos offer a unique glimpse into these places. Finding one or several of them could let us learn completely new things about the universe.”

The new NASA-approved project shares its name with the pueo (Asio flammeus), the only living owl native to Hawaii.

The 12-institution international collaboration will build a radio detector attached to a high-altitude balloon, which will be launched by NASA and travel over Antarctica at 120,000 feet, searching for signals from neutrinos. The groundbreaking project is called PUEO, short for the Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations. (It shares its name with the only living owl native to Hawaii, where PUEO’s predecessor experiment was born.)

‘A beautiful way to look at the universe’

Neutrinos are often called “ghost” particles because they very rarely interact with matter. Trillions pass harmlessly through your body every second.

Because they can travel huge distances without getting distorted or sidetracked, neutrinos can serve as unique clues about what’s happening elsewhere in the universe—including the cosmic collisions, galaxies and black holes where they are created.

“Neutrinos are a beautiful way to look at the universe, because they travel unimpeded across space,” said Vieregg. “They can come from very far away, and they don’t get scrambled along the way, so they point back to where they came from.”

Scientists have detected a few such neutrinos from outer space coming into the Earth’s atmosphere. But they think there are even more neutrinos out there which carry extraordinarily high energies—several orders of magnitude higher than even the particles being accelerated at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe—and have never yet been detected. These neutrinos could tell us about the most extreme events in the universe.

That is, if you can catch them.

These neutrinos so rarely interact with other forms of matter that Vieregg would have to build an enormous, country-sized detector to catch them. Or she can use one that already exists: the sheet of ice atop Antarctica.

“The ice cap is perfect—a homogeneous, dense, radiotransparent block that spans millions of square kilometers,” said Vieregg. “It’s almost like we designed it.”

Neutrinos can serve as unique clues about what’s happening elsewhere in the universe.

If one of these highly energetic neutrinos comes through the Earth, there’s a chance it will bump into one of the atoms inside the Antarctic ice sheet. This collision produces radio waves which pass through the ice. This radio signal is what PUEO would detect as it floats above Antarctica.

To do so, it needs some very, very special equipment.

The next generation

PUEO is the next generation of a mission called ANITA, based out of the University of Hawaii, which flew over the Antarctic aboard NASA balloons four times between 2006 and 2016 to look for similar neutrinos. PUEO, however, will have a much more powerful detector.

The new detector taps into the power of an old astronomy trick—a technique called interferometry, which combines signals from multiple telescopes. PUEO is studded all over with radio antennas, and a central data acquisition system will merge and analyze these signals to make a stronger signal.

PUEO will launch from Antarctica, as did its predecessor experiment ANITA in 2016 (above). From left to right: scientists Cosmin Deaconu, Eric Oberla and Andrew Ludwig, PhD’19. Credit: UChicago

A stronger signal would be a significant leap forward, because it would help scientists pick out the important signals from the noise washing in from all directions. “There are terabytes of data coming into the detector every minute, and we expect at most a few events out of billions to be a neutrino,” said Cosmin Deaconu, a UChicago research scientist who is working on the software for PUEO. “You can’t write all of that data to disk, so we have to design a program to decide very quickly which signals to keep and which to discard.”

Many common signals look like neutrinos, but aren’t. Those can range from satellite transmissions to someone flicking a cigarette lighter. “At least in Antarctica, there are only a few locations where humans would be generating these, so it’s easier to rule those out,” said Deaconu. “But we even need to account for things like static electricity, generated by wind.”

Vieregg and the team tested the idea of the interferometric phased array on the ground in two experiments: one called ARA at the South Pole in 2018, and another called RNO-G in Greenland in the summer of 2021. Both showed a significant jump in performance over previous designs—which makes PUEO’s aerial detector all the more promising. “PUEO will have a factor of 10 better sensitivity than all previous flights of ANITA combined,” said Vieregg.

“Finding one or several of these neutrinos could let us learn completely new things about the universe.”

— Assoc. Prof. Abby Vieregg

In the next months, the team will build prototypes for PUEO and finalize the design. Once the layout is final, small teams at institutions around the country will build parts of the instrument, which will then be assembled and tested at UChicago. “For example, we want to make sure it can handle the vacuum of near-space,” said Eric Oberla, a UChicago research scientist who is building PUEO’s hardware. “It’s harder to dissipate heat when there’s no air to move it away, which can be a problem for electronics, so we’ll run tests in a vacuum chamber here on campus and later in a large NASA chamber during the instrument integration campaign.”

From there, PUEO will ship to a NASA facility in Palestine, Texas, for final tests before being sent to the launch station in Antarctica.

Depending on the weather conditions, the detector could fly for a month or more, collecting data and transmitting it back to the ground, where scientists will comb through it for evidence of the first-ever high-energy neutrino detection.

“We are delighted to have the PUEO stratospheric balloon mission included in the inaugural group of Pioneers missions, and are looking forward to the great science it will return,” said Michael Garcia, lead at NASA/HQ for the Pioneers in Astrophysics Program, which is funding the experiment.

The Pioneers program allowed the scientists to “dream big,” Vieregg said. “We could say, ‘If we could build anything we wanted to, what could we make?’”

“It’s a discovery experiment, meaning nothing’s guaranteed,” she added. “But all the indications say there’s something out there for us to pick up—and even a few neutrinos would be an amazing scientific find.”