This Bacteria-Powered Battery Eats Up Methane to Spit Out Electricity


Miriam Fauzia
Tue, April 12, 2022, 

Cavan Images

When discussing climate change, carbon dioxide sucks up a lot of the air, so to speak. Less attention is spent on methane, which accounts for 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions but is 80 times more powerful at trapping heat.

You’ve probably already heard that cow farts are a big contributor of atmospheric methane (220 pounds every year!), but rotting organics and natural gas can also expel methane into the air. Slashing emissions involves decreasing our dependence on natural gas, recycling and composting trash, and getting cows to fart less. But a new, unique method may convert methane into a usable energy source with the help of a microscopic friend: bacteria.

On Tuesday, a team of researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands published a paper in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology where they constructed a battery consisting of methane-munching bacteria that convert the gas into electricity.

“This could be very useful for the energy sector,” Cornelia Welte, a microbiologist at Radboud University and study co-author, said in a press release.

This California Dairy Farm’s Secret Ingredient for Clean Electricity: Cow Poop

Using bacteria to generate energy isn’t a new concept. Anaerobic digestion installations (also called biogas installations) capture gases like methane and carbon dioxide produced by bacteria that are digesting organic wastes. This gas is then converted into either heat or electricity—or upgraded into a form of methane that’s can be injected into natural gas pipelines or used as vehicle fuel. Currently, there are around 2,200 operating biogas systems across the U.S. and nearly 50 million micro-scale digesters worldwide (mostly in China and India), according to a 2019 report by the World Biogas Association.

But a problem with these installations is that they aren’t all that energy efficient. “Less than half of the biogas is converted into power, and this is the maximum achievable capacity,” said Welte.

To see if they could improve the energy efficiency, the researchers turned to Candidatus Methanoperedens, a bacteria that can be found in freshwater and consumes methane to survive—a process that peels away electrons. Those free electrons are used to digest another chemical called nitrate, which is made of nitrogen and oxygen.

“We create a kind of battery with two terminals,” Heleen Ouboter, a microbiologist and co-author of the study, said in the press release. At one terminal—designated the biological terminal—the researchers placed the methane-munching bacteria, and at the other terminal—a chemical terminal—they placed a stream of nitrate. This stream is gradually reduced over time, forcing the bacteria to hand over their electron scraps to an electrode leading to a mini-reactor. With this setup, the researchers were able to convert around 31 percent of the methane fed to the bacteria into electricity.

How to Turn an Electric Vehicle Battery Into a Miniature Power Plant for Your Home

It’s impressive, but the conversion process needs to be hastened to play valuable impact in the real world. And the research team wants to run more tests to see how well this bacteria can perform the reaction in a natural environment (so far, it’s only been in the lab). But the new findings are a promising start as we try to uncover new ways to offset methane emissions and cool our planet.

UK Wind turbines set new record for power production


Rachel Millard
Tue, April 12, 2022

Wind turbine

Wind turbines set a new record in the first three months of the year, generating almost as much electricity as gas-fired power stations.

Renewable sources overall generated more power than gas and coal for only the second time, according to data from market specialist EnAppSys. It highlights the growth of renewables in Britain’s electricity system amid the push to cut carbon emissions.

However, high gas prices amid a turbulent period on wholesale markets led to record wholesale electricity prices in a situation that is likely to add to calls for market reform.

Paul Verrill, director of EnAppSys, said: “More wind generation was seen this quarter than in any other quarter on record. Renewables exceeded aggregate fossil fuel generation for a calendar quarter. This has only ever happened once before, in the first quarter of 2020.”

Efforts to cut carbon emissions from power generation have driven a surge in wind turbine developments in recent years, with 25 gigawatts of capacity now installed over land and in the seabed, compared to less than 5 gigawatts in 2008.

The capacity is set to rise, with the Government targeting a five-fold increase in offshore wind capacity from about 11 to 50 gigawatts by 2030.

The target was raised from 40 to 50 gigawatts last week amid efforts to cut the West’s reliance on Russian gas.

One of the newest developments, Orsted’s giant Hornsea Two wind farm 55 miles off the Yorkshire coast, generated its first power in December and will be fully operational this year.

Coal now generates less than 2pc of British electricity and this is set to be phased completely by October 2024. Wind typically now accounts for about 20pc of the total, with gas on 35pc and nuclear about 16pc.

Over the past three months, EnAppSys said wind generated 23.3 terawatt hours, about 31pc of total demand and beating its previous record of 23 terawatt hours at the start of 2020.

It accounted for almost 70pc of all generation from renewables, which includes hydropower and biomass. Overall wind generation was more than double that during the third quarter of 2021, when a lull in wind speeds pushed generation down to 10.4 terawatt hours.

Despite the increase in wind power, high gas and coal prices as a result of global gas shortages and Russia’s war on Ukraine led to record wholesale electricity prices.

Day-ahead electricity prices were three times as high as the same quarter in 2021 and six times as high as the same quarter in 2020.

High wholesale gas and electricity prices are now being felt in households across Britain, due to the 54pc increase in the energy price cap at the start of April, pushing average bills up to £1,971.

High fossil fuel prices were “the primary factor” in sustained high electricity prices despite increased wind generation, EnAppSys said.

The way the market works means gas determines the electricity price more so than other sources of power.

There are calls for this to be changed so that wholesale prices better reflect the growing use of renewables, which do not have fuel costs and where installation costs have been falling.

“Record fuel prices meant this was one of the most expensive quarters in the GB market’s history,” EnAppSys added.
Shell to develop 'blue' hydrogen facility in UK in decarbonising push

Shell has struck a deal with a German energy company to produce hydrogen in the Humber as part of efforts to decarbonise the UK’s largest industrial cluster.

Uniper and Shell have signed a “cooperation agreement” to make the gas at the German utility's site in Killingholme, from where it could then be used by heavy industry across the area.

While it is more likely to be used for industrial purposes, the hydrogen produced at the 720MW plant would be enough to heat about half a million homes per year, the companies said.

Hydrogen does not produce carbon emissions when burned, and politicians hope it can replace fossil fuels in industry, heavy transport and potentially some home heating as the UK tries to cut emissions to net zero by 2050.

Shell and Uniper plan to produce hydrogen from natural gas. This is the most common method currently used to make hydrogen, but is in itself a vast source of carbon emissions.

To make this hydrogen "low carbon", they plan to capture and stash the emissions from this process under the North Sea, using carbon capture technology which has yet to be deployed at scale in the UK.

Mike Lockett, Uniper UK country chairman, said the plans represent a “significant step towards decarbonising the UK’s largest industrial cluster” and have the “potential to secure and grow the region’s economy.”

David Bunch, country chair at Shell, said the company was “ready to play our part in ensuring an orderly transition to net zero while bolstering the UK’s energy security.”

Shell plans to invest £25bn in the UK over the next decade, 75pc of which in "low carbon" products, he added.

Greg Hands, energy minister, said the announcement shows “real confidence” in hydrogen calling it a “cutting-edge new super fuel.”

Ministers are hoping that both the production and use of hydrogen will grow rapidly in coming years.

In their energy security strategy published last week amid efforts across the West to cut reliance on Russian gas, they doubled the target for low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030, from 5GW to 10GW.

They said at least half of this should come from hydrogen produced through electrolysis, a process which, unlike production from natural gas, does not generate carbon emissions.

The Shell and Uniper project is among several planned hydrogen projects in the UK, including BP’s proposed plant in Teesside which will also make hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture.

Many developers are waiting on final details of government support for emerging hydrogen and carbon capture industries before making firm investment decisions.

Shell and Uniper will now work on process design studies and site development activity, they added.

Climate change caused hurricanes to dump more rain in 2020, study says


People stop to look at the lowered gates of the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier as Tropical Storm Henri arrives in Providence, R.I., on August 22, 2020. Scientists said climate change led hurricanes and tropical storms to dump more rain during the 2020 season.

 File Photo by Matthew Healey/UPI | License Photo

April 12 (UPI) -- Human-caused climate change caused tropical storms and hurricanes to dump up to 10% more rain in 2020 compared to those during the pre-industrial era, a study released Tuesday indicates.

Researchers used what they called "hindcast attribution" -- like a forecast but for the past -- to quantify rainfall associated with storms during the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. The season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30 each year, included 30 named storms, 14 of which were hurricanes.

The record-breaking hurricane season caused about $40 billion in damage worldwide.

"Hurricanes are devastating events, and storms that produce more frequent hourly rain are even more dangerous in producing damage flooding, storm surge and destruction in its path," lead study author Kevin Reed said in a press release.

"Our findings indicate that environmental changes caused by humans are signaling more and quicker rainfall, which have direct consequences for coastal communities and sometimes outlying areas," said Reed, associate professor and associate dean of research at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University.

Reviewing the rainfall rates over 3-hour and three-day timeframes during the storms, the team found that tropical storms had an increase of 10% and 5%, respectively, compared to storms before 1850. For hurricanes, the effect was an 11% and 8% increase.

The team said human activities, including industrial growth, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to a more than 1 degree Celsius increase in the global surface temperature in 2020 compared to 1850.

This has led to a sea surface temperature increase in the North Atlantic basin of between 0.4 degrees to 0.9 degrees.

"An increase in hurricane rainfall due to global warming is not surprising," said study co-author Michael Wehner.

"What is surprising is that the amount of this human-caused increase is so much larger than what is expected from increases in humidity alone. This means that hurricane winds are becoming stronger as well," said Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The research team published its findings Tuesday in the journal Nature.

Study: extreme hurricane seasons made twice as likely by ocean warming


A new study from Berlin-based Climate Analytics says extreme hurricane seasons have been made twice as likely by global warming of the oceans. Photo by Mark Garcia/NASA

April 13 (UPI) -- Exceptionally intense Atlantic tropical hurricane seasons are twice as likely as they were in the 1980's due to global warming, according to a new study by Berlin-based Climate Analytics.

The research, published Wednesday in the journal Weather Climate Dynamics, found that for the year 2020 extreme Atlantic hurricane seasons were made twice as likely by ocean warming.

"While the attribution of individual tropical cyclone events remains difficult, there can be no doubt that climate change is creating more intense storms," study author Peter Pfleiderer said in a press release.

The researchers found, using a novel weather-pattern-based statistical model, that a "forced warming trend" in Atlantic sea surface temperature, or SST, increases from 1982-2020 doubled the probably of "extremely active tropical cyclone seasons."

Human-caused climate change caused tropical storms and hurricanes to dump up to 10% more rain in 2020 compared to those during the pre-industrial era, according to a separate study released Tuesday.

The new study said, "There is increasing consensus in the scientific literature that the number of tropical cyclones might not or only moderately increase, while the number of most intense storms would increase substantially."

The research shows that Atlantic tropical cyclone activity has increased and that increase "can be robustly ascribed to variations in atmospheric circulation as well as sea surface temperature increase."

"Our findings indicate that warming SSTs over the tropical Atlantic might have already contributed significantly to more extreme tropical cyclone seasons and thereby to the fatalities, destruction and trillion dollar losses that these cyclones have caused over the last four decades," the study concluded.

The study said to minimize future risks, "stringent emission reductions in line with achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement would be required."

"Our results do not imply that increasing sea-surface temperatures lead to more tropical cyclones -- but point toward a trend of more intense storms and therefore more extreme outcomes for seasons with many tropical cyclone," Pfleiderer said.

Lithium ion batteries going cobalt-free; nickel next on the chopping block


The energy startup Sparkz is preparing to mass produce the first high-performance, low-carbon lithium ion battery made in the United States. Photo by Sparkz

BANGOR, Maine, April 13 (UPI) -- In an effort to bring down costs, General Motors, Tesla, Nissan and other automakers have pledged to start building cars with cobalt-free lithium ion batteries.

Meanwhile, a pair of energy startups, Sparkz and Texpower, are preparing to scale up production of their high-performance, cobalt-free batteries.

But with the price of nickel rapidly rising, the need for additional battery chemistry breakthroughs remains.

Old problem, new urgency

Since they first moved from research labs to market in the 1980s, lithium ion batteries have relied on cobalt cathodes. Cobalt offers tremendous energy density, but the metal is expensive.

In recent years, cobalt has accounted for roughly a quarter of the cost to make a lithium ion battery, more than the cost of all the other metals in a battery combined.

As part of a broader push to shrink the carbon footprint of the U.S. economy, the Biden Administration wants electric cars to account for 50% of the auto market by 2030.

Many of the biggest automakers are planning accordingly, but to get more Americans into electric cars, most industry leaders and policy makers agree that prices for EVs -- and the batteries that power them -- will need to come down.

In recent months, federal officials in the White House and at the Department of Energy have announced a variety of programs aimed at shoring up domestic supply chains for the kinds of materials needed to build more lithium ion batteries and electric cars.

Problems beyond cost

Most of the world's cobalt mines and processing facilities are operated by Chinese companies and located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where mine operators have faced accusations of child labor violations and other human rights abuses.

"Eliminating cobalt makes batteries more affordable and reduces China's stranglehold on a critical mineral, while addressing significant national security and supply chain issues," Sanjiv Malhotra, founder and CEO of Sparkz, told UPI in an email.

Environmental groups have also raised concerns about the impacts of Congo's cobalt mines on soil, air and water quality.

"The motivation for battery makers and automakers is primarily driven by cost and long-term transparency," Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at Argonne National Laboratory, told UPI.

"But not far behind that is the environmental aspects and human rights, especially today when there is more focus on those issues," Srinivasan said.

From the beginning, scientists and lithium ion battery makers have known that cobalt was a problem, but it has become more pressing in recent years as the trade war between China and the United States intensified and supply chains faltered.

Last month, the price of cobalt reached $79,295 per ton, its highest price since June 2018.

Replacing cobalt

Over the last decade, scientists have developed a variety of technological tweaks to make up for the performance drop-off when a lithium ion battery's cathode is robbed of its cobalt.

Mostly, researchers have replaced cobalt with nickel.

"The higher nickel you go, the better the energy density," Arumugam Manthiram, an expert in energy storage and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told UPI.

But altering the chemical composition of a battery is never easy, and even small changes can lead to changes in performance and reliability.

"Too much nickel and the cycle life will suffer," Manthiram said. "It can lead to other concerns, too, like thermo stability."

Sparkz, which expects to break ground on a new lithium ion battery production facility, or gigafactory, and deliver batteries to its first customers by the end of 2022, is the proud owner of six patents transferred from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

One of those patents is the recipe for a cobalt-free cathode material featuring a special mix of nickel, iron and aluminum.

The patented material can double the energy density achieved by lithium iron phosphate batteries, the only cobalt-free battery currently on the market.

"Lithium iron phosphate is commercialized and relatively cheap, but its issue is limited driving range," Manthiram said. "So if people worried about cost, they can use lithium iron phosphate."

Lithium iron phosphate has reached its performance peak, however, according to Manthiram, who helped first develop the technology a few decades ago.

"With high nickel, there is room to squeeze out a little bit more," he said.

International politics complicate nickel use

Nickel is geologically and geographically more widely distributed than cobalt, with healthy deposits in Canada, Greenland and even the United States. However, a small but significant amount of nickel is sourced from Siberia, and Russia has an outsized influence on the nickel market.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sent nickel prices soaring. Last month, the London Metal Exchange halted the metal's trading after its price doubled in a day.

Though most expect nickel's price to moderate in the coming weeks and months, its volatility remains a concern.

While efforts are underway, it will take time to bring more nickel mines and processing facilities online to meet the growing demand for high-nickel electric car batteries.

"If you're in the battery community, you worry about nickel," Srinivasan said.

The challenge for battery researchers is that science can never move as fast as shifts in markets, prices and consumer preferences. Nevertheless, researchers are already working on the new iterations of the lithium ion battery.

Even with demand for cobalt-free batteries at a fever pitch, Sparkz won't be selling to automakers for some time.

"The process for approval with the automakers can be three to five years," Malhotra said. "As we continue talks with automotive manufacturers, we will begin making batteries for three key markets: agricultural and off-road vehicles, material handling and stationary energy storage."

Often, battery makers must find bridge markets for their products as they work to meet the needs of car makers.

Looking for more breakthroughs

"At DOE, for the longest time, we've supported manganese-rich technologies, Srinivasan said. "For us, the thing has always been, let's diversify, let's not put too many eggs in one basket."

Sparkz CEO Malhotra said his company will continue to focus on re-engineering and scaling a domestic battery supply chain, while federal scientists find the next breakthrough.

"We should allow our extensive network of experts at our national laboratories to focus on research and development and let companies like Sparkz manufacture and scale," he said in an email.

Despite the new challenge presented by the rising nickel prices, Manthiram said going cobalt-free is the right move.

"Cobalt is a problem today, nickel will be a problem tomorrow, and lithium silicon will be a problem the day after tomorrow," Manthiram said. "But right now, cobalt needs to be removed, and that is done by nickel. And that is, in my opinion, the best way to do it."

GM signs cobalt deal with Glencore as rush 

for battery metals intensifies

Abhijith Ganapavaram
Tue, April 12, 2022



(Reuters) -General Motors Co said on Tuesday it would buy cobalt from miner Glencore PLC to use in its electric vehicles (EVs), as automakers around the world scramble to stock up on the critical raw material amid supply chain disruptions.

Global automakers, ranging from EV leader Tesla Inc to Volkswagen, are splurging billions of dollars on developing vehicles for a market that could be worth $5 trillion over the next decade.

However, metals to make batteries that last longer hard to come by due to supply chain disruptions, which has led to automakers rushing to secure supplies of lithium, nickel and cobalt.

The prices of these rare metals have soared to multi-year highs.

Cobalt, a metal that makes up 0.001% of the earth's crust, ensures cathodes do not easily overheat or catch fire and helps extend the life of batteries, which automakers usually guarantee for eight to 10 years.

The cobalt, secured from Glencore's Murrin Murrin operation in Australia, will be used in GM's Ultium battery cathodes, which powers the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq vehicles, the companies said in a joint statement https://bit.ly/37doJ0r.

They did not disclose the size of the deal.

GM, which has laid out plans to ramp up capacity to build one million EVs in North America by the end of 2025, also has an agreement with General Electric Co to develop a supply chain of rare earth and other materials.

It had also announced it would invest in a U.S. lithium project last year, which could become the country's largest by 2024.

Rival Ford Motor Co said on Monday it had signed a preliminary deal to buy lithium from a Lake Resources NL facility in Argentina.

(Reporting by Abhijith Ganapavaram in Bengaluru; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel)

WH environmental justice advisors press for Justice40 action

BY DREW COSTLEY

In this Jan. 20, 2021, file photo, President Joe Biden signs his first executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Biden laid out an ambitious agenda for his first 100 days in office, promising swift action on everything from climate change to immigration reform to the coronavirus pandemic. Key members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council say one year into the Biden Administration's commitment that 40% of all benefits from climate investment go to disenfranchised communities, not enough has been done. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)


Key members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council said Tuesday that the Biden administration hadn’t done enough to make good on its promise that 40% of all benefits from climate investment go to disenfranchised communities.

Speaking at a press briefing ahead of the HBCU Climate Change Conference in New Orleans, the council members said they’ve secured $14 million from the Bezos Earth Fund for a program called Engage, Enlighten and Empower to hold the Biden administration accountable for carrying out its Justice40 initiative.

President Biden made the commitment in a sweeping executive order on his first day in office. The initiative has been held up as an unprecedented push to bring environmental justice to communities long plagued by pollution and climate inaction.

The three members of the federal environmental justice council leading the $14 million-dollar effort, Beverly Wright, Peggy Shepard and Robert Bullard, have been working closely with the administration on Justice40.

But Wright told members of the press that more needs to be done to “turn a novel idea into a project that works.”

The trio are combining philanthropic grants from the Bezos Earth Fund, $6 million from Shepard’s WE ACT for Environmental Justice, $4 million from Wright’s Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and $4 million from the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, to ensure federal funding from Justice40 “goes where it’s intended,” Shepard said.

The effort should “ensure equitable implementation of the Justice40 initiative at the state and local level and empower local communities to participate in the policy-making” that comes as a result of the initiative, a press release said.

The funds will go to educate grassroots organizations on the resources available to them through Justice40, inform state and local governments on how the money should be used, and develop a screening tool to determine where Justice40 funds are needed most, one that includes racial demographic data. Controversially a federal screening tool used by the administration does not take into account the racial makeup of communities.

There has been little change on the ground yet from the Justice40 pledge because the federal government is still trying to figure out which communities are most in need of the investment. In recommendations to the Biden administration, many reputable environmental justice advocates pushed for a methodical, intentional process for identifying disadvantaged communities and disbursing funds.

At the briefing, Wright and Bullard said they’ve seen past federal social and infrastructure projects fail to deliver on promises to disadvantaged communities and don’t want to see it happen again.

“There’s been a lot of really novel approaches at changing the lives of Americans in general that have worked out” benefitting just white Americans, Wright said.

Bullard pointed to discrimination in how flood relief was distributed in Texas, where the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice is located, as an example.

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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Battle over carbon capture as tool to fight climate change

BY DREW COSTLEY

1 of 18

The Marathon Petroleum Refinery is seen in Reserve, La., Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. Last year, Congress pledged $3.5 billion to carbon capture and sequestration projects around the United States, which has been called the largest federal investment ever by advocates for the technology. But environmental justice advocates and residents of legacy pollution communities are wary of the technology, with many calling it a "false solution." (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)


Polly Glover realized her son had asthma when he was nine months old. Now 26, he carries an inhaler in his pocket whenever he’s out and about in Prairieville, Louisiana, part of Ascension Parish.

“He probably needs to leave Ascension quite frankly,” Glover says, but he hasn’t because “this is his home and this is our family and this is our community.”

The parish is part of the 85-mile (137-kilometer) span between New Orleans and Baton Rouge officially called the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor, more commonly known as Cancer Alley. The region’s air quality is some of the worst in the United States, and in several places along the corridor, cancer risks are much higher than levels considered acceptable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Glover says the air is “terrible” where she lives, but there’s also great biodiversity — osprey, eagles, migratory birds, deer, rabbits, fish and alligators — among the region’s lakes, rivers and wetlands. The environmental advocate has been working for 30 years to preserve the place she’s loved since childhood.

That’s why she is wary of anything that might make air quality worse or threaten wildlife — and her biggest fear now is that a $4.5 billion plant designed to capture climate-changing carbon and make clean-burning hydrogen fuel will actually do more harm to the Lake Maurepas basin.

The blue hydrogen energy plant (BLUE MEANS IT USES NATURAL GAS TO CREATE H2) is slated to be built and operated by Air Products and Chemicals, a multinational petrochemical company. The company says the plant will capture airborne carbon emissions created during production and put them safely underground — a process called carbon capture and storage.

“Sometimes I think people think you’re kind of bubbling this in at the bottom of the lake,” said Simon Moore, vice president of investor relations, corporate relations and sustainability at Air Products. “You know, this is a mile below the Earth’s surface, where the geological formation of the rock has this porous space, which simply absorbs the CO2.”

Still, Glover is worried. “I’m not a scientist. I’m a mom who cares,” she said. “We have got to be better stewards of the environment and while reducing carbon emissions is necessary, injecting them into the basin is not the answer.”

There are several other carbon capture and storage projects proposed or in the works throughout the U.S., including in Louisiana, Texas, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa and California. Companies behind them maintain they can successfully remove carbon from the air to reduce pollution, then safely transport and store the carbon underground — or do both.

In some cases, oil and gas companies are banking on this new technology to either help build new profit centers, such as plants that make hydrogen, or extend the lifespan of their fossil fuel facilities.

Carbon capture and storage projects are gaining traction since Congress approved $3.5 billion for them last year. The Global CCS Institute, a think tank seeking to advance these projects globally, called it the “single largest appropriation of money for CCS in the history of the technology.”

In the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top scientists said carbon capture and storage technology has to be part of the range of solutions to decarbonize and mitigate climate change. But they said solar and wind energy and electricity storage are improving faster than carbon capture and storage.

Opponents of carbon capture and storage maintain the technology is unproven and has been less effective than alternatives such as solar and wind at decarbonizing the energy sector.

“Carbon capture is neither workable nor feasible,” said Basav Sen, climate justice policy director for the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C. “It’s merely an excuse for the fossil fuel industry to keep operating the way it does.”

A study in late 2020 by researchers from the University of California, San Diego, found over 80% of 39 projects that have sought to commercialize carbon capture and storage ended in failure. The study cited lack of technological readiness as a top factor

But even if the technology was deployed successfully, several critics say the projects would pose threats to the public health of communities long plagued by air and water pollution.

First, they said any project that prolongs the lifespan of an existing industrial facility presents additional environmental harm by extending the amount of time it pollutes a community, which the IPCC report confirms.

Second, they noted that since carbon capture would require more energy to power the equipment, it would result in more air pollution because the technology can only catch a portion of the carbon emitted by a facility.

Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and pioneer of carbon capture and storage technology, disputed this in an interview with the Associated Press. But he acknowledged there is a risk in transporting and storing carbon.

In 2020, a pipeline carrying compressed carbon dioxide ruptured in the town of Satartia, Mississippi, which caused over 40 people to get hospital treatment and more than 300 to evacuate. The incident is cited by experts, advocates and residents who live near proposed carbon capture and storage projects to illustrate potential dangers of transporting carbon long distances.

Injecting carbon underground for storage could end up contaminating aquifers, according to Nikki Reisch, director of the climate and energy program for the Center for International Environmental Law.

Over 500 environmental organizations, including the law center, signed an open letter published in the Washington Post in July 2021, calling carbon capture and storage a “false solution.”

In response, the Carbon Capture Coalition, which advocates the technology, released its own letter in August with over 100 signatories. They pressed Congress to include investment in carbon capture and storage in any upcoming legislation.

Matt Fry, a state and regional policy manager with the Great Plains Institute, a Minneapolis-based climate and energy think tank, told AP the technology is essential to meeting mid-century climate goals.

“The potential for a completely decarbonized, electrified world is a reality,” Fry said. “But we’re going to need to transition to get there. And it’s going to require carbon capture to address those emissions.”

At the point of capture, Herzog said, the technology poses a “very low” threat to public health. “There’s always a chance of some mishaps,” he added, “but on the overall scale of chemical plants, (the technology) is fairly benign.”

Still, residents near proposed projects worry.

In California’s Central Valley agricultural region, Chevron, Microsoft and Schlumberger New Energy are collaborating to build a facility in the town of Mendota that will create energy by converting agricultural waste into carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas, then mixing it with oxygen to generate electricity with the promise of capturing 99% of the carbon from the process.

Chevron said it plans to inject the carbon “underground into nearby deep geologic formations.”

That’s concerning for Nayamin Martinez, who lives in the valley and is director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network. “That worries us a lot,” she said. “What does that mean in terms of risk for contamination of drinking water?”

Creighton Welch, a spokesperson for Chevron, said the process they plan to use is safe. “CO2 capture, injection, and storage are not new technologies and have been conducted safely for decades,” Welch said.

Back in Louisiana, Glover and other residents also fear carbon capture technology will affect the water. The carbon dioxide captured at the Air Products and Chemicals facility will be stored in sites such as under Lake Maurepas, an important wetland.

Kim Coates, who lives on the lake’s northeast side, said it’s a buffer between the Gulf of Mexico and residents. But she said she’s witnessed generations of destruction to that ecosystem through industrial development and, more recently, hurricanes and tropical storms.

Now Coates fears more of the same if carbon is stored under the lake. “We’ve seen the destruction over time with no one looking forward to what was going to happen in the future,” she said.

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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

ALSO SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

There’s still a way to reach global goal on climate change

BY SETH BORENSTEIN

AP

1 of 6

FILE - Wind turbines are silhouetted against the rising sun Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2021, near Spearville, Kan. A new study released on Wednesday, April 13, 2022, finds that if the nations of the world live up to their promises, future climate climate change can be limited to the weaker of two international goals. According to a study, the world is potentially on track to keep global warming at or a shade below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial times, a goal that once seemed out of reach (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)


If nations do all that they’ve promised to fight climate change, the world can still meet one of two internationally agreed upon goals for limiting warming. But the planet is blowing past the other threshold that scientists say will protect Earth more, a new study finds.

The world is potentially on track to keep global warming at, or a shade below, 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial times, a goal that once seemed out of reach, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

That will only happen if countries not only fulfill their specific pledged national targets for curbing carbon emissions by 2030, but also come through on more distant promises of reaching net zero carbon emissions by mid-century, the study says.

This 2 degree warmer world still represents what scientists characterize as a profoundly disrupted climate with fiercer storms, higher seas, animal and plant extinctions, disappearing coral, melting ice and more people dying from heat, smog and infectious disease. It’s not the goal that world leaders say they really want: 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The world will blast past that more prominent and promoted goal unless dramatic new emission cuts are promised and achieved this decade and probably within the next three years, study authors said.

Both goals of 1.5-degrees and 2-degrees are part of the 2015 Paris climate pact and the 2021 Glasgow follow-up agreement. The 2-degree goal goes back years earlier.

“For the first time we can possibly keep warming below the symbolic 2-degree mark with the promises on the table. That assumes of course that the countries follow through on the promises,” said study lead author Malte Meinshausen, a University of Melbourne climate scientist.

That’s a big if, outside climate scientists and the authors, say. It means political leaders actually doing what they promise

The study “examines only this optimistic scenario. It does not check whether governments are making efforts to implement their long-term targets and whether they are credible,” said Niklas Hohne of Germany, a New Climate Institute scientist who analyzes pledges for Climate Action Tracker and wasn’t part of this study. “We know that governments are far from implementing their long-term targets.”

Hohne’s team and others who track pledges have similarly found that limiting warming to 2 degrees is still possible, as Meinshausen’s team has. The difference is that Meinshausen’s study is the first to be peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal.

THE OTHER METHANE PRODUCER 

Sure, the 2-degree world requires countries to do what they promise. But cheaper wind and solar have shown carbon emissions cuts can come faster than thought and some countries will exceed their promised cuts, Meinshausen said. He also said the way climate action works is starting with promises and then policies, so it’s not unreasonable to take countries at their word.

Mostly, he said, limiting warming to 2 degrees is still a big improvement compared to just five or ten years ago, when “everybody laughed like ‘ha we’ll never see targets on the table that bring us closer to 2 degrees’,” Meinshausen said. “Targets and implemented policies actually can turn the needle on future temperatures. I think that optimism is important for countries to see. Yes, there is hope.”

About 20% to 30% of that hope is due to the Paris climate agreement, but the rest is due to earlier investments by countries that made green energy technologies cheaper than dirty fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, Meinshausen said.

Yet, even if that’s good news, it’s not all good, he said.

“Neither do we have a margin of error (on barely limiting to 2 degrees) nor do the pledges put us on a path close to 1.5 degrees,” Meinshausen said.

In 2018 the United Nations’ scientific expert team studied the differences between the 1.5- and 2-degree thresholds and found considerably worse and more extensive damages to Earth at 2 degrees of warming. So the world has recently tried to make the 1.5 degrees goal possible.

Earth has already warmed at least 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, often considered the late 1800s, so 2 degrees of warming really means another 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than now.

Meinshausen’s analysis “looks good and solid, but there are always assumptions that could be important,” said Glen Peters, a climate scientist who tracks emissions with Global Carbon Project.

The biggest assumption is that nations somehow get to promised net zero carbon emissions, most of them by 2050 but a decade or two later for China and India, said Peters, research director of the Cicero Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway.

“Making pledges for 2050 is cheap, backing them up with necessary short-term action is hard,” he said, noting that for most countries, there will be five or six elections between now and 2050.

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Thawing permafrost is roiling the Arctic landscape, driven by a hidden world of changes beneath the surface as the climate warms


Mark J. Lara, Assistant Professor in Plant Biology & Geography

 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

THE CONVERSATION
Tue, April 12, 2022

Permafrost and ice wedges have built up over millennia in the Arctic. 

When they thaw, they destabilize the surrounding landscape. 

Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Across the Arctic, strange things are happening to the landscape.

Massive lakes, several square miles in size, have disappeared in the span of a few days. Hillsides slump. Ice-rich ground collapses, leaving the landscape wavy where it once was flat, and in some locations creating vast fields of large, sunken polygons.

It’s evidence that permafrost, the long-frozen soil below the surface, is thawing. That’s bad news for the communities built above it – and for the global climate.

As an ecologist, I study these dynamic landscape interactions and have been documenting the various ways permafrost-driven landscape change has accelerated over time. The hidden changes underway there hold warning for the future.

What is permafrost?

Permafrost is perennially frozen soil that covers about a quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Canada, Russia and Alaska. Much of it is rich with the organic matter of long-dead plants and animals frozen in time.

These frozen soils maintain the structural integrity of many northern landscapes, providing stability to vegetated and unvegetated surfaces, similar to load-bearing support beams in buildings.

As temperatures rise and patterns of precipitation change, permafrost and other forms of ground ice become vulnerable to thaw and collapse. As these frozen soils warm, the ground destabilizes, unraveling the interwoven fabric that has delicately shaped these dynamic ecosystems over millennia. Wildfires, which have been increasing across the Arctic, have been increasing the risk.

Thawing permafrost can cause the ground to sink and crack in places, destabilizing roads and buildings. Orjan F. Ellingvag/Corbis via Getty Images

Under the surface, something else is active – and it is amplifying global warming. When the ground thaws, microbes begin feasting on organic matter in soils that have been frozen for millennia.

These microbes release carbon dioxide and methane, potent greenhouse gases. As those gases escape into the atmosphere, they further warm the climate, creating a feedback loop: Warmer temperatures thaw more soil, releasing more organic material for microbes to feast on and produce more greenhouse gases.

The evidence: disappearing lakes

Evidence of human-caused climate change is mounting across the permafrost extent.

The disappearance of large lakes, multiple square miles in size, is one of the most striking examples of recent patterns of northern landscape transitions.

The lakes are draining laterally as wider and deeper drainage channels develop, or vertically through taliks, where unfrozen soil under the lake gradually deepens until the permafrost is penetrated and the water drains away.

There is now overwhelming evidence indicating that surface water across permafrost regions is declining. Satellite observations and analysis indicate lake drainage may be linked with permafrost degradation. Colleagues and I have found it increases with warmer and longer summer seasons.

This insight came after some of the highest rates of catastrophic lake drainage – drainage that occurs over a few days due to permafrost degradation – on record were observed over the past five years in northwestern Alaska.

The disappearance of lakes across the permafrost extent is likely to affect the livelihoods of Indigenous communities as water quality and water availability important for waterfowl, fish and other wildlife shift.

Slumping hills and polygon fields

The thaw and collapse of buried glacial ice is also causing hillsides to slump at increasing rates across the Russian and North American Arctic, sending soil, plants and debris sliding downslope.

One new study in northern Siberia found that the disturbed land surfaces increased over 300% over the past two decades. Similar studies in northern and northwestern Canada found slumping there also accelerated with warmer and wetter summers.

An ice wedge dated to the late Pleistocene era in Noatak National Preserve in Alaska. David Swanson/National Park Service

In flat terrain, ice wedges are able to develop, creating unusual geometric patterns and changes across the land.

Over decades to centuries, melting snow seeps into cracks in the soil, building up wedges of ice. These wedges cause troughs in the ground above them, creating the edges of polygons. Polygonal features naturally form as a result of the freezing and thawing process in a way similar to that seen at the bottom of drying mud flats. As ice wedges melt, the ground above collapses.

Even in extremely cold high Arctic environments, the impacts of only a few uncommonly warm summers can dramatically change the surface of the landscape, transitioning previously flat terrain into undulating as the surface begins to sink into depressions with the melting of ice in the soil below. Overall rates of ice wedge thawing have increased in response to climate warming.

Across many Arctic regions, this thawing has also been hastened by wildfire. In a recent study, colleagues and I found that wildfires in Arctic permafrost regions increased the rate of thaw and vertical collapse of the frozen terrain for up to eight decades after fire. Because both climate warming and wildfire disturbance are projected to increase in the future, they may increase the rate of change in northern landscapes.

The impact of recent climate and environmental change have also been felt at lower latitudes in the lowland boreal forest. There, ice-rich permafrost plateaus – elevated permafrost islands heaved above adjacent wetlands – have rapidly degraded across Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia. They can look like cargo ships filled with sedges, shrubs, and trees sinking into wetlands.

Why does it matter?

Frigid temperatures and short growing seasons have long limited the decomposition of dead plants and organic matter in northern ecosystems. Because of this, nearly 50% of global soil organic carbon is stored in these frozen soils.

The abrupt transitions we’re seeing today – lakes becoming drained basins, shrub tundra turning into ponds, lowland boreal forests becoming wetlands – will not only hasten the decomposition of buried permafrost carbon, but also the decomposition of above-ground vegetation as it collapses into water-saturated environments.

Russia has a large part of the world’s permafrost. When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, some Western institutions paused funding for scientific studies there after years of international cooperation. Joshua Stevens/NAS

Climate models suggest the impacts of such transitions could be dire. For example, a recent modeling study published in Nature Communications suggested permafrost degradation and associated landscape collapse could result in a 12-fold increase in carbon losses in a scenario of strong warming by the end of the century.

This is particularly important because permafrost is estimated to hold twice as much carbon as the atmosphere today. Permafrost depths vary widely, exceeding 3,000 feet in parts of Siberia and 2,000 feet in northern Alaska, and rapidly decrease moving south. Fairbanks, Alaska, averages around 300 feet (90 meters). Studies have suggested that much of the shallow permafrost, 10 feet (3 meters) deep or less, would likely thaw if the world remains on its current warming trajectory.

To add insult to injury, in water-logged environments lacking oxygen, microbes produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas 30 times more effective at warming the planet than carbon dioxide, though it doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long.

How big of a problem thawing permafrost is likely to become for the climate is an open question. We know it is releasing greenhouse gases now. But the causes and consequences of permafrost thaw and associated landscape transitions are active research frontiers.

One thing is certain: The thawing of previously frozen landscapes will continue to change the face of high-latitude ecosystems for years to come. For people living in these areas, slumping land and destabilizing soil will mean living with the risks and costs, including buckling roads and sinking buildings.



This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Mark J. Lara, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Read more:

2021 Arctic Report Card reveals a (human) story of cascading disruptions, extreme events and global connections


100 degrees in Siberia? 5 ways the extreme Arctic heat wave followed a disturbing pattern

Mark J. Lara receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

WAGE THEFT
‘I’m really angry’: 2 Kansas City area coffee shops close, giving workers scant notice


Joyce Smith
Tue, April 12, 2022, 

The Northland’s two Headrush Roasters Coffee & Tea shops are currently closed.

“We never used the words permanently closed,” said Eric Schneider, who, with his wife, Nancy Schneider, owns the two locations — at 7108 N. Oak Trafficway, Gladstone, and in The Village at Briarcliff, 4115 N. Mulberry Drive. “We pulled back and suspended operations. But they are closed and they are not reopening any time soon.”

On Monday, they announced the closures on Facebook (in mostly capitalized letters): “It pains us to do so, but it is the right thing for us to do at this time. … Life sometimes throws you a curve ball.”

They said Eric’s 90-year-old mother had a serious fall and fractured her ankle, and recovery has not been what they hoped. That, along with the rigors of running a small business on top of a two-year pandemic, has “really taken a toll.”

The five-year lease is up this month at Briarcliff, and the Schneiders hope the center will hold the building for them for two to three months — based on their history as a tenant and current personal hurdles. But he said the shopping center is already fielding queries on the space.

The Schneiders own the building on North Oak Trafficway. They hope to reopen it this summer.

“My wife and I haven’t had time to talk about it seriously, but we know we love coffee,” he said.

They are still taking online orders for roasted coffee and packaged teas.

Eric and Nancy Schneider opened Headrush Roasters Coffee & Tea in 2012.

But some of its workers are upset at the news and the way they were told.

Dannon Coe, who has worked at the cafes for more than a year, said the staff at both locations had an hour’s notice of a Zoom call Sunday night informing them of the closing — and the loss of their jobs.

Some employees were not able to participate in the Zoom session.

“It was a huge surprise. None of us expected to lose our jobs in that call,” she said. “And my other co-worker was getting married, so some employees couldn’t be on the call because they were at the wedding. We had to break the notice that they no longer had jobs.”

She said they were told they would get two weeks’ severance pay.

“But our hours had been cut drastically over the last few weeks and it won’t include tips, which is about 50% of our pay,” she said. She said the owners have not responded to text messages.

Genesis Hall was lead barista and would have celebrated her first anniversary at Headrush in May. She was not feeling well on Sunday and took a nap, only to find out later that night from co-workers that she no longer had a job.

“Honestly, I’m really angry,” she said. ‘When I started they wanted to know how long I would commit, and I said I could work there for a couple of years and was thinking of going into management. But they can’t give the same respect to the co-workers.”

Fans of the shops posted messages on its Facebook page:

▪ “Devastating news, but we understand. Thank you for being open through the pandemic — it helped a lot of us that couldn’t work remotely, through some very surreal days.”

▪ “Sorry to hear about your mom! We will miss your coffee and customer service dearly! Thank you all for staying open through Covid. … Looking forward to ordering online as your coffee can’t be beat!”

But others who posted were advocating for the employees:

▪ “What about the families of your employees? What about the mental and physical well being of your employees that you gave no notice that you had made this decision to close. .... Do you have regret about terminating an employee during their wedding?”

Headrush Roasters Coffee & Tea at 7108 N. Oak Trafficway in Gladstone has closed.

As of Sunday, Schneider thought his lease was expiring Friday and had to act quickly, he said. But he found out later he has until the end of the month

“I know what we are going through and I know what they are going through. No one is going to be 100% positive,” Eric Schneider said. “There’s a lot of good kids that work for us. We did provide them — and we didn’t have to because we are a small company — two weeks’ severance based on an average of their last three months, because we know hours fluctuate.”

Amazon accused of ramping up anti-union efforts ahead of another warehouse election


BRIESELANG, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 18: A worker packs items while fulfilling orders at an Amazon warehouse on November 18, 2021 in Brieselang, Germany. Many shoppers who fear gifts will be lacking due to the global supply chain disruption are buying their Christmas gifts early this year, both online and at brick and mortar retailers. 

(Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images)

Kris Holt
·Contributing Reporter
Wed, April 13, 2022

Amazon is said to have intensified its anti-union efforts ahead of a union election at a warehouse later this month. The Amazon Labor Union told Motherboard the company is mandating daily anti-union meetings at LDJ5, a facility in Staten Island, New York. It's also said to have distributed anti-union literature and disciplined a leader of the drive for organizing on the warehouse floor. What's more, ALU says Amazon has hired anti-union consultants to pose as employees.

Workers at the warehouse, which reportedly has around 1,500 employees, are scheduled to begin a union election on April 25th. Amazon's anti-union efforts ramped up in recent days, according to the report. The ALU recently won an election at a nearby facility, JFK8, which became the first Amazon warehouse in the US to formally unionize. Amazon plans to appeal the union's victory.

Amazon and the National Labor Relations Board in December reached a deal in December, under which the company agreed to inform past and current warehouse workers in the US of their right to organize. The terms of the agreement afforded workers more leeway to organize in break rooms, which is said to have been a key factor in ALU's success at JFK8.

However, Amazon reportedly isn't sticking to those terms at LDJ5. The ALU said the company removed pro-union literature from the break room and took down a pro-union banner after the JFK8 election result became clear. A lawyer representing ALU workers has filed unfair labor practice charges against Amazon for removing the banner and allegedly retaliating against a worker to stifle unionization efforts.

Engadget has contacted Amazon for comment.

Amazon has long been accused of cracking down on workers' attempts to organize. Last year alone, it spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants. The company's also said to be working on a chat app for workers, in which terms like "union" and "pay raise" are on a blocklist.

The NLRB said the company illegally interfered in a union election in Bessemer, Alabama last year and called for a rerun. However, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union claimed Amazon interfered in the second election as well. The result of that vote hinges on a court hearing over challenged ballot