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      Can we drill for hydrogen? New find suggests additional geological source.

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 23 February - 18:16 · 1 minute

    Image of apartment buildings with mine tailings behind them, and green hills behind those.

    Enlarge / Mining operations start right at the edge of Bulqizë, Albania. (credit: Wikimedia Commons )

    “The search for geologic hydrogen today is where the search for oil was back in the 19th century—we’re just starting to understand how this works,” said Frédéric-Victor Donzé, a geologist at Université Grenoble Alpes. Donzé is part of a team of geoscientists studying a site at Bulqizë in Albania where miners at one of the world’s largest chromite mines may have accidentally drilled into a hydrogen reservoir.

    The question Donzé and his team want to tackle is whether hydrogen has a parallel geological system with huge subsurface reservoirs that could be extracted the way we extract oil. “Bulqizë is a reference case. For the first time, we have real data. We have a proof,” Donzé said.

    Greenish energy source

    Water is the only byproduct of burning hydrogen, which makes it a potential go-to green energy source. The problem is that the vast majority of the 96 million tons of hydrogen we make each year comes from processing methane, and that does release greenhouse gases. Lots of them. “There are green ways to produce hydrogen, but the cost of processing methane is lower. This is why we are looking for alternatives,” Donzé said.

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      Google, Environmental Defense Fund will track methane emissions from space

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 14 February - 20:17 · 1 minute

    computer-generated image of a satellite highlighting emissions over a small square on the globe.

    Enlarge / With color, high resolution. (credit: Google/EDF)

    When discussing climate change, attention generally focuses on our soaring carbon dioxide emissions. But levels of methane have risen just as dramatically, and it's a far more potent greenhouse gas. And, unlike carbon dioxide, it's not the end result of a valuable process; methane largely ends up in the atmosphere as the result of waste, lost during extraction and distribution.

    Getting these losses under control would be one of the easiest ways to slow down greenhouse warming. But tracking methane emissions often comes from lots of smaller, individual sources. To help get a handle on all the leaks, the Environmental Defense Fund has been working to put its own methane-monitoring satellite in orbit. On Wednesday, it announced that it was partnering with Google to take the data from the satellite, make it publicly available, and tie it to specific sources.

    The case for MethaneSAT

    Over the course of 20 years, methane is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to greenhouse warming. And most methane in the atmosphere ultimately reacts with oxygen, producing water vapor and carbon dioxide—both of which are also greenhouse gasses. Those numbers are offset by the fact that methane levels in the atmosphere are very low, currently just under two parts per million (vs. over 400 ppm for CO 2 ). Still, levels have gone up considerably since monitoring started.

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      Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 2 February - 18:52 · 1 minute

    Digital generated image of golden helium balloon in shape of bitcoin sign inflated with air pump and moving up against purple background.

    Enlarge / It takes a lot of energy to keep pumping out more bitcoins. (credit: Andriy Onufriyenko )

    What exactly is bitcoin mining doing to the electric grid? In the last few years, the US has seen a boom in cryptocurrency mining, and the government is now trying to track exactly what that means for the consumption of electricity. While its analysis is preliminary, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that large-scale cryptocurrency operations are now consuming over 2 percent of the US's electricity . That's roughly the equivalent of having added an additional state to the grid over just the last three years.

    Follow the megawatts

    While there is some small-scale mining that goes on with personal computers and small rigs, most cryptocurrency mining has moved to large collections of specialized hardware. While this hardware can be pricy compared to personal computers, the main cost for these operations is electricity use, so the miners will tend to move to places with low electricity rates. The EIA report notes that, in the wake of a crackdown on cryptocurrency in China, a lot of that movement has involved relocation to the US, where keeping electricity prices low has generally been a policy priority.

    One independent estimate made by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance had the US as the home of just over 3 percent of the global bitcoin mining at the start of 2020. By the start of 2022, that figure was nearly 38 percent.

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      The right bacteria turn farms into carbon sinks

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 1 February - 12:15

    Image of a woman in a lab coat holding a bacterial culture plate

    Some of the microbes that make carbon sequestration work. (credit: Andes Ag, Inc)

    In 2022, humans emitted a staggering 36 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Along with reducing emissions, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a key climate mitigation strategy. But Gonzalo Fuenzalida wasn’t looking to help solve climate change when he co-founded the company Andes .

    “We started this company with the idea of using microbes to make the process of growing food more resilient,” says Fuenzalida. “We stumbled upon these microbes that have the ability to create minerals in the soil which contain carbon and that intrigued us.”

    Fuenzalida, alongside his co-founder Tania Timmermann-Aranis, had an unconventional notion: They could harness the power of microbes residing in plant roots within the soil to remove carbon from the atmosphere. These naturally occurring microbes can be applied to the soil by blending them with pesticides or other soil treatments—they will strategically position themselves within the root structure of corn, wheat, and soy plants.

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      Urban agriculture’s carbon footprint can be worse than that of large farms

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 23 January - 19:14

    Lots of plants in the foreground, and dense urban buildings in the background

    Enlarge (credit: Bruce Yuanyue Bi )

    A few years back, the Internet was abuzz with the idea of vertical farms running down the sides of urban towers, with the idea that growing crops where they're actually consumed could eliminate the carbon emissions involved with shipping plant products long distances. But lifecycle analysis of those systems, which require a lot of infrastructure and energy, suggest they'd have a hard time doing better than more traditional agriculture.

    But those systems represent only a small fraction of urban agriculture as it's practiced. Most urban farming is a mix of local cooperative gardens and small-scale farms located within cities. And a lot less is known about the carbon footprint of this sort of farming. Now, a large international collaboration has worked with a number of these farms to get a handle on their emissions in order to compare those to large-scale agriculture.

    The results suggest it's possible that urban farming can have a lower impact. But it requires choosing the right crops and a long-term commitment to sustainability.

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      40% of US electricity is now emissions-free

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 28 December - 19:12 · 1 minute

    Image of electric power lines with a power plant cooling tower in the background.

    Enlarge (credit: fhm / Getty Images )

    Just before the holiday break, the US Energy Information Agency released data on the country's electrical generation. Because of delays in reporting, the monthly data runs through October, so it doesn't provide a complete picture of the changes we've seen in 2023. But some of the trends now seem locked in for the year: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal, and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production.

    Tracking trends

    Having data through October necessarily provides an incomplete picture of 2023. There are several factors that can cause the later months of the year to differ from the earlier ones. Some forms of generation are seasonal—notably solar, which has its highest production over the summer months. Weather can also play a role, as unusually high demand for heating in the winter months could potentially require that older fossil fuel plants be brought online. It also influences production from hydroelectric plants, creating lots of year-to-year variation.

    Finally, everything's taking place against a backdrop of booming construction of solar and natural gas. So, it's entirely possible that we will have built enough new solar over the course of the year to offset the seasonal decline at the end of the year.

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      Government makes an app to cut down government’s role in solar permitting

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 21 December - 15:42

    Aerial view of houses with roof-top solar panels.

    Enlarge / NREL has taken some of the hassle out of getting permits for projects like these. (credit: owngarden )

    Can government agencies develop software to help cut bureaucratic red tape through automation? The answer is “yes,” according to the promising results achieved by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which has saved thousands of hours of labor for local governments by creating a tool called SolarAPP+ (Solar Automated Permit Processing Plus) for residential solar permits.

    “We estimate that automatic SolarAPP+ permitting saved around 9,900 hours of… staff time in 2022,” NREL staff wrote in the report, “ SolarAPP+ Performance Review (2022 Data) . “Based on median timelines, a typical SolarAPP+ project is permitted and inspected 13 business days sooner than traditional projects… SolarAPP+ has eliminated over 134,000 days in permitting-related delays.”

    SolarAPP+ automates over 100 compliance checks in the permitting process that are usually the responsibility of city, county, or town employees, according to Jeff Cook, SolarAPP+ program lead at NREL and first author of the report. It can be more accurate, thorough, and efficient than a time-pressured local government employee would be.

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      A locally grown solution for period poverty

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Saturday, 9 December - 13:08 · 1 minute

    Image of rows of succulents with long spiky leaves and large flower stalks.

    Enlarge / Sisal is an invasive species that is also grown agriculturally. (credit: Chris Hellier )

    Women and girls across much of the developing world lack access to menstrual products. This means that for at least a week or so every month, many girls don’t go to school , so they fall behind educationally and often never catch up economically.

    Many conventional menstrual products have traditionally been made of hydrogels made from toxic petrochemicals, so there has been a push to make them out of biomaterials. But this usually means cellulose from wood, which is in high demand for other purposes and isn’t readily available in many parts of the globe. So Alex Odundo found a way to solve both of these problems: making maxi pads out of sisal, a drought-tolerant agave plant that grows readily in semi-arid climates like his native Kenya.

    Putting an invasive species to work

    Sisal is an invasive plant in rural Kenya, where it is often planted as livestock fencing and feedstock. It doesn’t require fertilizer, and its leaves can be harvested all year long over a five- to seven-year span. Odundo and his partners in Manu Prakash’s lab at Stanford University developed a process to generate soft, absorbent material from the sisal leaves. It relies on treatment with dilute peroxyformic acid (1 percent) to increase its porosity, followed by washing in sodium hydroxide (4 percent) and then spinning in a tabletop blender to enhance porosity and make it softer.

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      Cold temperatures in Las Vegas were “most difficult,” says Pirelli

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 22 November - 14:54 · 1 minute

    A set of used F1 tires in the pit lane in Las Vegas

    Enlarge (credit: Roberto Baldwin)

    Pirelli provided flights and accommodation from San Francisco to Las Vegas so Roberto could attend the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

    LAS VEGAS—It was cold this past weekend at the first Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix. Winters in the desert are notoriously chilly, and it didn't help that the race organizers decided to start the spectacle at 10 pm local time.

    The issue was the tires—they're not developed to handle frigid weather. Teams were tracking air temperatures and formulating plans to keep their cars on the road instead of sliding into a wall. There was some relief the night of the race, as the weather was warmer than it was during Friday night's qualifying session. At the start of the race ( according to Weather Underground ) it was roughly 60° F (15.5° C), and the actual lowest air temperature was still 10° F warmer than the historical average for November 18; turns out climate change is real and happening .

    There's nothing subtle about Formula 1. Big egos, big money, big tracks, and thanks to a certain Netflix show, big-time fan growth in the United States. But at its core, the actual cars themselves, relatively speaking, don't have that big of an impact on the environment. Sure, they're loud V6 engines, and the tires get depleted quicker than a pizza at a children's birthday party; but transporting the cars and pit equipment and tires and team members to each race uses far more energy than the race itself. And of course, if you factor in fans flying in from all over the world for the 23 races per year, you get a larger carbon footprint than, say, your kid's soccer game.

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