Developing genetically modified trees and plants could capture billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere annually and reduce the impacts of global warming, a new U.S. study says. In the study, researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory explore methods of enhancing the processes by which plants sequester
What two countries lead the world in energy consumption, energy production and greenhouse gas emissions? The United States and China. Can our two countries work together to help lead the world in a transition to clean energy? A recent announcement by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu is an important step in that direction.
Each year energy-related carbon dioxide emissions account for more than 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. According to the Energy Information Association, that adds up to over 5,814 million metric tons (MMT) of carbon in 2008 alone. The Obama administration recognizes that this is not sustainable and that’s why we’ve actively sought to not only
Biochar is charcoal type created by the pyrolysis of biomass, and differs from ordinary charcoal only in the sense that its primary use is not for fuel, but for biosequestration or atmospheric carbon capture and storage. As much as 12 percent of the world’s human caused greenhouse gas emissions could be sustainably offset by producing biochar.
Restoring damaged rainforest is a more effective way of capturing carbon than cultivating industrial, single-species tree plantations, according to a new study. After testing three types of plantations in northeastern Australia — monoculture plantations of native conifers, mixed plantations, and restored rainforests containing a diversity of trees — Australian
During President Obama’s speech this week at Carnegie Mellon University, he signaled emphatically that he would go after the votes to pass a clean energy bill this year, assuring that while “the votes may not be there right now… I intend to find them in the coming months… and we will get it done.”This is exactly the sort of presidential resolve that’s needed. The president went on to say,
[T]he only way the transition to clean energy will succeed is if the private sector is fully invested in this future – if capital comes off the sidelines and the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs is unleashed. And the only way to do that is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution.
He got it exactly right – investors are waiting to see what Congress decides. And once we do set a price for carbon pollution, a huge amount of money will be back in play to invest in clean energy.
The Norwegian government has delayed until 2014 a highly touted project to capture and sequester carbon dioxide on a large scale, saying the project had become too complex to develop in the next several years.
The project, to be located at Mongstad in western Norway and developed in conjunction with the oil firm Statoil, was designed to capture carbon on an industrial scale, proving that the technology could safely and effectively be used to sharply reduce carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants.
The Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Sotltenberg, had called the proposed Mongstad facility Norway’s “moonlanding” project.
A new technology that uses aminosilicones, a product found in hair conditioners and fabric softeners, has proven successful in removing 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from the simulated flue gases created by coal-fired power plants.
Chemists at General Electric Global Research, reporting their findings at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, said that using aminosilicones as a scrubber material holds the promise of stripping CO2 from flue gases more efficiently and cheaply that current compounds being tested as CO2 scrubbers.
Robert Perry, a chemist who helped invent the aminosilicone scrubber system, said the material will soon be used on a pilot scale at a power plant.
The drive to extract and store CO2 from coal-fired power plants is gaining momentum, with the Obama administration backing the technology and the world’s first capture and sequestration project now operating in the U.S. Two questions loom: Will carbon capture and storage be affordable? And will it be safe?
On a placid bend of the Ohio River in West Virginia sit two coal-fired power plants. The Philip Sporn Plant boasts four boilers from the 1950s, surrounded by mountains of coal and a series of man-made lakes to contain the toxic residue of its coal-burning.
A faint haze emanates from its main smokestack, the only visible sign of the thousands of tons of acid-rain-forming sulfur dioxide, smog-forming nitrogen oxides, and climate-warming carbon dioxide it emits each day, a consequence of the plant’s complete lack of pollution-control technologies. The 1,100 megawatts of electricity it produces will never benefit from such controls, as they are too expensive to install on the multiple small boilers, according to the plant’s owner, American Electric Power.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have created a synthetic “gene” they say can capture carbon dioxide emissions.
Omar M. Yaghi, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has developed thousands of so-called crystal sponges that absorb gases and have proven effective in the lab at storing CO2.
The synthetic crystals, which code information in a “DNA-like manner,” have nanoscale-sized pores that Yaghi says allow molecules to go in and out.
President Obama is supporting an ambitious plan to increase biofuel production in the U.S. and to develop 5 to 10 demonstration projects to capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and store the CO2 underground.
Unveiling a policy to develop biofuels not only from corn but also from farm and forest waste and switch grass, Obama said his administration will strive to meet a Congressional target of producing 36 billion gallons of ethanol and advanced biofuels by 2022.
Scientists are reporting that biochar, which is a material that the Amazonian Indians used to enhance soil fertility centuries ago, has the potential in the modern world to help slow global climate change. Mass production of biochar could capture carbon that otherwise would wind up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Their report appears in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a bi-weekly journal.
It has only recently been realized that pyrogenic carbon or biochar or charcoal, can make up a significant fraction of the organic carbon in soils and sediments. As such, it is an important but poorly understood portion of the global carbon cycle. Biochar also may be useful as an additive to soils to enhance fertility.
A new report from Pike Research of Colorado says the addition of carbon capture systems to power plants will add 50% to 70% to the cost of creating electricity for existing and future plants.
The report, titled “Carbon Capture and Sequestration: Drivers and Barriers, Technology Issues, Key Industry Players, Market Analysis and Forecasts,” adds that such increases in costs will be initially underwritten by governments but gradually passed on to ratepayers.
Dow Chemical Company, a worldwide leader in the global chemical industry, and sponsor of the 2010 Dow Live Earth Run for Water, has entered into agreements with the new Saudi Arabian King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) for developing cleaner, new routes for producing chemical derivatives.
The two are also looking into ways for carbon capture –a method which proposes to suck up and store greenhouse gas emissions.
Although many of the chemicals produced by the American chemical giant are used in the petroleum distilling and petrochemical industries, with much of the company’s “raw material” is coming from Saudi Arabia.