Technology

It is entirely appropriate that big ticket efforts to reduce global warming causing greenhouse gas emissions are at the center of global climate efforts, however, there is also a need for small gestures. Such actions can make a big difference if repeated often. Governments (nations and subnational), public companies and private organizations all have a critical role to play and so do individuals. Efficiency in the aviation industry is a good illustration of how seemingly small efforts can make a difference. Something as simple as painting a plane with a light color can have a major impact. White paint is...

RelatedThe Environmental Impact of Livestock Farming (Infographic)

The Future of Sustainable Buildings Conference will take place on October 27, 2020 1 p.m. - 2 p.m. (EDT). This free live virtual conference is subtitled "How Timber Will Define the Skylines of Our Future". Climate change will impact how we live and design in the future. To slow the rate of climate change we need to rethink the way we build. Sustainable design has many meanings, but  it starts with the recipe of building and the choice of healthy ingredients. The materials of a building and especially the structural materials represent the embodied carbon in a building’s life. Timber is...

The University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia has become the first institute of higher learning in the world to have its entire energy consumption offset by renewable energy produced from its own assets. With 50,000 solar panels on campuses in Brisbane and Gatton generating 7 megawatts (MW) the university was already Australia's largest solar energy producing university. The new Warwick facility that was completed in 2020 generates about 160GWh per year making UQ energy neutral. The new facility not only meets its current electricity needs it also offsets projected future demand. The AU$125 million (US$87.33 million) cost of the project...

Buildings are a leading source of climate change causing greenhouse gas, and as such they are an essential part of carbon reduction efforts. Driven by lower costs and carbon abatement, green buildings offer tremendous benefits. New technologies like smart systems that access data in real time make it easy to identify savings opportunities. Buildings are becoming more efficient and their energy demand is expected to keep declining. This may be why the building sector and energy efficiency have outpaced most official projections. In an essay for Foreign Affairs' Hal Harvey thinks climate advocates should forget about pipelines and focus on...

Six years ago a sun-powered emissions-free aircraft called Solar Impulse, captivated our imagination by crossing the Pacific Ocean. That same year Airbus Group and its partners, unveiled the electric E-Fan training aircraft. However, it would take another five years for a test flight of an electric commercial carrier. In 2019, Canadian company Harbour Air and electric motor startup Magnix made history with their all-electric converted 6 passenger de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver seaplane. Recently MagniX conducted a successful test flight of a larger plane in Washington state.The modified Cessna Grand Caravan 208B which has been dubbed "eCaravan" was powered by a...

The cornavirus pandemic has highlighted supply chain weaknesses that are causing food shortages. As explained in an FAO report, the global pandemic is threatening supply lines leading to concerns about food insecurity. "A protracted pandemic crisis could quickly put a strain on the food supply chains, a complex web of interactions involving farmers, agricultural inputs, processing plants, shipping, retailers and more," the report said. In a March paper the U.N. Committee on World Food Security (CFS) warned that Covid-19 will cause heightened instability in global food supply. The pandemic also prompted the Food and Land Use Coalition to issue a...

Early in March as the coronavirus was breaking and air travel was declining airlines began flying empty planes so that they could keep their flight slots. According to European rules if airlines fail to fly their allocated flights they risk losing their right to fly these routes. These passenger-less flights are being called ghost planes. As a consequence they wasted thousands of gallons of jet fuel and generated emissions that we can ill afford given our dwindling carbon budgets. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought air travel to a virtual standstill, and more than $100 billion in losses are expected. This...

Research into NETs has shown both promise and disappointment. A 2010 study indicated that "negative emission technologies…significantly enhance the possibility to meet low concentration targets" (Azar et al, 2010). The American Geophysical Union has also called for further research (Landau, 2018). A recent article published in the Cambridge University Press called for a research agenda on NETS and stated: "There are many technological solutions to address climate change but unfortunately there are no silver bullets" (Nekuda, 2019).A 2016 paper called the assumption that these technologies and concepts will work to scale in time a "moral hazard” (Anderson & Peters, 2016)....

NETs have often been considered technologies of last resort. As emissions keep rising and global carbon budgets decline, it is becoming increasingly apparent that if we are to stave off the worst of climate change we must deploy and scale these carbon removal solutions as quickly as possible. Atmospheric carbon is the primary cause of the climate crisis and current CO2 concentrations are now higher than they have been in at least 800,000 years. (Lindsey, 2019). The average level of atmospheric CO2 for the month of December 2019 at Mauna Loa was 411.76 ppm (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ,...