Day: August 17, 2015

Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project awards $9.3 million for innovative energy research

The Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) at Stanford University has awarded $9.3 million for six new research projects on energy. The funding will be shared by scientists at Stanford and four other universities to develop a suite of promising energy technologies, from a device that extracts power from the night sky to a charcoal-like soil amendment that removes carbon dioxide from the air.

“For more than a decade, GCEP has supported bold ideas for new technologies that significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said GCEP Director Sally Benson, a professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford. “These six projects are potential game changers that could help transform our global energy system in the future.”

The six awards bring the total number of GCEP-supported research programs to 127 since the project’s launch in 2002. In total, GCEP has awarded $170 million for energy research and other technical activities.

“The projects funded this cycle include a unique mix of energy technologies,” said GCEP management committee member Peter Trelenberg, manager of environmental policy & planning at Exxon Mobil. “These promising research efforts have the potential to open up pathways for applying innovative clean-energy approaches in the future.”

Stanford awards

The following Stanford faculty members will receive funding to develop new techniques for cooling buildings, improving engine efficiency and generating renewable fuels:

Nighttime radiative cooling: Harvesting the darkness of the universe. Researchers will create a device that generates electricity at night by radiating heat into outer space. This passive energy source, which exploits the large temperature difference between space and Earth, could provide nighttime lighting without batteries or other electrical inputs. Investigator: Shanhui Fan, professor, Department of Electrical Engineering.

Use of mixed combustion/electrochemical energy conversion to achieve efficiencies in excess of 70 percent for transportation-scale engines. This project will demonstrate how engines for transportation can be made at efficiencies above 70 percent, exceeding conventional internal combustion engines and fuel cells used today. Investigator: Chris Edwards, professor, Mechanical Engineering.

Electrochemical tuning of electronic structures for highly active electrocatalysts. The goal of this project is to identify efficient, low-cost metal catalysts that can split water into oxygen and clean-burning hydrogen fuel. Researchers will conduct experiments on several promising catalytic materials using lithium to enhance hydrogen production. Investigators: Yi Cui, associate professor, Materials Science and Engineering; Harold Hwang, professor, Applied Physics.

Sustainable fuel production from carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. The aim of this research is to discover metal catalysts capable of converting carbon dioxide and its byproducts into methanol and other alcohols for use in sustainable fuels and chemicals. Investigators: Professor Jens Nørskov, Associate Professor Thomas Jaramillo and Professor Stacey Bent, Chemical Engineering; Anders Nilsson, professor, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Negative-emissions awards

In 2012, GCEP conducted a workshop on the feasibility of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That workshop resulted in a worldwide call for proposals to develop new carbon-negative technologies. Two research teams outside of Stanford will receive funding in this category:

The pyrolysis-bioenergy-biochar pathway to carbon-negative energy. Heating plant material slowly without oxygen – a process called pyrolysis – produces a carbon-rich material called biochar. Researchers will study the production of biochar for use as a soil amendment that stores carbon underground instead of allowing carbon dioxide to re-enter the atmosphere as the plant decomposes. Investigators: David Laird, Bruce Babcock, Robert Brown and Dermot Hayes (Iowa State University); David Zilberman (University of California, Berkeley).

Sustainable transportation energy with net-negative carbon emissions. Researchers will conduct an integrated ecological and engineering systems analysis to identify promising transportation fuels with negative carbon emissions. The project will include field studies of potential grassland resources in the United States. Investigators: Eric Larson, Princeton University; Clarence Lehman and David Tilman, University of Minnesota.

GCEP is an industry partnership that supports innovative research on energy technologies to address the challenge of global climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The project includes five corporate sponsors: ExxonMobil, GE, Schlumberger, DuPont and Bank of America.

 

Cutting food waste by a quarter would mean enough for everyone, says UN

Read the full story in The Guardian.

With the global population rising, wastage of products including 45% of all fruit and vegetables and 20% of meat is one of the greatest challenges to achieving food security.

Tracking Climate Change Regulation

Read the full post on the Climate Law Blog.

The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law has updated the Climate Regulation Tracker on our website. The Climate Regulation Tracker is a uniquely comprehensive resource, compiling in one place and providing links to the federal government’s climate change-related rules and regulations.

Why Sustainability Ratings Matter

Read the full post at MIT Sloan Management Review.

The growing body of research linking strong sustainability performance with strong financial performance only improves the value proposition for sustainable business practices. A recent study of 2,300 companies by George Serafeim and his colleagues at Harvard Business School, for example, found that companies with good performance on material ESG issues demonstrate stronger stock performance than those with weak performance on the same material measures. These results are consistent with other studies that should sway even the strongest ESG skeptics that ESG investments pay for themselves many times over.

Millions Of ‘Shade Balls’ Protect LA’s Water During Drought

Read the full story in the Huffington Post.

Los Angeles can’t make it rain, but it can shield its precious water with “shade balls” — 96 million of them to be exact.

 

Wind and solar surge sends EU emissions tumbling

Read the full story at Climate News Network.

Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling fast, mainly because of the rapid spread of the wind turbines and solar panels that are replacing fossil fuels for electricity generation.

European Union data shows that once countries adopt measures to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs), they often exceed their targets − and this finding is backed up by figures released this week in a statement by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The Convention’s statistics show that the 37 industrialised countries (plus the EU) that signed up in 1997 to the Kyoto Protocol − the original international treaty on combating global warming – have frequently exceeded their promised GHG cuts by a large margin.

Phone Book Industry Makes Environmental Advances, Still Needs Improvement in Sustainability

Read the full story from the Product Stewardship Institute.

Is the telephone book – once a common and useful tool in every household – still around? Even in the digital era, the answer is yes. And in the past year, telephone directory publishers took steps to reduce the environmental impacts of their products. But they continue to fall short in key areas, according to a new report card published by the nonprofit Product Stewardship Institute (PSI).

The 2015 Sustainability Report Card of Telephone Directory Publishers evaluates 13 publishers against benchmark best practices on three categories of sustainability: providing easy access to opt-out programs (i.e., the ability to choose not to receive a phone book), using sustainable paper and ink, and supporting recycling programs. All 13 publishers allow residents to opt out of receiving directories, and 12 facilitate opt-out awareness by promoting it on the covers of their print directories or on their websites. The Berry Company and Names and Numbers provide financial support for community recycling infrastructure, and Dex Media, Local Edge, and Hagadone Directories claim to use 40% or higher recycled content paper. Even so, 7 out of 13 publishers still received grades of D+ or lower for shortcomings in sustainability and transparency.

Allegheny County, Pa., Emphasizes ‘Green’ Infrastructure in $2 Billion Stormwater Control Effort

Read the full story in FutureStructure.

Greening the county’s antiquated sewer network can be accomplished through a series of regionally focused, strategically placed solutions, such as green roofs, permeable pavement and stormwater planters.

Commentary: Pipelines, fish tanks and environmental risk

Read the full post at Great Lakes Echo.

Risk assessment quickly gets complicated when you start weighing things more consequential than a leaky fish tank. What is the economic impact of closing that pipeline? How do we weigh that? Will gasoline be more expensive? How much? Would you pay another penny a gallon if it prevented a catastrophic spill? How about a dime?

Energy Efficiency in the Clean Power Plan: Take One

Read the full post from ACEEE.

On August 3rd, EPA released the final Clean Power Plan (CPP), a rule that sets performance rates and individual state targets for carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. Now that the emissions targets are set, energy efficiency plays a prominent role as a proven strategy that states can use to reduce energy, cut emissions, and boost the economy. As we have said, it’s not important that energy efficiency is no longer a CPP building block. The fact is that it’s prominently featured as a key compliance option for states in EPA’s materials (see Energy Efficiency TSD and Key Topics and Issues Fact Sheet), as a component of the rule’s Regulatory Impact Analysis, and even in the president’s speech announcing the rule.

Now that we’ve had time for a first read-through of the final rule, we’ve found some significant changes from the proposed version.