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World leaders are still trying to figure out how to handle the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic waste generated every year. Back in the 1990s, it was tough to switch on the TV and not see ads or shows offering viewers a simple solution: to reduce, reuse, and recycle plastics. Nice words, but it turns out that wasn’t enough to solve the problem. New high tech methods have shown promise in breaking down plastics or creating new ones that are easier to recycle. But they’re expensive alternatives. Will the economics work out? WSJ’s Danny Lewis sorts through the future of plastics recycling.

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FOR YEARS, THE world has known what it has to do about climate change: hold the line at 1.5 degrees Celsius to stave off the worst effects of warming. To do so we need to make serious cuts to carbon emissions, fast—at least 42 percent from 2019 levels by 2030. That’s been the aim since 2015, when world leaders came together to sign the Paris Agreement. So around this time last year, when global climate negotiators arrived at the United Nations’ annual Conference of Parties meeting, known as COP26, they came with a clear mandate. Yet by the end of the marathon negotiations, they left Glasgow with the carbon arithmetic far from solved.

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Countries around the world are turning to biogas and biomethane to enhance their energy and food security and jump-start their circular economies.

Biogas is produced by breaking down organic waste – agricultural, food, municipal or animal, including manure and sewage – through a process known as anaerobic digestion, while biomethane removes greenhouse gases via carbon capture. Digestate, the other by-product of anaerobic digestion, can also be used as fertiliser.

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Ford Motor Company’s announcement that it will invest $11 billion in the production of electric vehicles will mean 10,800 jobs in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The initiative reflects what clean energy advocates have been saying for years — that electric vehicles can create jobs — but the decision to stop producing products that require fossil fuels was likely not a sudden change of heart for the company.

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Production and use of biofuels is considered by the U.S. government to have fewer or lower negative effects on the environment compared to fossil-fuel derived fuels. There are also potential national economic and security benefits when biofuel use reduces the need to import petroleum fuels. Government programs that promote and/or require biofuels use, such as the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), define the types of biofuels and processes or low-carbon pathways by which biofuels can be produced in order for them to qualify for use under the programs. While biofuels have environmental benefits, their production and use do have effects on the environment.

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Fuel ethanol data
Year Million gallons Thousand barrels Thousand barrels per day
U.S. production 2021 15,015 357,502 979
U.S. imports 2021 61 1,447 4
U.S. exports 2021 1,252 29,803 82
U.S. consumption 2021 13,937 331,823 909
World production 2019 28.91 688.39 1.89
World consumption 2019 28.61 681.09 1.87

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"Science" was a class you probably took in school, but the subject matter you studied was not the only thing you learned. Your science classes helped you develop a mindset, a way of problem-solving, that you can still tap into today in any line of work.

People with various academic and experiential backgrounds collaborate with the researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). They have opportunities to work with people like Nalinrat Guba, whose scientist mindset is complemented by those of an artist, athlete, and caretaker. These perspectives make her a versatile and impactful member of NREL's Computational Science Center, where clients come to achieve their goals leveraging computational science, high-performance computing, applied mathematics, and advanced computer science, visualization, and data.

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An underutilized natural resource could be just what the airline industry needs to curb carbon emissions.

Researchers at three institutions—the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Washington State University—report success in using lignin as a path toward a drop-in 100% sustainable aviation fuel. Lignin makes up the rigid parts of the cell walls of plants. Other parts of plants are used for biofuels, but lignin has been largely overlooked because of the difficulties in breaking it down chemically and converting it into useful products.

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The Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Grand Challenge is the result of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and other federal government agencies working together to develop a comprehensive strategy for scaling up new technologies to produce SAF on a commercial scale.

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Three new reports from the United Nations paint a grim picture of what’s to come in the near future as the world falls short in mobilizing against climate change. According to the reports, nations are failing to create and act on sufficient plans to reduce warming as global greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise — a combination that is putting the planet on track to hit nearly 3 degrees Celsius of warming within less than 80 years.

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