Biden called for US energy independence — advanced biofuels can propel us

It has been nearly a month since President Biden addressed the nation to announce a ban on Russian oil imports amid Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. As Biden pointed out during his speech, this moment is “a stark reminder” that the U.S. needs to be energy independent. At the time, the president made clear to the American public that gas prices, already on the rise prior to the invasion, would reach new heights as a result of U.S. sanctions. Today, we are seeing his prediction play out as gas prices have soared 48 percent year-over-year.

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Sea Level to Rise up to a Foot by 2050, Interagency Report Finds

Coastal flooding will increase significantly over the next 30 years because of sea level rise, according to a new report by an interagency sea level rise task force that includes NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and other federal agencies. Titled Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States, the Feb. 15 report concludes that sea level along U.S. coastlines will rise between 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30 centimeters) on average above today’s levels by 2050.

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A Cue From Kitty Hawk: What the Wright Brothers Teach Us About Decarbonizing Flight

The seeds of modern aviation didn’t merely sprout from two brothers’ dream of flight. They broke into the sunlight through the rigor of the scientific process.

I’ve heard that the Wright brothers tested hundreds of wing designs during their efforts to build and demonstrate the first fully functional airplane. Many of those wooden wings never took off. But every experiment — whether airborne or not — taught the American inventors something valuable.

Orville and Wilbur Wright carried insights back to their lab, where they polished their understanding of the dynamics of lift. They gathered detailed data, revised their assumptions, and improved their designs. It was rigorous applied science that earned extraordinary results.

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Net-Zero-Emission Biofuels

Aviation, marine, and trucking are among the most difficult transportation sectors to decarbonize. NREL researchers are developing processes to convert widely available biomass and waste feedstocks into sustainable biofuels that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 100% compared to petroleum-based fuels.

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FACT SHEET: Biden Administration Advances the Future of Sustainable Fuels in American Aviation

Today, President Biden is taking steps to coordinate leadership and innovation across the federal government, aircraft manufacturers, airlines, fuel producers, airports, and non-governmental organizations to advance the use of cleaner and more sustainable fuels in American aviation. These steps will help make progress toward our climate goals for 2030 and are essential to unlocking the potential for a fully zero-carbon aviation sector by 2050. Today’s executive actions across the Departments of Energy, Transportation, Agriculture, Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the General Services Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency will result in the production and use of billions of gallons of sustainable fuel that will enable aviation emissions to drop 20% by 2030 when compared to business as usual. Together with President Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda, these new agency steps and industry partnerships will transform the aviation sector, create good-paying jobs, support American agriculture and manufacturing, and help us tackle the climate crisis.

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Thawing Permafrost Could Leach Microbes, Chemicals Into Environment

Scientists are turning to a combination of data collected from the air, land, and space to get a more complete picture of how climate change is affecting the planet’s frozen regions.

Trapped within Earth’s permafrost – ground that remains frozen for a minimum of two years – are untold quantities of greenhouse gases, microbes, and chemicals, including the now-banned pesticide DDT. As the planet warms, permafrost is thawing at an increasing rate, and scientists face a host of uncertainties when trying to determine the potential effects of the thaw.

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What Is the Greenhouse Effect?

Earth is said to be in a perfect "Goldilocks zone" away from the sun (not too cold, and not too hot), which enables life to thrive on the planet's surface. But Earth's balmy temperatures would not be possible without the greenhouse effect, which traps solar energy on Earth's surface and keeps the planet warm.

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The future of bioenergy

Energy from biomass plays a large and growing role in the global energy system. Energy from biomass can make significant contributions to reducing carbon emissions, especially from difficult‐to‐decarbonize sectors like aviation, heavy transport, and manufacturing. But land‐intensive bioenergy often entails substantial carbon emissions from land‐use change as well as production, harvesting, and transportation. In addition, land‐intensive bioenergy scales only with the utilization of vast amounts of land, a resource that is fundamentally limited in supply. Because of the land constraint, the intrinsically low yields of energy per unit of land area, and rapid technological progress in competing technologies, land intensive bioenergy makes the most sense as a transitional element of the global energy mix, playing an important role over the next few decades and then fading, probably after mid‐century. Managing an effective trajectory for land‐intensive bioenergy will require an unusual mix of policies and incentives that encourage appropriate utilization in the short term but minimize lock‐in in the longer term.

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