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Google and YouTube are taking a stand against climate misinformation, announcing a new policy that will demonetize climate denial content beginning Nov. 1. Google's decision to no longer display ads on "content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus" coincides with the upcoming United Nations Climate Summit in Glasgow. Meanwhile, even though YouTube has cracked down on COVID-19 misinformation by taking down a number of channels, it's now reviewing a major German channel after Axios reported its false claims have stayed up.
Bioenergy Technologies Office Webinar: Sustainable Aviation Fuel Strategy at the Bioenergy Technologies Office Presentation Slides
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has been collaborating with utilities and startups at the frontlines of high-renewable systems to make the technical and economic case for renewable fuels as we transition to a clean energy economy. With continued cost reductions for renewably generated electricity from sources like wind and solar systems, NREL is validating utility-scale hydrogen-production processes that could provide tomorrow’s clean fuels and chemical feedstocks to produce low-carbon, high-value products.
The melting of polar ice is not only shifting the levels of our oceans, it is changing the planet Earth itself. Newly minted Ph.D. Sophie Coulson and her colleagues explained in a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters that, as glacial ice from Greenland, Antarctica, and the Arctic Islands melts, Earth's crust beneath these land masses warps, an impact that can be measured hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles away.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt recently told a group of forestry executives and students that from now on the U.S. government would consider burning wood to generate electricity, commonly known as forest or woody biomass, to be “carbon neutral.”
During this Climate Week, and the upcoming COP26 climate summit of world leaders, corporations will make pledges to decarbonize and policymakers will up the ante on the urgency to transition away from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy to address threats posed by climate change.
In 2020, renewables generated a record 834 billion kWh of electricity, or about 21% of all the electricity generated in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration, coming in second to natural gas at 1,617 billion kWh.
Society has just begun to tap new renewable sources of energy from agriculture and forestlands on a commercial scale that impacts energy markets. Among these sources are biofuels, a small but important component of current fuel consumption in the U.S. transport sector. In 2012, biofuels accounted for roughly 7.1 percent of total transport fuel consumption, or 13.8 billion gallons, unchanged from the previous year. Ethanol, made mostly from corn starch from kernels, is by far the most significant biofuel in the United States, accounting for 94 percent of all biofuel production in 2012. Most of the remainder is biodiesel, which is made from vegetable oils (chiefly soy oil) as well as animal fats, waste oils, and greases.
Congressional members from both sides of the aisle are reminding President Joe Biden about his past promises to uphold the Renewable Fuel Standard as rumors continue to float about significantly lower RFS mandated volumes in the years ahead.