UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Plant-based biofuels can play a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and growing these crops in certain landscapes offers net climate benefits compared to other land use options, according to a team of international scientists.
Renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) produced significantly more electricity than either coal or nuclear power during the first five months of 2020, according to a SUN DAY Campaign analysis of just-released data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The Co-Optimization of Fuels & Engines (Co-Optima) National Laboratory consortium is jointly sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office and Vehicle Technologies Office. For the past four years, the Co-Optima team has focused research efforts primarily on turbocharged (or “boosted”) spark-ignition (SI) engines for light-duty vehicles. This research involves identifying the fuel properties and engine parameters that mitigate knock and emissions, while maximizing boosted SI efficiency and performance. As a capstone summarizing findings from the first phase of the Co-Optima initiative, the publication,"A Transportation Future with Science in the Driver’s Seat: Mapping a Viable Route Forward for Affordable, Efficient, and Clean Fuels and Engines" has been released.
Researchers are concerned that huge pulses of carbon emissions from devastating wildfires could overwhelm natural reservoirs that store carbon dioxide.
Big news on the sustainability front! San Francisco International Airport (SFO) recently announced a ban on plastic water bottles. The new ban includes both vendors and vending machines. Starting this week, you won’t be able to buy a single-use plastic water bottles at the airport.
New results relying on five decades of satellite observations show extensive changes to glaciers at the Earth's north and south poles, a result of global warming.
Deep in west Alabama, in a part of the state where most economic activity grows up from the ground, one woman is hoping to get paid for what she’s putting back into the soil.
OAK RIDGE, TN—A team of scientists led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered the specific gene that controls an important symbiotic relationship between plants and soil fungi, and successfully facilitated the symbiosis in a plant that typically resists it.
The discovery could lead to the development of bioenergy and food crops that can withstand harsh growing conditions, resist pathogens and pests, require less chemical fertilizer and produce larger and more plentiful plants per acre.
The verdict is in—again: Climate change mitigation cannot be achieved without wood bioenergy and sustainable forest management. This is according to the latest report on Climate Change and Land from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report unambiguously calls for “sustainable management of global land resources, including promoting forest management that is aimed at storing carbon while yielding timber, fiber and bioenergy.”
The bottom of the sea can be a gassy place. Underwater volcanoes and vents spew carbon dioxide (CO2) near the crevices where tectonic plates rift apart. Hungry bacteria convert decomposing creatures of the deep into natural methane. And, new research from Japan reminds us, enormous, miles-wide reservoirs of greenhouse gases lurk in untouched pockets just below the seafloor.
