Enlarge (credit: US DOE) More details have emerged about the climate and energy priorities of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan, and they include support for nuclear power and carbon capture with sequestration (CCS). In a press conference yesterday with reporters, White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy said the administration would seek to implement a clean […]
(credit: MIT News) Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed into law late last week one of the nation’s most sweeping climate bills, putting the state on a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The law sets emissions limits of 50% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 75% cuts by 2040 with interim limits every […]
Enlarge / Sensors, support electronics, and a transmitter are all encased in a pressure-proof shell. (credit: Michael Prior-Jones) Through the GRACE satellite program, researchers have shown that Greenland’s ice sheet has been losing about 280 billion tons of ice each year—the equivalent of close to 1.5 million Olympic swimming pools. For glaciers like those in […]
Enlarge / A future green jet fuel? (credit: Picture Alliance/Getty Images) For many applications, liquid fuels remain the most practical energy supply—applications like aircraft and large ships being obvious examples. It’s possible to avoid using fossil fuels for these applications, since there are many ways of producing biofuels. But we can’t produce biofuels at a […]
Enlarge / All those lights take energy. (credit: DEA) Back in the pre-legalization days, cannabis production meant finding a rarely visited patch of land and growing outside, or it meant taking cultivation indoors—typically to a basement where your product wouldn’t be visible from the outside world. But the power use involved in lighting a basement […]
Recovering economies lead to a surge in pollution as carbon emissions rise in December, according to data from International Energy Agency Read More
Enlarge (credit: Picture Alliance / Getty Images) On Friday, the Biden administration announced it had fulfilled the requirements of one of the executive orders issued on the very first day of his presidency: determining what’s called the “social cost of carbon.” This figure tries to capture the cumulative economic value achieved by investing in limiting […]
Enlarge / The weather map on February 15. (credit: NASA EO) Some songs are earworms—catchy whether you like them or not. (I won’t infect the rest of your day with an example.) Some explanations in science seem to be the earworm equivalent: inherently intuitive, making them stick readily in the mind. That’s obviously the case […]
Enlarge / GM and Will Ferrell took a Cadillac Lyriq EV to Sweden to highlight the fact that Norway buys more electric vehicles per capita than the US. (credit: General Motors) Although a bunch of automakers chose to sit out 2021, General Motors still saw value in advertising during this year’s Super Bowl. The automaker […]
Enlarge / A prototype Amazon delivery truck in the Los Angeles area. (credit: Amazon) A year and a half after Amazon announced it would buy 100,000 electric trucks to reduce its carbon footprint, Amazon says it has begun using prototype vehicles for real-world deliveries in Los Angeles. Amazon expects to spend a few more months […]