Finland and Estonia have made a joint decision to lease a large LNG terminal ship in their pursuit of ending the use of Russian gas.
The project announced on 7 April is apparently underway, though few details or specifics have been made public at this stage.
Source: Finland and Estonia bunk on floating LNG terminal to secure gas supply – EURACTIV.com
In the 1960s, Japan was facing the same air pollution problems as the U.S., and as in the U.S., car makers scrambled to find ways to meet the resulting government limits on vehicle emissions.
In response, Honda Motor Co. founder Soichiro Honda established the company’s Air Pollution Control Lab with a team of just 30 engineers to investigate emissions control systems. At the time, Honda was a motorcycle company that was only just dipping a toe in automotive waters and had no budget to develop costly new technologies to control pollution from its vehicles.
Source: We Make it Simple: How Honda Outsmarted Catalytic Converters
Following a meeting in Brussels between US President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on March 25, the United States and the EU Commission announced measures to reduce Europe’s dependency on Russian energy, planning to immediately establish a joint Task Force on Energy Security to set out the parameters of this cooperation and execute its implementation.
The US vowed to ensure additional liquified natural gas (LNG) volumes for the EU market of at least 15 billion cubic meters in 2022 with expected increases going forward. The EU Commission said it will work with EU Member States toward ensuring stable demand for additional US. LNG until at least 2030 of approximately 50 billion cubic meters per year, on the understanding that the price formula of LNG supplies to the EU should reflect long-term market fundamentals, and stability of the cooperation of the demand and supply side, and that this growth be consistent with our shared net zero goals.
Source: US, EU LNG plan, take Russia out of energy loop | New Europe
A team of researchers at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., led by Jenny Zhang from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, successfully demonstrated the use of bacteria and photosynthesis for solar-based energy harvesting.
When we think of energy-harvesting options, the obvious possibilities that come to mind are likely solar and photovoltaics, vibration and piezoelectric transducers, wind and water turbines, or perhaps thermal via thermocouples.
But why be limited to such conventional thinking? It turns out there are other substances that can harvest energy, as the research team at the University of Cambridge has shown. They combined solar energy (those pre-packaged pure energy bundles) with a specialized bacteria to generate small, but useful, amounts of electricity.
Source: 3D Printing and Bacteria for Solar Harvesting – EE Times Europe
Here in the dirt of one of the world’s most radioactive places, Russian soldiers dug trenches. Ukrainian officials worry they were, in effect, digging their own graves.
Thousands of tanks and troops rumbled into the forested Chernobyl exclusion zone in the earliest hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, churning up highly contaminated soil from the site of the 1986 accident that was the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
For more than a month, some Russian soldiers bunked in the earth within sight of the massive structure built to contain radiation from the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor. A close inspection of their trenches was impossible because even walking on the dirt is discouraged.
Source: Russia’s Chernobyl seizure seen as nuclear risk ‘nightmare’ | AP News
As more EVs hit the road, they will create more worn-out batteries over time. While battery manufacturers are keenly interested in recovering the vital materials inside these batteries for re-use, there’s no need to tear car batteries apart just because their capacity has fallen below the 80 percent threshold generally regarded as the end of their usefulness as automotive power sources.
Instead, they can become the source of power in stationary power sources such as those made by the Italian company Pramac. Jaguar has announced a deal to provide Pramac with batteries that are retired from the company’s i-Pace EVs.
Source: Jaguar EV Batteries Are Headed to a Second Life as Power Stations
Congested cities stand to benefit the most from switching to electric vehicles, yet they often have the fewest places to charge them. As EVs become increasingly available, the plug problem is finally getting more attention.
Why it matters: Transportation is the leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Replacing gasoline cars with EVs could go a long way toward helping the planet.
Source: Startups try to make it easier to charge electric vehicles in cities
A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposal to require publicly traded companies to release detailed information about their climate-risk activities could lead to significant changes for businesses, investors, and the planet, said Wharton management professor Witold Henisz.
“It’s going to give investors a lot more information to assess what a company is doing and how it’s operating, and I think it’s a great move forward,” he said during an interview with Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM.
Source: The Benefits of the SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rule – Knowledge at Wharton
New polling results from The Harris Poll taken for Google Cloud, and shared first with Axios, show that senior executives at large companies around the world are prioritizing sustainability goals and feel confident in their company’s progress.
Yes, but: However, many of these same corporate leaders say that “green hypocrisy exists” and that their own company has overstated its sustainability progress.
Zoom in: The polling, conducted on 1,491 C-suite or VP-level executives across 16 markets and multiple industries, found that senior leaders face barriers to making progress on sustainability, especially difficulties in measuring and verifying progress.
Source: Global executives suspect their own companies of “greenwashing”
First Light Fusion (First Light) has confirmed that it has achieved fusion. The U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) independently validated the achievement.
The fusion achieved by the Oxford University fusion spin–out is the first to use projectile technology. The goal of First Light is to tackle the fusion challenge with a machine that is as simple as possible. According to scientists, projectile technology is a revolutionary inertial method that should be more energy–efficient and less expensive.