Lifeboat Foundation

A chance to switch to renewable sources for heating, electricity and fuel, while also providing new opportunities for several industries to produce large numbers of renewable products. This is the verdict of researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, who now, after 10 years of energy research into gasification of biomass, see an array of new technological achievements.

“The potential is huge! Using only the already existing Swedish energy plants, we could produce renewable fuels equivalent to 10 percent of the world’s aviation fuel, if such a conversion were fully implemented,” says Henrik Thunman, Professor of Energy Technology at Chalmers.

How to implement a switch from fossil-fuels to renewables is a tricky issue for many industries. For heavy industries, such as oil refineries, or the paper and pulp industry, it is especially urgent to start moving, because investment cycles are so long. At the same time, it is important to get the investment right because you may be forced to replace boilers or facilities in advance, which means major financial costs. Thanks to long-term strategic efforts, researchers at Sweden´s Chalmers University of Technology have now paved the way for radical changes, which could be applied to new installations, as well as be implemented at thousands of existing plants around the globe.

Continue reading “Advanced biofuels can be produced extremely efficiently” »

Seafood consumption is both a love and a necessity for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. And its supply is a key part of maintaining food security for the whole planet. But during a time of rapid population growth and increasing demand, stocks of wild fish and invertebrates (such as mussels and prawns) are declining.

The problem is that policies and plans designed to make sure there are enough fish and invertebrates almost exclusively target fishing activity. But we also need to protect the critical habitats that are essential for the sustainability of these stocks and fisheries.

Most species that are fished require more than a single habitat to live and thrive. Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), for example, spends its adult life shoaling in deep water where it lives, feeds and spawns. But juveniles require more stable habitat such as seagrass meadows. So, if we want to manage fish and invertebrate stocks for sustainability reasons, it is essential to protect the supporting habitats of targeted species.

Continue reading “Loss of marine habitats is threatening the global fishing industry – new research” »

Insect-sized flying robots could help with time-consuming tasks like surveying crop growth on large farms or sniffing out gas leaks. These robots soar by fluttering tiny wings because they are too small to use propellers, like those seen on their larger drone cousins. Small size is advantageous: These robots are cheap to make and can easily slip into tight places that are inaccessible to big drones.

But current flying robo-insects are still tethered to the ground. The electronics they need to power and control their wings are too heavy for these miniature robots to carry.

Now, engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time cut the cord and added a brain, allowing their RoboFly to take its first independent flaps. This might be one small flap for a robot, but it’s one giant leap for robot-kind. The team will present its findings May 23 at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Brisbane, Australia.

Yes, I know of a soon to be made public solar company that will totally alter the renewable market. Decentralized microgrids are coming!

The rise in renewable energy will scramble the sector at this rate.

Is there enough space for all the wind turbines and solar panels to provide all our energy needs? What happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? Won’t renewables destabilise the grid and cause blackouts?

In a review paper last year in the high-ranking journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, researcher Benjamin Heard and colleagues presented their case against 100 percent renewable electrical systems. They doubted the feasibility of many of the recent scenarios for high shares of renewable energy, questioning everything from whether renewables-based systems can survive extreme weather events with low sun and low wind, to the ability to keep the grid stable with so much variable generation.

Now, scientists have hit back with their response to the points raised by Heard and colleagues. The researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and collaborators have analysed hundreds of studies to answer each of the apparent issues. They demonstrate that there are no roadblocks to a 100 percent renewable future.

China and India are going to build a Lunar base/colony (I’ve heard) and the Japanese (I’ve heard) want to clad the moon in solar cells and microwave the power to Earth. To different places round the globe depending on the time.

In May 2018, China wrapped up a yearlong mission inside “Lunar Palace 1,” a Beijing facility designed to help the nation prepare to but boots on the moon. See images of the experiment here. (Read our full story here.) Here: Four volunteers take the oath in front of Lunar Palace 1, a facility for conducting bio-regenerative life-support systems experiments key to setting up a lunar base, at the Beijing University for Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA) on May 10, 2017. A ceremony was held in the BUAA that day as eight volunteers in two groups started a 365-day experiment in Lunar Palace 1.

A UCF research team with collaborators at Virginia Tech have developed a new “green” approach to making ammonia that may help make feeding the rising world population more sustainable.

“This new approach can facilitate ammonia production using renewable energy, such as electricity generated from solar or wind,” said physics Assistant Professor Xiaofeng Feng. “Basically, this new approach can help advance a sustainable development of our human society.”

Ammonia, a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen, is essential to all life on the planet and is a vital ingredient in most fertilizers used for food production. Since World War I, the ammonia in fertilizer has been primarily produced using the Haber-Bosch method, which is energy and fossil-fuel intensive. There have been substantial obstacles to improving the process, until now.

If someone tells you to go suck an egg, you might want to think twice about it if you live on the east coast. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last month that a Salmonella outbreak affecting hundreds of millions of eggs had been traced back to a farm in Hyde County, North Carolina. Public health officials have traced consumers’ illnesses in nine different states to the outbreak. Last week, the CDC released a map showing the outbreak’s spread.

Rose Acre Farms, the company responsible for the outbreak, distributes eggs all over the US, to both grocery stores and restaurants. As a result of contamination on the North Carolina farm, over 206 million eggs were exposed to Salmonella braenderup, a bacteria that causes severe diarrhea. The outbreak began in mid-April and appears to be slowing down, but in a multi-state outbreak like this, officials at the CDC may not hear about people getting sick right away. Therefore, the data on the case continues to evolve as reports roll in. The most recent numbers count 35 illnesses, 11 hospitalizations, and no deaths. Here’s a map of the outbreak’s current extent:

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The Astana Global Challenge Summit 2018 will host a series of panels and talks on longevity and rejuvenation.

As it has every year since 2008, the Astana Economic Forum (AEF) is about to take place in Astana, Kazakhstan. AEF, now also known as the Global Challenges Summit (GCS), is an international and regional non-profit platform for public discourse on topics such as economics, globalization, security, global risks, energy efficiency, innovation, and, more generally, matters concerning the future of our world and society. It was jointly created by the Eurasian Economic Club of Scientists Association and the Kazakhstan government back in 2008, and over the years, it has hosted innumerable talks and presentations by scientists, economists, world leaders, entrepreneurs, Nobel laureates, and other key people.

In our rapidly changing world, where we sometimes struggle to keep up the pace with progress, initiatives like this are greatly needed and welcome. In order to address the global issues we will face in the coming decades, cooperation, dialogue, information sharing, and networking will be pivotal, and events like the GCS are instrumental in achieving success. The themes of the 2018 event, which will be held on May 17–19, will include global strategy, sustainability, the future of money, clean energy, a unified economy, and many others. Around 500 speakers from all over the world will be on stage to discuss these important topics, sharing visions and insights to build a brighter and safer future together.