Political hurdles and low prices have made carbon pricing a low-impact affair. But there’s still hope it can help limit climate change. Earth’s atmosphere has long served as a free dump for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases generated by humans.
Forests take up 25 to 30 percent of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide—a strong greenhouse gas—and therefore are considered to play a crucial role in mitigating the speed and magnitude of climate change.
Global climate change, driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases, is already affecting the planet, with more heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods, and accelerating sea-level rise.
Falling costs mean that power generated by offshore wind farms is becoming increasingly competitive with other fuels – and that’s good news for the climate.Offshore
The Paris climate agreement saw countries pledge to limit global warming to well below 2?, and to aim to keep it within 1.5?. The problem is that countries' current emissions targets are not enough to meet these goals.
Even though Iowa is typically associated with red state politics, everyone there seems to agree that wind power makes economic sense for one of the windiest states in the country.
This week’s decision by four Australian Catholic orders to divest fully from fossil fuels can be interpreted as a direct response to the encyclical on the environment, issued by Pope Francis almost exactly a year ago.
The solar panels of about 40,000 Massachusetts households and community groups cut electricity prices for all of the approximately three million electricity ratepayers in the state, even those without the panels, also called photovoltaics (PV) systems.
We seriously need to do something about CO2 emissions. Besides shifting to renewable energy sources and increasing energy efficiency, we need to start putting some of the CO2 away before it reaches the atmosphere.
The daily ebb and flow of the tides promise a renewable energy bonanza for countries such as Canada and the UK that have shallow seas and a steep tidal range.
Battery costs are plummeting to levels that make EVs a truly disruptive technology, as we’ve explained. That’s why electric vehicle (EV) sales are exploding world-wide, and why Tesla broke every record for pre-sales with its affordable ($35,000), 200+ mile range Model 3 last month.
Scientists have found a way to increase the energy cows take in from feed, while reducing the vast amounts of the greenhouse gas methane they pump out of the other end.
Among climate change activists, solutions usually center on a transition to renewable energy. There may be differences over whether this would be best accomplished by a carbon tax, bigger subsidies for wind and solar power, divestment from fossil fuel companies
Global demand for energy is increasing by the hour as developing countries move toward industrialization. Experts estimate that by the year 2050, worldwide demand for electricity may reach 30 terawatts (TW). For perspective, one terawatt is roughly equal to the power of 1.3 billion horses.
One of the places machine learning is turning out to be the most beneficial is in the environmental sciences, which have generated huge amounts of information from monitoring Earth’s various systems — underground aquifers, the warming climate or animal migration, for example.
From creating transparent wood for solar panels or windows to turning carbon dioxide and plant waste into plastic bottles, scientists are finding ingenious ways to sidestep fossil fuels.
It’s not just the planet that benefits from reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that intensify global warming.
Historic change heralded as investors are told they face losing their money if they continue to back the fossil fuel industry that is causing disastrous global warming.
As obesity levels soar, cutting the vast amount of food we waste could have a major impact on reducing the effects of climate change, as well as alleviating world hunger.
New research by the European Commission suggests that energy efficiency can become a “niche” market that will attract investors away from fossil fuels.
Few product launches in recent memory have captured as much attention as last week’s unveiling of the Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle (EV), Tesla’s first vehicle pitched at the mass market.
Every time you flush your toilet or drain the bath, you’re losing something surprisingly valuable: heat. It takes a lot of energy to warm up the water in the first place, and vast amounts of this energy simply disappear down and is lost in the environment.
Much of the U.S. was built around the automobile, with greater distances to be covered than in places like Europe, making Americans' daily lifestyles higher in energy than elsewhere.