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Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies will be at the forefront of international efforts to fight climate change. CCS technologies can be adopted to make cleaner electricity - not only from coal but also from heavy petroleum residues - and for that reason the European Union is looking into it with the ambition of introducing them as part of EU’s cap and trade scheme.
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The world is facing huge challenges with climate change, food scarcity being one of them. There is an urgent need to increase the use of appropriate technologies for sustainable agriculture. However, the identification and development of suitable technologies is a challenge in itself and we’re not even talking about the efficient dissemination of these, which would be the next step.
Wave Hub is an electrical hub on the seabed 16 Km off the north coast of Cornwall in South West England to which wave energy devices can be connected. Its sole existence is to provide shared offshore infrastructure for the demonstration and verification of a collection of wave energy generation devices over a sustained period of time.
The UK is pushing for the implementation of a ‘green accounting system’ by governments worldwide. With such practice Britain is hoping to formally acknowledge a value on environmental assets like forests or lakes. British Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman will be spreading the word at the next world conference on sustainable development to be held in Brazil this June.
An engineering Italian company found a way of boosting solar panel’s efficiency with a solar concentrator system while not taking up valuable space on land. The company put them on rafts so that the solar concentrator system could use the water from small lakes or artificial reservoirs to cool solar panel’s generators on farms or quarries.
iWe can´t live without our gadgets: from a GPS that helps you get to your destination to a Smartphone that lets you check your email while away on your little road adventure. The thing that most of us dread in this digital era is to be out of the game because you run out of power.
Women are the key players in the developing world these days. Most often than not, they’re the sole driving force behind local and parallel economies, subjected to labor-intensive and unpaid work like in Uganda where 80% of all unpaid workers are women. A report by the World Bank found that they’re also victims of gender discrimination in the formal employment sector. This all happens despite Ugandan women being highly entrepreneurial.
At the Edinburgh Napier University a star-up is ready to commercialize a process for producing biofuel made from whisky by-products. Initially, Celtic Renewables Ltd will center all of their efforts on Scotland’s £ 4bn malt whisky industry with the purpose of developing biobutanol and other chemicals.
Over the last 20 years more than 11,000 bird and butterfly species were analyzed in Europe in what is the largest study of its kind. Scientists are now releasing some of the data gathered during that period of time and one of the conclusions is that these species are not keeping up with the pace of climate change.
It sounds like something out of science fiction, but the Dearman Engine Company is very serious about their invention, which they say will be only second best to cold fusion – an engine that runs on liquid air.
The North Sea is known to be a prime site for wind development. Several countries have set up wind farms in this location with Great Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and The Netherlands taking the lead in this race for clean energy. The site has great potential and developers are always looking for new ways to make the most of it.
Promethean Power Systems is a small startup with a big dream: change lives of poor Indians villagers by helping them keep milk chilled. This simple thing could be a massive revolution for impoverished and isolated people in parts of India where you cannot rely on electric power. Each year in India $10 billion in agricultural produce is lost due to inadequate refrigeration.
India is the second most populous country in the world (China is top of the list) with 1.21 billion people, which represents more than a sixth of the world’s population. And this number is on the rise: the projections show that by 2025, India will surpass China and become the most populous country in the planet.
New analysis suggests that by the middle of this century many routes across and around the Arctic Ocean that are now partially blocked by ice will open during summer months, allowing the passage of ships. On the other hand, due to the rise in temperature, some parts of Arctic ground accessible in winter via ice roads will become unreachable by land.
A set of new satellite images show that the same tsunami that swept across large areas of Japan, on March 11, also broke off giant icebergs in Antarctica. This astonishing revelation is proof that the effects of the 9.0 earthquake that caused the deaths of 15,000 people in Japan were felt halfway around the world.
Rhinos are being threatened with extinction to meet demand for sham cancer treatment. Poaching in South African nature reserves has reached epidemic levels, all because of an entirely – and completely false - widespread belief in the Far East that rhino horn can cure cancer and other serious life-threatening illnesses. For the poachers the rewards are immense and difficult to resist: rhino horn can fetch 50,000 sterling pounds a Kilo, a ‘commodity’ now worth more than diamonds, gold or illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine.
The UN (United Nations) issued a worrying report concerning the scarcity of food in a new future and linking the problem to two factors: population surge and water stress. These two aspects of the equation are driving the planet to a food and environmental crisis. According to the study only better farming techniques and a more efficient use of ecosystems can prevent disaster.
The dugong is a large marine mammal and the closest modern relative to the Steller’s sea cow which was hunted to extinction in the 18th century. The dugong is also the only strictly-marine herbivorous mammal, as it doesn’t venture into fresh water like some other marine herbivorous mammals do to varying degrees.
The principle is simple: as we walk, we waste energy that could be harvested. A group of US researchers took that concept on board and developed a way to generate electricity from human motion. They created a device that could be placed in a shoe in order to capture the energy of moving micro droplets, converting it into electrical current.
In Africa, everyday life is a struggle for farmers and their livelihoods. Unfortunately, in Kenya, elephants and farmers compete for limited resources and desperation sets in.
