In Between Times 1-5-2024
How to best use carbon capture, Highway cutting through the Amazon to be refurbished, Graphite becoming more important, Toilet to tap is happening
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OK so carbon capture, But how do we use it best?
Carbon capture tech is controversial (for some climate activists) and expensive. Even still, it is a technology that deserves attention and investment as pulling carbon from the atmosphere (and at the source) is simply a problem that must be addressed. Turning away from this vital part of solving the climate equation would be unwise in the extreme. Thankfully that appears unlikely as progress continues to be made on the carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) front.
Two areas of particular interest in these early days are the cement and steel industries. Both industries are vital to the world economy but both industries have carbon emissions that are “hard to abate”. Carbon capture at the source could be enormously helpful as steel and cement manufacture collectively represent 15% of all global carbon emissions. That’s more than the entire economy of the USA.
Bloomberg argues that this might be the lowest hanging carbon capture fruit.
(From Bloomberg)
“The real utility of carbon capture is addressing the hard-to-abate emissions that can’t be dealt with,” said Ben Grove, carbon storage manager at the Clean Air Task Force, a climate research nonprofit.
One of those hard-to-abate sectors is cement, which accounts for about 8% of global emissions. While parts of the cement-making process can be electrified, some of the CO2 emissions from production are “fundamental to the process,” said Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame…
…“Unless you come up with a replacement for cement or a vastly different formulation, there’s not a way around those emissions without using something like CCS,” Grubert said.
Steelmaking is another industrial process with few immediate decarbonization pathways. While startups and incumbents are looking at ways to produce the world’s most used metal without the emissions, the costs are great and the industry needs to cut emissions rapidly.
In some cases, it may make more sense to retrofit a new steel plant with carbon capture technology
Click here for the article.
Allsides: Is The New York Times fake news?
Allsides is a remarkably good resource for everyone, right, left, up, down. It is an unusually fair minded publication. The attached article is a (again) very fair examination of some of the stories the Gray Lady has run recently. She has stumbled a few times of late.
(From Allsides)
An entire news outlet isn’t “fake news” because it posted one incorrect or false story. Mistakes do happen. Often, good journalists who make a mistake or accidentally publish false information issue apologies and corrections, and try to rectify the situation.
However, there are some examples of the New York Times publishing what some may say amounts to “fake news.”
Click here for the article.
An abandoned highway through the middle of the Amazon is about to be repaved. Does this spell doom for the ecosystem?
The road was originally carved out of the forest in the 1970s when the government sought to connect the large city of Manaus, which can only be reached reliably by air or by river currently, with the rest of Brazil. It has long fallen into disrepair and is impassable at all for many months of the year. But that may soon change as the current government seeks to bring the thoroughfare into the 21st century. With this new road will likely come new, likely illegal, timbering.
(From EuroNews.com)
Much of the route is now impassable during the rainy season. Vehicles that attempt it during dry months crawl along the broken pavement, dodging huge potholes and jungle debris.
Amazon researchers say the repaved road would trigger an explosion of deforestation in Amazonas state, home to most of Brazil's best-preserved rainforest state due to a lack of roads.
Every major highway project in the Amazon has set off a surge in land grabbing and illegal deforestation. Researchers say BR-319 would open a new frontier for logging that could push the rainforest past a point of no return.
Click here for the article.
Logging in the Amazon was cut in half last year
So that’s good. But in the savanna area of Brazil, prime soybean and cattle country, land is being cleared at a record pace.
(From Yahoo News)
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by half last year…
…However, the news was far less bright from the crucial Cerrado savanna below the rainforest, where clear-cutting hit a new annual record last year, rising by 43 percent from 2022, according to the national space research agency's DETER surveillance program.
Satellite monitoring detected 5,152 square kilometers (nearly 2,000 square miles) of forest cover destroyed in the Brazilian Amazon last year, down 50 percent from 2022.
That still represented a loss 29 times the size of Washington DC in Brazil's share of the world's biggest rainforest, whose carbon-absorbing trees play a vital role in curbing climate change.
Click here for the article.
As China puts the squeeze on exports the USA looks to recycle graphite
Your editor did not know how important graphite is in the manufacture of much green tech. Cobalt and lithium but graphite? Isn’t that in pencils?
Yes, but it is also in lithium ion batteries and it is getting harder to come by. That is why the push is on to develop an economically sustainable way to recycle the substance.
(From Grist)
On December 1, China implemented new export controls on graphite, the carbon-based mineral that’s best known for being used in pencils but that’s also used in a more refined form in commercial EV battery anodes. The new policies, which the Chinese government announced in October shortly after the Biden administration increased restrictions on exports of advanced semiconductors to China, have alarmed U.S. lawmakersand raised concerns that battery makers outside of China will face new challenges securing the materials needed for anodes. Today, China dominates every step of the battery anode supply chain, from graphite mining and synthetic graphite production to anode manufacturing.
Along with a new federal tax credit that rewards automakers that use minerals produced in America, China’s export controls are boosting the U.S. auto industry’s interest in domestically sourced graphite. But while it could take many years to set up new graphite mines and production facilities, there is another, potentially faster option: Harvesting graphite from dead batteries.
Click here for the article.
“Toilet to tap” is going mainstream
A lot of proponents of toilet to tap don’t want people using the term because they are afraid it will turn off other people to the idea. That is probably true. But why the hangup? With current technology water that is contaminated with sewage can be purified. Why wouldn’t we use this resource if it’s economically viable?
In California (and Nevada and Colorado) toilet to tap is becoming reality. Cheers. We will have no reservation.
(From KCLU)
It could be one of the biggest drought busting moves by California in decades. State regulators have cleared the way for water districts to turn your home’s wastewater—what goes down the toilet and down the sink—into tap water coming out of your faucet.
"We always, collectively as a society looked at wastewater as what it says...it's a waste product. But, it's not. it's just water with stuff in it that we have to remove," said Mike McNutt, who is with the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District.
Click here for the article.
See…It’s not bad at all
Event
(Oregon) STAR Voting Monthly Meeting
Equal Vote
Location: Online
Would you like to improve local elections with a voting method that doesn’t split the vote? Join our monthly meeting for STAR Voting and Represent.Us! We will talk about: –Efforts to bring STAR Voting to Portland –Statewide reform! –What is STAR Voting? (for new people) And we’ll talk about ways that you can help either from home or in person as things open up. The first half will include an orientation for new volunteers and those who want to get more confident in their talking points. The second half will focus on our action items. See www.starvoting.us/events for event link. See you there! Email annie@equal.vote if you have questions. For more info on STAR voting, visit www.starvoting.us.