Ben Cahill at the Center for Strategic and International Studies takes a deep dive into U.S. and EU progress on regulating methane emissions. It’s vitally important because methane has more than 80 times the warming potential of CO2 in its first 20 years in the atmosphere. In his assessment, Cahill explains why the U.S. is likely to move much faster than the EU. Unlike the U.S., the EU is a big importer of gas so needs its rules complied with by … [Read more...]
Galway and Sofia lead in climate adaptation plans for European cities: new online tool to help others follow
A new study assesses the most recent adaptation plans of 167 European cities. Six “principles” - evidence of impacts and risks; adaptation goals; adaptation measures; implementation; monitoring and evaluation; societal participation in plan creation – are used to quantify performance. The authors – Diana Reckien, University of Twente; Attila Buzási, Budapest University of Technology and Economics; Marta Olazabal, Basque Centre for Climate Change; … [Read more...]
Can new cheap, frequent “laser” monitoring of critical components extend Nuclear plant lifetimes by decades?
For nuclear to thrive, rather than retreat and be displaced by alternatives, plants reaching the end of their lifetimes need to be replaced with new ones. Or, perhaps more interestingly, can the existing plants have their lifetimes greatly extended, safely and cheaply? David Chandler at MIT describes new research led by MIT to detect and measure defects in critical components to ensure that damage from heat and radiation has not led, and will not … [Read more...]
Swiss industry and science consortium on track to optimise hydropower production using satellite data
The “Defrost for Hydropower” project combines SLF’s snow expertise with satellite imagery from Wegaw’s cutting-edge geospatial technology and Hydrique Engineers advanced modelling skills, in order to more accurately predict water flow into hydro dams up to 4 months in advance as well as hydrological inflows on a regional scale. … [Read more...]
Will COP26 set right the booming Carbon Offset Market
Carbon offsetting is when a company, rather than cut its own emissions, pays someone else somewhere else to cut their emissions. It has always been controversial because it has two main problems. Buying carbon credits means you aren’t putting the effort in to cut emissions yourself. And the risk of double-counting: when the company reports it has cut emissions, and so does the “someone else”. A third problem exists too: measuring whether the … [Read more...]
