Les régions côtières de l'océan global, qui par le passé étaient vraisemblablement des sources de dioxyde de carbone (CO2) pour l'atmosphère, absorbent aujourd'hui des quantités considérables de ce gaz à effet de serre. Sur base des dernières mesures disponibles, des chercheurs américains et belges - les chercheurs de l'ULB sont les seuls belges à avoir pris part à cette étude - ont en effet estimé que l'océan côtier, qui aurait pu émettre jusqu'à 150 millions de tonnes de carbone par an il y a un siècle, en absorbe maintenant environ 250 millions de tonnes.
Making carbon dioxide by burning hydrocarbons is easy. A pair of novel catalysts recently made by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago could make it far more practical to do the reverse, converting carbon dioxide and water into fuel.
Because running this reaction normally requires large amounts of energy, it has been economical only in rare cases (see “Company Makes CO2 into Liquid Fuel, with Help from a Volcano”). But if the process could be done commercially, liquid fuels could be made from the exhaust gases of fossil-fuel power plants.
A one-stop scientific website bringing together worldwide relevant data on climate change was launched in France last week (20 November), with the hope of contributing to the fight against global warming.
The LSCE, a French laboratory on climate and environment science, has recently launched a unique project called Global Carbon Atlas. The aim of the programme is to collect all scientific data on carbon dioxide, even with divergent results.
An Icelandic company figures out how to make methanol from waste CO2, but the economics may not work without a nearby volcano.
When a geothermal power plant started spewing hot water into the barren, volcanic landscape of Iceland’s Southern Peninsula in 1976, the locals turned the steaming lake into a health spa that’s now frequented by half a million people a year. Now a small Icelandic company is hoping to turn a profit from waste carbon dioxide from the same plant.
El Centro de Láseres Pulsados (CLPU), el Servicio General de Espectrometría de Masas de NUCLEUS de la Universidad de Salamanca y la empresa Iberdrola Ingeniería han presentado hoy un dispositivo capaz de eliminar casi al 100% las emisiones de gases contaminantes a la atmósfera, principalmente CO2, por parte de las industrias. Los investigadores ya han presentado una patente nacional de un primer prototipo, que es el resultado del proyecto de I+D SIGMA, que comenzó hace dos años. Mediante radiación láser, el sistema ioniza los gases contaminantes y los extrae a través de campos eléctricos y magnéticos.
EU diplomats today (8 November) agreed to begin talks on a legal text to slash permit supply and prop up carbon prices in the bloc's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), marking a big step forward for the divisive proposal.
EU president Lithuania said member state officials would start negotiations with the European Parliament and the executive European Commission over the "backloading" plan, which seeks to delay the sale of 900 million carbon permits until later this decade.
Britain has begun paying firms millions of pounds in compensation to industrial companies help shield them from higher energy bills due to European carbon permits, a government spokeswoman said on Thursday (7 November).
"The government has begun compensating companies for the indirect costs of the European Union Emissions Trading System (ETS) ... To date a total of 16 million pounds ($25.7 million) has been paid to 17 companies in the UK," a spokeswoman from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said in an email.
Carbon dioxide emissions from coal have been falling over the last five years in the U.S., hitting the lowest point for any quarter since 1986 in March 2012. Cheap natural gas allowed utilities to cut back on coal, the most “carbon-intense” fossil fuel used for power generation. But coal-fired power plants are not going away anytime soon in the U.S., and countries like China and India, which already burn half of the world’s coal, are leading in building new ones.
