Dude, where's my plane? Canadian company Hempearth creates the world's first airplane made from and fueled by hemp!

Different parts of the hemp plant have been used for centuries to create many different types of products including consumer textiles, medicine, building materials, bio-fuel, paper, food, and more recently even batteries. “Hemp is a sustainable crop that needs no pesticides or herbicides to grow, so the plane would have a carbon footprint significantly smaller than that of standard planes.” So, when Canadian Derek Kesek's imagination took things a step further to a desire to create a hemp plane it wasn't such a "far out" idea. He founded Hempearth in 2014 and embarked on a plan to build an airplane that consisted of as much hemp as possible. 75% or better of the aircraft being built is made from hemp. "At first, people laughed at the concept and even joked around saying things like ha-ha you can smoke at too."

Today the world’s first ever hemp plane is an elegant and sleek four-seater single engine design aircraft that has cruising speeds ranging at a little over 250 miles per hour. It had a has a wing span of 36 feet. Many of the interior parts such as the seats, pillows, and outer shell are also made of hemp.

"By removing as much of the non-sustainable materials and toxic fiberglass materials as possible and replacing them with hemp, we’re helping to create an aircraft that is not only stronger than traditional aircraft but will also leave a footprint on the environment that is virtually zero in comparison to current forms of aviation manufacturing."

The plane is powered entirely by hemp bio-fuel which releases zero emissions into the atmosphere. No high flying carbon footprint from a hemp plane flight!

Photo courtesy of HEMPEARTH (https://hempearth.ca).

(TOP) Plane photo courtesy of HEMPEARTH (https://hempearth.ca).

It may sound coney, but Australian researchers have developed nanocones, a nanostructure material that increases solar efficiency by 15%!

The team of scientists at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology announced the development of the nanocone, which is a type of nanomaterial that boosts the efficiency of photovoltaics by increasing their light absorbing abilities.

The cone like material works due to it's ultrahigh refractive index—the inside of each cones is an insulator and outside is a conductor—under a microscope the material looks like a mass of bullets stood up on end atop a flat base. Each cone has a metal shell coating and a core that is based on a dielectric (poor conductor of electricity) so a material made with them would be able to provide superior light absorption properties, making it perfect not just for solar cells, but also for a wide variety of photovoltaic applications from optical fibers to waveguides and even lenses. The researchers say that if such a material were used as part of a traditional thin-film solar cell, it would increase light absorption up to 15 percent in both the visible and ultraviolet range.
This is the first time that such a nanocone structure has been created and just as importantly, creating them would not require any new fabrication techniques! Nanocones could be key to making inexpensive solar cells thus taking us another step closer to a lower carbon, clean air life.

Image courtesy of RMIT UNIVERSITY (https://www.rmit.edu.au/).

Image courtesy of PHYS.ORG.

Environmental Research Advocates (ERAscience.org), Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and CNSI (California Nano Systems Institute), launched a revolutionary inner-city teaching program to support science education for underserved children.  Perimeter Institute is considered to be one of the world’s leading research organizations in the field of theoretical physics. The first educational training event of the initiative took place February 28th and 29th at CNSI UCLA. Outstanding teachers representing 13 school districts across greater Los Angeles, with Green Dot Charter Schools, Da Vinci Schools, and non profit Girls Inc also participating in the sessions. The goal is to enable teachers to take new concepts back to their classrooms and teach theoretical physics to Junior High School and High School students in underserved and often dangerous areas.

The sessions provided a unique, hands-on experience that demystifies and simplifies advanced concepts in math and science. The aim is to level the playing field for all underserved students who currently do not have access to these learning tools. 

California NanoSystems Institute, CNSI, established by former California Governor Gray Davis, is our full and dedicated partner and offers similar outreach workshops in the ever changing exciting field of nano science.

“Educating students today for the jobs of tomorrow requires a greater emphasis on STEM subjects.  This program provides educators with the necessary training in the field of science and experience they can bring back to the classroom,” says former First Lady of California Sharon Davis. “None of this would be possible without the vision and support from the Avchens and ERAscience." 

Science most definitely is fun and the potential of sharing it with young students is priceless! 

What does the accompanying image bring to mind? Layers of carved chocolate? How about a block of clay waiting to become a piece of art? Bet you didn't guess it's the future of 24 hour winter warmth thanks to the guys at MIT and a new exciting little molecule that going to change the way we store solar heat!

We all know that the sun is an endless source of energy, but it's only available on sunny days. For Mr. Sun to provide all our needs there must be a better way to save it up for use during nighttime and stormy days.

Up til now efforts have focused on storing solar energy in the form of electricity, but a new finding could provide a revolutionary method for storing the sun’s energy through a chemical reaction and releasing it later (at will) as heat. MIT's Jeffrey Grossman, postdoc David Zhitomirsky, and grad student Eugene Cho, have found the key to enabling long-term, stable storage of solar heat! They have stored it in the form of a chemical change rather than storing the heat itself. Heat always dissipates no matter how good the insulation around it, a chemical storage system can retain the energy indefinitely in a stable molecular configuration, until its release is triggered by a small jolt of heat (or light or electricity).

The key is a molecule that can remain stable in either of TWO different configurations. When exposed to sunlight, the energy of the light kicks the molecules into their “charged” configuration, and they can stay that way for long periods. Then, when triggered by a very specific temperature or stimulus, the molecules snap back to their original shape, giving off a burst of heat!

Such chemically-based storage materials, known as solar thermal fuels (STF), have been around before, but earlier efforts “had limited utility in solid-state application" because they were liquid but now the genius guys at MIT have figured out how to store solar energy in a polymer that can be used in both fabric or glass!

Imagine riding on a ski lift with your fingers and toes numb with cold, ZAP and you send a charge to instantly warm those tootsies. BMW, is excited that use of the polymer in windshields will equal instant de-icing in the harshest winter! Thank you MIT for making us all much "hotter" in winters to come!

2016 is getting off to a very fast, (speeds of 200 mph fast), start at this years CES in Las Vegas, with the unveiling of Faraday Future's electric race car FFZERO1.

The team at Faraday Future is serious about supplanting fossil fuels with cleaner electric power. Under the hood of the FFZERO1 are four “quad core” motors that output more than 1,000 horsepower combined. The car can hit 0-60 in less than 3 seconds on the way to a top speed greater than 200mph, numbers that would put it in Ferrari, Lamborghini, Corvette, and Nissan GT-R territory. The FFZERO1’s chassis consists of carbon fiber and lightweight composites, and Faraday Future says the car features advanced vehicle dynamic control and torque vectoring. The modular battery back consists of so-called battery strings that can be moved around and molded into a variety of charge capacities and vehicle compartment dimensions.

Want to know more? Ok how about this, the car includes a steering wheel with a socket for mounting and integrating your smartphone. Once you do that, you can use it to modify power output in real time and visualize performance data, and when you’re away from the car, you can use it to set it up and otherwise configure the entire vehicle. The interior also contains virtual and head-up displays, along with seating for just one, thanks. Your friends can all go take a long walk, because, after all this is a real race car! The seat is “inspired by NASA zero gravity design” for reduced driver fatigue and a “sense of weightlessness". Sign us up for a need for speed test drive right after we get our jaws off the floor!

In an interesting article for US News and World Report, Michael MacCracken, ERAscience board member and Chief Scientist for Climate Change at the Climate Institute in Washington, explores the possible reversal of climate change impact on Antarctica.

Technology to the Planet's Rescue?

It's time to explore whether geoengineering can reverse Antarctic ice loss.

Research from NASA released on May 12 suggests that a large section of the West Antarctic ice sheet is now on a path, perhaps irrevocably, to collapse. The result could be billions of tons of ice poured into the Southern Ocean each year. This could lead, over the span of coming decades and centuries, to as much as 10 feet of global sea level rise, attributable to this event alone.

Sea level rise of this magnitude, even spread over a long timescale, will be extremely disruptive and likely dangerous for human societies, with the worst and highest costs falling on those who are least able to bear them.

What can be done? The first choice would be an immediate halt to all global greenhouse gas emissions, which would help to slow sea level rise generally. Given the difficulty and seeming impracticality of that, it bears asking, could some sort of large-scale technological intervention in the region help to slow the calving away of the ice? While the shape of the underlying ocean bottom that no longer will hold back the ice stream is a critical contributor to the vulnerability of the ice sheet, there are, conceptually, a number of ways by which human intervention could reduce regional Antarctic warming, perhaps with the potential to slow the movement and loss of ice.

One possible option would be to increase the reflectivity of clouds over the Southern Ocean during the sunlit season, thus reducing ocean heat uptake. Models suggest that, in areas that are fairly clean, injection of finely misted salt water, targeted regionally, could increase the amount of solar radiation reflected back into space.

Another way to possibly bring about a localized cooling effect might be to inject reflective microbubbles into the frigid Antarctic waters, brightening the surface in the way that ship wakes brighten the waters, but doing so more efficiently.

Two other interventions could, potentially, encourage more rapid radiation of absorbed heat to space. One way to release heat trapped in the oceans could be to use icebreaking ships to open up selected areas of the ocean during the winter, allowing heat otherwise contained beneath the sea ice to escape to the atmosphere. Another option that has been proposed would be to use cloud-seeding techniques to thin out the high-altitude, winter layer of cirrus clouds, allowing heat radiated from the ocean’s surface to more readily pass into space.

Now, such ideas are highly speculative, at best. In fact, it’s easy to write them off as the stuff of science fiction. They are, though, among the kinds of climate geoengineering proposals that have been suggested as bottom-of-the-barrel approaches to limiting the increasingly severe impacts of climate change, perhaps, in the best case scenario, buying time for the growth in global emissions of carbon dioxide to be stopped and then reversed. Such geoengineering approaches are not a long-term solution and have limited potential, but they may be able to temporarily limit some of the worst impacts of climate change while actions are taken that cut through political and societal dithering around seriously addressing the increasing risks of climate change.

On the same day that that the world learned of the potential for runaway Antarctic ice melt, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., spoke for many conservative politicians when he declared, “I don't agree with the notion that some are putting out there, including scientists, that somehow, there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate.” The day then closed with the announcement that the U.S. Senate, because of political wrangling over the Keystone XL pipeline, appears unable to pass a straightforward energy efficiency bill that has bipartisan sponsorship.

While these kinds of political and social intransigence seem to be making climate geoengineering technologies increasingly attractive, such approaches are not a long-term panacea, and they are, for good reason, controversial.

For one thing, it is unclear whether the kinds of ideas proposed above are technically feasible at the kind of scale that would make a difference in and around Antarctica. Nor is it clear that creating a solar shield could bring about a rapid and sufficient enough cooling of the ocean waters to slow the warming of the Antarctic ice streams that are so concerning to NASA scientists.

At the same time, there are thorny governance and justice issues presented by any geoengineering scheme. Who gets to control the technology and decide how and to what ends it is used? What if the talk of a technological response to Antarctic ice melt distracts attention from the greenhouse gas reduction efforts that the world so desperately needs? Such questions broach no easy answers.

Given the complexities and controversy surrounding climate geoengineering, it is tempting to write off the entire enterprise as hubristic and ill advised. However, indicators like the melting of Antarctic ice tell us that we may no longer have that luxury. If a radical, even risky, technological intervention could forestall polar ice melt, and in turn forestall suffering tied to sea level rise in places like Bangladesh, then who can deny the need to investigate the option?

Climate geoengineering is not going away. The technologies of climate geoengineering are far too enticing a genie to be stuffed back into their bottle. It is time, then, for climate geoengineering to be given proper social and scientific consideration. It is time for a broader, more robust, and more inclusive conversation on climate geoengineering to begin. 

Arthur Gossard, an ERA Science Board member, as well as a professor in the Materials Department and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was recently involved in a breakthrough discovery at the University of California Santa Barbara. The team created a semiconductor that can manipulate light energy in the infrared range; this discovery bodes well for solar energy development, as it would allow a broader spectrum of light to be absorbed and converted into energy, creating more efficient and effective solar technologies.

The following is the full article from Phys.org:

"In a feat that may provide a promising array of applications, from energy efficiency to telecommunications to enhanced imaging, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have created a compound semiconductor of nearly perfect quality with embedded nanostructures containing ordered lines of atoms that can manipulate light energy in the mid-infrared range. More efficient solar cells, less risky and higher resolution biological imaging, and the ability to transmit massive amounts of data at higher speeds are only a few applications that this unique semiconductor will be able to support.
 

'This is a new and exciting field,' said Hong Lu, researcher in UCSB's Materials department and lead author of a study published recently in the journal Nano Letters, a publication of the American Chemical Society.

Key to this technology is the use of erbium, a rare earth metal that has the ability to absorb light in the visible as well as infrared wavelength—which is longer and lower frequency wavelength to which the human eye is accustomed—and has been used for years to enhance the performance of silicon in the production of fiber optics. Pairing erbium with the element antimony (Sb), the researchers embedded the resulting compound—erbium antimonide (ErSb)—as semimetallic nanostructures within the semiconducting matrix of gallium antimonide (GaSb).

ErSb, according to Lu, is an ideal material to match with GaSb because of its structural compatibility with its surrounding material, allowing the researchers to embed the nanostructures without interrupting the atomic lattice structure of the semiconducting matrix. The less flawed the crystal lattice structure of a semiconductor is, the more reliable and better performing the device in which it is used will be.

'The nanostructures are coherently embedded, without introducing noticeable defects, through the growth process by molecular beam epitaxy,' said Lu. 'Secondly, we can control the size, the shape and the orientation of the nanostructures.' The term 'epitaxy' refers to a process by which layers of material are deposited atom by atom, or molecule by molecule, one on top of the other with a specific orientation.

'It's really a new kind of heterostructure,' said Arthur Gossard, professor in the Materials Department and also in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. While semiconductors incorporating different materials have been studied for years—a technology UCSB professor and Nobel laureate Herbert Kroemer pioneered—a single crystal heterostructured semiconductor/metal is in a class of its own.

The nanostructures allow the compound semiconductor to absorb a wider spectrum of light due to a phenomenon called surface plasmon resonance, said Lu, and that the effect has potential applications in broad research fields, such as solar cells, medical applications to fight cancer, and in the new field of plasmonics.

Optics and electronics operate on vastly different scales, with electron confinement being possible in spaces far smaller than light waves. Therefore, it has been an ongoing challenge for engineers to create a circuit that can take advantage of the speed and data capacity of photons and the compactness of electronics for information processing.

The highly sought bridge between optics and electronics may be found with this compound semiconductor using surface plasmons, electron oscillations at the surface of a metal excited by light. When light (in this case, infrared) hits the surface of this semiconductor, electrons in the nanostructures begin to resonate—that is, move away from their equilibrium positions and oscillate at the same frequency as the infrared light—preserving the optical information, but shrinking it to a scale that would be compatible with electronic devices.

In the realm of imaging, embedded nanowires of ErSb offer a strong broadband polarization effect, according to Lu, filtering and defining images with infrared and even longer-wavelength terahertz light signatures. This effect can be used to image a variety of materials, including the human body, without the risk posed by the higher energies that emanate from X-rays, for instance. Chemicals such as those found in explosives and some illegal narcotics have unique absorption features in this spectrum region. The researchers have already applied for a patent for these embedded nanowires as a broadband light polarizer.

'For infrared imaging, if you can do it with controllable polarizations, there's information there,' said Gossard.

While infrared and terahertz wavelengths offer much in the way of the kind of information they can provide, the development of instruments that can take full advantage of their range of frequencies is still an emerging field. Lu credits this breakthrough to the collaborative nature of the research on the UCSB campus, which allowed her to merge her materials expertise with the skills of researchers who specialize in infrared and terahertz technology.

'It's amazing here,' she said. 'We basically collaborated and discovered all these interesting features and properties of the material together.'

'One of the most exciting things about this for me is that this was a 'grassroots' collaboration,' said Mark Sherwin, professor of physics, director of the Institute for Terahertz Science and Technology at UCSB, and one of the paper's co-authors. The idea for the direction of the research came from the junior researchers in the group, he said, grad students and undergrads from different laboratories and research groups working on different aspects of the project, all of whom decided to combine their efforts and their expertise into one study. 'I think what's really special about UCSB is that we can have an environment like that.'

Since the paper was written, most of the researchers have gone into industry: Daniel G. Ouelette and Benjamin Zaks, formerly of the Department of Physics and the Institute for Terahertz Science and Technology at UCSB, now work at Intel and Agilent, respectively. Their colleague Justin Watts, who was an undergraduate participant is now pursuing graduate studies at the University of Minnesota. Peter Burke, formerly of the UCSB Materials Department, now works at Lockheed Martin. Sascha Preu, a former postdoc in the Sherwin Group, is now assistant professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt.

Researchers on campus are also exploring the possibilities of this technology in the field of thermoelectrics, which studies how temperature differences of a material can create electric voltage or how differences in electric voltages in a material can create temperature differences. Renowned UCSB researchers John Bowers (solid state photonics) and Christopher Palmstrom (heteroepitaxial growth of novel materials) are investigating the potential of this new semiconductor."

Conservation International’s Chairman, CEO and ERA Science Board member Peter Seligmann hosted the 18^th annual Los Angeles dinner in Beverly Hills last Thursday to honor renowned Los Angeles attorney Skip Brittenham’s commitment to the environmental movement. 

Mr. Seligmann emphasized the importance of identifying and protecting vital natural resources around the world, and encouraging businesses and global leaders to join this critical race to save our planet. 

Dr. Sandy Andelman, Conservation International Chief Scientist and ERA Science Board Member, has focused her efforts on the continent of Africa, to create a dialogue and encourage action to protect their food sources and devise sustainable methods of food production. According to Dr. Andelmen:

“Pressure to increase agricultural production has never been greater, with 1 billion people currently undernourished and demand for food production expected to increase 70 per cent by 2050… to prevent unintended environmental consequences of increased agricultural production – particularly in the context of climate – change is needed in the way agricultural development decisions are made and agricultural systems managed.” 

The ERA Science team was in attendance along with CI’s Vice Chair Harrison Ford, Walmart Board Chair Rob Walton, Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, and many other leaders seeking solutions to the environmental crisis. 

The dinner was held at the Montage Beverly Hills, and featured inspiring talks by Mr. Seligmann, Mr. Brittenham, and Mr. Ford.

ERA Science Board member Flemming Besenbacher, a professor at Denmark’s Aarhus University, played a pivotal role in the breakthrough development of an environmentally friendly method of producing a molecular hydrogen compound used to refine crude oil into gasoline.

Check out the following article released by Stanford to learn more:

University researchers from two continents have engineered an efficient and environmentally friendly catalyst for the production of molecular hydrogen (H₂), a compound used extensively in modern industry to manufacture fertilizer and refine crude oil into gasoline.

Although hydrogen is abundant element, it is generally not found as the pure gas H₂but is generally bound to oxygen in water (H₂O) or to carbon in methane (CH₄), the primary component in natural gas. At present, industrial hydrogen is produced from natural gas using a process that consumes a great deal of energy while also releasing carbon into the atmosphere, thus contributing to global carbon emissions.

On the left, a scanning tunneling microscope image captures the bright shape of the moly sulfide nanocluster on a graphite surface. The grey spots are carbon atoms. Together the moly sulfide and graphite make the electrode. The diagram on the right shows how two positive hydrogen ions gain electrons through a chemical reaction at the moly sulfide nanocluster to form pure molecular hydrogen (Image: Jakob Kibsgaard).

In an article published in Nature and Chemistry, nanotechnology experts from Stanford Engineering and from Denmark's Aarhus University explain how to liberate hydrogen from water on an industrial scale by using electrolysis.

In electrolysis, electrical current flows through a metallic electrode immersed in water. This electron flow induces a chemical reaction that breaks the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The electrode serves as a catalyst, a material that can spur one reaction after another without ever being used up. Platinum is the best catalyst for electrolysis. If cost were no object, platinum might be used to produce hydrogen from water today.

But money matters. The world consumes about 55 billion kilograms of hydrogen per year. It now costs about $1 to $2 per kilogram to produce hydrogen from methane. So any competing process, even if it's greener, must hit that production cost, which rules out electrolysis based on platinum.

In their Nature Chemistry paper, the researchers describe how they re-engineered the atomic structure of a cheap and common industrial material to make it nearly as efficient at electrolysis as platinum – a finding that has the potential to revolutionize industrial hydrogen production.

The project was conceived by Jakob Kibsgaard, a postdoctoral researcher with Thomas Jaramillo, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Stanford. Kibsgaard started this project while working with Flemming Besenbacher, a professor at the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO) at Aarhus.

Meet Moly Sulfide

Since World War II petroleum engineers have used molybdenum sulfide – moly sulfide for short – to help refine oil.

Until now, however, this chemical was not considered a good catalyst for making moly sulfide to produce hydrogen from water through electrolysis. Eventually scientists and engineers came to understand why: the most commonly used moly sulfide materials had an unsuitable arrangement of atoms at their surface.

Typically, each sulfur atom on the surface of a moly sulfide crystal is bound to three molybdenum atoms underneath. For complex reasons involving the atomic bonding properties of hydrogen, that configuration isn't conducive to electrolysis.

In 2004, Stanford Chemical Engineering Professor Jens Norskov, then at the Technical University of Denmark, made an important discovery. Around the edges of the crystal, some sulfur atoms are bound to just two molybdenum atoms. At these edge sites, which are characterized by double rather than triple bonds, moly sulfide was much more effective at forming H₂.

Armed with that knowledge, Kibsgaard found a 30-year-old recipe for making a form of moly sulfide with lots of these double-bonded sulfurs at the edge.

Using simple chemistry, he synthesized nanoclusters of this special moly sulfide. He deposited these nanoclusters onto a sheet of graphite, a material that conducts electricity. Together the graphite and moly sulfide formed a cheap electrode. It was meant to be a substitute for platinum, the ideal but expensive catalyst for electrolysis.

The question then became: could this composite electrode efficiently spur the chemical reaction that rearranges hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water?

As Jaramillo put it: "Chemistry is all about where electrons want to go, and catalysis is about getting those electrons to move to make and break chemical bonds."

The acid test

So the experimenters put their system to the acid test –- literally.

They immersed their composite electrode into water that was slightly acidified, meaning it contained positively charged hydrogen ions. These positive ions were attracted to the moly sulfide clusters. Their double-bonded shape gave them just the right atomic characteristic to pass electrons from the graphite conductor up to the positive ions. This electron transfer turned the positive ions into neutral molecular hydrogen, which bubbled up and away as a gas.

Most importantly, the experimenters found that their cheap, moly sulfide catalyst had the potential to liberate hydrogen from water on something approaching the efficiency of a system based on prohibitively expensive platinum.

Yes, but does it scale?

But in chemical engineering, success in a beaker is only the beginning.

The larger questions were: could this technology scale to the 55 billion kilograms per year global demand for hydrogen, and at what finished cost per kilogram?

Last year, Jaramillo and a dozen co-authors studied four factory-scale production schemes in an article for The Royal Society of Chemistry's journal of Energy and Environmental Science.

They concluded that it could be feasible to produce hydrogen in factory-scale electrolysis facilities at costs ranging from $1.60 and $10.40 per kilogram – competitive at the low end with current practices based on methane—though some of their assumptions were based on new plant designs and materials.

"There are many pieces of the puzzle still needed to make this work, and much effort ahead to realize them," Jaramillo said. "However, we can get huge returns by moving from carbon-intensive resources to renewable, sustainable technologies to produce the chemicals we need for food and energy."

Support was provided by the Carlsberg Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Jan. 26, 2014

By Tom Abate, Stanford School of Engineering

- See more at: https://energy.stanford.edu/news/researchers-teach-old-chemical-new-tricks-make-cleaner-fuels-fertilizers#sthash.TwcGA2Cb.dpuf

As solar energy becomes more and more cost-competitive with oil as an energy source, we at Environmental Research Advocates are very excited to see the incredible strides being made by solar scientists and engineers.  

For those of you who are less-familiar with solar panels and how they function, or if you just want to brush-up on the facts, here is ERA’s Solar Panel Cheat Sheet. 

How a solar panel works:

Sunlight hits a solar panel, and a semi-conductor (most commonly made of silicon or cadmium telluride) absorbs the photons. Electrons in the semiconductor are knocked free of their atoms, which creates an electrical current that is fed into the grid to power our homes.

Commercial solar panels:

Today, commercial panels generally operate between 12-20% efficiency, which means that less than 1/5 of the sunlight’s photons are converted into electricity.

Solar Research and Design

The two main goals of solar research are to (1) increase the electrical yield and (2) lower the costs of solar electricity.

Increasing the electrical yield is possible in a few ways:

      1.  Adding more solar cells to the panel.

      2.  Improving the efficiency of electricity transfer from panel to grid.

      3.  Broadening the spectrum of light frequencies that the cells are able to absorb and convert into electricity.

Lowering costs involves:

      1.  Reducing the hard and soft costs of solar installation.

      2.  Increasing the electrical yield of solar panels (lowering the price of electricity).

      3.  Creating more durable solar panels that require less maintenance and repair.

Two important facts to note about “Efficiency”:

Solar companies and researchers will throw around many numbers to describe their solar products, namely concerning the panel’s efficiency. When someone claims that a particular solar product or breakthrough is more efficient than another, keep this in mind:

      1.  Efficiency of a single solar cell is usually greater than the aggregate efficiency of the entire panel.

      2.  Performance in a controlled lab will usually yield better results than in commercial application.

So when it comes to solar efficiency claims, always make sure to note the conditions of the testing and take them with a grain of salt.

We at Environmental Research Advocates are excited by the potential implementation of graphene in renewable energy technologies.

The carbon-based super-material is making technology news yet again, as scientists in Korea claim they have developed a graphene supercapacitor that has the potential to drastically improve battery performance in electric vehicles.

As electric automobiles are gaining popularity around the world, Lithium-ion batteries are providing the energy storage necessary to allow these cars to function at comparable distances to gas-powered vehicles. The battery’s main drawback is the time it takes to charge, as lithium-ion batteries require at least a couple hours, if not an entire night, to fully charge.  This limits the automobile’s ability to cover long distances without long pit stops.

The solution to these issues is graphene, according to researchers at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Korea, who have developed a graphene supercapacitor that stores nearly the same amount of energy as a lithium-ion battery, but can charge in a mere 16 seconds and maintain its performance over thousands of charges.

Supercapacitors of the past also possess this ability to charge quickly, but generally lack the energy storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries; the application of graphene as an insulator allows for much higher energy storage, as the carbon-based material has a porous physical structure that creates more surface area to store energy.

Graphene has been touted as a wonder-material, and tech researchers continue to experiment with its many possible uses. It is strong, light, almost transparent, and an excellent conductor. Some potential areas of application include water filters, solar cells, and electrical functions.

If applied to electric cars, these graphene supercapacitors could cut down charging time significantly, even faster than pumping a full tank of gas, while still allowing longer travelling distances between charges. Some scientists believe that we could see graphene supercapacitors replace lithium-ion batteries within the next five to ten years.

The risks of irreversible damage to the environment will increase significantly if the global average temperature increases by 2° C in the coming century, and the solutions will only get more difficult and costly the longer we wait.

That’s according to the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) 4^th Emission Gap Report, which was released on Tuesday, and highlights an urgent need to cut CO2 emissions before 2020. The report involved 44 scientific groups in 17 countries, with the expressed purpose of evaluating the least-cost path to keeping global temperature rise below 2° C.

The report offers a plan to cut down CO2 emissions that includes increased energy efficiency, improved agricultural practices, and replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.

The UN believes that renewable energy initiatives could cut 1 to 3 Gigatons of Carbon Dioxide (GtCO2e) from emissions by 2020, and UNEP says that faster adoption will become more urgent if we don’t act soon: 

“If the [emissions] gap is not closed or significantly narrowed by 2020, the door to many options to limit temperature increase to a lower target of 1.5° C will be closed, further increasing the need to rely on faster energy-efficiency improvements and biomass with carbon capture and storage.” – UNEP

The report was released in anticipation of the Climate Change Conference of the Parties, which will take place later this month in Warsaw, Poland.

To view the entire report, follow this link.

Last month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first segment of its 5^th report, which describes the scientific basis for climate change caused by humans. The IPCC’s goal is to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects and options for adaptation and mitigation.

Over 2,000 scientists worked on this report, using a remarkable amount of raw data taken from 9,200 peer-reviewed studies. The IPCC reports always garner a healthy amount of controversy, as both climate change deniers and believers fight over the report’s implications.

Here are the 4 most important takeaways from the IPCC’s most recent report, so you can decide for yourself:

1.    It is virtually certain that the earth has warmed since the mid-20^th century, and it probably will continue to warm.

· The planet’s surface could warm anywhere from 2.7°F to 7.2°F by 2100 relative to pre-1900 conditions.

· This means more extreme weather, storms, drought, flooding, and heat waves.

2.    Scientists are more confident than ever that climate change is human caused.

· They are over 95% sure; that’s increased from 90% certainty in 2007, 66% in 2001, and 50% in 1995.

3.    Glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate in the Arctic and Antarctica.

· Sea levels could rise more than 3 feet by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are unchecked.

· Major coastal cities like New York and Hong Kong would be affected.

4.     The rises in temperature, sea level, and occurrence of extreme weather all coincide with rising greenhouse gas levels.

· Greenhouse gas levels haven’t been this high in over 800,000 years.

The remaining segments of the 5^th IPCC report, which concern potential impacts and recommended mitigation plans, will be released in 2014.

Peter Seligmann, an ERA Science Board Member and Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Conservation International, believes that a sustainable future for our planet and the human race relies on collaboration across border lines. The following was featured in the May 21, 2013 issue of the Huffington Post.

Future Relies on US-China Collaboration

By Peter Seligmann

The world is sitting on a consumption time bomb -- more consumers, higher consumption, and more material intensity, coupled with diminishing supplies of natural capital, add up to a planet that is dangerously overspent and veering towards ecological bankruptcy in the not-too-distant future. China and the U.S., the two largest consuming nations with combined GDPs comprising one-third of global Gross Domestic Product, find themselves at the center of a potential catastrophe, in which human demand outspends Earth's supplies. The two nations consume one-quarter of world natural gas, one-third of world oil production, and produce nearly two-thirds of world coal. The two nations also are the planet's largest carbon dioxide emitters, jointly releasing nearly half of the world total each year.

As the problem worsens and threatens the sustainability of our planet, business-as-usual scenarios are insufficient to address the acute challenges that both nations, as well as the community of nations, will face in years ahead. As discussed in a major new report this week, U.S.-China 2022: Economic Relations in the Next Ten Years, only through massive collaboration and cooperation, can we chart a sustainable and positive path forward.

A 2012 assessment commissioned by 20 governments, the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, calculated that five million deaths occur each year from air pollution, hunger and disease as a result of climate change and carbon-intensive economies. That toll will rise significantly if current patterns of fossil fuel use continue.

Global growth in energy and consumer demand is driving much of this change. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) projects that the global middle class will skyrocket 250 percent to five billion people by 2030, with almost 90 percent of that growth coming from the Asia-Pacific region. Consumption in emerging markets is expected to rise from $12 trillion in 2010 to $30 trillion by 2025. These new consumers will move from bulk, unbranded products to highly processed and packaged goods.

From a producer's or investor's point of view, these may sound like profitable projections. However, runaway production to meet such ravenous, consumptive demand will create threatening deficiencies of our global natural capital, and therefore, shortages of supply, if we are not extremely careful.

China's urban transformation and rising middle class will play a significant role in these changes. In 20 years, China's cities will have added 350 million people, more than the entire population of the United States today. By 2025, China will have 221 cities with one million-plus inhabitants -- compared with 35 cities of this size in Europe today. The environmental ramifications of this unprecedented demographic shift will be severe.

Consequences are already being seen in the agricultural heartlands of both the U.S. and China, gripped by multi-year droughts. China has one-fifth of the world's population but just seven percent of arable land, further shrinking as urbanization converts nearly nine million more hectares of farmland per decade.

The U.S. and China, although at different stages with their respective economic and environmental challenges, are each increasingly vulnerable to resource scarcity, from minerals to water to food to the biodiversity that fuels science, medicine, and innovation. Climate destabilization is also a shared threat, with drought, floods, coastal storms, wildfires and other extreme weather occurring with alarming intensity and frequency. Both nations also have extensive supply chains operating in and withdrawing significant resources from other megadiverse countries, but neither nation will prosper in the long term if the other exhausts these critical supplies. These megadiverse nations face similar threats of natural resource exhaustion and collapse, but also can tap into the large pool of best practices in markets and governance to sustain their irreplaceable natural capital assets.

The costs and consequences of inaction are now undeniably immense and clearly indicate that business-as-usual is driving the global economy, society, humanity and the biosphere towards premature morbidity and mortality. A growing number of statesmen, corporate and civic leaders, and scientific experts have been loud and clear in their warnings: humanity has the next 10 years, starting immediately, to take and make transformational changes that put the global economy on a path consistent with keeping temperature rise below 2℃.

Joint initiatives and collaboration are in both of our nations' enlightened self interest to aid with immediate and sustained economic and environmental gains, as well as long-term well being and prosperity of our people. These initiatives will be a major and essential contribution to finding global solutions to devastating risks facing humanity and the biosphere.

Humanity's health and well-being hang in the balance.

The fundamental sustainability challenge for both nations is to sustain growth while maintaining, not diminishing or depleting, natural capital productivity and resilience. Together, we must account for, value and protect our natural factories and treasuries, so that they continue to generate the renewable goods and ecosystem services that our societies, families and businesses all depend upon to thrive.

Thankfully, there are many areas where the U.S. and China should work together to help achieve large-scale sustainability gains for themselves and for their trading partners.

First, being the two largest economies in the world, the U.S. and China should provide leadership in addressing global challenges, such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity, ecosystem health and vitality caused by unsustainable development. Success will require collaboration between the U.S. and China as well as their encouragement and support of the initiatives of their trading partners.

Second, the U.S. and China, accounting for 50 to 60 percent of global Research and Development, should embrace policies such as collaborative innovation networks to stimulate radical innovations in sustainability.

Third, Feed-In Tariff (FIT) performance payments are proving essential for spurring zero and near-zero emission power options -- solar, wind, geothermal, biowastes, small-scale hydro. Given the urgency this decade in reducing CO₂ emissions, adoption of advanced FITs must become an imperative for aligning good governance, reduced CO₂ emissions and flourishing markets. As of 2011, feed-in tariff policies have been enacted in China, seven U.S. states, and in more than 50 countries. China and the United States have the opportunity to show world-leading governance, by exponentially scaling up adoption of these policies in many more of our territories and provinces.

Fourth, nations require healthy ecological foundations for long term stability. Production that undercuts natural capital is not sustainable. The principles of 'No Net Biodiversity Loss' or 'Net Positive Impact' should be considered as normal business practice, using robust biodiversity performance benchmarks and assurance processes to avoid and mitigate damage, together with pro-biodiversity investment to compensate for adverse impacts that cannot be avoided.

Together, joint collaborations and cooperative partnerships between China and the United States, demonstrating leadership in markets and statesmanship in governance, offer our respective countries, the global community of nations, and the planet's biosphere a very hopeful, positive way forward. Let us make the most of it.

We at Conservation International believe strongly in this vision and know that we can make it reality if we "progress together, hand in hand," as a wise Chinese strategist once wrote. We must, so that future generations can praise our determination to sustain the health of the planet, which we all share and depend upon.

Professor Roberto Peccei has been selected to receive the American Physical Society’s (APS) 2013 J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, awarded annually to recognize and encourage outstanding achievement in particle theory. He received the award at the APS meeting in April 2013, along with his Stanford University colleague, Helen Quinn.

An internationally renowned theoretical particle physicist, Peccei is the first UCLA recipient of the Sakurai prize, named in honor of a late UCLA physics colleague.

A major contribution to physics is the Peccei-Quinn Symmetry, an elegant theory that ties together several branches of physics and has important implications for our universe. The Peccei-Quinn Symmetry predicts the existence of very light particles called axions, which may nevertheless be the dominant source of mass in the universe. Axions may be the mysterious "dark matter" that account for most of the matter in the universe.

The citation for the J.J. Sakurai Prize recognizes the Peccei-Quinn theory as "the elegant mechanism to resolve the famous problem of strong-CP violation which, in turn, led to the invention of axions, a subject of intense experimental and theoretical investigation for more than three decades."

Peccei, a fellow of the American Physical Society and a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, served as UCLA’s vice chancellor for research, dean of physical sciences in the College of Letters and Science, and chair of UCLA’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. 

Born in Italy and raised in Buenos Aires, Peccei came to the United States to attend MIT as a physics undergraduate. He earned his master’s at New York University and returned to MIT, where he earned his Ph.D. in physics in 1969. After a brief period of postdoctoral research at the University of Washington, he joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1971. In 1978, he joined the staff of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany. He became the head of the Theoretical Group at the Deutsches Elektron Synchrotron laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, in 1984 before joining UCLA’s faculty in 1989.

He has served on numerous editorial and advisory boards in both the United States and Europe.

- From UCLA Today

Environmental Research Advocates is proud to have played a role in the introduction of David Fransen, Consul General of Canada in Los Angeles, to Paul Weiss, California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI).  This relationship has resulted in the establishment of annual Canada Fulbright Chairs at CNSI.  The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 with the mission to enable academic exchange and public diplomacy between countries. Fulbright Canada, which recently celebrated its 20^th year, aims “to enhance mutual understanding between the people of Canada and the people of the United States of America by providing support to outstanding individuals. These individuals conduct research, lecture, or enroll in formal academic programs in the other country” (Fulbright Canada Mandate).

Canadian Fulbright Scholars discussed nanotechnology applications in the renewable energy and biomedical fields on May 14, 2013 in Westwood, CA.

Ted Sargent and Shana O. Kelley, recipients of the 2012-13 Canadian Fulbright Scholar Awards, presented their research on nanotechnology to a group of students, professors and scientists at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA. Their groundbreaking work involves the application of nanotechnology to developing solar energy and biomedical technologies.

Ted Sargent, a Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, holds the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at CNSI UCLA, focusing his research on inorganic colloidal Quantum Dot solar cells. Quantum dots are nanotechnology-produced semiconductors, and are a potential replacement for the silicon semiconductors that are generally used in photovoltaic cells. Incorporating Quantum Dots in solar cell synthesis poses potential advantages to renewable energy production; Silicon semiconductors convert light into electricity, but use a limited energy range of photons.  Dr. Sargent described his work developing tandem Quantum Dot solar cells, which are able to process a broader range of photon wavelengths – and even infrared light – into electricity, so less potential energy is wasted in the process. Dr. Sargent also works extensively with colloidal Quantum Dot solar cells, which are three-dimensional (as opposed to standard planar ones), and can convert photon energy with up to 7% energy transfer efficiency.  This research is a promising development in renewable energy technology as energy consumers search for more efficient and affordable solar panels.

The topic of the lecture switched from renewable energy to biomedical research when Shana O. Kelley, the special Fulbright Canada Fellow at CNSI UCLA , took the stage. Also a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, Dr. Kelley presented her research on applying ultra sensitive molecular detectors to medical equipment. By using electro-chemical bio-sensing enabled by nanotechnology, Dr. Kelley hopes to create faster, cost-effective, and reliable diagnostic methods.

CNSI is a multi-disciplinary research program with locations at both UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. Its mission is “to encourage university collaboration with industry and to enable the rapid commercialization of discoveries in nanoscience and nannotechnology.” Research at CNSI applies to four main areas: Energy, Environment, Health-Medicine, and Information Technology.  

Congratulations to Paul Weiss and to David Fransen for their combined vision in the creation of two Fulbright chair positions at CNSI UCLA.  We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank both Paul and David for their continued friendship and inspiration.

Conservation International's Founder, CEO and an Environmental Research Advocates Board Member, Peter Seiligmann, honored Disney and its commitment to conservation by presenting Disney Chairman Robert Iger with the Global Conservation Leadership Award.

CI's mission statement says it all: " Every person on Earth deserves a healthy environment and the fundamental benefits that nature provides. But our planet is experiencing an unprecedented drawdown of these resources, and it is only by protecting nature and its gifts – a stable climate, fresh water, healthy oceans and reliable food – that we can ensure a better life for everyone, everywhere."

Image: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Wirelmage

The Earth Institute and International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) present a panel discussion, "Adapting to a Changing Climate: Managing Our Cities & Food Supply," with Lisa Goddard, Director, International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI); Sergej Mahnovski, Director, Mayor’s Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability; and Adam Sobel, Professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University.

The panel, moderated by Steve Cohen, Executive Director of The Earth Institute, Columbia University, will explore how science is enhancing society's ability to understand and manage the impacts of climate variability and change. We will look at predictions, projections, tools and programs from disasters relief, agricultural, and urban perspectives, as well as investigate what stakeholders can do to improve the process of using science to influence decisions.

Originally scheduled for the night that Hurricane Sandy hit NYC, this panel will discuss how lessons from Sandy can be applied to protect and strengthen resiliency across the globe. Originally scheduled for the night that Hurricane Sandy hit NYC, this panel will discuss how lessons from Sandy can be applied to protect and strengthen resiliency across the globe.

Source: The Earth Institute Columbia University

President Barack Obama greets Fermi Award recipients Dr. Burton Richter, right, and his wife Laurose, and Dr. Mildred S. Dresselhaus, third from right, and her husband Gene, in the Oval Office, May 7, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The best science is as much about service as it is about discovery.  And that’s especially true for two of our Nation’s most accomplished researchers, who were honored Monday for devoting their lives not only to doing great science but also to teaching and mentoring, public service, and inspiring others.

The two awardees, Drs. Mildred Dresselhaus and Burton Richter--after visiting with President Obama in the Oval Office--were joined by distinguished guests at the Ronald Reagan International Center as Secretary of Energy Steven Chu honored them as winners of the Enrico Fermi Award.

A Presidential award, the Fermi Award is one of the oldest and most prestigious science and technology honors bestowed by the U.S. Government. It is administered by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science to honor individuals who have given unstintingly over their careers to advance energy science, and to inspire future scientists to follow their example.

Dr. Dresselhaus made many discoveries that deepened our fundamental understanding in condensed matter systems. She has also served in a variety of scientific leadership roles, including as the Director of the DOE Office of Science and President of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition, Dr. Dresselhaus has devoted great energy to mentoring students, raising community awareness about science, and promoting progress on gender equity. She is widely respected as a mentor and spokesperson for women in science.

Dr. Richter has done pioneering work in the development and use of accelerator technologies that have contributed to several Nobel Prizes—including the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics that he shared with Dr. Samuel C.C. Ting for the discovery of a new kind of heavy elementary particle. Dr. Richter also provided visionary leadership at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (today’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) from 1984 to 1999, where he helped lead advances that not only yielded new discoveries in particle physics but also laid the foundation for major new strides in photon science. Since then, Dr. Richter has served as a leader in many other positions involving public policy and science and technology.

Drs. Richter and Dresselhaus both opened new scientific and technical horizons. But, equally important, they have been generous with their scientific knowledge and their wisdom. We are proud to salute them, winners of the Enrico Fermi Presidential Award.