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.