Posts

Solar Panels

 Solar panels are a popular form of harvesting clean energy, but they aren’t without their limitations. They work best in bright, direct sunlight, so overcast and rainy days can limit energy efficiency. As for nightfall, solar panels can’t work without direct or indirect sunlight — at least for now. A team of researchers, including researchers from the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at UNSW Sydney and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science, have made a breakthrough in infrared technology that could lead to the development of solar panels that work at night. The researchers were able to run a successful test on a device, called a thermo-radiative diode, that converts infrared heat into electricity. According to the researchers, the thermo-radiative diode is similar to the technology used for night-vision goggles. For now, the amount of energy produced in the tests is incredibly small compared to solar panel output, about 0.001%. But it does show hop...

Carbon Offsets in Tanzania

One of the last hunter-gatherer communities on the continent is embracing 21st-century environmentalism deep in the Rift Valley of East Africa, close to some of the oldest human remains ever discovered. The Hadza people, who are referred to as "the last archers of Africa," are utilizing the money from the sale of carbon credits obtained from protecting their woods to hire their children as scouts to deter forest vandals. Around 1,300 Hadza and members of the cattle-herding tribes with whom they share the Yaeda Valley in northern Tanzania started receiving the first payments of what will be close to half a million dollars annually from a local social enterprise, Carbon Tanzania, for protecting woodland grazing and hunting grounds across an area larger than New York City this March. The project will dramatically expand a current carbon-offsetting operation that has been in place for ten years on Hadza property, north to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, one of Africa's most...

Simple Ways to be More Eco-Friendly

Certain products like paper towels, toilet paper, printer paper, and facial tissues are everyday necessities. However, they all come from trees, a diminishing natural resource that takes 10-30 years to mature. Fortunately, there are alternatives such as sustainable paper products that come from fast-growing plants like bamboo. Bamboo is a plant that grows faster than trees, with some species being ready to manufacture paper products such as bamboo toilet paper, printer paper, and paper towels in under five years. The bamboo plant can also be used to make furniture and flooring. Showering can save energy and water more than a bath. But, this is only possible if you don’t shower for thirty minutes or more under running water or use a powerful showerhead. You will save water and energy if you use a low-flow or aerated showerhead and spend less than ten minutes in the shower. Finally, homeowners tend to leave the heating running longer than necessary. Home heating systems and boilers are a...

What to look for in 2022

 This past year saw several big-picture studies identifying the extinction risk of large groups of species, and the news wasn’t good. One third of shark species, the studies found, are threatened, as are 30% of trees, half of all turtles, 16% of dragonflies and damselflies, 30% of European birds and 16% of Australian birds. Tragically, we don’t expect any of this to slow down in 2022. We’ve already heard from sources about potential extinction declarations that could come in the months ahead, mostly for species that haven’t been seen in several decades. The pandemic will also continue to affect the conservation movement, and we need to keep these issues in the public eye. The past two years have seen a lot less on-the-ground research around the world, although some scientists have started to break through the need to stay at home and gotten out into the field.

What is Envivia?

  Climate change is one of the greatest environmental, social, and economic challenges facing the world today. To solve the climate crisis, we must eliminate additional carbon emissions from entering the environment and get to “net zero” by 2050. This requires us to rethink about how we use and protect the world’s forests. Enviva is a leading global energy company specializing in sustainable wood bioenergy, plays a critical role in fighting climate change, getting rid of fossil fuels, and ensuring that our forests continue to grow and thrive. In fact, through their efforts, the landscape of forests in the U.S. Southeast continues to grow significantly and provides a practical solution for power and heat generation companies to reduce carbon emissions by replacing coal and other fossil fuels.

Natural Resource Depletion

A crucial current environmental problem is the depletion of Natural resources. We use so many natural resources that it would need almost 1.5 piles of earth to cover all our needs. This will further increase in the future due to massive industrialization in Asian countries like India and China. Increased use of natural resources leads to a number of other environmental issues, such as industrialization, population growth, and pollution. Over time, natural resource depletion will lead to an energy crisis. The chemicals emitted from many natural resources contribute to climate change. Fossil fuel consumption results in the emission of greenhouse gases, which is primarily responsible for global warming and climate change.  Globally, people are making efforts to shift to renewable sources of energy like solar, wind, and geothermal energy. As such, the cost of installing the infrastructure and maintaining these sources has plummeted in recent years.

Increased Emissions of Greenhouse Gases

Greenhouse gases are slowly becoming problematic as they are dramatically increasing. From Australia and the US experiencing some of the most devastating bushfire seasons ever recorded, locusts swarming across parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, decimating crops, scientists warning that the planet has crossed a series of tipping points that could have catastrophic consequences, microplastic being found in Antarctic ice for the first time, a heatwave in Antarctica that saw temperatures rise above 20 degrees for the first time, warnings of advancing permafrost melt in Arctic regions, the Greenland ice sheet melting at an unprecedented rate, news of the accelerating sixth mass extinction, increasing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, warnings of air pollution exacerbating the spread of COVID-19, China experiencing its worst floods in decades, methane levels rising to their highest on record, Canada’s last intact ice shelf collapsing, a national park in the US recording the hig...