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Europe Launches Last Vega Rocket With Observation Satellite

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Thursday, September 5, 2024

PARIS (Reuters) - Europe's Arianespace has launched the last Vega rocket, placing the Sentinel-2C satellite into orbit under the European Union's Copernicus programme to monitor Earth's environment.The slender single-body rocket, which does not have boosters strapped to its side unlike larger vehicles, streaked into the night sky at a launch base in French Guiana at 10.50 p.m. local time on Sept 4 (0150 GMT on Sept 5), streamed images showed.The launch ends a 12-year career for the small launch vehicle, designed by Italy's Avio. It is being replaced by the updated Vega C, which is due to return to service later this year after being grounded following a launch failure with the loss of two powerful imaging satellites in December 2022.Built by Airbus Defence & Space, Sentinel-2C will replace Sentinel-2A, which is part of a pair of satellites operating within the Copernicus programme.It will be used to study deforestation, urban development and emergencies such as forest fires, floods or volcanic eruptions, Mauro Facchini, head of the Copernicus unit at the European Commission, told reporters before the launch.The European Space Agency, which partners the EU on the project, has said Copernicus is the world's largest environmental monitoring effort.Together, the programme's six families of Sentinel satellites aim to read the planet's "vital signs" from carbon dioxide to wave height or temperatures of land and oceans.In 2022, Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images highlighted severe drought damage to Italy's Po Valley.(Reporting by Tim Hepher; editing by Philippa Fletcher)Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See - July 2024

PARIS (Reuters) - Europe's Arianespace has launched the last Vega rocket, placing the Sentinel-2C satellite into orbit under the European Union's...

PARIS (Reuters) - Europe's Arianespace has launched the last Vega rocket, placing the Sentinel-2C satellite into orbit under the European Union's Copernicus programme to monitor Earth's environment.

The slender single-body rocket, which does not have boosters strapped to its side unlike larger vehicles, streaked into the night sky at a launch base in French Guiana at 10.50 p.m. local time on Sept 4 (0150 GMT on Sept 5), streamed images showed.

The launch ends a 12-year career for the small launch vehicle, designed by Italy's Avio. It is being replaced by the updated Vega C, which is due to return to service later this year after being grounded following a launch failure with the loss of two powerful imaging satellites in December 2022.

Built by Airbus Defence & Space, Sentinel-2C will replace Sentinel-2A, which is part of a pair of satellites operating within the Copernicus programme.

It will be used to study deforestation, urban development and emergencies such as forest fires, floods or volcanic eruptions, Mauro Facchini, head of the Copernicus unit at the European Commission, told reporters before the launch.

The European Space Agency, which partners the EU on the project, has said Copernicus is the world's largest environmental monitoring effort.

Together, the programme's six families of Sentinel satellites aim to read the planet's "vital signs" from carbon dioxide to wave height or temperatures of land and oceans.

In 2022, Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images highlighted severe drought damage to Italy's Po Valley.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.

Photos You Should See - July 2024

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South Dakota Action Threatens Massive Carbon Dioxide Pipeline Proposed for Midwest

South Dakota's governor signed a bill into law Thursday that bans the taking of private property for building carbon dioxide pipelines

South Dakota's governor signed a bill into law Thursday that bans the taking of private property for building carbon dioxide pipelines, a blow to a sprawling Midwest pipeline network that ethanol producers see as key for their future.The new law muddies the waters for Summit Carbon Solutions and the planned $8.9 billion, 2,500-mile (4,023-kilometer) pipeline that already has approvals in three other states.Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden said the measure restricting eminent domain “does not kill” Summit's proposed project, and he encouraged the company to view the bill as “an opportunity to reset.”“I made my decision based on my own consideration of the facts, the policy arguments, legislative history, my own opinions and experience and my judgment about what is best for South Dakota,” Rhoden said.In a statement, Summit lamented the bill signing as changing the rules in the middle of the game. The company is seeking approval from South Dakota regulators for its proposed route in the state.“This kind of regulatory uncertainty creates real challenges — not just for our project, but for the ethanol plants in South Dakota that now face a competitive disadvantage compared to their counterparts in neighboring states," the company said. “While this presents obstacles, our project moves forward in states that support investment and innovation, and we will have more news on that soon.”The company's proposed pipeline system would transport planet-warming emissions from dozens of ethanol plants in five states for burial deep underground in North Dakota.Property rights have been a passionate issue in South Dakota, where voters last year rejected a suite of regulations that opponents said would deny local control over such projects and consolidate authority with state regulators. Supporters called it a “landowner bill of rights.”The bill states: “Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, a person may not exercise the right of eminent domain to acquire right-of-way for, construct, or operate a pipeline for the preponderant purpose of transporting carbon oxide.”Eminent domain is the taking of private property with compensation to the owner.Summit has approvals for its routes in Iowa and North Dakota, a leg in Minnesota and underground storage in North Dakota. In 2023, South Dakota regulators rejected Summit's permit application. New proceedings are underway.It isn't clear how Summit would move forward with its project if it could not build in South Dakota.Supporters see carbon capture projects such as Summit's pipeline as a way to fight climate change and to help the ethanol industry. Opponents question carbon capture's effectiveness at large scale and say it allows the fossil fuels industry to continue with little meaningful change.Some opponents argue the amount of greenhouse gases sequestered through the process would make little difference and could lead farmers to grow more corn despite environmental concerns about the crop.Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

A Straightforward Climate Fix Hits Another Setback

Cutting down emissions of planet-warming methane from oil and gas production was supposed to be relatively simple. It hasn’t worked that way.

For the oil and gas industry, cutting emissions of one of the most potent greenhouse gases was supposed to be relatively straightforward.But last week Congress voted to roll back the “methane fee,” a penalty on excess methane emissions passed during the Biden administration. The decision removed what was supposed to be an incentive for polluters to reduce their environmental impact, though the fee had not yet gone into effect.And the move comes amid efforts across the Trump administration to roll back environmental regulations and boost fossil fuel production, which, in turn, could lead to the release of more methane.Methane is considered a “superpollutant” because it can trap around 80 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide can in the short term, and it’s responsible for about a third of the global temperature rise since the preindustrial era.A big chunk of global methane emissions caused by human activity comes from the energy sector, where methane is released during the production and transportation of fossil fuels.Over the last few years, cutting back on energy-sector methane has become a focal point for policymakers looking for the cheapest, fastest and easiest ways to reduce emissions globally. New satellites and cameras can quickly and accurately locate large emissions events, and fixing the problem is sometimes as simple as twisting a knob on a valve.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Minimizing the carbon footprint of bridges and other structures

MAD Design Fellow Zane Schemmer writes algorithms that optimize overall function, minimize carbon footprint, and produce a manufacturable design.

Awed as a young child by the majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, civil engineer and MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) Fellow Zane Schemmer has retained his fascination with bridges: what they look like, why they work, and how they’re designed and built.He weighed the choice between architecture and engineering when heading off to college, but, motivated by the why and how of structural engineering, selected the latter. Now he incorporates design as an iterative process in the writing of algorithms that perfectly balance the forces involved in discrete portions of a structure to create an overall design that optimizes function, minimizes carbon footprint, and still produces a manufacturable result.While this may sound like an obvious goal in structural design, it’s not. It’s new. It’s a more holistic way of looking at the design process that can optimize even down to the materials, angles, and number of elements in the nodes or joints that connect the larger components of a building, bridge, tower, etc.According to Schemmer, there hasn’t been much progress on optimizing structural design to minimize embodied carbon, and the work that exists often results in designs that are “too complex to be built in real life,” he says. The embodied carbon of a structure is the total carbon dioxide emissions of its life cycle: from the extraction or manufacture of its materials to their transport and use and through the demolition of the structure and disposal of the materials. Schemmer, who works with Josephine V. Carstensen, the Gilbert W. Winslow Career Development Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, is focusing on the portion of that cycle that runs through construction.In September, at the IASS 2024 symposium "Redefining the Art of Structural Design in Zurich," Schemmer and Carstensen presented their work on Discrete Topology Optimization algorithms that are able to minimize the embodied carbon in a bridge or other structure by up to 20 percent. This comes through materials selection that considers not only a material’s appearance and its ability to get the job done, but also the ease of procurement, its proximity to the building site, and the carbon embodied in its manufacture and transport.“The real novelty of our algorithm is its ability to consider multiple materials in a highly constrained solution space to produce manufacturable designs with a user-specified force flow,” Schemmer says. “Real-life problems are complex and often have many constraints associated with them. In traditional formulations, it can be difficult to have a long list of complicated constraints. Our goal is to incorporate these constraints to make it easier to take our designs out of the computer and create them in real life.”Take, for instance, a steel tower, which could be a “super lightweight, efficient design solution,” Schemmer explains. Because steel is so strong, you don’t need as much of it compared to concrete or timber to build a big building. But steel is also very carbon-intensive to produce and transport. Shipping it across the country or especially from a different continent can sharply increase its embodied carbon price tag. Schemmer’s topology optimization will replace some of the steel with timber elements or decrease the amount of steel in other elements to create a hybrid structure that will function effectively and minimize the carbon footprint. “This is why using the same steel in two different parts of the world can lead to two different optimized designs,” he explains.Schemmer, who grew up in the mountains of Utah, earned a BS and MS in civil and environmental engineering from University of California at Berkeley, where his graduate work focused on seismic design. He describes that education as providing a “very traditional, super-strong engineering background that tackled some of the toughest engineering problems,” along with knowledge of structural engineering’s traditions and current methods.But at MIT, he says, a lot of the work he sees “looks at removing the constraints of current societal conventions of doing things, and asks how could we do things if it was in a more ideal form; what are we looking at then? Which I think is really cool,” he says. “But I think sometimes too, there’s a jump between the most-perfect version of something and where we are now, that there needs to be a bridge between those two. And I feel like my education helps me see that bridge.”The bridge he’s referring to is the topology optimization algorithms that make good designs better in terms of decreased global warming potential.“That’s where the optimization algorithm comes in,” Schemmer says. “In contrast to a standard structure designed in the past, the algorithm can take the same design space and come up with a much more efficient material usage that still meets all the structural requirements, be up to code, and have everything we want from a safety standpoint.”That’s also where the MAD Design Fellowship comes in. The program provides yearlong fellowships with full financial support to graduate students from all across the Institute who network with each other, with the MAD faculty, and with outside speakers who use design in new ways in a surprising variety of fields. This helps the fellows gain a better understanding of how to use iterative design in their own work.“Usually people think of their own work like, ‘Oh, I had this background. I’ve been looking at this one way for a very long time.’ And when you look at it from an outside perspective, I think it opens your mind to be like, ‘Oh my God. I never would have thought about doing this that way. Maybe I should try that.’ And then we can move to new ideas, new inspiration for better work,” Schemmer says.He chose civil and structural engineering over architecture some seven years ago, but says that “100 years ago, I don’t think architecture and structural engineering were two separate professions. I think there was an understanding of how things looked and how things worked, and it was merged together. Maybe from an efficiency standpoint, it’s better to have things done separately. But I think there’s something to be said for having knowledge about how the whole system works, potentially more intermingling between the free-form architectural design and the mathematical design of a civil engineer. Merging it back together, I think, has a lot of benefits.”Which brings us back to the Golden Gate Bridge, Schemmer’s longtime favorite. You can still hear that excited 3-year-old in his voice when he talks about it.“It’s so iconic,” he says. “It’s connecting these two spits of land that just rise straight up out of the ocean. There’s this fog that comes in and out a lot of days. It's a really magical place, from the size of the cable strands and everything. It’s just, ‘Wow.’ People built this over 100 years ago, before the existence of a lot of the computational tools that we have now. So, all the math, everything in the design, was all done by hand and from the mind. Nothing was computerized, which I think is crazy to think about.”As Schemmer continues work on his doctoral degree at MIT, the MAD fellowship will expose him to many more awe-inspiring ideas in other fields, leading him to incorporate some of these in some way with his engineering knowledge to design better ways of building bridges and other structures.

CO2 emissions from new North Sea drilling sites would match 30 years’ worth from UK households

New research comes as dozens of small potential fields have received some form of license from the governmentPotential new North Sea oil and gas fields with early stage licences from the UK would emit as much carbon dioxide as British households produce in three decades.The finding has led to calls to the government to reject demands from fossil fuel producers for the final permits needed to allow their operations to go ahead. Continue reading...

Potential new North Sea oil and gas fields with early stage licences from the UK would emit as much carbon dioxide as British households produce in three decades.The finding has led to calls to the government to reject demands from fossil fuel producers for the final permits needed to allow their operations to go ahead.Dozens of small potential sites, and several controversial large projects such as the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields, have received some form of licence, though they are not yet operational.If they all went aheadthe resulting emissions would have a global impact on the ability to stave off catastrophic levels of climate change, according to research by the campaigning group Uplift.Sites that have been licensed for drilling but have not yet been developed are estimated to hold up to 3.8bn barrels of oil equivalent. If burned, this would release 1.5bn tonnes of carbon dioxide. Emissions from the UK’s 28m households amount to about 50m tonnes a year.Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift, said: “The scale of the planned drilling by fossil fuel companies in the North Sea is alarming. How can it be right that, while we strive to reduce our climate impact – and household emissions fall from people installing solar panels and switching to heat pumps – the oil and gas industry is given a free pass to generate massive emissions?”The government has pledged not to issue any new licenses to oil and gas fields, but has stopped short of rescinding licences currently in the pipeline. Under the UK’s licensing regime, exploration licences can be issued at an early stage, and it can often take years or decades before progressing to the next stage of receiving the production permits necessary for operation.The previous government’s enthusiasm for licensing – and vow to drain “every last drop” from the North Sea – has meant that the pipeline is well stocked with potential new fields.Under the Conservatives, fields were subject to climate checks before being given the green light, but these checks did not take account of the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from burning the oil and gas produced from the fields.That changed in June, shortly before the general election, when a landmark ruling by the supreme court – called the “Finch ruling” after the campaigner Sarah Finch, who brought the initial case – found that such emissions must be taken into account.When Labour took power, the government issued fresh advice to operators, that they must include emissions from burning the oil and gas in their environmental assessments. A government consultation to establish in detail how potential new fields should be treated is now under way, and will close in early January.The new research by Uplift, seen by the Guardian, is the first to expose the impacts of the potential pipeline of new fields. Khan said ministers should make clear they would effectively shut down new fields.“We finally have a government that is willing to apply common sense and accept that the emissions from burning oil and gas should be factored into decisions on whether or not to approve new drilling,” she said. She called on the UK to send a strong signal to other countries, which are also considering new drilling.“Governments around the world also know that we have discovered more fossil fuels than are safe to burn and that some reserves need to be kept in the ground if we are to stay within safe climate limits. There is compelling evidence that the emissions from new North Sea drilling are incompatible with these limits,” she said.The ban on new licences – which applies to potential fields that have not yet received any form of permit – should prevent about 4bn barrels of oil being produced. The government will consult next year on how to implement this ban.Labour faces stiff challenges, however, from the oil and gas industry, and from oil and gas workers and the unions which represent them.Mark Wilson, operations director for Offshore Energies UK, which represents the oil and gas industry, said: “UK oil and gas demand is forecast to outstrip domestic production, even if these resources are brought to market. Limiting the production and therefore the supply of UK oil and gas within a mature and declining basin like the North Sea is not an effective way to address the challenge of delivering a net zero energy future.“Preventing the development of existing reserves and resources won’t fix the climate challenge, but it will threaten UK jobs, communities and income and negatively impact the livelihoods of the skilled people whose expertise we need to deliver the UK’s net zero goals.”Uplift’s Khan said the government must provide a “just transition” for workers, but pointed out that the future of the North Sea would be one of steep decline, even if resources were poured into extraction.“New drilling is not the answer for the UK’s energy workers. In the past decade, despite new fields being approved and hundreds of new licenses being handed out, the number of jobs supported by the industry has more than halved as the North Sea declines,” Khan highlighted.“What supply chains, workers, and their communities have long needed is a proper plan to create good quality, clean energy jobs in the places that need them most. This is the critical job for government. Approving new drilling delays the UK’s transition and distracts from the urgent action that workers need today.”A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “Our priority is a fair, orderly and prosperous transition in the North Sea in line with our climate and legal obligations, which drives towards our clean energy future of energy security, lower bills and good, long-term jobs. We will not revoke existing oil and gas licences and will manage existing fields for the entirety of their lifespan, and we will not issue new oil and gas licences to explore new fields.”The spokesperson added: “Clean, homegrown energy is the best way to protect bill payers and secure Britain’s energy independence while tackling climate change, which is why we announced the biggest ever investment in offshore wind and are moving ahead with new North Sea industries like carbon capture and storage and hydrogen.”

TikTok’s annual carbon footprint is likely bigger than Greece’s, study finds

Average user generates greenhouse gases equal to driving an extra 123 miles in gas-powered car a year, data showsTikTok’s annual carbon footprint is likely larger than that of Greece, according to a new analysis of the social media platform’s environmental impact, with the average user generating greenhouse gases equivalent to driving an extra 123 miles in a gas-powered car each year.Estimates from Greenly, a carbon accounting consultancy based in Paris, place TikTok’s 2023 emissions in the US, UK and France at about 7.6m metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) – higher than those associated with Twitter/X and Snapchat in the same region. Continue reading...

TikTok’s annual carbon footprint is likely larger than that of Greece, according to a new analysis of the social media platform’s environmental impact, with the average user generating greenhouse gases equivalent to driving an extra 123 miles in a gas-powered car each year.Estimates from Greenly, a carbon accounting consultancy based in Paris, place TikTok’s 2023 emissions in the US, UK and France at about 7.6m metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) – higher than those associated with Twitter/X and Snapchat in the same region.TikTok has 1 billion users worldwide and Greenly’s findings placed its carbon footprint just above Instagram’s – even though Instagram has nearly double TikTok’s user base.The reason behind this lies in the unique addictiveness of TikTok’s platform. The average Instagram user spends 30.6 minutes on the app per day. Meanwhile, the average TikTok user spends a whopping 45.5 minutes scrolling.“The whole algorithm is built around the massification of videos,” explained Alexis Normand, the chief executive of Greenly. “Addictiveness also has consequences in terms of incentivizing people to generate more and more [of a carbon] footprint on an individual basis.”Given that the US, UK and France make up just under 15% of TikTok’s global user base, the platform’s overall carbon footprint is likely around 50m metric tonnes of CO2e. And since these data center calculations don’t include other smaller sources of TikTok’s emissions, such as the emissions associated with office spaces and employee commuting, this is likely an underestimation.For context, Greece’s annual carbon emissions for 2023 were 51.67m metric tonnes of CO2e.TikTok’s users also have the second-highest emissions per minute of use on social media according to Greenly’s analysis, just after YouTube. One minute on TikTok will burn 2.921 grams of CO2e, on average, while one minute on YouTube will burn 2.923 grams. One minute on Instagram burns 2.912 grams.The small differences add up. Due to the sheer amount of content on the platform, as well as longer average scroll times, TikTok users have the highest yearly emissions. The average TikTok user will burn 48.49kg of CO2e on the app in one year, according to Greenly’s analysis. In second place comes YouTube, with an average user burning 40.17kg of CO2e. Instagram users will burn just 32.52kg of CO2e.According to the Environmental Protection Agency, that’s the difference between driving a gas car driving 123 miles (TikTok), 102 miles (YouTube) and 82.8 miles (Instagram).The study examined the carbon footprint associated with each user per minute by incorporating the emissions associated with data centers, which made up about 99% of the footprint, and the emissions associated with charging devices after using the platforms.TikTok’s emissions are the most opaque of the social media platforms. Tech giants such as Meta and Google release detailed reports to the Carbon Disclosure Project every year, even posting their findings to their respective websites. TikTok has no publicly available emissions data.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther social media companies, while also reporting sky-high emissions, have made commitments to power their data centers with clean energy. The quality of these commitments varies widely. An investigation by the Guardian showed that four of the five top tech companies were using offset-like renewable energy credits (Recs) to underreport their emissions data by approximately 662%.TikTok has made a commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030. The company has a plan called “Project Clover”, implemented in 2023, that is tasked with meeting this goal while enhancing overall data security. However, only one renewable data center has been built to date: a €12bn facility in Norway that runs on 100% renewable energy.It is unclear whether or not these reporting practices and commitments will persist under new ownership – a US appeals court has upheld a law that will require Chinese firm ByteDance to sell the platform to a non-Chinese entity by 19 January 2025, though the firm is trying to delay this until a recently friendlier Trump administration is inaugurated.If the platform is bought by a US company, rules passed this year would require the firm to publicly disclose its emissions if they are “material” to investors, though Trump will likely reverse this.TikTok did not respond to request for comment.

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