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Scientists Will Engineer the Ocean to Absorb More Carbon Dioxide

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Thursday, September 12, 2024

September 12, 20244 min readScientists Will Engineer the Ocean to Absorb More Carbon DioxideA research consortium plans to revive geoengineering trials of the controversial iron fertilization technique to pull carbon dioxide from the air, despite public backlashBy Alec LuhnThis February 8, 2016 composite image reveals the complex distribution of phytoplankton in one of Earth's eastern boundary upwelling systems — the California Current. NASA/Goddard/Suomin-NPP/VIIRSScientists plan to seed part of the Pacific Ocean with iron to trigger a surface bloom of phytoplankton that will hopefully suck carbon dioxide out of the air, reviving field trials of a geoengineering technique that has been taboo for more than a decade.On Sept. 9, 23 academics from Exploring Ocean Iron Solutions (ExOIS), a not-for-profit, non-commercial consortium, laid out a program in Frontiers in Climate to assess iron fertilization. The researchers want to better quantify how much CO2 this technique could sequester in the deep sea and what impacts it might have on marine ecosystems. They hope to start trials across as much as 10,000 square kilometers of the northeastern Pacific Ocean as soon as 2026, says consortium member Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world will likely need to remove billions of metric tons of atmospheric CO2 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), and Buesseler says that fertilization could be “one of those pieces in that puzzle.” The ocean already contains much more carbon than Earth’s plants, crops and soils, he says, and it has the capacity to hold far more. Spreading iron, he adds, can “speed up” the natural biological carbon pump by promoting greater phytoplankton growth.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.During photosynthesis, phytoplankton consume CO2, sunlight and nutrients, including iron. But in many parts of the ocean, this element is rare. If some is delivered to these areas by windblown dust or volcanic ash—or by a ship deliberately pumping out an iron sulfate solution—a vast number of the microscopic organisms can quickly grow and multiply. When these creatures die or are eaten and excreted by larger ones, some of the carbon that they took up sinks to deep, slow-moving waters as “marine snow,” keeping the carbon out of the atmosphere for decades or centuries.ExOIS is trying to raise $160 million for the entire program. As a start, the scientists have received a $2-million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for computer modeling, and they are in talks with potential donors such as the Ocean Resilience and Climate Alliance, a philanthropic coalition funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg and others.ExOIS plans to apply to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for permission to conduct trials under the London Protocol, which in 2013 set an international ban on ocean iron fertilization for commercial purposes. The convention allows fertilization for research if it is monitored and doesn’t harm the environment.Buesseler and others added iron to the ocean during a dozen experiments in the 1990s and 2000s. But a public backlash against tinkering with natural Earth systems arose in 2012, after American entrepreneur Russ George notoriously dumped 100 metric tons of iron dust off the coast of Canada, partly to bolster salmon fishing.ExOIS promises detailed monitoring of the effects of its field studies, as well as improved computer modeling of the implications. The scientists will add a nonreactive tracer such as sulfur hexafluoride to the iron sulfate solution, a step that will help track the spread of the fertilized water as the iron sulfate slowly breaks down. They will measure CO2 concentrations using ships, floats and underwater drones. And they will check satellite images that can register increases in phytoplankton color at the ocean’s surface. The group is also promising more public engagement and consideration for environmental impacts than were involved in previous iron-spreading projects.Effects could be varied and wide-ranging. In a 2009 experiment in the southwest Atlantic Ocean by German and Indian scientists, larger zooplankton ate the smaller phytoplankton—and little carbon actually reached the deep sea. In an experiment that was conducted in 2006 in the northeastern Pacific by researchers in the U.S. and Canada, toxic phytoplankton species flourished. This has raised fears that fertilization could create “dead zones” where rampant algal blooms would consume all the oxygen in the water, snuffing out other life. Phytoplankton blooms could also consume nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen that then wouldn’t be available for organisms elsewhere, a phenomenon known as “nutrient robbing.” In addition, scientists still know little about the deep-ocean ecosystems where the carbon is supposed to be stored. “Most likely [iron fertilization] will affect something that we don’t really understand yet,” says deep-sea expert Lisa Levin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who is not involved in the ExOIS program.Last year a computer modeling study done by British, American and French researchers found that adding one million to two million metric tons of iron into the ocean each year could draw down 45 billion metric tons of carbon by 2100. It would also rob nutrients from other sea life, however. Along with an estimated 15 percent reduction in marine biomass caused by warming, another 5 percent could be lost because of iron fertilization, particularly in fishing areas near the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian coasts. “I haven’t really seen [ExOIS] present a hypothesis of what’s wrong with previous work ... that either makes the carbon yield higher or minimizes the negative consequences,” says Alessandro Tagliabue of the University of Liverpool in England, co-lead author of that study.Buesseler argues that some difficult trade-offs such as this may be necessary. “It’s a small change in biology, relative to doing nothing and watching this planet boil,” he says.

A research consortium plans to revive geoengineering trials of the controversial iron fertilization technique to pull carbon dioxide from the air, despite public backlash

September 12, 2024

4 min read

Scientists Will Engineer the Ocean to Absorb More Carbon Dioxide

A research consortium plans to revive geoengineering trials of the controversial iron fertilization technique to pull carbon dioxide from the air, despite public backlash

By Alec Luhn

Satellite composite image of the California coast and Pacific Ocean with varying colors of blues and greens where there are phytoplankton blooms. The curve of the Earth can be seen at the top of the image

This February 8, 2016 composite image reveals the complex distribution of phytoplankton in one of Earth's eastern boundary upwelling systems — the California Current.

NASA/Goddard/Suomin-NPP/VIIRS

Scientists plan to seed part of the Pacific Ocean with iron to trigger a surface bloom of phytoplankton that will hopefully suck carbon dioxide out of the air, reviving field trials of a geoengineering technique that has been taboo for more than a decade.

On Sept. 9, 23 academics from Exploring Ocean Iron Solutions (ExOIS), a not-for-profit, non-commercial consortium, laid out a program in Frontiers in Climate to assess iron fertilization. The researchers want to better quantify how much CO2 this technique could sequester in the deep sea and what impacts it might have on marine ecosystems. They hope to start trials across as much as 10,000 square kilometers of the northeastern Pacific Ocean as soon as 2026, says consortium member Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world will likely need to remove billions of metric tons of atmospheric CO2 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), and Buesseler says that fertilization could be “one of those pieces in that puzzle.” The ocean already contains much more carbon than Earth’s plants, crops and soils, he says, and it has the capacity to hold far more. Spreading iron, he adds, can “speed up” the natural biological carbon pump by promoting greater phytoplankton growth.


On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.


During photosynthesis, phytoplankton consume CO2, sunlight and nutrients, including iron. But in many parts of the ocean, this element is rare. If some is delivered to these areas by windblown dust or volcanic ash—or by a ship deliberately pumping out an iron sulfate solution—a vast number of the microscopic organisms can quickly grow and multiply. When these creatures die or are eaten and excreted by larger ones, some of the carbon that they took up sinks to deep, slow-moving waters as “marine snow,” keeping the carbon out of the atmosphere for decades or centuries.

ExOIS is trying to raise $160 million for the entire program. As a start, the scientists have received a $2-million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for computer modeling, and they are in talks with potential donors such as the Ocean Resilience and Climate Alliance, a philanthropic coalition funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg and others.

ExOIS plans to apply to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for permission to conduct trials under the London Protocol, which in 2013 set an international ban on ocean iron fertilization for commercial purposes. The convention allows fertilization for research if it is monitored and doesn’t harm the environment.

Buesseler and others added iron to the ocean during a dozen experiments in the 1990s and 2000s. But a public backlash against tinkering with natural Earth systems arose in 2012, after American entrepreneur Russ George notoriously dumped 100 metric tons of iron dust off the coast of Canada, partly to bolster salmon fishing.

ExOIS promises detailed monitoring of the effects of its field studies, as well as improved computer modeling of the implications. The scientists will add a nonreactive tracer such as sulfur hexafluoride to the iron sulfate solution, a step that will help track the spread of the fertilized water as the iron sulfate slowly breaks down. They will measure CO2 concentrations using ships, floats and underwater drones. And they will check satellite images that can register increases in phytoplankton color at the ocean’s surface. The group is also promising more public engagement and consideration for environmental impacts than were involved in previous iron-spreading projects.

Effects could be varied and wide-ranging. In a 2009 experiment in the southwest Atlantic Ocean by German and Indian scientists, larger zooplankton ate the smaller phytoplankton—and little carbon actually reached the deep sea. In an experiment that was conducted in 2006 in the northeastern Pacific by researchers in the U.S. and Canada, toxic phytoplankton species flourished. This has raised fears that fertilization could create “dead zones” where rampant algal blooms would consume all the oxygen in the water, snuffing out other life. Phytoplankton blooms could also consume nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen that then wouldn’t be available for organisms elsewhere, a phenomenon known as “nutrient robbing.” In addition, scientists still know little about the deep-ocean ecosystems where the carbon is supposed to be stored. “Most likely [iron fertilization] will affect something that we don’t really understand yet,” says deep-sea expert Lisa Levin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who is not involved in the ExOIS program.

Last year a computer modeling study done by British, American and French researchers found that adding one million to two million metric tons of iron into the ocean each year could draw down 45 billion metric tons of carbon by 2100. It would also rob nutrients from other sea life, however. Along with an estimated 15 percent reduction in marine biomass caused by warming, another 5 percent could be lost because of iron fertilization, particularly in fishing areas near the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian coasts. “I haven’t really seen [ExOIS] present a hypothesis of what’s wrong with previous work ... that either makes the carbon yield higher or minimizes the negative consequences,” says Alessandro Tagliabue of the University of Liverpool in England, co-lead author of that study.

Buesseler argues that some difficult trade-offs such as this may be necessary. “It’s a small change in biology, relative to doing nothing and watching this planet boil,” he says.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

The Largest Carbon Capture Project in the U.S. Could Be in West Texas. Do Residents Want It?

West Texans will have their say this week regarding a proposed carbon dioxide injection site when the Environmental Protection Agency holds a series of public meetings in Ector County

ODESSA, Texas (AP) — West Texans will have their say this week regarding a proposed carbon dioxide injection site when the Environmental Protection Agency holds a series of public meetings in Ector County.The proposed project — which has been under review for the last two years — would be the largest of its kind in the United States. Occidental Petroleum Corporation, or Oxy, an oil and gas company based in Houston, wants federal approval to capture and store an estimated 722,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in three injection wells 4,400 feet underground.“We know that achieving global net zero by 2050 requires technological solutions that can quickly reduce emissions on a large-scale,” William Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for Oxy, said in a statement. Oxy “has been safely and securely storing CO2 underground for more than 50 years.”Known as Stratos, the facility would be located 20 miles southwest of Odessa. Oxy previously broke ground last year. Public testimony begins Wednesday with an information session at 7 p.m. and ends Oct. 7. The agency can take up to 90 days to issue a final decision, including changes to the proposal.If approved, Oxy would receive what’s known as Class VI permits, the first of their kind in Texas and the surrounding region that includes New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and 66 Tribal Nations.Certain sectors of the energy industry have embraced carbon capture and storage to propel the nation toward its climate goals. For its part, the federal government has put up about $12 billion for eligible projects under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.Climate advocates argue that the evidence about the advantages of decarbonization is insufficient and that it falls short of offsetting the greenhouse gases emitted by removing them from the atmosphere.Companies are pursuing projects anyway. Multiple plans to capture and store carbon dioxide are underway in Texas, including a natural gas power plant in Baytown owned by Calpine Texas CCUS Holdings, which was eligible for up to $270 million in federal dollars. A second San Antonio-based gas company, Howard Energy Partners, was awarded $3 million in federal money to “evaluate the technical and economic feasibility” of transporting 250 million tons of carbon dioxide from the Gulf Coast. Another project in southeast Texas, owned in part by Chevron, spans almost 100,000 acres.None, however, are close to the amount of carbon dioxide Oxy hopes to capture, inject and store underground.Oxy is one of the top oil and gas producers in the Permian Basin. With roughly 2.8 million acres between Texas and New Mexico and the biggest direct air capture facility in its portfolio, the company has become a household name in the Texas oil and gas industry. The proposed injection sites will create 120 jobs, Oxy said in a statement.Oxy said the Stratos project will provide more jobs, workforce training programs, educational opportunities and economic development in the region, but did not provide specifics. Earlier reports said the site will cost about $1 billion to construct.While it is unclear whether this project qualified for federal incentives, 1PointFive, the company’s subsidiary dedicated to carbon capture, in September received $500 million for a direct air capture plant in South Texas.Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of oil and gas production. When a fossil fuel company burns coal, crude oil, or natural gas, it emits carbon dioxide. The greenhouse gas traps heat and prevents the atmosphere from cooling.Oxy intends to capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and put it underground. Federal regulators determined that the energy firm met every requirement under the Safe Drinking Water Act and accounted for the protection of groundwater. Their review also concluded that the risk of seismicity due to the injections was minimal.And if necessary, the permit “also puts requirements in place in the event of potential groundwater contamination and/or seismic activity, including shutting down injection operations,” an agency spokesperson said.Oxy will capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through direct air capture, or DAC. The technology separates the gas from other particles in the air and then raises the temperature to incinerate them, leaving only the carbon dioxide. The equipment compresses the remaining gas by raising the pressure until it is the consistency of a brine that is transported and stored permanently in pockets of rock underground.According to the proposal, Oxy will monitor the pressure and temperature of the proposed sites on the surface of the well and downhole. Temperature and pressure gauges will be measured every second on the surface and every ten seconds in the well, providing a reading every ten minutes. A change in pressure could indicate a problem.The proposal stated that operators would monitor corrosion in the well four times a year or every three months. Similarly, the groundwater will be monitored every three months unless the regulators ask for additional testing. After three years, groundwater monitoring will occur once annually. The company must alert the EPA 30 days before most tests or if there are any changes. It must also alert them of any malfunctions within 24 hours.The oil and gas industry introduced carbon capture and sequestration to remediate excess greenhouse gas emissions from its operations since the 1970s. These emissions harm human health and deteriorate the atmosphere, and scientists agree they spur climate change. Industry leaders say it will help the country meet its climate goals and cool global temperatures.The benefits of carbon capture and storage have been fiercely debated for as long as the technology has existed. Climate advocates and scientists have been skeptical. They say no project has worked fast enough to offset the greenhouse gas emissions from major emitters.A handful of proposals in Louisiana were subject to backlash from the community, which expressed concerns over contamination.Commission Shift, a Texas-based watchdog group, said carbon capture and storage threaten groundwater sources. In a statement, the organization said the EPA should refrain from approving the project until the state resolves other lingering issues with saltwater injections, another underground disposal technique contributing to earthquakes in West Texas.“Outside of the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of (carbon caputure) as a climate mitigation solution, the injection and sequestration of carbon dioxide is dangerous to the land, water, communities, and ecosystems nearby,” Paige Powell, senior policy manager for Commission Shift, said in a statement on Friday.Ramanan Krishnamoorti, senior vice president of energy at The University of Houston, said neither the public nor the industry should consider carbon capture a permanent solution. He said that residents should pay particular attention to the precautions that Oxy and the EPA will take in case of a leak or contamination.“We need not build up our hopes that this is the be-all, end-all solution, but the solution that has a time and place,” said Krishnamoorti, an advocate of carbon capture and sequestration technology. “Let’s use it as appropriate, but with very clear eyes that we understand what the hazards are, what the risks are, and how do we make sure that we lessen the risk to the maximum extent possible, and yet be able to do it reasonably.”This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Volkswagen’s woes and Germany’s decline

German politicians will have to reckon with decades of bad decisions — and adjust course fast.

Katja Hoyer, an Anglo-German historian and journalist, is the author of “Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918.”For the first time ever, German car giant Volkswagen is considering factory closures in its home country. It’s hard to overstate just how gloomy this news feels in Germany. Volkswagen AG is Europe’s largest car manufacturer and helps uphold Germany’s status as a global economic powerhouse. Employees, politicians and company bosses are rightly demanding resolute action to save these jobs.How to do so is not immediately obvious. Volkswagen’s troubles did not begin yesterday but are the result of a long series of bad decisions — both at the European Union level and in Germany. And these troubles are a stand-in for a larger crisis facing Germany as a whole: the slow death of its industry, which has in turn helped push many voters into the arms of far-right political parties.Volkswagen needs the freedom to work with the market as it is, not as politicians want it to be. Tough emission targets, and the E.U.’s decision to ban the sale of new carbon-dioxide-emitting cars starting in 2035, have forced Volkswagen to direct its investment and creative energy toward electric vehicles, a market that has fallen short of expectations. Two out of three Germans would still buy traditional cars, a recent study showed. Fewer than 1 in 3 Americans say they would seriously consider buying an EV, according to another recent survey. The British car expert and “The Grand Tour” presenter James May, who is pro-EV in principle, thinks consumers are right to be skeptical. He told me that the technology isn’t “good enough” yet — a problem for the market to solve, not government.Follow Opinions on the newsThough the E.U. is meant to set environmental standards, German politicians need not be passive in the face of their proposals. Indeed, Brussels’ EV policy is deeply unpopular across the continent. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has been forced to advocate exceptions for so-called e-fuels to keep her job following a rightward shift in the E.U. Parliament after elections this past June. And Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which came second in those same elections in Germany, has promised to fight the 2035 ban “with all political means available.”German politicians are acutely aware of the political sensitivity around the German auto industry. At the plant in Zwickau, 5,000 angry employees gathered on Thursday booing and whistling when the CEO of Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Thomas Schäfer appeared. Ronny Niebuhr, who said he had worked for the company for 30 years, told reporters he had lost trust in it. A female employee said she feels she is suffering for the mistakes of others.State elections in Germany this week featured the first major breakthrough of a far-right party since the World War II era; the AfD gained around one-third of the votes in Thuringia and Saxony. Though EV mandates were far from the only driver of discontent, in Thuringia, the party notably won on a manifesto that promised “no ifs or buts” in its commitment to the internal combustion engine. And in Saxony, where some 11,000 people work at Volkswagen’s Zwickau facility and now fear for their jobs, the AfD came second behind the Christian Conservatives (CDU), the party of the current state leader Michael Kretschmer, who also wants combustion engines to stay. “Politics doesn’t know better than the market and the millions of car divers in the E.U.,” he has argued.Would lifting EV mandates save Volkswagen? It’s not cut and dried. But it’s also never too soon to end the harmful combination of political micromanagement and lack of strategic foresight that has been a hallmark of recent German politics.Getting German politicians to be more strategic will be difficult. During her 16 years as chancellor, Angela Merkel was permanently in crisis-management mode. What she euphemistically called “driving by sight” effectively meant reacting to pressure rather than thinking ahead.The car industry’s fate on Merkel’s watch is as good a case study as any. Her instincts had initially been on the side of the German automakers. In 2020, she rejected stricter emission rules in an effort to save the industry from an early death. “Of course we will still rely on combustion engines for years,” she said then. But in 2021, when the E.U. moved toward enacting the 2035 ban, Merkel merely looked on, unwilling to rock the boat. When her time in office was up, the defense of the German industry fell to her successor, Olaf Scholz, whose hands were tied by his need to rely on the Green Party as a coalition partner.Merkel also famously muddled through on other critical issues, such as immigration and energy. The end result has been that politics as usual in Germany have been upended: the slow death of German industry, coupled with high energy prices and uncontrolled migration, have fueled the rise of the far right. The AfD is currently projected to come in second in federal elections next year.Many of Germany’s political leaders continue to hope to muddle through, as well. But Germany cannot continue to put its head in the sand in the hope that its slow economic and political disintegration will miraculously stop. Getting the German car industry back on a firm footing would be a good first step.But the next German government should look to do much more.

Europe Launches Last Vega Rocket With Observation Satellite

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

Kids Are Headed Back to School. Are They Breathing Clean Air?

Clean indoor air protects against diseases such as COVID and flu, but we’re not doing enough to ensure it

Across the U.S., kids are headed back to their classrooms—just as COVID nears a fresh, late-summer peak. Somehow, four years into a viral pandemic that everyone now knows spreads through the air, most schools have done little to nothing to make sure their students will breathe safely.We—and especially our children—should be able to walk into a store or a gym or a school and assume the air is clean to breathe. Like water from the faucet, regulations should ensure our air is safe.“Air is tricky. You can choose to not partake of the water or the snacks on the table, but you can’t just abstain from breathing,” notes Gigi Gronvall, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an author of a 2021 report on the benefits of improving ventilation in schools.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The COVID-causing virus SARS-CoV-2 is far from the only airborne risk in schools. There are also other respiratory viruses, smoke from wildfires, mold spores, off-gassing from plastics and other compounds, air pollution from traffic and industry, and allergens that worsen asthma and add to sick days. Yet federal air standards are stuck in the 1970s, when they were mostly aimed at protecting people from secondhand tobacco smoke, says Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Fully updated standards for buildings are years or even decades away.It’s hard to assess just what schools have or haven’t done to improve indoor air quality. No one—not one federal agency—collects nationwide air quality data on individual schools. Schools could use federal money to update air filtration and ventilation during the height of the pandemic. But a 2022 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of school districts found that only half had taken simple steps such as opening windows or doors or using fans, and even fewer had upgraded ventilation systems.The benefits go beyond protecting children and adults alike from airborne disease spread. “Better ventilation is linked with better test scores and grades [and] better workplace performance,” Allen said at a July meeting about air quality held by the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, a U.S. think tank.“We have made incredible gains related to food safety, sanitation and water quality. Where is air quality in this?” he asked. “We have ignored it.” The CDC and the Food and Drug Administration quickly warn people about listeria in sliced meat or lead in cinnamon, but no one’s checking the air in public buildings for disease-causing germs.It’s not even hard to make sure indoor air is clean. Even in the 1800s, by having open doors and windows, tuberculosis sanatoriums prevented the spread of disease by air. The CDC has extensive guidelines on what’s known as air exchange, but ultimately, it’s a matter of moving contaminated air out and fresh air in.If it’s too hot, cold, polluted or humid outside, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems can clean up the air perfectly well when they are installed properly and used consistently. Their benefits far outweigh their costs.“There never has been a building that we could not turn into a healthy building with just a little bit of attention,” said Allen, one of the country’s top crusaders for cleaner air, at the biodefense meeting.Pandemic fatigue, of course, explains much of the apathy around making air-quality improvements. Public officials, from principals to local legislators right up to the top of the federal government, see that hospitals are no longer overflowing with COVID cases and that the nightly news no longer provides daily death counts. Most parents no longer clamor for assurances that their kids are safe from SARS-CoV-2.Despite regular, ongoing spikes in COVID, most people have dropped precautions such as masks, even in hospitals.“People are like, ‘There’s not a whole lot you can do about it,’ and that is why, societally, we need to do something about it,” Gronvall says. “We did this for water once upon a time, and we can do it for air.”Even the experts have mostly let down their guard.It wasn’t until halfway through the daylong, in-person-only biodefense conference on air quality that someone even thought to ask if the air in the room was safe to breathe.“Are air monitors effective?” asked former U.S. representative Fred Upton, a Republican and a commissioner at the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, at the July meeting. “Does anyone here have one?” added Upton, who had represented Michigan’s sixth district until 2023.“Are you sure you want to know?” someone in the audience asked, prompting laughter. Rick Rasansky, CEO of XCMR Biodefense Solutions, did have a carbon dioxide monitor, a device that gives a very rough estimate of the amount of fresh air exchange in a room. He read out a “pretty good” measurement.That was a lucky thing because the 100 or so people attending the meeting had been seated shoulder to shoulder for several hours at that point. Not one was wearing a mask.It will take federal legislation and sustained attention to make a difference.The Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University have developed a Model Clean Indoor Air Act, which state legislatures throughout the country could use in writing new indoor air laws. In Congress, Representatives Paul Tonko of New York State and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania have introduced a bipartisan bill that would require the Environmental Protection Agency to list indoor air contaminants and develop guidelines (albeit voluntary ones).The new federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) found a great acronym in its Building Resilient Environments for Air and Total Health (BREATHE) program, which will develop and roll out cool new air-cleaning technologies.But fancy tech isn’t enough on its own, and some schools may have wasted money on glittery toys instead of real fixes. Ceiling-installed ultraviolet lights won’t kill germs if the air isn’t blown upward to get cleaned in the first place. And gadgetry won’t create the demand and enthusiasm needed for cleaner indoor air. Politicians won’t win elections by campaigning on clean indoor air. But once they have been elected, federal, state and local officials owe it to kids, their parents and their neighbors to fight this most invisible of all hazards.“We need to make it easier for people to see what they can’t see—to see what they’re breathing,” Gronvall says.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

California’s Carbon Deadline Is Approaching. Meeting It Will Take Hundreds of Miles of Pipelines.

Plans call for millions of tons of carbon dioxide to be piped across the state to the Central Valley and Sacramento delta for burial. The post California’s Carbon Deadline Is Approaching. Meeting It Will Take Hundreds of Miles of Pipelines. appeared first on .

Hundreds of miles of pipeline must be built, and built quickly, if California is to meet its fast-approaching deadline for removing millions of tons of climate-altering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Such is the view of regulators, business groups and some academic institutions pushing a Herculean plan to build a maze of pipes across California to carry the carbon dioxide emissions from oil refineries, natural gas power plants and other sources to the Sacramento delta and the Central Valley, where it would be buried deep underground. Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas and is among the pollutants driving the climate crisis by trapping heat in the atmosphere, triggering withering heats waves, rising sea levels and more frequent and intense storms.   The California Air Resources Board, the state’s climate emissions regulator, has set a target of capturing between 13 million and 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030 — the equivalent of removing 3 million to 4.8 million gas-powered cars from the road. It is part of a strategy to eliminate climate pollution from the state’s industrial sector at a cost of $290 million annually over the next decade. Six companies are applying to the Environmental Protection Agency for permits to pump carbon dioxide underground. As of now, there are no such facilities in the state doing that. The infrastructure to transport 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — which is half of what the state wants to capture by midcentury — would include 1,150 miles of new pipeline running through the cities of Long Beach, Richmond, San Diego, Burbank and others, according to a 2020 report by the nonprofit Energy Futures Initiative and Stanford University’s Center for Carbon Storage and Precourt Institute for Energy. Once the carbon dioxide reaches its destination in the Central Valley or Sacramento, it would be pumped into the ground. While it’s generally agreed that removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is critical for the world to meet its climate goals, where to put it and how to get it there are fraught questions. The miles of pipeline needed to carry a known asphyxiant worry some climate activists, who fear that a rupture or leak could be disastrous. Exposure to carbon dioxide can be fatal or cause serious health issues.  Across the country there were 76 incidents involving the release of carbon dioxide from pipelines between January 2010 and May 2024, totaling more than 66,800 barrels.  Four years ago in Satartia, Mississippi, a mudslide caused a 24-inch pipeline carrying carbon dioxide to rupture, and dozens of people a mile away lost consciousness or grew delirious. There were no deaths, but 49 people were hospitalized. In a federal lawsuit against pipeline operator Denbury Gulf Coast Pipelines LLC, settled last year, motorist Korinne Heying Koestler said she suffered seizures from a lack of oxygen after she tried helping others engulfed in “clouds” of what turned out to be carbon dioxide. Yet in public statements and reports touted by the California Carbon Partnership, headed by the state Chamber of Commerce, moving this gas is treated as an economic matter, with little attention to safety risks or political obstacles. Those reports found it is cheaper to transport carbon dioxide hundreds of miles from emissions sources to injection sites by pipeline than moving it by truck, rail or barge. At a May 15 policy briefing hosted by the partnership, a panel of experts described carbon dioxide capture technology as critical in the state’s efforts to tackle climate change. There have been no deaths since oil and gas companies first began piping carbon dioxide in the 1970s as part of drilling activities, said panelist Sarah Saltzer, the managing director of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage, which receives funding from companies such as Chevron Corp., the California Resources Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp.  Across the country, federal data show there were 76 incidents involving the release of carbon dioxide from pipelines between January 2010 and May 2024, totaling more than 66,800 barrels. They mostly occurred in rural settings, though some happened near churches and homes in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration reported hospitalizations only from the Satartia incident in February 2020. Reached by email, Saltzer, who worked at Chevron for 25 years including managerial roles, said Stanford Center for Carbon Storage was planning its own review of carbon dioxide pipeline safety.  Steve Bohlen, another panelist and the senior director of Government and External Affairs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told Capital & Main he disputed the contention that panelists had downplayed the risks of carbon dioxide-carrying pipelines. They are sometimes exaggerated by opponents of carbon capture and sequestration, he said.  Those opponents generally want a faster transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. But California’s climate plan says carbon dioxide still needs to be captured from oil refineries, cement factories and natural gas power plants, even as emissions from cars and buildings improve.  Federal rules for carbon dioxide-carrying pipelines were inspired by a natural release of carbon dioxide from a lake in Cameroon in 1986 that killed more than 1,700 people.  Carbon dioxide “may need to be safely transferred by pipeline to the best geologic sequestration sites in the state,” said Lys Mendez, a spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board, in an email. Otherwise, California “will not be able to achieve the carbon dioxide removal targets” in its 2022 climate change-fighting blueprint.  Coalitions of environmentalists in California, the Gulf Coast and the Midwest are protesting plans to capture carbon dioxide and bury it underground, arguing that they pose a danger to communities already bearing the brunt of fossil fuel pollution. They also contended that carbon capture is being used as a tactic to prolong the use of oil, gas and coal, which scientists say must be phased out quickly to slow global warming. Capturing carbon dioxide emissions and permanently burying them is a climate strategy supported by the United Nations, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and other groups both inside and outside the oil and gas industry. But how much to use the technology remains an unsettled question.  A report by Democratic staffs of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Senate Budget Committee analyzed plans for capturing carbon by companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Shell USA Inc., based on subpoenaed emails and other documents. The companies’ “massive public-facing campaigns” contrasted with internal acknowledgements that “they are not planning to deploy the technology at the scale needed to solve the warming crisis,” the report found.  The federal government is facing the “greatest and fastest pipeline expansion” in U.S. history thanks to federal subsidies that became available in 2021 and 2022, according to a report published by the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust. Those subsidies could build up the nation’s carbon dioxide pipelines from a small network of 5,000 miles, mostly in remote oil fields, to more than 60,000 miles through heavily populated areas by 2050. Bill Caram, the trust’s executive director, said current regulations do not take into consideration the scope of hazards from this ramp up. “We’ve been asking policy makers to ensure that the benefits as a climate solution are weighted against the risks you’re asking people to take on from these pipelines,” he said. In 1991, federal rules for carbon dioxide-carrying pipelines were added to existing statutes for petroleum pipelines. They were inspired by a disastrous natural release of carbon dioxide from a lake in Cameroon that killed more than 1,700 people. Back then, carbon dioxide being transported in the U.S. came not from industrial facilities but from underground reservoirs: pumped, piped and reinjected to stimulate oil production.  The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is finalizing new rules covering carbon dioxide pipelines, including a study of a potential impact radius for leaks and ruptures and requirements for emergency preparedness. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory is creating a national route-planning database “to guide routing decisions and increase transportation safety” for carbon dioxide pipelines.  The impact zone of a ruptured carbon dioxide pipeline could extend for miles, and the gas lingers invisibly in the air.  In the meantime, several companies are planning major projects across the nation. One proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions would transport carbon dioxide through 2,000 miles of pipelines from dozens of ethanol refineries in five Midwestern states to injection sites in North Dakota. Oil and gas companies are lobbying the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to reject “overly broad” safety rules, according to a document submitted in March by the Liquid Energy Pipeline Association. They asserted that carbon dioxide pipelines are safer than pipes used to move natural gas or petroleum, though the risks are hardly comparable.  While the rupture of a hydrocarbon line can result in explosions, a carbon dioxide pipeline’s impact zone could extend for miles, and the gas lingers invisibly in the air with the potential to asphyxiate people and to disable vehicles such as those used by first responders, according to the Pipeline Safety Trust report.  Unlike other states, California has a law governing carbon capture that includes a provision preventing companies from transporting carbon dioxide by pipeline until federal rules are published, possibly as soon as August. That has proven to be a stumbling block for project developers, though some are moving forward with pipeline-dependent projects anyway.  The Montezuma NorCal Carbon Sequestration Hub is a plan to operate an underwater pipeline to gather carbon dioxide streams from coastal oil refineries and hydrogen producers in the Bay Area. The line would run carbon dioxide through San Pablo Bay, the Carquinez Strait and Suisun Bay to Solano County for burial underneath wetlands. Jim Levine, the project’s manager, said he wants to secure agreements with companies to collect at least 6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. He hopes the EPA issues a carbon dioxide injection permit by 2026. There is little research on underwater carbon dioxide pipeline failures. A report by the Center for International Environmental Law said such infrastructure could incur seawater infiltration during construction, potentially weakening the metal, and cited high leakage rates of oil and gas pipelines off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. Levine said the Montezuma project will have a fiber optic monitoring system covering the length of the proposed pipeline, with monitors every 6 feet and automatic shut-off valves that would engage if a leak was detected. “It will be the safest [carbon dioxide] pipeline in the world,” Levine said. Copyright 2024 Capital & Main

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