Solar generation up 36% in the first two months of 2022

Good News Notes: “The solar PV train has left the station with strong momentum in 2022, showing 36% year-over-year growth through February when compared to the first two months of 2021. This marks significant growth despite a year of challenges for the industry. This figure includes both large-scale and small-scale generation, as reported by the Energy Information…

Cutting animal agriculture buys time to get off fossil fuels: study

Good News Notes: “Eliminating animal agriculture over the next 15 years would effectively stop global warming in its tracks – largely halting the increase of greenhouse gases for the next 30 years, according to a recent study in PLOS Climate. The largest contributor to that decrease in heating would be a massive expansion in prairie, forest and…

Pratt students create compostable Strøm water filters from food waste

Good News Notes: “Pratt Institute graduate students Charlotte Böhning and Mary Lempres have designed a collection of carbon water filters made completely without fossil fuels, using waste from their own kitchens. The four-piece range, called Strøm, includes a sustainable substitute for Brita filter cartridges, purifying sticks that can be added into cups or bottles and a self-cleaning pitcher and carafe. Traditional…

LanzaTech Makes Products From Carbon Dioxide

Good News Notes: “Climate technology developer and commercializer LanzaTech has been awarded $4.1M from the Department of Energy (DOE) for a project leveraging technology that uses carbon dioxide (CO2)-rich gas, such as from corn grain ethanol refining, to make chemicals and fuels. A major benefit is that the CO2 is captured before it is released to the…

Waste hop stem in the beer industry upcycled into cellulose nanofibers

Good News Notes: “Some three quarters of the biomass in hop plants used in beer-making ends up in landfills. But a group of Japanese researchers has developed a technique that ‘upcycles’ that waste hop into cellulose nanofibers (CNFs). A paper describing the technique was published in the journal ACS Agricultural Science & Technology on June 11. In…

A Clever Robot Spies on Creatures in the Ocean’s ‘Twilight Zone’

Good News Notes: “THE GRANDEST MIGRATION on Earth isn’t the journey of some herbivore in Africa or a bird in the sky, but the vertical movement of whole ecosystems in the open ocean. All kinds of animals, from fish to crustaceans, hang out in the depths during the day, where the darkness provides protection from predators. At night, they…