Category Archives: Environment

Convert Air into Energy

Education, Environment, Science

Convert Air into Energy

A team of scientists have discovered an enzyme that converts air into energy

The finding, published in the top journal Nature, reveals that this enzyme uses the low amounts of the hydrogen in the atmosphere to create an electrical current. This finding opens the way to create devices that literally make energy from thin air.

The research team, led by Dr Rhys Grinter, Ashleigh Kropp, and Professor Chris Greening from the Monash University Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Melbourne, Australia, produced and analyzed a hydrogen-consuming enzyme from a common soil bacterium. Molecular modelling and simulations were performed by Oxford Biochemistry and Queens College undergraduate Jack Badley and postdoctoral research fellow Dr Ruyu Jiya, under the supervision of Professor Syma Khalid (Professor of Computational Microbiology in the Department of Biochemstry, Oxford). Professor Chris Greening is also an alumnus of the Department of Biochemistry at Oxford.

Many bacteria use hydrogen from the atmosphere as an energy source in nutrient-poor environments. In this Nature paper, the researchers extracted the enzyme responsible for using atmospheric hydrogen from a bacterium called Mycobacterium smegmatis. They showed that this enzyme, called Huc, turns hydrogen gas into an electrical current. The enzyme is extraordinarily efficient and is able to consume hydrogen below atmospheric levels – as little as 0.00005% of the air we breathe.

The researchers used several cutting-edge methods to reveal the molecular blueprint of atmospheric hydrogen oxidation. They used advanced microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine its atomic structure and electrical pathways, pushing boundaries to produce the most resolved enzyme structure reported by this method to date. Electrochemistry was used to demonstrate the purified enzyme creates electricity at minute hydrogen concentrations. Molecular modelling and simulations were used to identify the specific regions of the protein which allow hydrogen gas to enter the active site of the protein where it is transformed, but prevent oxygen getting through.

Huc is a “natural battery” that produces a sustained electrical current from air or added hydrogen. While this research is at an early stage, the discovery of Huc has considerable potential to develop small air-powered devices, for example as an alternative to solar-powered devices.

The bacteria that produce enzymes like Huc are common and can be grown in large quantities, meaning we have access to a sustainable source of the enzyme. Dr. Grinter says that a key objective for future work is to scale up Huc production. “Once we produce Huc in sufficient quantities, the sky is quite literally the limit for using it to produce clean energy.”

Syma Khalid: Jack Badley, an undergraduate student doing a research project in my group used computer simulations to show how the channels to the active site of Huc are too narrow for oxygen to pass through, but wide enough for hydrogen. Extension of Jack’s work by Ruyu Jia predicted mutations that would widen these channels to enable passage of oxygen. It was wonderful for us to work with the remarkably high-quality structure determined by the Monash team, and I think for all of us it really showed the power of doing experimental and simulation work in tandem.

Key UN reports published warn urgent and collective action needed

Broken in the USA, Education, Environment, Science

Key UN reports published warn urgent and collective action needed – as oil firms report astronomical profits

By Damian Carrington Environment editor

The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe.

Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high.

He said the world was coming “very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast”.

Emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating but are still rising, the reports showed – at a time when oil giants are making astronomical amounts of money.

On Thursday, Shell and TotalEnergies both doubled their quarterly profits to about $10bn. Oil and gas giants have enjoyed soaring profits as post-Covid demand jumps and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The sector is expected to amass $4tn in 2022, strengthening calls for heavy windfall taxes to address the cost of living crisis and fund the clean energy transition.

All three of the key UN agencies have produced damning reports in the last two days. The UN environment agency’s report found there was “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place” and that “woefully inadequate” progress on cutting carbon emissions means the only way to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis is a “rapid transformation of societies”.

Current pledges for action by 2030, even if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C, a level that would condemn the world to catastrophic climate breakdown, according to the UN’s climate agency. Only a handful of countries have ramped up their plans in the last year, despite having promised to do so at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last November.

The UN’s meteorological agency reported that all the main heating gases hit record highs in 2021, with an alarming surge in emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Separately, the IEA’s world energy report offered a glimmer of progress, that CO2 from fossil fuels could peak by 2025 as high energy prices push nations towards clean energy, though it warned that it would not be enough to avoid severe climate impacts.

Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: “It’s a really bleak moment, not only because of the reports showing that emissions are still rising, so we’re not delivering on either the Paris or Glasgow climate agreements, but we also have so much scientific evidence that we are very, very close to irreversible changes – we’re coming closer to tipping points.”

Research by Rockström and colleagues, published in September, found five dangerous climate tipping points may already have been passed due to the global heating caused by humanity to date, including the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, with another five possible with 1.5C of heating.

“Furthermore, the world is unfortunately in a geopolitically unstable state,” said Rockström. “So when we need collective action at the global level, probably more than ever since the second world war, to keep the planet stable, we have an all-time low in terms of our ability to collectively act together.”

“Time is really running out very, very fast,” he said. “I must say, in my professional life as a climate scientist, this is a low point. The window for 1.5C is shutting as I speak, so it’s really tough.”

His remarks came after the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Wednesday that climate action was “falling pitifully short”. “We are headed for a global catastrophe [and] for economy-destroying levels of global heating.”

He added: “Droughts, floods, storms and wildfires are devastating lives and livelihoods across the globe [and] getting worse by the day. We need climate action on all fronts and we need it now.” He said the G20 nations, responsible for 80% of emissions, must lead the way.

Inger Andersen, head of the UN environment program (UNEP), told the Guardian that the energy crisis must be used to speed up delivery of a low-carbon economy: “We are in danger of missing the opportunity and a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

Carbon Removals

Economics, Environment, Science

The net-zero strategy of Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) relies heavily on unproven carbon removal technologies to camouflage its fossil fuel emissions and those of its customers while expanding its oil and gas production, a new investigation reveals.

Released on 2 May 2024, to coincide with Oxy’s annual general meeting, the Carbon Market Watch report, ‘Net-zero oil company: climate action or oxymoron?’, takes a deep dive into Oxy’s climate strategy. We assess the oil and gas corporation’s publicly available climate documents, pronouncements and projects.

The in-depth analysis reveals that not only does Oxy’s net-zero strategy conflict with the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, it also underplays the significance of indirect emissions and focuses far too much on experimental technologies, such as direct air capture (DAC), instead of committing to deep and rapid emissions reductions through winding down fossil fuel production. In fact, the company intends to use carbon removals as a licence to expand its oil and gas output.

“Oxy’s net-zero strategy fuels the climate crisis. The oil major’s massive investments in oil production and offsetting with unproven technologies are clearly intended to perpetuate the fossil fuel age. Plucking carbon out of the air is no substitute for keeping it in the ground,” says Wijnand Stoefs, CMW’s lead expert on carbon removals and co-author of the report.

                                    Diagram: Noemí Rodrigo, Carbon Market Watch

A central pillar of Oxy’s climate plans is to invest heavily – including using taxpayers’ money – in energy-guzzling and unproven-at-scale direct air capture technology. Its flagship STRATOS facility was initially meant to suck a million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but this advertised capacity has been slashed by half and we will have to wait and see what the final capacity will be when it comes online in 2025.

Moreover, when the lifecycle emissions associated with the plant are factored in, STRATOS’s net removal capacity plummets to a mere 195,000 tonnes.

The doubts surrounding the plant’s real capacity have not stopped Oxy from selling DAC carbon credits to its customers (including AT&T, TD Bank and Trafigura) to enable them to offset their emissions. More worryingly still, it has not stopped Oxy from indicating that it intends to use captured carbon to pump more petrol out of the ground through a process known as enhanced oil recovery, to market “net-zero oil” products and even potentially to offset Occidental’s own colossal emissions.

These plans are extremely far-fetched, to put it mildly. Even if Oxy were able to construct the 135 DAC plants it intends to build by 2030 and use them to offset its own emissions, this would only cover 11% of its carbon footprint, if the plants have the same capacity as the flagship STRATOS plant.

“Oxy’s misguided climate strategy is not only damaging to the climate, it is also ultimately harmful to its bottom line,” concludes Marlène Ramón Hernández, CMW expert on carbon removals and co-author of the report.  “The company, its investors and customers are all at risk of being left with stranded assets and fending off greenwashing lawsuits. ‘Net zero oil’ doesn’t exist.”