Driven by rising natural gas and oil consumption, levels of CO2 are expected to hit 37 billion metric tons this year, according to new estimates from the Global Carbon Project (GCP), an initiative led by Stanford University scientist Rob Jackson. The findings are outlined in three new papers published in... Read more →

Cummins Inc. announced its next environmental sustainability strategy—PLANET 2050—which includes science-based goals that meet or exceed the goals in the United Nations Paris agreement on climate change. By 2050, Cummins is targeting net-zero carbon emissions. PLANET 2050 focuses on three priority areas: addressing climate change and air emissions; using natural... Read more →

Although hydropower is broadly considered to be much more environmentally friendly than electricity generated from fossil fuels (e.g., earlier post), a new study by a team at Environmental Defense Fund finds that the climate impact of hydropower facilities varies widely throughout the world and over time, with some facilities emitting... Read more →

The application period has opened for the 2020 Keeling Curve Prize, which awards $25,000 to each of 10 projects designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or increase their uptake. Each year, this prestigious competition attracts entries from around the world. The prize is named after scientist Charles David Keeling’s iconic... Read more →

Researchers at MIT have determined that growth in aviation causes twice as much damage to air quality as to the climate. In an open-access paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters, they examine how this damage can be mitigated, and provide consistent comparative assessments of aviation emissions trade-offs, considering both... Read more →

ExxonMobil and FuelCell Energy, Inc. signed a new, two-year expanded joint-development agreement to further enhance carbonate fuel cell technology for the purpose of capturing carbon dioxide from industrial facilities. The agreement, worth up to $60 million, will focus efforts on optimizing the core technology, overall process integration and large-scale deployment... Read more →

An aerial methane survey conducted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), California Energy Commission (CEC) and NASA has found that just 10% of the point sources were responsible for 60% of the total methane emissions detected. Researchers believe that statewide, these relatively few super emitters are responsible for about... Read more →

Seeking to slash CO2 emissions from its North American manufacturing operations, Honda has entered into long-term virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs) for renewable wind and solar power that will cover more than 60% of the electricity that Honda uses in North America. These VPPAs will enable Honda to fully offset... Read more →

Leading banks and the United Nations on Sunday launched the Principles for Responsible Banking, with 130 banks collectively holding US$ 47 trillion in assets—one third of the global banking sector—signed up. In the Principles, launched one day ahead of the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, banks commit to... Read more →

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra today, with Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Air Resources Board, led a coalition of 24 state attorneys general and the cities of Los Angeles and New York in filing a lawsuit against the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The lawsuit challenges the Trump... Read more →

Audi has set the goal of successively reducing vehicle-specific CO2 emissions by 30% by 2025 compared with reference year 2015 and over the entire product lifecycle. In the long term, Audi is pursuing the vision of CO2-neutral mobility and aims to be climate-neutral throughout the company on balance by 2050.... Read more →

Volkswagen is investing in climate protection projects to compensate for unavoidable CO2. The first project, Katingan Mentaya, a forest protection project on the Indonesian island of Borneo, compensates for the currently still unavoidable CO2 emissions from the supply chain, production and delivery of the new Volkswagen e-vehicle ID.3, as well... Read more →

One view advanced in some studies attempting to model future climate is that cleaning up fossil-fuel air pollution rapidly will unintentionally lead to a near-term rise in atmospheric warming of about a half-degree Celsius, which might take up to a century to reverse. The foundational idea is that the sun-obscuring... Read more →

A new International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) report finds that aviation emissions are increasing 70% faster than UN projections that already point to a tripling of CO2 by 2050. In other words, the climate challenge for aviation is worse than expected. The report was issued in advance of the... Read more →

In a series of tweets Wednesday morning, President Trump said that his administration “is revoking California’s Federal Waiver on emissions”—a reference to the waiver of preemption under the federal Clean Air Act granted California by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the Obama Administration in 2012. However, the revocation—if... Read more →

A new report by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) finds that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from road transport in the UK rose by 6% from 1990 to 2017. The increase—albeit lower than the increase in road traffic—highlights the significant challenge in reducing emissions from road transport, the report... Read more →

by Michael Sivak. In this analysis, I examined recent changes in the contribution of transportation to total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States relative to the other sources of emissions (industry, commercial, residential, and agriculture). Also of interest were the changes in the relative contributions of various transportation modes,... Read more →

A study by a team of researchers from China, the US and Germany suggests that future climate change may worsen air quality for more than 85% of China’s population, leading to an additional 20,000 deaths each year. An open access paper on their work is published in Proceedings of the... Read more →

The California Air Resources Board’s latest state inventory of greenhouse gas emissions shows that California’s GHG emissions continue to decrease. In 2017, emissions from GHG emitting activities statewide were 424 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (MMTCO2e), 5 MMTCO2e lower than 2016 levels and 7 MMTCO2e below the 2020 GHG... Read more →

Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (PCNA) has launched Porsche Impact, an online tool that links individual CO2 emissions to specific climate projects. The program is available to US customers after PCNA earlier this year enrolled its own Porsche Experience Center cars and its Porsche Passport subscription fleet. Impact has been... Read more →

A new study published in Nature Communications by researchers from IIASA, Boston University, and the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice found that by mid-century, climate change will increase the demand for energy globally, even with modest warming. The world is dependent on energy both for human wellbeing and society’s continued... Read more →

Year-over-year, US greenhouse gas emissions were 0.5% lower in 2017 than the prior year (after accounting for sequestration from the land sector), and power sector emissions fell 4.2%, according to the 2019 edition of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) annual report on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This decrease was... Read more →

Carbon Recycling International has been awarded a €1.8-million (US$2.0-million) grant under the EU Horizon 2020 Research Programme to increase the scale of its CO2-to-methanol technology, marketed under the trademark Emissions-to-Liquids (ETL). The grant will allow CRI to accelerate efforts to commercialize large scale production plants, expanding the market for ETL... Read more →

A new study released by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) finds greenhouse gas emissions from corn-based ethanol are about 39% lower than gasoline. The study also states that when ethanol is refined at natural gas-powered refineries, the greenhouse gas emissions are even lower—around 43% below gasoline. The study, led... Read more →

An annual ' tracking the progress of California Climate Investments, released by the California Air Resources Board and the California Department of Finance, finds that nearly $1.4 billion in new funding last year went to projects across all of California’s 58 counties—almost double the $720 million spent in 2017. The... Read more →

Carbon dioxide emissions from S energy consumption will remain near current levels through 2050, according to projections in EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2019. The AEO2019 Reference case, which reflects no changes to current laws and regulations and extends current trends in technology, projects that US energy-related CO2 emissions will be... Read more →

The European Parliament and the Council have reached provisional agreement on a regulation setting, for the first time in the EU, strict CO2 emission standards for trucks. Under the agreement, emissions from new trucks will have to be 15% lower by 2025 and 30% lower in 2030 compared to 2019... Read more →

In 2017, total gross U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were 6,472.3 MMT (million metric tons) CO2 equivalent, a decrease of 0.3% from 2016, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory. The decrease in total greenhouse gas emissions between 2016 and 2017 was driven in part by... Read more →

Reintroducing commercial supersonic transport (SST) aircraft into the global aviation fleet could have significant noise and climate impacts by 2035, according to a new study by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). The paper analyzes the landing and takeoff (LTO) noise, sonic boom, and CO2 implications of introducing 2,000... Read more →

Fewer soot particles in the exhaust stream of aircraft reduces the formation of ice crystals and therefore the climate impact of the resulting contrail cirrus. Halving the ice particles that form in the contrail decreases the climate-warming effect of the contrail cirrus by 20%; the effect is halved if there... Read more →

US electric power sector CO2 emissions have declined 28% since 2005 because of slower electricity demand growth and changes in the mix of fuels used to generate electricity, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). EIA calculated that CO2 emissions from the electric power sector totaled 1,744 million metric... Read more →

A coalition of nine Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia announced their intent to design a new regional low-carbon transportation policy proposal that would cap and reduce carbon emissions from the combustion of transportation fuels, and invest proceeds from the program into low-carbon and more resilient transportation... Read more →

Soot from road traffic in emerging countries can reach high altitudes, where it can be transported over long distances and thus contributes to global warming, according to the findings of a study performed by an international team of researchers in the Bolivian cities of La Paz (the seat of government),... Read more →

A consortium of researchers led by Caltech, in partnership with MIT; the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS); and JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA, seeks to build a new type of climate model that is designed to provide more precise and actionable predictions. Leveraging recent advances in the computational and data... Read more →

Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping company, has set a goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. To achieve this goal, carbon neutral vessels must be commercially viable by 2030, and an acceleration in new innovations and adaption of new technology is required. The maritime industry emitted close to 1000... Read more →

California is not on track to meet the greenhouse gas reductions expected under SB 375 for 2020, with emissions from statewide passenger vehicle travel per capita increasing and going in the wrong direction, according to a new report published by the California Air Resources Board (ARB). While overall, California has... Read more →

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the European Union rose slightly in 2017, mostly because of the transport sector. Preliminary estimates published in the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) annual trends and projections assessments show a 0.6% emissions increase in 2017 from 2016. This limited increase means that the EU is still... Read more →

The European Council agreed on setting a target of a 35% average reduction in CO2 emissions form new cars by 2030. This position is a basis on which to begin talks with the European Parliament, which just came out with its own target of 40% by 2030 (earlier post). The... Read more →

Electrocatalysis and photocatalysis (artificial photosynthesis) are among the most promising ways to achieve effective storage for renewable energy. CO2 electroreduction has been capturing the imagination of researchers for more than 150 years because of its similarity to photosynthesis. Recent research in electrocatalytic CO2 conversion points the way to using CO2... Read more →

Aerosols are tiny particles released into the atmosphere by human activities; they have proven negative effects on air quality—damaging human health and agricultural productivity. However, while greenhouse gases cause warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere, some aerosols can have a cooling effect on the climate because the aerosol particles... Read more →

A study led by scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that, in the western United States, increases in aerosols from East Asia decreased the radiative warming effect induced by reductions in US emissions by 25% from 1980-2014. The open-access study appears in the AGU... Read more →

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has proposed amending the California Low-Emission Vehicle III Greenhouse Gas Emission Regulation to ensure that cars and light-duty trucks for model years 2022-2025 continue to meet California standards even if Federal standards are frozen. (Earlier post.) Recognizing the value of a national program to... Read more →

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) announced that greenhouse gas emissions in California in 2016 fell below 1990 levels for the first time since emissions peaked in 2004—a reduction roughly equivalent to taking 12 million cars off the road or saving 6 billion gallons of gasoline a year. Under Assembly... Read more →

A “well-to-wheel” life cycle assessment (LCA) by a team from synthetic fuels producer Greyrock (earlier post), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has determined the potential reduction of greenhouse gases and criteria pollutant emissions from the use of synthetic fuels directly converted from flare gas. The results of this... Read more →

During the first three years of California’s 5-year-old cap-and-trade program, the bulk of the greenhouse gas reductions occurred out of state—i.e., state residents did not see the benefits of improved air quality from presumed reductions in harmful co-pollutants, such as particulate matter—according to a new study led by UC Berkeley... Read more →

A new study finds that the growth of carbon production from Chinese exports has slowed or reversed, reflecting a “new phase of globalization” between developing countries that could undermine international efforts to reduce emissions. The paper is published in Nature Communications. The study, involving researchers from the University of East... Read more →

Rio Tinto and Alcoa Corporation announced a revolutionary process to make aluminum that produces only oxygen as a by-product, eliminating all direct greenhouse gas emissions from the traditional smelting process. In Canada alone, use of the technology could eliminate the equivalent of 6.5 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions,... Read more →

In April 2018, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) completed the Midterm Evaluation (MTE) process for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards for cars and light trucks for model years 2022-2025, and determined that the current standards are not appropriate and should be revised. (Earlier post.) The California Air Resources... Read more →

In Japan, Aichi Prefecture, Chita City, Toyota City, Chubu Electric Power, Toho Gas, Toyota Motor Corporation, and Toyota Industries have launched the Chita City and Toyota City Renewable Energy-use Low-carbon Hydrogen Project. The project is a first step toward realizing the 2030 vision of a low-carbon hydrogen supply chain formulated... Read more →

A new earth modeling system will support weather-scale resolution and use advanced computers to simulate aspects of Earth’s variability and anticipate decadal changes that will impact the US energy sector in coming years. After four years of development, the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) is being released to the... Read more →