Page 117 - Berkeley Lab News Today

Date Time Future Looks Bright for Infinitely Recyclable Plastic Only about 2% of plastics are fully recycled currently. PDK plastics could solve the single-use crisis. (Chanchai Phetdikhai/Shutterstock) Plastics are a part of nearly every product we use on a daily basis. The average person in the U.S. generates about 100 kg of plastic waste per year, most of which goes straight to a landfill. A team led by Corinne Scown, Brett Helms, Jay Keasling, and Kristin Persson at Lawrence Berkeley Nation...

How Techno-economic Analysis Can Improve Energy Technologies For new energy technologies, the time elapsed from when a breakthrough is made in a laboratory setting until when it is validated, scaled up, piloted, and then widely commercialized can be years or even decades. But in the race to avoid the most damaging impacts of climate warming, the need for negative emissions technologies is urgent. Negative emission technologies, or NETs – also referred to as carbon removal technologies – rem...

President Joe Biden announced an ambitious new national climate target at a livestreamed summit of world leaders on April 22, 2021: He pledged to cut U.S. carbon emissions in half by the end of this decade and aim for net zero emissions by 2050. The new goal is a big deal because it formally brings together the many different ideas on infrastructure, the budget, federal regulatory policy, and disparate actions in the states and industry for transforming the U.S. economy into a highly competitiv...

 E-Mail IMAGE: A modified plastic (left) breaks down after just three days in standard compost (right) and entirely after two weeks. view more  Credit: Christopher DelRe, UC Berkeley Biodegradable plastics have been advertised as one solution to the plastic pollution problem bedeviling the world, but todays "compostable" plastic bags, utensils and cup lids dont break down during typical composting and contaminate other recyclable plastics, creating headaches for recyclers. Most compos...

Oil and gas production is one of the top sources of methane emissions. (Credit: iStock) What is the cost of 1 ton of a greenhouse gas? When a climate-warming gas such as carbon dioxide or methane is emitted into the atmosphere, its impacts may be felt years and even decades into the future – in the form of rising sea levels, changes in agricultural productivity, or more extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods, and heat waves. Those impacts are quantified in a metric called the “soc...

Bentham Paulos is an affiliate for the Electricity Markets & Policy (EMP) Group of the Berkeley Lab, doing communications and research on renewable energy. EMP conducts technical, economic, and policy analysis of energy topics centered on the U.S. electricity sector. Our current research seeks to inform public and private decision-making on public-interest issues related to energy efficiency and demand response, renewable energy, electricity resource and transmission planning, and electricity...

Berkeley Lab study reviews progress toward carbon-free US power sector A report prepared by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. power supply in 2020 was roughly half of the amount estimated by the 2005 Annual Energy Outlook. Photo by Tom Shockey under CC BY SA 2.0 . The report, which was prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy ’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, found that carbon dioxide emissions from the ...

Experts’ Predictions for Future Wind Energy Costs Drop Significantly Berkeley Lab-led study shows expected cost declines of 17%-35% by 2035 and 37%-49% by 2050 Technology and commercial advancements are expected to continue to drive down the cost of wind energy, according to a survey led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) of the world’s foremost wind power experts. Experts anticipate cost reductions of 17%-35% by 2035 and 37%-49% by 2050, dri...

Study by wind energy researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UMass Amherst shows expected cost declines of 17%–35% by 2035 and 37%–49% by 2050 Wind energy experts, in a study by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory along with Erin Baker of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, predict significant reductions in the cost of wind energy by 2050, according to new research published today in the journal Nature Energy. Baker and the Berkeley Lab...

Print Photo By USDA Teams from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Sandia National Laboratories have collaborated to develop a streamlined and efficient process for converting woody plant matter like forest overgrowth and agricultural waste -- material that is currently burned either intentionally or unintentionally -- into liquid biofuel. Their research was published recently in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. "According to a recent report, by 2050 the...