Mitigation Ideas: Energy Efficiency and Conservation
From homes, to offices, to factories, to schools, and many other kinds of buildings, the places we inhabit cost energy. They cost energy to build, heat, cool, and light, but they also represent one of the easiest, most straightforward ways to conserve energy. From construction to insulation, to window placement, to geothermal heat pumps, there are myriad ways to lower the energy cost of buildings, saving both money and emissions.
Bio-inspired window design
Scientists mimic biological temperature control systems to develop windows that keep heat in during the winter, and cool things off in the summer.
Harnessing waste heat
Researchers at Stanford University and MIT have found a new way to harness waste heat—heat produced as a by-product of industrial processes or electricity generation. One-third of all energy consumed in the United States ends up as low-grade waste heat . A new battery harnesses waste heat in a four-step process.
Mitigation Ideas: Carbon Capture and Sequestration
Carbon capture and sequestration refers to the process of capturing carbon dioxide and storing it in a place permanently, usually underground. It has usually been used at sites such as a cement factory that produces a lot of carbon dioxide as waste. Another strategy uses “biochar” to capture and sequester carbon in the soil, at the same time enriching the soil for agriculture.
1. Direct Carbon Capture
Direct carbon capture refers to using man-made machines, catalysts, or other techniques to pull in air and filter out CO2. At this point in time, there is no efficient, effective way to do this, and we do not have machines capable of removing CO2 from the atmosphere on any meaningful scale. Meanwhile, some advances in this technology have been made:
Plastic resin that absorbs carbon from the air
Researchers at Colombia University developed a material that aggressively absorbs carbon and can release it again when exposed to water, making the material potentially re-useable.
Concrete that stores carbon
CarbonCure collects CO2 from industrial processes and stores it in concrete.
2. Biochar as a Small-to-Medium Scale Strategy
Biochar is created by burning organic waste in oxygen-free chambers and then burying it. New England Biochar is one of many companies around the world seeking to increase the use of biochar as a soil enrichment technique that also takes carbon out of the atmosphere (through photosynthesis). They are creating a stable organic material that will persist in the soils for years.