Environment

Ukrainian Company Produces Easy to Install Solar Panels to get Europe Off Russian Gas

- Adam Clare
Solar panels on grass

Oil is not just a reason countries go to war, it’s used during war to destabilize allies. Russia’s war in Ukraine is no exception to this as the Russians are profiting from selling Europe gas while threatening to cut off gas supplies to the continent at the same time.

A Ukrainian company, We Do Solar, started selling their easy to install solar panels the same month Russia advanced towards Kyiv. The panels themselves are impressive since they are a self contained system that integrates into existing home electrical system. The core idea is to get them on balconies of towers so individual units can augment their household energy consumption.

In theory, if every balcony in Europe had solar panels such as WeDoSolar’s, it would make getting off Russian oil and gas a great deal easier.

Designed by German engineers and coming insured as part of the offer, the lightweight panels weigh 1 kg each and plug into a standard power socket. The WeDoSolar Microinverter then pushes the power into the home grid, allowing the panels to power home appliances ahead of using the normal grid, since solar is always used ahead of normal grid power, claims the company.

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How Banks Destroy Your Future, And What You Can do About It

- Adam Clare

Money makes the world go round, but it can also make the world go burn. If you care about the planet, the people on it, or just life in general then you probably don’t want your investments to destroy what you care about. Investment funds that claim to protect the environment and it’s important to ensure that they actually do what they claim, and there are organizations that check that. As a consumer you can talk to your bank or financial advisor about this to bring more awareness to your concerns.

[#1] Blast the banks on socials.
Big banks are incredibly worried about their reputations, and they’re extra sensitive during their annual shareholder meetings. Those happen to be happening right now, so fire up those accounts and get to blastin’ about it.

[#2] Switch your bank.
If you don’t want your money being lent to fossil fuel companies, switch to a bank that won’t do that. There are a bunch of full service, FDIC-insured banking options out there to choose from.

[#3] Go outside and get loud!
Put on some pants, walk outside, and get loud about how absolutely f%&ed it is that banks are still lending to the fossil fuel sector.

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Australia Taking Action on Climate Change

- Adam Clare
tree with climate knowledge

Australia (like Canada) has a well-deserved reputation of being a laggard on climate issues and being one of the worst polluters on the planet. The recent Australian election results will likely change that. Australians have been suffering the effects of climate change in the form of increased flooding and devastating fires.

The new coalition government has ambitions to reduce the damage the country does to the planet while ensuring that the people in the country reap the benefits of a green economy. Let’s hope Australia‘s efforts push other commonwealth countries to increase their environmental efforts.

“It’s a very clear illustration of the concern that Australians have and their desire for climate action,” says Amanda McKenzie, CEO of the Climate Council, a nonprofit organization dedicated to climate change communication. The hope is that the new Labor government will quickly improve Australia’s poor track record on carbon emissions.

…

“There is no more important time to be talking about energy and climate change in Australia than right now, and what we’re inheriting is a decade-long failure to tackle these issues of climate, energy, and security,” says Madeline Taylor, deputy director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Innovation and Transformation at Macquarie University in Sydney.

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Kelp Could be the Carbon Capture King

- Adam Clare
Water

The simple kelp plant could help us suck carbon out of the air in large quantities, and if so then we need more kelp – and fast! Kelp is a seaweed that naturally grows up to two feet per day, which puts it on a similar growth rate to algae which is similar and we’ve looked at before as a carbon sink. Kelp is so good at using carbon that a startup is currently creating a kelp factory that functions as an industrial carbon-removal service.

The company produces groupings of kelp that float on water and absorb carbon, when they get heavy enough the groupings fall to the ocean floor. It’s an imperfect idea and still being tested, but we must remember that climate change will be addressed by thousands of little solutions and not one grand gesture.

At its core, carbon removal is “a mass-transfer problem,” Marty Odlin, Running Tide’s CEO, told me. The key issue is how to move the hundreds of gigatons of carbon emitted by fossil fuels from the “fast cycle,” where carbon flits from fossil fuels to the air to plant matter, back to the “slow cycle,” where they remain locked away in geological storage for millennia. “How do you move that?” Odlin said. “What’s the most efficient way possible to accomplish that mass transfer?” The question is really, really important. The United Nations recently said that carbon removal is “essential” to remedying climate change, but so far, we don’t have the technology to do it cheaply and at scale.

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Greenhouse Gas Emissions of American Diet Almost Halved

- Adam Clare

A simple diet change reduced diet-related greenhouse gas emissions of American adults between 2003 and 2018. The carobon footprint of their diets fell from 4 kilograms of CO2 equivalent to 2.45 kg CO2e over the 15 year study period. All it took was a slight reduction in meat consumption.

As an individual one of the biggest things you can do in the face of climate change is to change your diet. It’s easy and saves you money!

The main reason for this decline emerged clearly in the data: over this same period, daily beef consumption plummeted by an average 40% per person, which accounted for nearly half of the diet-related dip in emissions. But it wasn’t just beef: the data showed a slow shift away from all animal-based foods, including dairy, eggs, chicken, and pork—all of which US citizens gradually consumed less of in 2018 than 2003. 

This overall shift away from meat occurred slowly but steadily: on average, the food-related carbon footprint of US consumers declined by 127 grams each year of the study period.

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