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China renewables firms burst on to ranking of world’s most sustainable corporates

Posted on January 31, 2022 by dishanth

Chinese renewable energy companies have featured on a ranking of the world’s most sustainable firms for the first time.

Anhui-headquartered solar glass manufacturer Xinyi Solar Holdings and Xi’an-based solar panel maker LONGi Green Energy Technology ranked in the top 50 of the Global 100 list of the world’s greenest firms, assessed by Canada-based media and research company Corporate Knights.

China’s post-pandemic green recovery measures, which have come with a national pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060, are hastening measures for clean solution growth, which Xinyi Solar and LONGi are benefiting from and driving, commented Corporate Knights president, Toby Heaps.

Hong Kong-based water and environmental services company Beijing Enterprises Water Group was another new entrant, recognised for profiting from the construction and operation of sewage and reclaimed water treatment plants, consistent with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

However, Singapore real estate firm City Developments Limited (CDL) was recognised as the greenest company in the Asia Pacific in the yearly index.

The property giant, which is known for its shopping malls, hotels, offices and homes, placed fifth, making it the highest ranked firm in the region. It is not the company’s first time to top the Asian rankings, as it cinched the spot five years ago.

Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems, which is responsible for almost a fifth of the world’s installed wind power capacity, emerged on top of the global ranking dominated by European and North American firms.

The Global 100, which is normally announced on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, was instead released in a virtual Leaders’ Roundtable on Wednesday. It assessed 6,914 publicly listed companies with more than US$1 billion in revenues against 23 sustainability indicators.

These included revenue derived from enviromentally and socially beneficial products, percentage of taxes paid, salary ratio between the chief executive and the average worker, and the proportion of women in board rooms.

We made the clean taxonomy stricter this year, where we measure what qualifies as clean revenue and clean investment. As CDL has been a pioneering leader in carbon free electrified buildings, it fared better under the stricter criteria.

Toby Heaps, president, Corporate Knights

CDL, which climbed from the 40th spot last year, scored highest in its clean energy and investment ratings.

“We made the clean taxonomy stricter this year, where we measure what qualifies as clean revenue and clean investment. As CDL has been a pioneering leader in carbon free electrified buildings, it fared better under the stricter criteria,” Heaps told Eco-Business.

CDL’s pay gap between top management and the average worker narrowed, but it recorded fewer number of women in its board this year.

The 59 year-old firm’s local rival CapitaLand slid 17 places from last year due to continuing to record a wide salary gap, with the company’s bosses earning 58 times more than the average employee, although it improved slightly in sales from green solutions.

Japanese companies lost ground in this year’s index, with 2021’s highest-ranking Eisa slipping 16 places, as other firms generated more clean revenue based on Corporate Knight’s stricter requirements.

Strong European and North American presence remain in ranking

Although the number of Asia Pacific companies that made it to the index rose to 18 from 17 last year, the list is still dominated by Western companies. Almost half (41) of the Global 100 are from Europe, and 36 are from the United States and Canada.

Ranking first, Vestas has committed to reducing its Scope 3 emissions—that is, emissions from beyond its direct energy use and operations — by 45 per cent by 2030. More than half the firm’s emissions in its supply chain come from its use of steel, principally for turbine towers. Steel is one of the most carbon-intensive materials to produce. The firm scored 100 per cent for its clean revenue and investments.

Second in the roster was 2019’s number one, Chr. Hansen, a Danish bioscience company that makes natural food preservatives. Third was American company Autodesk Inc, which creates software used by architects and engineers for projects like designing electric cars.

Last year’s number one Schneider Electric SE, a French digital energy and automation solutions provider, ranked fourth.

Source Eco Business

Novel “artificial leaf” design ups the carbon capture rate by 100x

Posted on January 31, 2022 by dishanth

Recreating the process of natural photosynthesis in which plants turn sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into energy is a long-pursued goal in science. Often described as an “artificial leaf,” these systems could play a key role in the fight against climate change, and a team of engineers has just picked up the pace with a solution that captures carbon dioxide at 100 times the rate of current technologies.

We have looked at quite a number of artificial leaf systems over the years that use sunlight to turn water into liquid fuels and electricity. One interesting example came from engineers at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) in 2019. It had a unique design the creators say made it suitable for use in the real world, unlike other laboratory solutions that could only work with carbon dioxide from pressurized tanks.

The solution consisted of a standard artificial photosynthesis unit that was encased in a transparent capsule filled with water, and featured a semi-permeable outer layer. As sunlight struck the device, the water evaporated through the pores in the outer layer and carbon dioxide was drawn in to replace it, where the unit inside turned it into carbon monoxide. This CO could in turn be captured and used to make synthetic fuels.

Through some key tweaks to the design, the scientists have now taken its performance to new heights. The team used inexpensive materials to integrate an electrically charged membrane that acts as a water gradient, with both a dry and wet side. On the dry side an organic solvent attaches to the captured carbon dioxide and turns it into concentrated bicarbonate, which builds up on the membrane.

A positively charged electrode on the wet side then draws the bicarbonate across the membrane and into the watery solution, where it is converted back into carbon dioxide to make fuels or in other applications. Altering the electrical charge can speed up or slow down the rate of carbon capture, which the scientist found at its optimum could capture 3.3 millimoles per hour for each four square centimeters (0.6 sq in) of material.

Diagram depicts the design of a novel “artificial leaf” device that captures carbon dioxide with great efficiency Aditya Prajapati/UIC

This “flux rate” is described as very high, and more than 100 times better than existing systems. Importantly, only a negligible amount of energy was required to power the reactions, at 0.4 kilojoules per hour, less than what it takes to run a one-watt LED lightbulb. Equally impressive, the team says the system can capture carbon dioxide at a price of US$145 a ton, which is within the Department of Energy’s guidelines that these technologies should cost $200 per ton or less.

“Our artificial leaf system can be deployed outside the lab, where it has the potential to play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere thanks to its high rate of carbon capture, relatively low cost and moderate energy, even when compared to the best lab-based systems,” said Meenesh Singh, assistant professor of chemical engineering in the UIC College of Engineering and corresponding author on the paper.

The device is small enough to fit in a backpack and is modular by nature, meaning multiple units can potentially be stacked on top of one another to build out devices suited for different settings.

“It’s particularly exciting that this real-world application of an electrodialysis-driven artificial leaf had a high flux with a small, modular surface area,” Singh said. “This means that it has the potential to be stackable, the modules can be added or subtracted to more perfectly fit the need and affordably used in homes and classrooms, not just among profitable industrial organizations. A small module of the size of a home humidifier can remove greater than 1 kg of CO2 per day, and four industrial electrodialysis stacks can capture greater than 300 kg of CO2 per hour from flue gas.”

The research was published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Source: University of Illinois Chicago

Source New Atlas

Maersk launches the world’s first offshore electric vessel-charging station venture

Posted on January 28, 2022 by dishanth

Maersk Supply Service, a subsidiary of Danish shipping giant Maersk, is launching Stillstrom – an offshore vessel-charging venture to support the decarbonization of the maritime industry by eliminating idle emissions.

Maersk’s offshore charging venture

Stillstrom will deliver offshore electric charging solutions to vessels at ports, hubs, and offshore energy operations.

Offshore charging for idle vessels is critical to facilitating the decarbonization of the maritime industry, since it allows vessel owners to replace fossil fuels with electricity while moored to a charging buoy (image above).

Stillstrom and Danish wind giant Ørsted will demonstrate the world’s first full-scale offshore charging station for vessels at an offshore wind farm in third quarter 2022. Stillstrom’s power buoy will supply overnight power to one of Ørsted’s Service Operations Vessels (SOV). Ørsted will be responsible for the grid integration of the charging buoy.

Ørsted will publicly share the intellectual property generated during the design of the buoy’s integration into the offshore wind farm in order to encourage uptake of the charging buoy in the offshore wind sector.

The charging buoy will be large enough to charge an SOV-sized battery- or hybrid-electric vessel. It will be scaled and adapted to supply power to larger vessels, enabling vessels of all sizes to turn off their engines when lying idle.

By substituting fossil fuels with clean electricity, virtually all emissions and noise pollution are eliminated while the buoy is in use.

Sebastian Klasterer Toft, venture program manager at Maersk Supply Service, said:

The mission is to remove 5.5 million tons of CO2 within five years of commercial rollout, additionally eliminating particulate matter, [nitrogen oxides] and [sulfur oxides].

Dirty shipping

This announcement is welcome news, as climate pollution from the booming international shipping sector rose by nearly 5% last year, according to a new report from shipbroker Simpson Spence & Young.

Bloomberg reported that ocean-freight carriers pulled in estimated profits of $150 billion in 2021 — a nine-fold annual jump after a decade.

International shipping currently accounts for around 3% of global climate pollution. To put that in perspective, it’s more than all coal-fired power plants in the United States combined, and more than the emissions of Germany.

Dawny’all Heydari, campaign lead of the Ship It Zero Campaign at Pacific Environment, said:

Now is the perfect time for international ocean shipping companies to invest their record profits into a horizon of hope for our shared future on this planet.

Carriers CMA-CGM, MSc, Cosco, Evergreen, and Yang Ming must commit to a 100% zero-emissions supply chain this decade, following initial leadership by Maersk. Their top big retail customers, Walmart and Target, must urge this speedy transition.

Black and brown frontline communities are bearing the brunt of fossil-fuel spewing ocean cargo ships and the problem is only getting more severe with each passing day. It’s about time that the shipping sector takes its responsibility seriously and stops hurting our port cities and oceans in the name of profits.

Source Electrek

New company turns 100 tons of non-recyclable plastic into building blocks for construction

Posted on January 28, 2022 by dishanth

Recycling doesn’t always mean chemically separating things into component parts, or finding a new life for an old object. An LA-based startup is proving that landfills need not be dug for plastics, if one can merely smash enough of them together into a Minecraft-like block.

103 tons of nonrecyclable plastics, in fact, have been diverted from entombment since the company was founded, all through ByFusion’s patented machines known as “Blockers.” Blockers have a simple yet ingenious design. They shred the plastic, and then apply mass multiplied by acceleration repeatedly, until the “nonrecyclable plastic” is so squished together that it fuses.

Composite plastics have advanced the world standard of living no end, but often they tend to be unrecyclable.

Many minds are trying to develop thermal or chemical methods of separating the polymers in these materials to allow them to be recycled. ByFusion have avoided this problem by cutting out that middleman and simply turning the material as is into a new, composite, and ridiculously durable construction block.

Called “ByBlocks,” they are a simple 16x8x8 shape and can be used to build bus stops, fences, retaining walls, curtain walls, public terraces, and more.

ByFusion’s full-service operation in LA can process 450 tons of plastic per year into blocks, and hope to install 12 more Blockers soon.

They have partnered with cities across the country, from the island of Kauai, to Boise in Idaho, to get as many blockers into the hands of people who want to use them.

A big advantage of the Blockers is their indiscrimination; they turn every kind of plastic, even fishing nets, into blocks of the same material properties. The only thing they can’t tackle is polystyrene or Styrofoam.

Not one ounce of adhesive glue, mortar, or any kind of extra substance is used. If 22 pounds of plastic go in, a 22 pound block comes out.

The machines come in two sizes, one for industry, and another for community. The latter comes in a shipping container, while the former features an array of blockers for companies that really crank out the plastic waste.

Source Good News Network

Expansion plan to take world’s biggest battery storage project to 3GWh capacity

Posted on January 27, 2022 by dishanth

Plans to nearly double the output and capacity of the world’s biggest battery energy storage system (BESS) project to date have been announced by its owner, Vistra Energy.

The Texas-headquartered integrated utility and power generation company said it wants to add another 350MW/1,400MWh BESS to the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California’s Monterey Bay.

The existing facility is 400MW/1,600MWh and was brought online in two phases, with the most recent 100MW/400MWh Phase II commissioned in August 2021. Phase I’s 300MW/1,200MWh of batteries went online at the end of 2020, although in September they were temporarily taken offline after overheating in some battery modules had been detected. Phase II remained operational at that time.

Vistra has worked with battery module and rack provider LG Energy Solution, engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) partner Burns & McDonnell and system integrator Fluence among its contractors on the project so far.

At 750MW/3,000MWh, Moss Landing would retain its crown of being the biggest in the world, although large-scale BESS project announcements are gathering in pace, not least of all in California, which is the leading US state for energy storage online and contracted to come online.

A 15-year Resource Adequacy agreement has already been signed with California investor-owned utility (IOU) Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) for the new capacity and submitted to the regulatory body California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for approval on 21 January.

A decision is expected within 180 days, Vistra said yesterday. Construction could then begin in May, for the new BESS to come online in just over a year by June 2023.

The agreement is one of nine new contracts PG&E has in place with four-hour duration energy storage projects in the state, which Energy-Storage.news has reported full details of in a separate news story today.

PG&E was ordered to procure 2,200MW of clean energy by CPUC last June, as part of a wider 11.5GW of resources which California’s load-serving entities, including IOUs, must procure and bring online by 2026 to meet the need for capacity as a number of natural gas power plants and the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant — which is an asset in PG&E’s service area — reach retirement.

Vistra said that as Moss Landing — itself built on the site of an existing gas power plant owned by Vistra subsidiary Dynegy — already has development permitting in place, and has existing grid interconnection and infrastructure, it can move quickly on the proposed Phase III.

The company has previously said that the site and its interconnection allow for it to eventually bring Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility to 1,500MW/6,000MWh, if market conditions allow it to meet demand.

Vistra CEO Curt Morgan described Moss Landing yesterday as “a shining example of the pivot of our generation fleet toward carbon-free technologies”.

Separately, PG&E itself is executing a build-own-operate BESS project, Elkhorn, at the Moss Landing site, using 182.5MW/750MWh of Tesla Megapack BESS units.

In September, Vistra Energy said that it also plans to repurpose a number of its fossil fuel plant sites in Illinois to host a mix of solar-plus-storage and standalone battery storage projects by 2025. That announcement was made after Illinois legislators approved a plan to transition the state away from its largely coal-based energy mix to clean energy. Illinois’ target date for achieving carbon-free electricity is 2045, the same as California’s.

Vistra is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 meanwhile. Last February it unveiled plans for a 600MW BESS project in California’s Morro Bay, which the company said could come online by 2024 and further help PG&E ease through the retirement of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. Vistra is also expecting to bring DeCordova Energy Storage Facility, a 260MW BESS project in Texas, online before this summer to join that state’s ERCOT market.

Source Energy Storage News

Spanish giant lands deal to build £683m waste power plant

Posted on January 27, 2022 by dishanth

ACCIONA beat French and Swiss rivals for the Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) contract for the North London Waste Authority at its site in Edmonton.

The ERF will transform unhygienic black-bin-bag waste into electricity for up to 127,000 homes and heat and hot water for up to 50,000 local homes while preventing waste from ending up in landfill.

The ERF forms part of a £1.2bn investment known as the North London Heat and Power Project which will serve seven north London boroughs.

It includes state-of-the art recycling and waste facilities with the most advanced technology in the world. The new facilities will replace a single energy-from-waste plant on the 16-hectare site, which began operating in 1971 and is now Europe’s oldest.

Taylor Woodrow is currently on site constructing a £100m recycling centre.

NLWA’s chair Cllr Clyde Loakes said: “With contracts signed and sealed with ACCIONA, work now begins on the next stage of one of the most sustainable and nationally significant projects ever to tackle waste and increase recycling rates, and one which greatly boosts employment opportunities in the area.

“ACCIONA will expertly build the ERF section utilizing the world’s best tech including Selective Catalytic Reduction technology, which converts the nitrogen oxide created by incinerating waste into water and nitrogen, a harmless gas that makes up 78% of the Earth’s atmosphere.”

Source Construction Enquirer

Rolls-Royce all-electric aircraft breaks world records

Posted on January 26, 2022January 26, 2022 by dishanth

An all-electric aircraft built by Rolls-Royce has broken two world speed records.

In November 2021, The Spirit of Innovation hit an average of 555.9 km/h (345.4 mph) over 3 km, and 532.1km/h (330 mph) over 15 km.

Both attempts, which took place at an experimental testing site, have now been verified as records by the World Air Sports Federation.

Rolls-Royce described it as a “fantastic achievement”.

The team is awaiting confirmation of a third record, for rate of climb

In runs at the UK Ministry of Defence’s Boscombe Down testing site in Wiltshire, the aircraft’s average speed over 3 km broke the existing record by 213.04 km/h (132 mph).

The 15 kilometres speed was 292.8 km/h (182 mph) faster than the previous record.

A third record attempt, for the fastest climb to 3,000m, reached in 202 seconds, is still going through the verification process. If approved, it will break the current record by 60 seconds.

A maximum speed reached, that of 387.4 mph (623 km/h) – which would make it the fastest electric vehicle ever – was not part of the official record submission.

The project is part of the UK Government-backed ACCEL or “Accelerating the Electrification of Flight” project.

Spirit of Innovation uses a 400kW electric powertrain

The aircraft uses a 400kW electric powertrain – the equivalent of a 535 BHP supercar.

Rolls-Royce, whose aerospace headquarters are based in Derby, said the propulsion battery pack was the most power-dense ever assembled for a plane – enough to charge 7,500 phones.

Warren East, CEO, Rolls-Royce, said: “Achieving the all-electric world-speed record is a fantastic achievement for the ACCEL team and Rolls-Royce.

“The advanced battery and propulsion technology developed for this programme has exciting applications for the Advanced Air Mobility market.

“This is another milestone that will help make ‘jet zero’ a reality and supports our ambitions to deliver the technology breakthroughs society needs to decarbonise transport across air, land and sea.”

Source BBC

European Investment Bank supports thermal, gravity energy storage projects

Posted on January 25, 2022 by dishanth

The EU’s European Investment Bank has pledged support for a long-duration thermal energy storage project and a gravity-based energy storage demonstration project.

They have been selected among 15 projects defined as large-scale — each requiring capital costs of more than €7.5 million (US$8.5 million) — through EU Innovation Fund grants for Project Development Assistance (PDA), administered by the bank.

A total of 311 applications were received for clean energy or decarbonisation projects after the call for submissions opened last summer.

Of these, seven were selected to receive direct funding from a €1.1 billion budget and include hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, advanced solar cell manufacturing and other technologies.

The 15 among which the two energy storage projects were selected will receive PDA, technical assistance for various stages of their development.

The other 13 projects cover technologies including wind propulsion for cruise ships, hydrogen fuel cells for marine vessels, green methanol production, greenhouse gas (GHG) and carbon capture and storage, bioethanol, power-to-liquid for aviation fuels and other areas.

There is also an electric vehicle (EV) battery project, which will use ultra-pure electrolyte salt to improve lithium-ion batteries and a project to develop and upscale the synthesis of curved graphene and electrode production technologies.

Thermal energy storage project Sun2Store

Sun2Store, a 100MW/1,000MWh thermal energy storage project in Spain was selected for a PDA agreement. Using technology developed by US startup Malta Inc, the project will enable 10-hour duration storage of energy.

Malta Inc has developed a technology it calls ‘pumped heat’ electricity storage, which could provide up to 200 hours of storage, although the company is largely targeting 10 – 12 hour applications. It converts electricity to heat, which is then stored in molten salt. Simultaneously, the system produces cold energy stored in special vats of an anti-freeze-like cooling liquid.

The hot and cold energy are then converted back into electricity as required, using a temperature difference-driven heat engine. The company has raised funds from investors including Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and is one of the founding members of the international Long Duration Energy Storage Council.

It has deals in place with equipment manufacturers Bechtel and Siemens Energy for co-development and supply of key components.

Funds have been granted to Malta Inc’s European affiliate company, Malta Iberia Pumped Heat Electricity Storage (Malta Iberia). The EIB will provide technical assistance to Malta Iberia, including an independent technology assessment, which will verify the storage facility’s key technical parameters.

Malta Inc recently announced plans for a similar-sized project in Canada.

Gravity storage project GraviSTORE

Scotland-headquartered startup Gravitricity was the other energy storage system industry recipient of a PDA agreement through the Innovation Fund.

The EIB will support Gravitricity’s plans to build a full scale 4-8MW project in a former mine shaft.

Located in mainland Europe, the project follows a 250kW demonstrator which operated in Scotland’s capital city Edinburgh throughout the summer and for which specialists appointed by the EIB have begun evaluating test results.

The results of the Edinburgh demonstrator are to be combined with a review of local revenue streams to produce a commercial risk assessment that will inform detailed design and development activities.

“We already have a high level of confidence in our technology and its ability to store energy effectively. What these studies will bring is increased understanding and confidence in how a full-scale project will play into a specific energy market,” said Chris Yendell, project development manager at Gravitricity.

Gravitricity’s energy storage solution works by raising weights in a deep shaft, with disused mine shafts currently being targeted by the firm, and releasing them when energy is required. Its proposed single weight full scale system could deliver up to 2MWh of energy storage, with future multi-weight systems having the potential for a capacity of 25MWh or more.

Alongside the test evaluations, the EIB has now also committed 120 days of consultancy time to advance the full scale project.

In October, Gravitricity engineers visited the recently mothballed Staříč mine in the Moravian Silesian Region of Czechia to investigate its potential for the project. The Gravitricity team is to head to mainland Europe later in January to further evaluate their shortlist, with a final selection decision expected within the next few months.

The firm is also exploring opportunities for a purpose-built prototype shaft at a brownfield location in the UK, where gravity storage could be combined with hydrogen and inter-seasonal heat storage.

Gravitricity story by Alice Grundy.

Source Energy Storage News

‘Just a new fossil fuel industry’: Australia to send first shipment of liquefied hydrogen to Japan

Posted on January 24, 2022 by dishanth

Australia will export its first load of liquefied hydrogen made from coal in an engineering milestone which researchers say could also lock in a new fossil fuel industry and increase the country’s carbon emissions.

Under the $500m Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC) pilot project, hydrogen will be made in Victoria’s LaTrobe valley from brown coal and transported aboard a purpose-built ship to Japan, where it will be burned in coal-fired power plants.

Carbon capture and storage will be used in an attempt to reduce the carbon emissions associated with making the hydrogen and supercooling the gas until it forms a liquid before it is loaded aboard the Suiso Frontier vessel. The first shipment is due to depart from Hastings in the coming days.

The project is being led by a Japanese-Australian consortium including Japan’s J-Power, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Shell and AGL.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said on Friday the development was a “world-first that would make Australia a global leader” in the budding industry.

“A successful Australian hydrogen industry means lower emissions, greater energy production and more local jobs,” Morrison said in a statement.

“The HESC project puts Australia at the forefront of the global energy transition to lower emissions through clean hydrogen, which is a fuel of the future.”

Morrison also announced an additional $7.5m to support the next stage of the project, which has a goal of producing 225,000 tonnes of carbon-neutral hydrogen each year and an additional $20m towards the next stage of the CarbonNet project which aims to produce commercial-scale carbon capture and storage.

According to government estimates, this will reduce emissions by 1.8m tonnes a year.

But Tim Baxter, a senior researcher for climate solutions at the Climate Council, said the assumptions were questionable as the reliance on “fossil hydrogen” meant government needed to “come back with a zero emissions hydrogen plan”.

“Hydrogen derived from fossil fuel sources, like what is being shipped out of the LaTrobe Valley, which is derived from some of the world’s dirtiest coal, is really just a new fossil fuel industry,” Baxter said.

“Fossil hydrogen is a whole new fossil fuel industry, regardless of whether carbon capture and storage is attached to it. It results in extraordinary greenhouse gas emissions. It’s not a climate solution.”

Though “clean hydrogen” has become central to the government’s emissions reductions plans, hydrogen produced by fossil fuels is more expensive, will release more greenhouse gas emissions and comes with greater risk of creating stranded assets.

Dr Fiona Beck, an engineer with the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, said Friday’s announcement did mark an engineering milestone as it showed it was technically possible to liquefy and store hydrogen for transport, as this was more difficult to do than with LNG.

However, Beck, a co-author of a recent peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Cleaner Production that examined the emissions that will be created out of the proposed Japanese-Australia hydrogen supply chain, said if hydrogen made with fossil fuels became the norm, Japan would be transferring its emissions to Australia.

Japan, which has limited options for onshore wind projects, has been looking for ways to reduce its CO2 emissions. One way is by burning ammonia, which is made with hydrogen, in its coal-fired power plants – which are also powered with Australian coal.

Under current CO2 accounting standards by which emissions are measured, Japan would slash its emissions while shifting them across to Australia owing to the CO2 emissions involved in creating, processing, transporting and shipping the hydrogen.

“If you’re importing hydrogen made from coal, essentially the emissions are going to be worse in Australia rather than it would be by just taking that coal and burning it in Japan,” Beck said.

“There’s no policy pressure or economic reason why Japan would buy low-emissions hydrogen when it gets the same benefit by buying cheap, high-emissions hydrogen.”

Beck said that while current government planning stated its intention to reduce emissions associated with creating hydrogen “there’s very few actual mechanisms to do this”.

“Unless Australia has some strong policy to keep its carbon emissions down, we could see a rise in emissions in Australia due to this hydrogen trade.”

Source The Guardian

New York could pass the Nation’s first sustainable fashion law

Posted on January 21, 2022 by dishanth

A new bill in the state of New York could require fashion brands to disclose social and climate impacts as well as order these global companies to work toward reducing their environmental impact.

The bill, if passed, requires major fashion retailers that make over $100 million in revenue globally and operate in New York “to disclose environmental and social due diligence policies [and] establishes a community benefit fund for the purpose of implementing one or more environmental benefit projects that directly and verifiably benefit environmental justice communities,” the bill states. That includes luxury brands, like Prada and Armani, alongside fast-fashion retailers, like Shein.

Under the proposed Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act, retailers that do not disclose environmental and social policies nor work toward environmental benefit projects would face penalties of up to 2% on revenues of $450 million or higher. All fines collected from companies violating the law would go into a fund used to support projects for environmental justice.

If the new law is passed, fashion brands would need to show at least 50% of their suppliers by volume, Bloomberg reported, as well as the type and materials used to make apparel and how much of the materials are recycled. The companies must also identify impacts based on their emissions, water consumption and chemical use.

The law would also hold companies accountable for reporting wages paid to suppliers, with analyses on how that pay compares to minimum wages and living wages. All of these disclosures would need to be listed on the brands’ websites. New York’s state attorney general would then create an annual report listing any brands that do not comply with the law, and citizens could then file civil suits against the retailers.

“As a global fashion and business capital of the world, New York State has a moral responsibility to serve as a leader in mitigating the environmental and social impact of the fashion industry,” said State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, co-sponsor of the bill. Biaggi also noted that the law would make the state a leader in holding the fashion industry accountable and that the law would prioritize “labor, human rights, and environmental protections.”

As reported by The World Bank, the fashion industry is responsible for about 10% of all annual emissions globally. Fashion consumption is only speeding up, too, and experts estimate that the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions will surge 50% before the end of the decade.

The law, first introduced in October 2021, is currently in committee..

Source Eco Watch