Vehicle emissions control is the study of reducing the emissions produced by motor vehicles, especially internal combustion engines.
Climate engineering, or commonly geoengineering, is deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system. The main category of climate engineering is solar geoengineering or solar radiation management. Solar geoengineering, or solar radiation modification, would reflect some sunlight back to space to limit or reverse human-caused climate change. An alternative approach to geoengineering is to increase the thermal emittance of the Earth through passive daytime radiative cooling to decrease and reverse global temperature increases.
Energy is sustainable if it "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Most definitions of sustainable energy include considerations of environmental aspects such as greenhouse gas emissions and social and economic aspects such as energy poverty. Renewable energy sources such as wind, hydroelectric power, solar, and geothermal energy are generally far more sustainable than fossil fuel sources. However, some renewable energy projects, such as the clearing of forests to produce biofuels, can cause severe environmental damage. The role of non-renewable energy sources in sustainable energy has been controversial. Nuclear power is a low-carbon source whose historic mortality rates are comparable to wind and solar, but its sustainability has been debated because of concerns about radioactive waste, nuclear proliferation, and accidents. Switching from coal to natural gas has environmental benefits, including a lower climate impact, but may lead to a delay in switching to more sustainable options. Carbon capture and storage can be built into power plants to remove their carbon dioxide emissions, but is expensive and has seldom been implemented.
A fossil fuel power station is a thermal power station which burns a fossil fuel, such as coal or natural gas, to produce electricity. Fossil fuel power stations have machinery to convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, which then operates an electrical generator. The prime mover may be a steam turbine, a gas turbine or, in small plants, a reciprocating gas engine. All plants use the energy extracted from the expansion of a hot gas, either steam or combustion gases. Although different energy conversion methods exist, all thermal power station conversion methods have their efficiency limited by the Carnot efficiency and therefore produce waste heat.
Heavy industry is an industry that involves one or more characteristics such as large and heavy products; large and heavy equipment and facilities ; or complex or numerous processes. Because of those factors, heavy industry involves higher capital intensity than light industry does, and it is also often more heavily cyclical in investment and employment.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) or carbon capture and sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) before it enters the atmosphere, transporting it, and storing it (carbon sequestration) for centuries or millennia. Usually the CO2 is captured from large point sources, such as a chemical plant or biomass power plant, and then stored in an underground geological formation. The aim is to prevent the release of CO2 from heavy industry with the intent of mitigating the effects of climate change. CO2 has been injected into geological formations for several decades for enhanced oil recovery and after separation from natural gas, but this has been criticised for producing more emissions when the gas or oil is burned.
Like other emissions resulting from fossil fuel combustion, aircraft engines produce gases, noise, and particulates, raising environmental concerns over their global effects and their effects on local air quality. Jet airliners contribute to climate change by emitting carbon dioxide, the best understood greenhouse gas, and, with less scientific understanding, nitrogen oxides, contrails and particulates. Their radiative forcing is estimated at 1.3–1.4 that of CO2 alone, excluding induced cirrus cloud with a very low level of scientific understanding. In 2018, global commercial operations generated 2.4% of all CO2 emissions.
A low-carbon economy (LCE) or decarbonised economy is an economy based on energy sources that produce low levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GHG emissions due to human activity are the dominant cause of observed climate change since the mid-20th century. Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause long-lasting changes around the world, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible effects for people and ecosystems. Shifting to a low-carbon economy on a global scale could bring substantial benefits both for developed and developing countries. Many countries around the world are designing and implementing low-emission development strategies (LEDS). These strategies seek to achieve social, economic, and environmental development goals while reducing long-term greenhouse gas emissions and increasing resilience to the effects of climate change.
The Virgin Earth Challenge was a competition offering a $25 million prize for whoever could demonstrate a commercially viable design which results in the permanent removal of greenhouse gases out of the Earth's atmosphere to contribute materially in global warming avoidance. The prize was conceived by Richard Branson, and was announced in London on 9 February 2007 by Branson and former US Vice President Al Gore. However, the prize was never awarded. In 2019, Virgin quietly took the prize website offline, after keeping 11 finalists suspended in expectation for eight years. Al Gore had withdrawn from the jury earlier and commented that "He was not part of the decision to discontinue the contest.".
This is a list of climate change topics.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR), also known as negative CO2 emissions, is a process in which carbon dioxide gas is removed from the atmosphere and sequestered for long periods of time. Similarly, greenhouse gas removal (GGR) or negative greenhouse gas emissions is the removal of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the atmosphere by deliberate human activities, i.e., in addition to the removal that would occur via natural carbon cycle or atmospheric chemistry processes. In the context of net zero greenhouse gas emissions targets, CDR is increasingly integrated into climate policy, as a new element of mitigation strategies. CDR and GGR methods are also known as negative emissions technologies (NET), and may be cheaper than preventing some agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
Klaus S. Lackner is the Founding Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions (CNCE) and a professor in School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University. He is scientific advisor to Carbon Collect Limited, and senior science advisor to Aircela Inc. He is a pioneer in carbon management and is the first to suggest capturing carbon dioxide from air in the context of addressing climate change.
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is the process of extracting bioenergy from biomass and capturing and storing the carbon, thereby removing it from the atmosphere. The carbon in the biomass comes from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) which is extracted from the atmosphere by the biomass when it grows. Energy is extracted in useful forms (electricity, heat, biofuels, etc.) as the biomass is utilized through combustion, fermentation, pyrolysis or other conversion methods. Some of the carbon in the biomass is converted to CO2 or biochar which can then be stored by geologic sequestration or land application, respectively, enabling carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and making BECCS a negative emissions technology (NET).
Biosequestration or biological sequestration is the capture and storage of the atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by continual or enhanced biological processes.
Carbon-neutral fuel is fuel which produces no net-greenhouse gas emissions or carbon footprint. In practice, this usually means fuels that are made using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a feedstock. Proposed carbon-neutral fuels can broadly be grouped into synthetic fuels, which are made by chemically hydrogenating carbon dioxide, and biofuels, which are produced using natural CO2-consuming processes like photosynthesis.
Christopher W. Jones is an American chemical engineer and researcher on catalysis and carbon dioxide capture. In 2022 he is the John Brock III School Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, GA. Previously he served as Associate Vice President for Research at Georgia Tech (2013-2019), including a stint as Interim Executive Vice-President for Research in 2018.
Carbon Engineering Ltd. is a Canadian-based clean energy company focusing on the commercialization of Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology that captures carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the atmosphere.
Direct air capture (DAC) is a process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the ambient air (as opposed to capturing from point sources, such as a cement factory or biomass power plant) and generating a concentrated stream of CO2 for sequestration or utilization or production of carbon-neutral fuel and windgas. Carbon dioxide removal is achieved when ambient air makes contact with chemical media, typically an aqueous alkaline solvent or sorbents. These chemical media are subsequently stripped of CO2 through the application of energy (namely heat), resulting in a CO2 stream that can undergo dehydration and compression, while simultaneously regenerating the chemical media for reuse.
Climeworks AG is a Swiss company specializing in carbon dioxide air capture technology. The company filters CO2 directly from the ambient air through an adsorption-desorption process. Climeworks refers to the filtering of CO2 from the ambient air for underground storage as carbon dioxide removal.
Jennifer Wilcox is an American chemical engineer and an expert carbon capture and storage and removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. She is the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy at University of Pennsylvania and a former James H. Manning Chaired Professor of Chemical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Wilcox conducts research focused on minimizing the environmental and climate impacts of our dependence on fossil fuels. In January 2021, she became acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (PDAS) for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.
