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Top 1% of EU households have carbon footprints 22 times larger than climate targets allow

Top 1% of EU households have carbon footprints 22 times larger than climate targets allow

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Denis Belitsky / shutterstock

To keep global warming below 1.5°C, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 2.5 tonnes of CO₂ per person per year by 2030. But we recently analysed more than 275,000 household budget surveys from 26 countries for an academic study, and we found that only about 5% of EU households live within these limits.

Scientists aren’t certain exactly how much fossil fuel we can use and still remain below 1.5°C – that is, how big the world’s remaining carbon budget is – but it’s clear the vast majority of EU citizens are using far more than their fair share. In the EU, the average carbon footprint is equivalent to about eight tonnes of CO₂ per person, which must fall by about a third over the next decade.

But some people place even greater pressure on the environment. Households in the top 1% of polluters in the EU have carbon footprints that are 22 times larger than the safe limit of 2.5 tonnes. On average, people in this group emit greenhouse gases equivalent to 55 tonnes of CO₂ per person per year.

Consumption patterns of the top polluters

So who are these top emitters? We know they’re relatively wealthy, though perhaps not private-jet wealthy. Their annual net income is around €40,000 per person on average.

Meanwhile, the top 10% of polluters in the EU account for 27% of the total EU carbon footprint, a greater contribution than that of the bottom 50%. These stark differences in carbon footprints are rooted in the things people buy and consume.

What do the top emitters consume that produces so much waste? One of the biggest culprits in our analysis is air travel. Regular flights are responsible for 41% of the carbon footprint of the top 1% of emitters, and almost all flights taken in the EU are by the top 10% of polluters. Air travel is very unequally distributed across the population, while it is also very carbon intensive.

But air travel largely isn’t the focus of climate policies. Airlines rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic have received bailouts, while kerosene tax exemptions effectively subsidise flying, making it relatively cheap compared to other transport options.


À lire aussi : We can't expand airports after declaring a climate emergency – let's shift to low-carbon transport instead


Car travel also makes up close to a third of the carbon footprint among the top 10% of EU emitters. At the same time, poorer people spend a larger share of their wages on transport, including fuel, road tax and car insurance. Policies that increase the price of car travel, such as fuel duty rises, could hurt the poorest most if they aren’t accompanied by support for switching to cleaner alternatives such as public transport.

Traffic jam in countryside.
Too many Europeans still depend on their cars. Marian Weyo / shutterstock

But as households get richer, travel emissions grow faster than the growth in wealth. At one end of the income divide, there’s a structural reliance on cars for travelling to work and other necessities, while at the other end, people buy new cars they don’t need and travel more as they get richer. Policymakers need to stop incentivising luxuries like air travel and better address the car dependency that is most pronounced for people with lower incomes.

To reduce the need for cars, governments should provide adequate public transport, cycling and walking infrastructure. They should also help to redesign cities, increase urban density of residents and jobs and actively target social practices and business models that reinforce car reliance.

Avoiding flying, living car-free and eating a vegan diet can reduce personal carbon footprints. But the reductions are generally insufficient to meet the 2.5 tonnes carbon targets. This is largely because of fossil-fuel dependence throughout the economy.

Carbon footprints and wellbeing

As things stand, living within climate limits most often means living in inadequate conditions, with fewer opportunities to travel or buy things. This is especially true in EU countries that rely heavily on coal to generate energy, such as Estonia and Bulgaria.

But the link between carbon footprints and income is highly complex. While the wealthiest are clearly responsible for the highest emissions, Denmark and France have much lower carbon footprints for the same level of income compared with other European countries. This could be because they generate more of their electricity from nuclear and renewables. Both countries also have comparably robust welfare states, with expansive public services and public transport. This could ensure that people there have more of their basic needs met and aren’t as compelled to buy lots of stuff, as in other countries.

If 95% of EU households live beyond planetary limits, we need ambitious and radical change. Reducing the carbon intensity of global supply chains could ensure that everyone can have adequate nutrition, shelter, education, healthcare and mobility within planetary limits. Airport expansions, motorway extensions and fossil fuel subsidies are locking us into a future with less opportunity to achieve climate targets and a good standard of living for all in Europe and around the world.

Diana Ivanova receives funding from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Energy Programme under the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement.

Richard Wood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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MIT design would harness 40% of the sun’s heat to produce clean hydrogen fuel

MIT engineers aim to produce totally green, carbon-free hydrogen fuel with a new, train-like system of reactors that is driven solely by the sun.  Credit:…

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MIT engineers aim to produce totally green, carbon-free hydrogen fuel with a new, train-like system of reactors that is driven solely by the sun. 

Credit: Courtesy of Ahmed Ghoniem, Aniket Patankar, et. al

MIT engineers aim to produce totally green, carbon-free hydrogen fuel with a new, train-like system of reactors that is driven solely by the sun. 

In a study appearing today in Solar Energy Journal, the engineers lay out the conceptual design for a system that can efficiently produce “solar thermochemical hydrogen.” The system harnesses the sun’s heat to directly split water and generate hydrogen — a clean fuel that can power long-distance trucks, ships, and planes, while in the process emitting no greenhouse gas emissions. 

Today, hydrogen is largely produced through processes that involve natural gas and other fossil fuels, making the otherwise green fuel more of a “grey” energy source when considered from the start of its production to its end use. In contrast, solar thermochemical hydrogen, or STCH, offers a totally emissions-free alternative, as it relies entirely on renewable solar energy to drive hydrogen production. But so far, existing STCH designs have limited efficiency: Only about 7 percent of incoming sunlight is used to make hydrogen. The results so far have been low-yield and high-cost.

In a big step toward realizing solar-made fuels, the MIT team estimates its new design could harness up to 40 percent of the sun’s heat to generate that much more hydrogen. The increase in efficiency could drive down the system’s overall cost, making STCH a potentially scalable, affordable option to help decarbonize the transportation industry. 

“We’re thinking of hydrogen as the fuel of the future, and there’s a need to generate it cheaply and at scale,” says the study’s lead author, Ahmed Ghoniem, the Ronald C. Crane Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. “We’re trying to achieve the Department of Energy’s goal, which is to make green hydrogen by 2030, at $1 per kilogram. To improve the economics, we have to improve the efficiency and make sure most of the solar energy we collect is used in the production of hydrogen.”

Ghoniem’s study co-authors are Aniket Patankar, first author and MIT postdoc; Harry Tuller, MIT professor of materials science and engineering; Xiao-Yu Wu of the University of Waterloo; and Wonjae Choi at Ewha Womans University in South Korea.

Solar stations 

Similar to other proposed designs, the MIT system would be paired with an existing source of solar heat, such as a concentrated solar plant (CSP) — a circular array of hundreds of mirrors that collect and reflect sunlight to a central receiving tower. An STCH system then absorbs the receiver’s heat and directs it to split water and produce hydrogen. This process is very different from electrolysis, which uses electricity instead of heat to split water. 

At the heart of a conceptual STCH system is a two-step thermochemical reaction. In the first step, water in the form of steam is exposed to a metal. This causes the metal to grab oxygen from steam, leaving hydrogen behind. This metal “oxidation” is similar to the rusting of iron in the presence of water, but it occurs much faster. Once hydrogen is separated, the oxidized (or rusted) metal is reheated in a vacuum, which acts to reverse the rusting process and regenerate the metal. With the oxygen removed, the metal can be cooled and exposed to steam again to produce more hydrogen. This process can be repeated hundreds of times. 

The MIT system is designed to optimize this process. The system as a whole resembles a train of box-shaped reactors running on a circular track. In practice, this track would be set around a solar thermal source, such as a CSP tower. Each reactor in the train would house the metal that undergoes the redox, or reversible rusting, process. 

Each reactor would first pass through a hot station, where it would be exposed to the sun’s heat at temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees Celsius. This extreme heat would effectively pull oxygen out of a reactor’s metal. That metal would then be in a “reduced” state — ready to grab oxygen from steam. For this to happen, the reactor would move to a cooler station at temperatures around 1,000 C, where it would be exposed to steam to produce hydrogen. 

Rust and rails

Other similar STCH concepts have run up against a common obstacle: what to do with the heat released by the reduced reactor as it is cooled. Without recovering and reusing this heat, the system’s efficiency is too low to be practical.

A second challenge has to do with creating an energy-efficient vacuum where metal can de-rust. Some prototypes generate a vacuum using mechanical pumps, though the pumps are too energy-intensive and costly for large-scale hydrogen production. 

To address these challenges, the MIT design incorporates several energy-saving workarounds. To recover most of the heat that would otherwise escape from the system, reactors on opposite sides of the circular track are allowed to exchange heat through thermal radiation; hot reactors get cooled while cool reactors get heated. This keeps the heat within the system. The researchers also added a second set of reactors that would circle around the first train, moving in the opposite direction. This outer train of reactors would operate at generally cooler temperatures and would be used to evacuate oxygen from the hotter inner train, without the need for energy-consuming mechanical pumps. 

These outer reactors would carry a second type of metal that can also easily oxidize. As they circle around, the outer reactors would absorb oxygen from the inner reactors, effectively de-rusting the original metal, without having to use energy-intensive vacuum pumps. Both reactor trains would  run continuously and would enerate separate streams of pure hydrogen and oxygen. 

The researchers carried out detailed simulations of the conceptual design, and found that it would significantly boost the efficiency of solar thermochemical hydrogen production, from 7 percent, as previous designs have demonstrated, to 40 percent. 

“We have to think of every bit of energy in the system, and how to use it, to minimize the cost,” Ghoniem says. “And with this design, we found that everything can be powered by heat coming from the sun. It is able to use 40 percent of the sun’s heat to produce hydrogen.” 

In the next year, the team will be building a prototype of the system that they plan to test in concentrated solar power facilities at laboratories of the Department of Energy, which is currently funding the project. 

“When fully implemented, this system would be housed in a little building in the middle of a solar field,” Patankar explains. “Inside the building, there could be one or more trains each having about 50 reactors. And we think this could be a modular system, where you can add reactors to a conveyor belt, to scale up hydrogen production.”

This work was supported by the Centers for Mechanical Engineering Research and Education at MIT and SUSTech. 

###

Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News

Paper: “A comparative analysis of integrating thermochemical oxygen pumping in water-splitting redox cycles for hydrogen production”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0038092X23005935


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Hillman grant for Penn Nursing professor to study virtual reality & loneliness

PHILADELPHIA (October 16, 2023) – Penn Nursing, with partners from the Annenberg Virtual Reality ColLABorative and New York University’s Rory Meyers…

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PHILADELPHIA (October 16, 2023) – Penn Nursing, with partners from the Annenberg Virtual Reality ColLABorative and New York University’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing, have been awarded 2023 grant from the Hillman Emergent Innovation: Serious Illness and End of Life program to study the use of social virtual reality (VR) in enhancing the treatment experience and reducing loneliness in people undergoing hemodialysis. This grant is awarded by The Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation.

Credit: Penn Nursing

PHILADELPHIA (October 16, 2023) – Penn Nursing, with partners from the Annenberg Virtual Reality ColLABorative and New York University’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing, have been awarded 2023 grant from the Hillman Emergent Innovation: Serious Illness and End of Life program to study the use of social virtual reality (VR) in enhancing the treatment experience and reducing loneliness in people undergoing hemodialysis. This grant is awarded by The Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation.

Hemodialysis is a life-saving treatment for people experiencing end stage kidney disease. Treatments are typically three times a week and each session lasts three to four hours. The experience can be isolating and so uncomfortable that patients skip future sessions, which can rapidly worsen their condition. This $50,000 pilot study testing social VR during hemodialysis uses low cost, off-the-shelf solutions to remove the environment that patients find dull and replace it with a more stimulating one.

Led by Penn Nursing’s Lea Ann Matura, PhD, RN, CRNP, FAAN, Associate Professor of Nursing and Vice Chair of the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences, the study will connect dialysis patients in outpatient centers across Philadelphia in an immersive, realistic VR film theater. The project will explore a new nurse-moderated, social VR experience to decrease isolation and increase health literacy and adherence to treatment in marginalized communities. The study begins in 2024 and runs for 18 months.  

“Social VR is a contrast to depersonalized care. It can remove the environment that patients find dull and replace it with a more stimulating one. VR may promote self-care agency by offering choices in how they spend their time during treatment sessions,” said Matura. “VR compels an understanding of the needs and preferences of patients and lends itself to multidisciplinary integration providing enhanced holistic care. It also focuses on caring for the patient rather than treating a disease.”

Co-investigators include Penn Nursing’s Subhash Aryal, PhD, MS, Director, BECCA Lab & Research Associate Professor; Linda Ruggiero, PhD, BSN, BS,  RN-BC , Clinical Nurse at Penn Medicine; Maya Clark-Cutaia, PhD, RN, MSN, Assistant Professor, NYU College of Nursing; and Kyle Cassidy, BS, a digital design specialist at the Annenberg School for Communication.

# # #

About the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing

The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing is one of the world’s leading schools of nursing. For the eighth year in a row, it is ranked the #1 nursing school in the world by QS University. For the third year in a row, our Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program is ranked # 1 in the 2024 U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges rankings. Penn Nursing is also consistently ranked highly in the U.S. News & World Report annual list of best graduate schools and is ranked as one of the top schools of nursing in funding from the National Institutes of Health. Penn Nursing prepares nurse scientists and nurse leaders to meet the health needs of a global society through innovation in research, education, and practice. Follow Penn Nursing on: FacebookTwitterLinkedIn, & Instagram.


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“I Did It To Avenge Muslims!” – Belgium Issues Highest Terror Alert After Mass-Shooting In Brussels

"I Did It To Avenge Muslims!" – Belgium Issues Highest Terror Alert After Mass-Shooting In Brussels

Update: Belgium’s crisis center has raised…

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"I Did It To Avenge Muslims!" - Belgium Issues Highest Terror Alert After Mass-Shooting In Brussels

Update: Belgium's crisis center has raised the nation's terror alert status to its highest level.

“Horrified by the terrorist attack which left two victims in the heart of Brussels,” Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib said in a post on the X social media network.

“All necessary means must be mobilized to combat radicalism.”

“We are monitoring the situation and ask the people of Brussels to be vigilant,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in a post on X, but appeared to confirm the link to terrorism:

"I have just offered my sincere condolences to the Swedish prime minister following tonight's harrowing attack on Swedish citizens in Brussels.

"Our thoughts are with the families and friends who lost their loved ones. As close partners, the fight against terrorism is a joint one."

Additionally, the Euro 2024 soccer qualifier between Belgium and Sweden (taking place in Belgium's national stadium in Brussels) has been abandoned at half-time after the attack, with fans locked in the stadium.

No suspect has yet been arrested.

*  *  *

As Remix News' Thomas Brooke reported, two people have been shot dead and others injured in central Brussels on Monday evening and the perpetrator remains at large, Belgian police have said.

Authorities have confirmed a shooting took place in Ieperlaan at around 7:15 p.m. local time and two people of Swedish nationality were killed.

The victims are understood to have been supporters of the Swedish national football team and were visiting the Belgian capital to attend the European Championship qualifying fixture between the two nations at the Heysel Stadium on Monday evening.

Amateur footage circulating outline showed the perpetrator, dressed in a fluorescent orange jacket and wearing a white helmet, equipped with an assault rifle on the rampage in the city. The suspect arrived at the scene on a scooter before opening fire in the street causing pedestrians to flee into a nearby apartment building.

The man followed those fleeing the scene into the lobby of the residential building before firing several more shots, before returning to his scooter and taking off at speed.

Belgian media reported eyewitness testimony which stated the shooter shouted “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire.

Additional footage circulating online purports to be a video message recorded in Arabic by the shooter who is wearing the same identifiable clothing following the attack. According to the Sudinfo news outlet, the attacker said his motivation for the mass shooting was to avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world and boasted about killing “infidels.”

“In his very violent speech, he said he had shot two people to ‘avenge the Muslims and that we live and die for our religion,'” the news site stated.

The tweet is viewable here but not embeddable...

Crisis meetings have taken place between the Belgian federal police, the Brussels local police, the security services, and Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden and Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne.

Authorities have not yet made an arrest and the suspect remains at large.

This is a developing story...

Tyler Durden Mon, 10/16/2023 - 16:15

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