Lifeboat Foundation

Rio Tinto has ambitious goals when it comes to sustainability. According to the company’s website, it aims to transition all its facilities and operations to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To achieve this, the company is working with governments to scale up renewable energy resources where it works. For example, Rio Tinto invested more than $500 million to partner with the Canadian government to decarbonize an iron and titanium mine in Quebec.

Mining companies like Rio Tinto provide necessary metals and minerals for global clients. The company’s products and resources are used all over the world in items that people use in their daily lives. Unfortunately, mining with diesel fuel produces carbon dioxide. Rio Tinto is exploring the effectiveness of renewable energy sources in its operations to try and reduce the negative impacts mining has on the Earth.

The Diavik diamond mine features a historic solar power plant that can produce up to 4.2GW hours of electricity for its operations. The solar panels on-site use both the light of the sun as well as light reflected off of snow to generate electricity.

52 billion solar panels could soon be covering the American highway network. Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Geosciences, and Columbia University have proposed a historic initiative which could see major global highways covered with solar panels.

The researchers publication “Roofing Highways With Solar Panels Substantially Reduces Carbon Emissions and Traffic Losses” in Earth’s Future advocate for the deployment of solar technology across the global highway network which spans up to 3.2 million kilometers.

In doing so, the researchers estimate that up to 17,578 TWh of electricity could be generated annually. This figure is equivalent to more than a staggering 60% of 2023’s energy consumption. This could offset up to 28% of global carbon emissions and reduce road accident incidences up to 11%.

Sierra Space’s oxygen tech boosts lunar sustainability, aiding NASA’s Artemis goal for a permanent moon base and future Mars missions.

As the global energy crisis intensifies and climate change accelerates, finding sustainable solutions for energy management is increasingly urgent. One promising approach is passive radiative cooling, a technology that allows objects to cool by emitting heat directly into space, requiring no additional energy.

Officials in southern California are advising some residents against leaving their homes as wildfire smoke worsens air quality in the region.

On Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service (NWS) office in San Diego broadcast an air quality alert from the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD). The alert warned of increased fine particle pollution from wildfire smoke across parts of southern California, and it is expected to remain in place until 11 p.m. local time Tuesday.

“If you smell smoke or see ash due to a wildfire, remain indoors with windows and doors closed or seek alternative shelter, if feasible,” the alert said. “Avoid vigorous physical activity and run your air conditioner and/or an air purifier. If possible, do not use whole house fans or swamp coolers that bring in outside air. Avoid burning wood in your fireplace or firepit and minimize sources of indoor air pollution such as candles, incense, pan-frying, and grilling.”

Scientists identified a new mechanism causing lithium-ion battery self-discharge and degradation: cathode hydrogenation. They revealed how protons and electrons from the electrolyte impact the cathode.

A discovery six years ago took the condensed-matter physics world by storm: Ultra-thin carbon stacked in two slightly askew layers became a superconductor, and changing the twist angle between layers could toggle their electrical properties. The landmark 2018 paper describing “magic-angle graphene superlattices” launched a new field called “twistronics,” and the first author was then-MIT graduate student and recent Harvard Junior Fellow Yuan Cao.

Together with Harvard physicists Amir Yacoby, Eric Mazur, and others, Cao and colleagues have built on that foundational work, smoothing a path for more twistronics science by inventing an easier way to twist and study many types of materials.

A new paper in Nature describes the team’s fingernail-sized machine that can twist thin materials at will, replacing the need to fabricate twisted devices one by one. Thin, 2D materials with properties that can be studied and manipulated easily have immense implications for higher-performance transistors, optical devices such as solar cells, and quantum computers, among other things.

Lithium-ion (or Li-ion) batteries are heavy hitters when it comes to the world of rechargeable batteries. As electric vehicles become more common in the world, a high-energy, low-cost battery utilizing the abundance of manganese (Mn) can be a sustainable option to become commercially available and utilized in the automobile industry.

Currently, batteries used for powering electric vehicles (EVs) are nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co)-based, which can be expensive and unsustainable for a society with a growing desire for EVs.

By switching the positive electrode materials to a lithium/manganese-based material, researchers aim to maintain the high performance of Ni/Co-based materials but with a low-cost, sustainable twist.

Materials are crucial to modern technology, especially those used in extreme environments like nuclear energy systems and military applications. These materials need to withstand intense pressure, temperature and corrosion. Understanding their lattice-level behavior under such conditions is essential for developing next-generation materials that are more resilient, cheaper, lighter and sustainable.