by Toby Benham
China plans to more than double its number of wind turbines in the next 6 years. This bold move involves increasing the nationwide wind power capacity from 75 gigawatts (GW) to 200 GW. To put this into context, all of the countries of the EU combined have a total capacity of around 90 GW. This is an important positive move for a country that is a leading contributor of greenhouse gases. Wind turbine technology is improving due to the massive market potential. Current efforts are innovating the field while simultaneously lowering prices. This is beneficial to other countries worldwide. The opportunity arises to either purchase turbines from the Chinese or further their research. While sustainable energy is the way forward there are still problems to be addressed.
While China contributes to 26.7% of the worlds installed wind power capacity, this only meets 2% of the country’s power demands. In fact 75% of their power still comes from coal. Clearly more needs to be done in an effort to phase out fossil fuels for renewables. For this to happen, renewable energy technologies need to be improved to be able to provide more power and deliver it to the right places. Excellent research has been carried out to bring us the technology we have today. However there are serious problems when trying to use these technologies to supply countries with large quantities of power. Energy storage is a key issue. Sticking with wind, generally the amount of wind is intermittent. This means that there is either no electricity being generated or too much to cope with. Last year in China around a quarter of turbines were left off during the windiest times because the turbines are vulnerable to damage during high winds. Another problem is that the windiest places are generally far away from the cities that require power from them. New advances may provide answers to these issues, but it is difficult to tell if this will be years or decades away. One thing is for certain; China should be commended for
taking a step in the right direction. This is an opportunity for other
countries to follow suit and develop more renewables.
Scientists
find life thriving in the hostile oceanic layers of the Earth’s crust
by Daisy Dunne
Scientists
studying the activity of the “dark biosphere”, the portion of the Earth
shrouded in both darkness and mystery, have revealed how tiny organisms called
microbes can obtain the energy required for life directly from their rocky
surroundings of the oceanic crust - the layer of rock found covering the Earth
directly beneath the sea. Life found deep within the oceanic crust of the Earth has the potential to make up the biggest ecosystem, a functioning unit
considering all living organisms as well as their physical environment, the
world has ever seen. This is due to the fact that 60% of the Earth’s surface is
covered by oceanic crust. This new discovery poses a great challenge to
pre-existing views concerning the normal conditions of life, which are based on
the theory that energy is fixed by plants from sunlight and passed from
organism to organism through a food chain. In contrast, scientists have shown
how an astounding number of organisms can exploit energy from the
natural reaction of infiltrating sea water with the inorganic (non-living)
substances found in the rocky crust.
Why is this
new revelation so important? Finding a thriving community of organisms living
independently of sunlight and oxygen strengthens the idea that there may indeed
be life on other planets. Similar life forms to such microorganisms could
potentially exist be deriving energy in the absence of appropriate light from
rocky deposits found in their own planet’s constitution. One of the
microbiologists behind the paper, Dr Mark Lever, hopes his findings will
contribute to our understanding of extra-terrestrial life. He suggests, "I
think it's quite likely there is similar life on other planets. On Mars, even
though we don't have oxygen, we have rocks there that are iron-rich. It's
feasible that similar reactions could be occurring on other planets and perhaps
in the deep subsurface of these planets." This research opens a whole new
door to the possibilities of life in hostile but mineral-rich environments,
both on Earth and on other planets, that were previously disregarded as
unsuitable to sustaining life.
Hannah Bruce Macdonald
While it may seem there are already enough sources of greenhouse gases, a study has shown that large sources of methane may be released from their storage at the bottom of the sea. Off the East coast of North America large deposits of methane hydrate, a solid form of frozen methane trapped in ocean sediments, have been found. This methane hydrate is formed at the top few hundred metres of the ocean floor where the pressure is high and the temperature is low, far enough away from the Earth’s warm interior.
Changes in temperature and shifts in position of the Gulf Stream over recent years have allowed these methane reserves to ‘melt’ releasing 2.5 billion tonnes of methane. This gas is unlikely to move through the ocean to the surface, but will probably remain dissolved in the seawater where it will be converted by microbes. If this methane were to be released into the atmosphere, it would be unlikely to have much effect on global temperatures, but the main concern is for deep-ocean landslides. The breakdown of these methane hydrate reserves are capable of causing landslides in the seabed, which in turn have the knock-on effect of releasing even more methane, which could impact on global warming, while also having the potential to cause tsunamis.
Studies
have been carried out using indirect measurements of sea-floor temperatures,
from which the break-down of the methane hydrates has been inferred. On top of
this little is known about the extent of methane hydrate present, or about the
rate or mechanism at which this gas is released. Due to this, research is
limited on methane hydrates potential as an energy source, or the effect it
could have on global warming.
