Lifeboat Foundation

Tesla received a large order for Model 3s from an Emirati taxi company, Arabia Taxi Dubai, helping the company to cut its carbon footprint.

Tesla’s retail consumer pressure is undeniably large. Still, the automaker has also grown in popularity in the commercial space, especially from customers looking to cut operating costs while reducing their carbon footprints. Predominantly, these orders have been coming from ride-hailing companies and car rental services. Now, a Dubai-based taxi company is also looking to capitalize on the cut-cutting opportunity.

According to the announcement from Arabia Taxi Dubai, it will buy 269 Tesla Model 3s to become part of its taxi fleet in the United Arab Emirates. Currently, Arabia Taxi advertises itself as the largest taxi fleet in Dubai and one of the largest in the country. With this new purchase, it looks to double down on that lead.

The system helps to plug the gap when it comes to renewable energy sources.

As a solution to the unpredictable nature of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power, gravity batteries are being pitched as an ideal remedy. To further this cause, Swiss startup Energy Vault is now completing two such units, which are situated near Shanghai in China and Texas in the United States.

The basic idea behind a gravity battery system is to lift a heavy object, such as a large mass of concrete or a weight, on a pulley, using energy from a power source. When energy is needed, the thing can fall, and the potential energy is converted back into electricity.

Today is Earth Day.

That said, Americans don’t fully trust the reliability of renewable sources and 67% of the population favors a mix of renewables and fossil fuels, with only about 31% in favor of completely phasing out fossil fuels altogether.

This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.

Continue reading “Current Climate: Americans Want The U.S. At Net Zero By 2050” »

A new study published in Ecology and Evolution by Henrik Svensmark of DTU Space has shown that the explosion of stars, also known as supernovae, has greatly impacted the diversity of marine life over the past 500 million years.

The fossil record has been extensively studied, revealing significant variations in the diversity of life forms throughout geological history. A fundamental question in evolutionary biology is identifying the processes responsible for these fluctuations.

The new research uncovers a surprising finding: the fluctuation in the number of nearby supernovae closely corresponds to changes in biodiversity of marine genera over the last 500 million years. This correlation becomes apparent when the marine diversity curve is adjusted to account for changes in shallow coastal marine regions, which are significant as they provide habitat for most marine life and offer new opportunities for evolution as they expand or shrink. Thus, alterations in available shallow marine regions play a role in shaping biodiversity.

Remark: This article is from The Conversation France written by Victor DOS SANTOS PAULINO & Nonthapat PULSIRI (V&N) — Experts from Toulouse Business School and The SIRIUS Chair (France)

Lorsque nous parlons d’espace, nous pensons aux étoiles que nous voyons la nuit ou à de bons films de science-fiction. Or, l’espace comprend également tous les satellites et engins qui sont lancés depuis la Terre. Dans certains engins spatiaux, il y a des astronautes, comme l’Américaine Christina Koch ou le Français Thomas Pesquet, qui voyagent pendant plusieurs jours ou mois pour de nombreuses missions.

Pendant ce temps, plus de 8 000 satellites non habités opèrent sur les orbites terrestres pour améliorer la vie quotidienne. Par exemple, les satellites de communication contribuent à améliorer l’accès à Internet dans les zones blanches, les satellites d’observation sont essentiels pour les prévisions météorologiques et les satellites de navigation (GPS) sont indispensables pour les besoins de transport actuels et futurs tels que les véhicules autonomes.

Les progrès dans le secteur spatial offrent aujourd’hui de nouvelles opportunités dans la mise en orbite de constellations de milliers de satellites (par exemple, la flotte Starlink lancée par SpaceX, la société de l’homme d’affaires américain Elon Musk) ou encore dans l’exploitation minière spatiale et le tourisme spatial. Certains pays (dont la France et les États-Unis) ont par ailleurs annoncé que soutenir leur écosystème spatial constituait une priorité pour dynamiser l’économie.

Continue reading “Comment les activités spatiales peuvent-elles évoluer vers plus de durabilité ?” »

COLORADO SPRINGS — Axiom Space has introduced a new program to allow countries to create human spaceflight programs without needing to develop their own infrastructure or other capabilities.

The Axiom Space Access Program, announced April 17, offers countries a tiered approach to conducting research on the International Space Station or Axiom’s future commercial space station, as well as flying their own astronauts.

The program is effectively a “space program in a box,” said Tejpaul Bhatia, chief revenue officer at Axiom, in an interview during the 38^th Space Symposium. “The real key is that turnkey access at affordable, sustainable and predictable rates.”

WangAnQi/iStock.

But now we’re learning that researchers in Sydney may have found a way to tackle this issue.

Lithium-ion batteries power our lives.

Because they are lightweight, have high energy density and are rechargeable, the batteries power many products, from laptops and cell phones to electric cars and toothbrushes.

However, current lithium-ion batteries have reached the limit of how much energy they can store. That has researchers looking for more powerful and cheaper alternatives.

Researchers predict that a “flashing” electric ratchet could separate same-charge ions by their diffusion coefficients, a possibility that could improve the energy efficiency of processes such as water desalination and purification.