Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability – Page 75

As part of its energy transition strategy, energy giant Shell plans to shed some of its retail locations, including gasoline stations, to focus more on EV charging sites.

“We are upgrading our retail network, with expanded electric vehicle charging and convenience offers, in response to changing customer needs,” Shell said in its 2024 Energy Transition Strategy report. The company plans to “divest around 500 Shell-owned sites (including joint ventures) a year in 2024 and 2025.” The company’s plans were first reported by Bloomberg News.

The closures will shrink the company’s retail footprint by 2.1%. In 2023, the company operated 47,000 locations.

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Oregon State University scientists studying ways to filter greenhouse gases from the air recently discovered that when molecules of the metal vanadium are bound with oxygen molecules as peroxide, they can pull carbon dioxide from the air. The carbon molecules can be siphoned off using a small amount of energy that’s then funneled into other uses, like making limestone for buildings or enhancing the atmospheric carbon in greenhouses, accelerating plant growth.

The process could help improve nascent technologies in capturing carbon dioxide from the air to slow the impacts of global climate change. The discovery was published in the journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in December.

Carbon dioxide is responsible for about two-thirds of the atmospheric heating causing global climate change, and it is primarily released in the burning of fossil fuels for energy, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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A new research paper has discovered the usefulness of DRAM cache for GPUs which can help enable higher performance at low power.

Researchers Propose The Use Of Dedicated DRAM Caches Onto Newly-Built SCMs For GPUs, Replacing Conventional HBM Configuration

The GPU industry, which involves consumer, workstation, and AI GPUs, is proceeding in a way that we are seeing advancements in memory capacities and bandwidth, but it isn’t sustainable, and ultimately, we could hit the limits if an innovative approach isn’t taken.

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Hydrogen gas is a clean fuel. It burns with oxygen in the air to provide energy with no CO2. Hydrogen is a key to sustainable energy for the future. Though humans are just now coming to realize the benefits of hydrogen gas (H2 in chemical shorthand), microbes have known that H2 is a good fuel for as long as there has been life on Earth. Hydrogen is ancient energy.

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One shaken Redditor took to r/teslamotors to share their story after their Tesla vehicle saved them from a situation that could easily have turned deadly.

“My Model 3 saved my life today,” they said in the post.

According to the Redditor, they were driving home on the highway in heavy, “basically stopped” traffic. They wanted to change lanes, but the number of cars was making it difficult. “Problem was there were a lot of oncoming cars and almost no breaks in between them,” they said.

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Even if electric cars are already prevalent today, anti-EV narratives are still abounding. Among the most persistent anti-electric vehicle talking points involves the idea that EVs take hours to charge, so those who own them would be stuck waiting several hours waiting for their cars to “fill up.” A recent post from Tesla’s official social media handle debunks these ideas.

Longtime Tesla and electric vehicle owners have noted over the years that EV charging practices are far different from refueling a combustion-powered car. As the electric vehicle maker posted on its official handle on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, charging a Tesla is actually far simpler than expected.

When charging at home through a Wall Connector or Mobile Connector, for example, all Tesla owners need to do is plug in their cars when they pull into their garage. EVs are like gigantic mobile devices, so just like smartphones, they could simply charge their batteries while their owners go about their day. And with the Wall Connector or Mobile Connector, Tesla owners can typically wake up to a fully charged car per day.

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Scientists at Ames National Laboratory have revealed the first unconventional superconductor with a chemical composition naturally found in the Earth’s crust. Named “miassite,” this mineral joins a rare league of only four natural substances capable of exhibiting superconductivity under laboratory conditions.

According to the research team’s study published in the journal Communication Materials, the discovery holds promise for future advancements in sustainable and cost-effective technologies.

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