FreshRSS

Normální zobrazení

Jsou dostupné nové články, klikněte pro obnovení stránky.
PředevčíremHlavní kanál

A Manhattan Project nuclear weapons site is being turned into a giant solar farm

The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced plans to turn land that previously housed aspects of the Manhattan Project into a 1 GW solar farm. For the uninitiated, the Manhattan Project was a top-secret and successful effort to develop nuclear weapons during the 1940s.

This particular renovation is being conducted at the former home of the Hanford nuclear testing facility, otherwise known as Site W, which is in Washington state. This site housed the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor. Plutonium made at this location was used in the very first atomic bomb and the Fat Man bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

The location certainly is intriguing, but so is the transformation project. This 580-square mile section of semi-arid desert could end up housing the largest solar project in the country, if built to the announced capacity. This record currently belongs to the Edwards Sanborn Solar and Energy Storage project in California, which generates 875 megawatts of solar power.

The DOE has teamed up with Hecate Energy to repurpose the 8,000-acre site. This is part of the Biden-Harris administration’s Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative that launched last year. This program is tasked with repurposing DOE-owned land for clean energy generation. This program has already added around 90 GW of solar capacity to the grid, which is enough to power 13 million homes.

This isn’t quite a done deal yet. The DOE and Hecate Energy still have to negotiate for a realty agreement and the government could cancel these negotiations at any time.

This is good news, but we still have some catching up to do with regard to Europe. The US produces around 5.6 percent of its energy via solar, but the EU recently shot up to 9.1 percent. However, trends are moving upward in both regions.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/a-manhattan-project-nuclear-weapons-site-is-being-turned-into-a-giant-solar-farm-173047830.html?src=rss

© Unsplash / American Public Power Association

A big solar farm.

Amazon says it’s cut down on those plastic air pillows in packages

You know those little plastic air bags in your more fragile Amazon purchases that make perfect popping noise makers when you crush them? Amazon says it's reduced its usage of them and plans to completely eliminate using them by the end of the year.

The ecommerce behemoth announced on its news blog that it has reduced the use of plastic air pillows by 95 percent and switched to crumbled paper filler instead. Amazon also says it plans to use paper filler for “nearly all” of its customer deliveries on Prime Day.

The company says its decision to phase out the use of plastic air cushions at its distribution centers aims to eliminate unnecessary waste and focus more on using recycled materials.

Plastic pollution has always been a concern when it comes to our environment but it has dramatically increased as a result of Amazon’s meteoric rise especially during the COVID pandemic. The nonprofit ocean conservation group Oceana released a study in 2021 showing that Amazon produced 599 million pounds of plastic waste in 2020. The group also estimated that the waste produced from plastic air pillows alone “would circle the Earth more than 600 times.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-says-its-cut-down-on-those-plastic-air-pillows-in-packages-222953642.html?src=rss

© Amazon

Amazon Air Pillows

The geomagnetic storm is a nightmare for farmers relying on precision agriculture tech

Space weather has been known to cause disruptions to GPS and communications systems, and perhaps no one is feeling those headaches more than farmers this weekend. 404 Media reports that the heightened solar activity over the last few days has led to outages in the GPS navigation systems that guide some modern tractors from John Deere and other brands. The technology has allowed farmers to plant more efficiently in ultra-tight, straight lines, but they’ve been advised to temporarily stop using it due to the potential for inaccuracies that could cause havoc down the line come harvesting time.

John Deere’s tractors connect to what are known as Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) systems, 404 reports, which allow for precision planting down to the centimeter level. If farmers were to go ahead and plant without their usual accuracy, “we expect that the rows won't be where the AutoPath lines think they are” when it’s time to tend and harvest the crops, Landmark Implement, owner of some John Deere dealerships, told 404 Media.

The timing is terrible — it’s peak planting season for corn, and one Nebraska farmer, Kevin Kenney, told 404, “All the tractors are sitting at the ends of the field right now shut down because of the solar storm.” Many farms have had to pause planting, while others are carrying on and just hoping for the best.

The geomagnetic storm we’re currently experiencing is the strongest observed in the last 20 years, and reached G5 levels on Friday and Saturday morning, which is considered to be “extreme.” It later died down some to G4/G3, but is expected to surge again on Sunday evening when some intense but slower-moving coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun reach Earth. That’s great if you want to see the northern lights, but not so much if your livelihood depends on the technology the storm is interfering with.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-geomagnetic-storm-is-a-nightmare-for-farmers-relying-on-precision-agriculture-tech-180252016.html?src=rss

© John Deere

A John Deere tractor steering wheel pictured with a smart display next to it

'Extreme' geomagnetic storm may bless us with more aurora displays tonight and tomorrow

The strongest geomagnetic storm in 20 years made the colorful northern lights, or aurora borealis, visible Friday night across the US, even in areas that are normally too far south to see them. And the show may not be over. Tonight may offer another chance to catch the aurora if you have clear skies, according to the NOAA, and Sunday could bring yet more displays reaching as far as Alabama.

The extreme geomagnetic storm continues and will persist through at least Sunday... pic.twitter.com/GMDKikl7mA

— NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (@NWSSWPC) May 11, 2024

The NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said on Saturday that the sun has continued to produce powerful solar flares. That’s on top of previously observed coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or explosions of magnetized plasma, that won’t reach Earth until tomorrow. The agency has been monitoring a particularly active sunspot cluster since Wednesday, and confirmed yesterday that it had observed G5 conditions — the level designated “extreme” — which haven’t been seen since October 2003. In a press release on Friday, Clinton Wallace, Director, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, said the current storm is “an unusual and potentially historic event.”

The Sun emitted two strong solar flares on May 10-11, 2024, peaking at 9:23 p.m. EDT on May 10, and 7:44 a.m. EDT on May 11. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images of the events, which were classified as X5.8 and X1.5-class flares. https://t.co/nLfnG1OvvE pic.twitter.com/LjmI0rk2Wm

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) May 11, 2024

Geomagnetic storms happen when outbursts from the sun interact with Earth’s magnetosphere. While it all has kind of a scary ring to it, people on the ground don’t really have anything to worry about. As NASA explained on X, “Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere” to physically affect us. These storms can mess with our technology, though, and have been known to disrupt communications, GPS, satellite operations and even the power grid.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/extreme-geomagnetic-storm-may-bless-us-with-more-aurora-displays-tonight-and-tomorrow-192033210.html?src=rss

© REUTERS / Reuters

The aurora borealis, also known as the 'northern lights’, caused by a coronal mass ejection on the Sun, illuminate the skies over the southwestern Siberian town of Tara, Omsk region, Russia May 11, 2024. REUTERS/Alexey Malgavko

Climate protestors clash with police outside Tesla’s German gigafactory

Climate protestors in Germany broke through police barricades on Friday, amid clashes between activists and law enforcement. The protestors either made it onto (according to protestors) or near (according to local police) the grounds of a Tesla gigafactory in Grünheide, Germany, near Berlin. It’s part of a planned five-day demonstration ahead of a local government vote next week to determine whether Tesla’s plant can expand.

Wired flagged social media videos showing activists, many of whom have been camping out in treehouses in nearby forest encampments, running toward a Tesla building on the site. In addition, the German newspaper Welt said at least one person participating was injured. Police reportedly police used pepper spray and batons to try to thwart the crowd, and there were at least some arrests.

A spokesperson for one of the groups participating in the protests told Wired that they broke the police barriers and stormed the Tesla grounds. “Eight hundred people have entered the premises of the gigafactory,” Lucia Mende of Disrupt Tesla said. However, local police posted on X (Musk’s social media platform) that the activists only reached a field facing the site. “We have been able to prevent them from entering so far,” they posted.

GRUENHEIDE, GERMANY - MAY 10: Police confront environmental activists in a forest near the Tesla Gigafactory electric car factory on May 10, 2024 near Gruenheide, Germany. Activists have come from across Germany to demand a stop to plans by Tesla to expand the factory, which would involve cutting down at least 50 hectares of trees. Some locals also support the protest, citing stress to local groundwater reserves from the factory. (Photo by Axel Schmidt/Getty Images)
Axel Schmidt via Getty Images

At least at first glance, it’s easy to wonder why activists are pouring so much energy into fighting Tesla. After all, despite Musk’s increasingly unhinged right-wing conspiracy-mongering and Nazi-catering on X, other automakers pushing gas-guzzling cars seem like more appropriate targets (not to mention the fossil fuel companies spending big bucks on anti-climate-reform disinformation). However, several factors make the issues at the heart of the protests less simplistic.

A (nonbinding) vote in February showed Grünheide residents opposed the expansion by almost a two-to-one ratio. If for no other reason, the local government having a chance to brush aside the overwhelming will of the voters in the name of capitalism is enough to raise the eyebrows of anyone who balks at minority rule.

Wired notes the area is also one of the most water-scarce in Germany, and residents worry the gigafactory will drain the resource, leaving much less for the humans who live there. The plant could also pollute local water supplies.

Those fears appear to have merit: The plant is licensed to use 1.4 million cubic meters of water annually, and a separate Wired report from Tuesday noted that’s enough to supply for a large town. As for the contamination fears, Tesla was fined in 2019 by the EPA for several hazardous waste violations at a California factory. The company paid a grand total of $31,000 to settle. (Tesla had a market cap of almost $76 billion in 2019.)

But some of the groups protesting have concerns that go much farther than those more immediate issues affecting the locals, instead taking issue with the entire electric vehicle movement. “Companies like Tesla are there to save the car industry, they’re not there to save the climate,” Esther Kamm, spokesperson for Turn Off the Tap on Tesla told Wired.

Another activist, who only gave Wired the name Mara, described the factory as the result of “green capitalism.” She views the EV movement as little more than a theatrical performance in the name of profit. “This has been completely thought up by such companies to have more growth, even in times of an environmental crisis,” she said.

I wouldn’t exactly say flipping the bird to the EV movement is a “workable” solution to the very real and pressing climate crisis. Regardless of your thoughts on the matter, the world needs to move quickly to fend off climate change’s most ravaging effects, and the scientific consensus is that the planned shift to EVs will need to play a central role.

Tesla reportedly told its employees at the factory to work from home on Friday, shutting down the plants for the planned protests. As for Friday’s protests, Welt reports that the situation had calmed by afternoon — at least for now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/climate-protestors-clash-with-police-outside-teslas-german-gigafactory-175726961.html?src=rss

© Axel Schmidt via Getty Images

GRUENHEIDE, GERMANY - MAY 10: Police confront environmental activists in a forest near the Tesla Gigafactory electric car factory on May 10, 2024 near Gruenheide, Germany. Activists have come from across Germany to demand a stop to plans by Tesla to expand the factory, which would involve cutting down at least 50 hectares of trees. Some locals also support the protest, citing stress to local groundwater reserves from the factory. (Photo by Axel Schmidt/Getty Images)

The world’s largest direct carbon capture plant just went online

Swiss start-up Climeworks has done it again. The company just opened the world’s largest carbon capture plant in Iceland, dwarfing its own record of how much CO2 it can pull from the air. The company’s previous record-holding carbon capture plant, Orca, sucks around 4,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per year, but the new plant can handle nearly ten times that, as reported by The Washington Post.

The plant’s called Mammoth and boasts 72 industrial fans that can pull 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year. Just like with Orca, the CO2 isn’t recycled. It’s stored underground and eventually trapped in stone, permanently (within reason) removing it from the environment. The plant’s actually located on a dormant volcano, so it’ll make a great hideout for a James Bond villain should it ever cease operations.

The location was chosen for its proximity to the Hellisheidi geothermal energy plant, which is used to power the facility's fans and heat chemical filters to extract CO2 with water vapor. After extraction, the CO2 is separated from the steam, compressed and dissolved in water. Finally, it’s pumped 2,300 feet underground into volcanic basalt. This compound reacts with the magnesium, calcium and iron in the rock to form crystals, which become solid reservoirs of CO2. It’s pretty nifty technology.

However, it’s not the end-all solution to climate change. It’s barely a blip. For the world to achieve "carbon neutrality" by 2050, "we should be removing something like six to 16 billion tons of CO2 per year from the air," said Climeworks founder Jan Wurzbacher, according to reporting by CBS News.

Therein lies the problem. This facility, the largest of its kind by a wide margin, can capture up to 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year, but that’s just 0.0006 percent of what’s needed to meet the minimum annual removal threshold as indicated by Wurzbacher. There are other plants, of course, but all of them combined don’t make a serious dent in what’s required to pull us from the brink.

To that end, Wurzbacher has pleaded with other companies to take up the cause. He says that Climeworks has a goal of surpassing millions of tons captured per year by 2030 and a billion by 2050. The company’s chief technology officer, Carlos Haertel, told 60 Minutes that scaling up the process globally is possible, but requires political will to rally behind the initiative.

The Biden administration recently committed $4 billion to jumpstart the industry here in the states and earmarked $1.2 billion for a pair of large-scale projects. The US Department of Energy also started a program called Carbon Negative Shot, with a goal of fostering the development of budget-friendly carbon capture technology.

Today, we're officially launching a new portfolio offering to expand our carbon removal service beyond direct air capture and fast-track the industry's scale-up. We're thrilled to finally reveal Climeworks Solutions! https://t.co/0CDAQLObEU pic.twitter.com/f8ojbF3ZLo

— Climeworks (@Climeworks) April 17, 2024

The method of carbon capture deployed by Climeworks is just one of many approaches. These processes range from stacks of limestone blocks that absorb CO2 like a sponge to giant hot air balloons that freeze and trap the chemical compound. Restoring forests is another option, which is something companies like Apple and Goldman Sachs have experimented with. Which one is best? All of them together deployed at global scale. Whatever it takes. Climate change isn’t fooling around.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-worlds-largest-direct-carbon-capture-plant-just-went-online-172447811.html?src=rss

© Climeworks

An image of the facility in Iceland.

'Extreme' geomagnetic storm may bless us with more aurora displays tonight and tomorrow

The strongest geomagnetic storm in 20 years made the colorful northern lights, or aurora borealis, visible Friday night across the US, even in areas that are normally too far south to see them. And the show may not be over. Tonight may offer another chance to catch the aurora if you have clear skies, according to the NOAA, and Sunday could bring yet more displays reaching as far as Alabama.

The extreme geomagnetic storm continues and will persist through at least Sunday... pic.twitter.com/GMDKikl7mA

— NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (@NWSSWPC) May 11, 2024

The NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said on Saturday that the sun has continued to produce powerful solar flares. That’s on top of previously observed coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or explosions of magnetized plasma, that won’t reach Earth until tomorrow. The agency has been monitoring a particularly active sunspot cluster since Wednesday, and confirmed yesterday that it had observed G5 conditions — the level designated “extreme” — which haven’t been seen since October 2003. In a press release on Friday, Clinton Wallace, Director, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, said the current storm is “an unusual and potentially historic event.”

The Sun emitted two strong solar flares on May 10-11, 2024, peaking at 9:23 p.m. EDT on May 10, and 7:44 a.m. EDT on May 11. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images of the events, which were classified as X5.8 and X1.5-class flares. https://t.co/nLfnG1OvvE pic.twitter.com/LjmI0rk2Wm

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) May 11, 2024

Geomagnetic storms happen when outbursts from the sun interact with Earth’s magnetosphere. While it all has kind of a scary ring to it, people on the ground don’t really have anything to worry about. As NASA explained on X, “Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere” to physically affect us. These storms can mess with our technology, though, and have been known to disrupt communications, GPS, satellite operations and even the power grid.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/extreme-geomagnetic-storm-may-bless-us-with-more-aurora-displays-tonight-and-tomorrow-192033210.html?src=rss

© REUTERS / Reuters

The aurora borealis, also known as the 'northern lights’, caused by a coronal mass ejection on the Sun, illuminate the skies over the southwestern Siberian town of Tara, Omsk region, Russia May 11, 2024. REUTERS/Alexey Malgavko

Climate protestors clash with police outside Tesla’s German gigafactory

Climate protestors in Germany broke through police barricades on Friday, amid clashes between activists and law enforcement. The protestors either made it onto (according to protestors) or near (according to local police) the grounds of a Tesla gigafactory in Grünheide, Germany, near Berlin. It’s part of a planned five-day demonstration ahead of a local government vote next week to determine whether Tesla’s plant can expand.

Wired flagged social media videos showing activists, many of whom have been camping out in treehouses in nearby forest encampments, running toward a Tesla building on the site. In addition, the German newspaper Welt said at least one person participating was injured. Police reportedly police used pepper spray and batons to try to thwart the crowd, and there were at least some arrests.

A spokesperson for one of the groups participating in the protests told Wired that they broke the police barriers and stormed the Tesla grounds. “Eight hundred people have entered the premises of the gigafactory,” Lucia Mende of Disrupt Tesla said. However, local police posted on X (Musk’s social media platform) that the activists only reached a field facing the site. “We have been able to prevent them from entering so far,” they posted.

GRUENHEIDE, GERMANY - MAY 10: Police confront environmental activists in a forest near the Tesla Gigafactory electric car factory on May 10, 2024 near Gruenheide, Germany. Activists have come from across Germany to demand a stop to plans by Tesla to expand the factory, which would involve cutting down at least 50 hectares of trees. Some locals also support the protest, citing stress to local groundwater reserves from the factory. (Photo by Axel Schmidt/Getty Images)
Axel Schmidt via Getty Images

At least at first glance, it’s easy to wonder why activists are pouring so much energy into fighting Tesla. After all, despite Musk’s increasingly unhinged right-wing conspiracy-mongering and Nazi-catering on X, other automakers pushing gas-guzzling cars seem like more appropriate targets (not to mention the fossil fuel companies spending big bucks on anti-climate-reform disinformation). However, several factors make the issues at the heart of the protests less simplistic.

A (nonbinding) vote in February showed Grünheide residents opposed the expansion by almost a two-to-one ratio. If for no other reason, the local government having a chance to brush aside the overwhelming will of the voters in the name of capitalism is enough to raise the eyebrows of anyone who balks at minority rule.

Wired notes the area is also one of the most water-scarce in Germany, and residents worry the gigafactory will drain the resource, leaving much less for the humans who live there. The plant could also pollute local water supplies.

Those fears appear to have merit: The plant is licensed to use 1.4 million cubic meters of water annually, and a separate Wired report from Tuesday noted that’s enough to supply for a large town. As for the contamination fears, Tesla was fined in 2019 by the EPA for several hazardous waste violations at a California factory. The company paid a grand total of $31,000 to settle. (Tesla had a market cap of almost $76 billion in 2019.)

But some of the groups protesting have concerns that go much farther than those more immediate issues affecting the locals, instead taking issue with the entire electric vehicle movement. “Companies like Tesla are there to save the car industry, they’re not there to save the climate,” Esther Kamm, spokesperson for Turn Off the Tap on Tesla told Wired.

Another activist, who only gave Wired the name Mara, described the factory as the result of “green capitalism.” She views the EV movement as little more than a theatrical performance in the name of profit. “This has been completely thought up by such companies to have more growth, even in times of an environmental crisis,” she said.

I wouldn’t exactly say flipping the bird to the EV movement is a “workable” solution to the very real and pressing climate crisis. Regardless of your thoughts on the matter, the world needs to move quickly to fend off climate change’s most ravaging effects, and the scientific consensus is that the planned shift to EVs will need to play a central role.

Tesla reportedly told its employees at the factory to work from home on Friday, shutting down the plants for the planned protests. As for Friday’s protests, Welt reports that the situation had calmed by afternoon — at least for now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/climate-protestors-clash-with-police-outside-teslas-german-gigafactory-175726961.html?src=rss

© Axel Schmidt via Getty Images

GRUENHEIDE, GERMANY - MAY 10: Police confront environmental activists in a forest near the Tesla Gigafactory electric car factory on May 10, 2024 near Gruenheide, Germany. Activists have come from across Germany to demand a stop to plans by Tesla to expand the factory, which would involve cutting down at least 50 hectares of trees. Some locals also support the protest, citing stress to local groundwater reserves from the factory. (Photo by Axel Schmidt/Getty Images)

The world’s largest direct carbon capture plant just went online

Swiss start-up Climeworks has done it again. The company just opened the world’s largest carbon capture plant in Iceland, dwarfing its own record of how much CO2 it can pull from the air. The company’s previous record-holding carbon capture plant, Orca, sucks around 4,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per year, but the new plant can handle nearly ten times that, as reported by The Washington Post.

The plant’s called Mammoth and boasts 72 industrial fans that can pull 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year. Just like with Orca, the CO2 isn’t recycled. It’s stored underground and eventually trapped in stone, permanently (within reason) removing it from the environment. The plant’s actually located on a dormant volcano, so it’ll make a great hideout for a James Bond villain should it ever cease operations.

The location was chosen for its proximity to the Hellisheidi geothermal energy plant, which is used to power the facility's fans and heat chemical filters to extract CO2 with water vapor. After extraction, the CO2 is separated from the steam, compressed and dissolved in water. Finally, it’s pumped 2,300 feet underground into volcanic basalt. This compound reacts with the magnesium, calcium and iron in the rock to form crystals, which become solid reservoirs of CO2. It’s pretty nifty technology.

However, it’s not the end-all solution to climate change. It’s barely a blip. For the world to achieve "carbon neutrality" by 2050, "we should be removing something like six to 16 billion tons of CO2 per year from the air," said Climeworks founder Jan Wurzbacher, according to reporting by CBS News.

Therein lies the problem. This facility, the largest of its kind by a wide margin, can capture up to 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year, but that’s just 0.0006 percent of what’s needed to meet the minimum annual removal threshold as indicated by Wurzbacher. There are other plants, of course, but all of them combined don’t make a serious dent in what’s required to pull us from the brink.

To that end, Wurzbacher has pleaded with other companies to take up the cause. He says that Climeworks has a goal of surpassing millions of tons captured per year by 2030 and a billion by 2050. The company’s chief technology officer, Carlos Haertel, told 60 Minutes that scaling up the process globally is possible, but requires political will to rally behind the initiative.

The Biden administration recently committed $4 billion to jumpstart the industry here in the states and earmarked $1.2 billion for a pair of large-scale projects. The US Department of Energy also started a program called Carbon Negative Shot, with a goal of fostering the development of budget-friendly carbon capture technology.

Today, we're officially launching a new portfolio offering to expand our carbon removal service beyond direct air capture and fast-track the industry's scale-up. We're thrilled to finally reveal Climeworks Solutions! https://t.co/0CDAQLObEU pic.twitter.com/f8ojbF3ZLo

— Climeworks (@Climeworks) April 17, 2024

The method of carbon capture deployed by Climeworks is just one of many approaches. These processes range from stacks of limestone blocks that absorb CO2 like a sponge to giant hot air balloons that freeze and trap the chemical compound. Restoring forests is another option, which is something companies like Apple and Goldman Sachs have experimented with. Which one is best? All of them together deployed at global scale. Whatever it takes. Climate change isn’t fooling around.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-worlds-largest-direct-carbon-capture-plant-just-went-online-172447811.html?src=rss

© Climeworks

An image of the facility in Iceland.

Climate protestors clash with police outside Tesla’s German gigafactory

Climate protestors in Germany broke through police barricades on Friday, amid clashes between activists and law enforcement. The protestors either made it onto (according to protestors) or near (according to local police) the grounds of a Tesla gigafactory in Grünheide, Germany, near Berlin. It’s part of a planned five-day demonstration ahead of a local government vote next week to determine whether Tesla’s plant can expand.

Wired flagged social media videos showing activists, many of whom have been camping out in treehouses in nearby forest encampments, running toward a Tesla building on the site. In addition, the German newspaper Welt said at least one person participating was injured. Police reportedly police used pepper spray and batons to try to thwart the crowd, and there were at least some arrests.

A spokesperson for one of the groups participating in the protests told Wired that they broke the police barriers and stormed the Tesla grounds. “Eight hundred people have entered the premises of the gigafactory,” Lucia Mende of Disrupt Tesla said. However, local police posted on X (Musk’s social media platform) that the activists only reached a field facing the site. “We have been able to prevent them from entering so far,” they posted.

GRUENHEIDE, GERMANY - MAY 10: Police confront environmental activists in a forest near the Tesla Gigafactory electric car factory on May 10, 2024 near Gruenheide, Germany. Activists have come from across Germany to demand a stop to plans by Tesla to expand the factory, which would involve cutting down at least 50 hectares of trees. Some locals also support the protest, citing stress to local groundwater reserves from the factory. (Photo by Axel Schmidt/Getty Images)
Axel Schmidt via Getty Images

At least at first glance, it’s easy to wonder why activists are pouring so much energy into fighting Tesla. After all, despite Musk’s increasingly unhinged right-wing conspiracy-mongering and Nazi-catering on X, other automakers pushing gas-guzzling cars seem like more appropriate targets (not to mention the fossil fuel companies spending big bucks on anti-climate-reform disinformation). However, several factors make the issues at the heart of the protests less simplistic.

A (nonbinding) vote in February showed Grünheide residents opposed the expansion by almost a two-to-one ratio. If for no other reason, the local government having a chance to brush aside the overwhelming will of the voters in the name of capitalism is enough to raise the eyebrows of anyone who balks at minority rule.

Wired notes the area is also one of the most water-scarce in Germany, and residents worry the gigafactory will drain the resource, leaving much less for the humans who live there. The plant could also pollute local water supplies.

Those fears appear to have merit: The plant is licensed to use 1.4 million cubic meters of water annually, and a separate Wired report from Tuesday noted that’s enough to supply for a large town. As for the contamination fears, Tesla was fined in 2019 by the EPA for several hazardous waste violations at a California factory. The company paid a grand total of $31,000 to settle. (Tesla had a market cap of almost $76 billion in 2019.)

But some of the groups protesting have concerns that go much farther than those more immediate issues affecting the locals, instead taking issue with the entire electric vehicle movement. “Companies like Tesla are there to save the car industry, they’re not there to save the climate,” Esther Kamm, spokesperson for Turn Off the Tap on Tesla told Wired.

Another activist, who only gave Wired the name Mara, described the factory as the result of “green capitalism.” She views the EV movement as little more than a theatrical performance in the name of profit. “This has been completely thought up by such companies to have more growth, even in times of an environmental crisis,” she said.

I wouldn’t exactly say flipping the bird to the EV movement is a “workable” solution to the very real and pressing climate crisis. Regardless of your thoughts on the matter, the world needs to move quickly to fend off climate change’s most ravaging effects, and the scientific consensus is that the planned shift to EVs will need to play a central role.

Tesla reportedly told its employees at the factory to work from home on Friday, shutting down the plants for the planned protests. As for Friday’s protests, Welt reports that the situation had calmed by afternoon — at least for now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/climate-protestors-clash-with-police-outside-teslas-german-gigafactory-175726961.html?src=rss

© Axel Schmidt via Getty Images

GRUENHEIDE, GERMANY - MAY 10: Police confront environmental activists in a forest near the Tesla Gigafactory electric car factory on May 10, 2024 near Gruenheide, Germany. Activists have come from across Germany to demand a stop to plans by Tesla to expand the factory, which would involve cutting down at least 50 hectares of trees. Some locals also support the protest, citing stress to local groundwater reserves from the factory. (Photo by Axel Schmidt/Getty Images)

The world’s largest direct carbon capture plant just went online

Swiss start-up Climeworks has done it again. The company just opened the world’s largest carbon capture plant in Iceland, dwarfing its own record of how much CO2 it can pull from the air. The company’s previous record-holding carbon capture plant, Orca, sucks around 4,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per year, but the new plant can handle nearly ten times that, as reported by The Washington Post.

The plant’s called Mammoth and boasts 72 industrial fans that can pull 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year. Just like with Orca, the CO2 isn’t recycled. It’s stored underground and eventually trapped in stone, permanently (within reason) removing it from the environment. The plant’s actually located on a dormant volcano, so it’ll make a great hideout for a James Bond villain should it ever cease operations.

The location was chosen for its proximity to the Hellisheidi geothermal energy plant, which is used to power the facility's fans and heat chemical filters to extract CO2 with water vapor. After extraction, the CO2 is separated from the steam, compressed and dissolved in water. Finally, it’s pumped 2,300 feet underground into volcanic basalt. This compound reacts with the magnesium, calcium and iron in the rock to form crystals, which become solid reservoirs of CO2. It’s pretty nifty technology.

However, it’s not the end-all solution to climate change. It’s barely a blip. For the world to achieve "carbon neutrality" by 2050, "we should be removing something like six to 16 billion tons of CO2 per year from the air," said Climeworks founder Jan Wurzbacher, according to reporting by CBS News.

Therein lies the problem. This facility, the largest of its kind by a wide margin, can capture up to 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year, but that’s just 0.0006 percent of what’s needed to meet the minimum annual removal threshold as indicated by Wurzbacher. There are other plants, of course, but all of them combined don’t make a serious dent in what’s required to pull us from the brink.

To that end, Wurzbacher has pleaded with other companies to take up the cause. He says that Climeworks has a goal of surpassing millions of tons captured per year by 2030 and a billion by 2050. The company’s chief technology officer, Carlos Haertel, told 60 Minutes that scaling up the process globally is possible, but requires political will to rally behind the initiative.

The Biden administration recently committed $4 billion to jumpstart the industry here in the states and earmarked $1.2 billion for a pair of large-scale projects. The US Department of Energy also started a program called Carbon Negative Shot, with a goal of fostering the development of budget-friendly carbon capture technology.

Today, we're officially launching a new portfolio offering to expand our carbon removal service beyond direct air capture and fast-track the industry's scale-up. We're thrilled to finally reveal Climeworks Solutions! https://t.co/0CDAQLObEU pic.twitter.com/f8ojbF3ZLo

— Climeworks (@Climeworks) April 17, 2024

The method of carbon capture deployed by Climeworks is just one of many approaches. These processes range from stacks of limestone blocks that absorb CO2 like a sponge to giant hot air balloons that freeze and trap the chemical compound. Restoring forests is another option, which is something companies like Apple and Goldman Sachs have experimented with. Which one is best? All of them together deployed at global scale. Whatever it takes. Climate change isn’t fooling around.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-worlds-largest-direct-carbon-capture-plant-just-went-online-172447811.html?src=rss

© Climeworks

An image of the facility in Iceland.

The Cheyenne Supercomputer is going for a fraction of its list price at auction right now

If you've been thinking about picking up a new supercomputer but were waiting on a good price, now might be a good time to put in your bid. Right now, the US government, via GSA Auctions, is auctioning off the Cheyenne Supercomputer to the highest bidder with three days remaining. While we haven't tested this one ourselves, we assume its 145,152 CPU cores will easily out-perform our current top pick for a laptop. You also won't need to upgrade the memory anytime soon, as there's a full 313,344GB of RAM currently installed, and the storage capacity tallies up to around 36 petabytes. No need to delete files to make room for new games or other media downloads.  

The deal was spotted by Ars Technica, who also point out that the fiber optic and CAT5/6 cabling are not included in the sale. While the price the government paid for the supercomputer has not been disclosed, it's safe to assume the cost was well into the millions, considering the price tags of other supercomputers. As of this writing, the bidding has reached $28,085, though the reserve has not yet been met. There are still three days to go and there's currently no deposit required to place a bid. 

The reason for such a hefty discount (other than the fact that Cheyenne has been decommissioned) could be faulty quick disconnects causing water spray and the fact that approximately one percent of nodes have "experienced failure" and "will remain unrepaired." One other caveat to note before you start making room in your arena-sized climate-controlled garage is that shipping is not included. As GSA Auctions notes on the details page, "moving this system necessitates the engagement of a professional moving company" and that "the purchaser assumes responsibility for transferring the racks from the facility onto trucks."    

But where else will you find such steep savings on a machine that can carry out 5.34 quadrillion calculations per second? Cheyenne is also surprisingly energy-efficient, consuming 25 percent less energy per computation than its predecessor, Yellowstone. The massive supercomputer helped researchers understand the rapid intensification of hurricanes, how wildfires impact air quality, and simulated years of climate functions to predict outcomes decades in advance. It should definitely provide you with enough processing power for extreme multitasking at work while handling even the most demanding games after hours. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-cheyenne-supercomputer-is-going-for-a-fraction-of-its-list-price-at-auction-right-now-235330715.html?src=rss

© GSA Auctions

The Cheyenne Super Computer in its facility.

Biden administration may give automakers more time to shift to EVs

The Biden administration plans to loosen the limits on tailpipe emissions proposed last year by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), giving automakers more time before they’ll be required to sell significantly more electric vehicles than gas-powered cars, The New York Times reported this weekend. Under the proposed regulations laid out by the EPA, EVs would have to account for 67 percent of new car and light-duty truck sales by 2032.

Rather than forcing manufacturers to start ramping up EV sales right away, the changes would allow them to make the shift more gradually through the remainder of the 2020s, sources told the NYT. After 2030, though, EV sales would need to drastically increase. Automakers have argued that the current cost of electric vehicles and the lack of charging infrastructure stand in the way of hitting such extreme targets as those proposed by the EPA. Last year, just 7.6 percent of new cars sold in the US were EVs, per NYT.

The revision is likely a move in part to appease labor unions, which represent a demographic seen as a key area of support for Biden and have expressed a need for more time to unionize new EV plants among other concerns, according to NYT. The rules are not yet finalized, but are expected to be published in the spring.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/biden-administration-may-give-automakers-more-time-to-shift-to-evs-215625805.html?src=rss

© Robert Nickelsberg via Getty Images

CHARLOTTE, VERMONT - NOVEMBER 13: A Volkswagen ID.4 electric car recharges its batteries November 14, 2023 at a charging station next to the town hall in Charlotte, Vermont. The average pice for a VW ID.4 electric car is $45,000. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)
❌
❌