Facing disastrous floods, they turned to mangrove trees for protection

Good News Notes: “As sea levels rise, eroding embankments and pushing water closer to their doorsteps, the residents of the hundreds of villages in the Sundarbans — an immense network of rivers, tidal flats, small islands and vast mangrove forests straddling India and Bangladesh — have found their lives and livelihoods at risk. In the…

In Iceland, CO2 sucked from the air is turned to rock

Good News Notes: “At the foot of an Icelandic volcano, a newly-opened plant is sucking carbon dioxide from the air and turning it to rock, locking away the main culprit behind global warming. Orca, based on the Icelandic word for “energy,” does its cutting-edge work at the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant in southwest Iceland. It…

Heimdal pulls CO2 and cement-making materials out of seawater using renewable energy

Good News Notes: “One of the consequences of rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere is that levels also rise proportionately in the ocean, harming wildlife and changing ecosystems. Heimdal is a startup working to pull that CO2 back out at scale using renewable energy and producing carbon-negative industrial materials, including limestone for making concrete, in the process,…

Tesla founder Elon Musk has spent $150 million on charity in 2021

Good News Notes: “Elon Musk is on a philanthropy spending spree. In the months immediately after briefly becoming the world’s richest person, Musk has been transforming his profile as a philanthropist, appearing seemingly every few weeks bearing gifts — in public. That represents a departure from Musk’s penchant for privacy and his relatively thin history as a…

Argonne National Lab Breakthrough Turns Carbon Dioxide Into Ethanol

Good News Notes: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could do something useful with excess carbon dioxide other than capture it, compress it, and bury it deep in the bottom of the ocean? Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory may have discovered a way to do precisely that. According to a press release from ANL, researchers at the lab, working…

How U.S. Cities Can Learn From Amsterdam in Becoming More Sustainable

Good News Notes: “As the climate crisis comes into sharper focus with ever new urgency, architects have been redefining just what ‘sustainable architecture’ can mean, treating the question as a design challenge itself. For a long while, the building industry got a pass for defining sustainability as a less wasteful alternative than conventional approaches. Now,…

Solar Energy Kicks Carbon Capture Butt In Renewable Energy Rampage

Good News Notes: “Wild Springs is the name of the South Dakota’s new 128 megawatt solar farm, to be located about 20 miles east of Rapid City in Pennington County. The developer is Geronimo Energy, a leading renewable energy company under the umbrella of National Grid — but that’s not what makes this project particularly interesting. After all, solar…