Equilibrium/Sustainability — Farming seaweed could help bolster food security

View Online    Equilibrium/ Sustainability Equilibrium/ Sustainability   Farming seaweed could help bolster food security © AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyam Expanding seaweed farming operations could help address global food insecurity, biodiversity loss and the impacts of climate change, new research shows.      Seaweed provides a sustainable alternative to land-based agriculture and can help meet the world's surging needs for food and materials, according to a team of Australian scientists who published their findings in Nature Sustainability.      "Seaweed has great commercial and environmental potential as a nutritious food and a building block for commercial products including animal feed, plastics, fibers, diesel and ethanol," lead author Scott Spillias, of the University of Queensland, said in a statement.   Spillias and his colleagues mapped out the potential of farming more the 34 commercially relevant species of seaweed and estimated the environmental benefits of various land-use, emissions, water and wildlife-related scenarios.      Ultimately, they found that growing seaweed would lessen the need for land-based crops and reduce global agricultural emissions by up to 2.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent each year.    Total greenhouse gas emissions generated by the global agri-food sector amounted to about 16.5 billion tons in 2021, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.    In addition to reducing emissions, the researchers found that when they substituted 10 percent of human diets with seaweed, they were able to prevent farming on 272 million acres of land.   The gains could be even greater, as many native species of seaweed have yet to be studied from a commercial production perspective, Spillias explained.      "The way I like to look at this is to think about ancestral versions of everyday crops — like corn and wheat — which were uninspiring, weedy things," he said.     "Through thousands of years of breeding we have developed the staple crops that underpin modern societies and seaweed could very well hold similar potential in the future." Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. We're Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Send us tips and feedback. A friend forward this newsletter to you? Subscribe here.   Today we'll start in New York City, which will host a massive airport solar array in just a few years. Then we'll see why Ukraine is eyeing shipborne power plants.   ⚡️ Plus: "Supercharging" the electric grid. JFK terminal to host NYC's largest rooftop solar array © Getty New York City's biggest rooftop solar array will illuminate John F. Kennedy International Airport's future New Terminal One in just a few years, the firms behind the project announced on Thursday.   Harnessing the sun: The massive photovoltaic system — of more than 13,000 solar panels — will help power "the first fully resilient airport transit hub in the New York region," according to the project partners.     At the core of that hub will be a 11.3-megawatt, independent microgrid — producing enough electricity to power 3,570 average U.S. homes for one year, partners stated.    A collaborative venture: "This New Terminal One infrastructure project illuminates a new pathway to decarbonizing the air transportation sector," Juan Macias, CEO of AlphaStruxure, said in a statement. AlphaStruxure — a joint venture of investment firm Carlyle and Schneider Electric — will design, build and operate the New Terminal One (NTO) microgrid. NTO, meanwhile, is a consortium of labor, operating and financial partners who are building the terminal with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.  Cleaner air, local jobs: The microgrid will deliver immediate emissions reductions of 38 percent and reduce pollution levels in Southeast Queens, AlphaStruxure said. The partners are positioning the 2.4 million-square-foot terminal as "a global gateway to New York," which could also create more than 10,000 new jobs. The first 14 gates are expected to open in 2026, while the remaining nine should be operative by 2030, Macias said at a Tuesday briefing.  Breaking it down: Powering the microgrid will be 7.66 megawatts from solar, or enough to power 1,039 U.S. homes annually, according to the announcement.  Another 3.68 megawatts will come from fuel cells — devices that directly convert chemical energy into electricity, with water and heat as byproducts. These cells will initially be powered by natural gas but will likely transition to either biogas or green hydrogen. The system will also include 2 megawatts of battery storage and will use reclaimed heat to generate chilled water and hot water. Independent islands: The microgrid will consist of four "power islands" that each have independent sources of generation, storage, automation and control, the companies said. Three islands will be operative when the first gates open in 2026, while the fourth will begin running in 2030, according to Macias. Touting the system's "seamless transition" capabilities, Macias said that "a transition that can happen in less than 100 milliseconds in the event of a grid outage."   Read more about the project here. Shipborne power plants could aid Ukraine grid © AP As many as 1 million Ukrainians could soon receive their electricity via ship.    The state-owned electric trader JSC Energy Company of Ukraine (ECU) signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday with Karpowership, a Turkish-owned operator of floating power plants.    ECU sees the floating generators as one potential means of helping customers weather damage to the electrical grid caused by escalating Russian missile attacks in recent months.    Under assault: The Russian army has been blasting away at the Ukrainian grid for months, and the national power grid is losing the repair war, ECU executives told Russian news outlet Interfax. "We have to look for innovative solutions to overcome the current crisis," company director general Vitaly Butenko said. Butenko said it had proven "impossible" to build new power plants or restore capacity lost to Russian shelling.   Charging up: Karpowership will provide Ukraine with up to 500 megawatts of electricity from ship-based generators, the Turkish company said.    The shipborne power plants would be anchored near the coast, likely in nearby Romania or Moldova, and connected to the grid through underwater cables.   They can burn liquified natural gas, fuel oil or biodiesel.    Read more here. 5 efforts to 'supercharge' the US grid  © Getty Clean energy legislation passed by congressional Democrats last year has the potential to transform all aspects of the national power system, a pair of advocacy groups say in a new report.   The Biden administration has pushed for funding in the Inflation Reduction Act to help make the U.S. electric grid carbon-free by 2035.   But Evergreen Action and the Natural Resources Defense Council say doing so will require making the best use of the estimated $370 billion in loans, grants and tax credits in the package.   The following five investments have the potential to help "supercharge" U.S. clean energy development, Lena Moffitt, chief of staff of Evergreen Action, told Equilibrium:    1: Clean Energy Tax Credits: $260 billion or more    This is the lion's share of the bill — an expansion of existing wind and solar tax programs to cover a vast new range of emerging technologies and institutions.    For example, the new tax credits allow nonprofits with no tax liability to get money for clean energy upgrades. It also makes tax credits refundable and transferable. "These are important because they are uncapped," Moffitt said. Congress estimated that it would spend $260 billion on the tax credits, according to House Democrats. But Moffitt said if enough people use them, they're "essentially unlimited." 2: Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund: $27 billion   This is the old idea of a green development bank, absorbed into the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and hidden behind a nonthreatening name, Moffitt said. Progressives have long pushed for a New Deal-style public bank to make cheap loans to build clean energy infrastructure, as we reported. That $27 billion in direct funding could help unlock 10 times as much private funding, according to a study by the Environmental Defense Fund.  3: Rural clean energy funding: $12.8 billion   This little-noticed climate stimulus provision would mostly go to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help rural electric co-ops switch to renewables. "That's another one that has a big bang for its buck," Moffitt said, because "rural co-ops own and operate a lot of coal." "These funds could be transformational in helping rural power providers transition off of the dirtiest forms of energy," she added.   4: Department of Energy loan guarantees: $8.6 billion   This sum would go to "retool, repurpose, repurpose, or replace" infrastructure such as coal-fired power plants or to build new renewables, according to Evergreen. The package includes billions of dollars to guarantee clean energy loans — lowering the risk to private lenders in the case of a default. The government estimates that this program would convince private equity to contribute another $290 billion in private loans.   5: Boosting the grid: about $8.5 billion   Moffitt said these funds would work "synergistically" with new rules from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that clarify permitting new transmission lines.   Those rules are expected in the coming months.     The $8.5 billion package would contain: $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act for infrastructure loans and funding for planning and hiring staff at regulatory agencies. $2.5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law to finance new, replacement or upgraded high-capacity power lines for transmitting clean electricity from region to region. $3 billion more from the bipartisan bill, through which the Energy Department would allocate matching grants to pay to deploy new grid technologies. Thursday Threats © Wikimedia Commons Biden administration protects wilderness area from mining threat, deaths from heat hit a new high in Texas and official land-rights help blunt the menace of deforestation in Brazil.     Biden administration restricts hardrock mining in Minnesota wilderness The Biden administration announced on Thursday that it would protect about 225,000 new acres in a northeastern Minnesota wilderness area from mineral leasing, our colleague Zack Budryk reported. Included in the protections is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area — the site of a proposed copper-nickel mine. Record heat-death toll in Texas Heat-related illnesses killed a record 214 people in Texas in 2022 — more than half of them migrants crossing the state's southern border, according to the Texas Tribune. The annual migrant death toll on the U.S.-Mexico border has more than tripled since 2020 amid rising temperatures, the Tribune reported. Land titles protected Brazil's forests Indigenous peoples with formal titles to their lands were better able to protect their territories from the loggers, miners and ranchers ripping through Brazil's fragmented Atlantic Forest, a study in PNAS Nexus found. Brazil's new left-wing president has been under pressure to reopen the land titling process, which advocates say will fight inequality and deforestation, Grist reported.  Please visit The Hill's Sustainability section online for more and check out other newsletters here. We'll see you tomorrow. Sign up for Equilibrium/Sustainability Privacy Policy  |  Manage Subscriptions  |  Unsubscribe Sign Up for Other Newsletters 1625 K Street NW, 9th Floor, Washington, DC 20006 © 1998 - 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. | All Rights Reserved.

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