Power shortfalls could be rife over the next three months across a large portion of the North American bulk power system (BPS), particularly during extreme and prolonged cold conditions, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) has warned.

The nation’s designated Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) in its latest Winter Reliability Assessment, issued on Nov. 17, said several regions face risks of insufficient electricity supplies during peak winter conditions owing to higher peak-demand projections and inadequate weatherization. The reliability watchdog also prominently highlighted fuel supply risks for coal, natural gas, and oil, and it underscored risks related to natural gas infrastructure constraints.

According to NERC’s evaluation of the generation resource and transmission system adequacy to meet projected peak demand, several regions may be highly vulnerable to extreme weather this winter and could require load-shedding procedures. These include the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT); the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO); SERC-East—a region that includes North Carolina and South Carolina; WECC-Alberta; and the Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC) Maritimes, a region that comprises the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, and the northern portion of Maine...

Hydrogen is touted as a wonder fuel for everything from transport to home heating — but greener and more efficient options are often available.

As governments across the world scramble to find ways to reform energy systems to meet climate commitments, hydrogen looms large. The fuel is now seen as a pillar of most net-zero emissions scenarios. Production is expected to at least quintuple by mid-century.

On one level, the enthusiasm is understandable. If hydrogen were freely available, it would be something of a decarbonization wonder. It can make carbon-free fuels for transportation and heating, and power some energy-intensive industries that can’t easily be electrified, such as the manufacture of steel or fertilizer (see Feature).

The problem is that hydrogen is not freely available. On Earth, it exists mostly in molecules bound to other elements, from which it must be extracted at huge energetic cost. Policymakers should beware potential unintended negative consequences for both people and the planet from an overwrought dash for hydrogen.

Most hydrogen is currently made by processes — such as steam reformation of natural gas (methane) — that produce large amounts of CO2 as a by-product. Although ‘green’ hydrogen can be made by using electricity from renewable sources to split water molecules, this process is costly compared with more conventional production methods.

It can also be an inefficient use of renewable resources. Using green electricity to make hydrogen at times of peak demand, when that energy could be feeding the grid and displacing electricity generated from fossil fuels, could result in higher overall emissions than intended. Making hydrogen with electricity generated from unabated use of fossil fuels would be even worse.

All this means that hydrogen should be used judiciously, to address emissions that can’t be eliminated in other ways. Many of the uses being touted do not tick that box. For example, some groups are advocating burning hydrogen to heat homes, as an alternative to natural gas, but this is much less efficient than using electricity directly. Most immediately, this means higher costs for consumers. But it also means that using even truly green hydrogen to heat homes displaces a smaller chunk of current CO2 emissions than would using it for other tasks, for which there are no alternatives...

Dustin Mulvaney’s Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice provides a thorough overview of the California solar power industry. Mulvaney makes the purpose of such an overview clear at the outset: a transition to solar (among other renewable energy technologies) is underway, but this is not necessarily a just transition unless we make it so. In order to facilitate a just transition, certain questions must be answered. For Mulvaney, these include: “…who bears the burdens? Where might collateral effects manifest? How can these aspects be integrated into energy policy, planning, and practice?” (pp. 3–4). These are important questions in the realms of environmental and climate justiceFootnote1 and Mulvaney’s contribution towards addressing them is timely and useful.

Solar Power is densely packed with a wide range of information on solar power in California. The first four chapters of the book cover details of the industry, including technology, raw materials, the Silicon Valley start-ups and venture capital involved, government investment programs, and NGOs. Readers get an occasional excursion into more theoretical terrain, such as a discussion of the tension between justice and sustainability or debates about whether technology can be inherently political, but Mulvaney generally remains focused on the technology and industrial organization...

...From chapter five onward, however, Mulvaney begins to connect the industry overview to thornier policy questions a bit more explicitly. For instance, chapter five (Green Civil War) lays out four possible explanations for why solar projects might be resisted at the local level. These include a lack of consulting with communities on project implementation (‘democratic deficit’), the likelihood that views about solar projects are more nuanced than surveys can capture, an ‘insider-outsider’ dynamic wherein Big Solar is demonized, and the well known Not In My Back Yard phenomenon. Chapter six explores the U.S. federal government’s Western Solar Plan to identify potential solar energy zones (SEZs) to be converted into solar farms. The chapter provides excellent information on the potential ecological impacts of solar farms and a critical evaluation of the concepts of ‘solar debt’ and ‘GHGFootnote2 return on investment.’ In chapter seven (‘Breakthrough Technologies and Solar Trade Wars’) Mulvaney discusses federal policies to support risk-taking in solar power innovation and this is probably the most analytically nuanced portion of the book, as he situates these policies within debates about green developmentalism and eco-modernism. In short, Mulvaney points to the failure of a federal energy policy that is based on a laissez-fair, market approach with the government assuming the role of venture capitalist. Mulvaney does argue for public investment in clean energy, but in different (and rather underspecified) ways. He concludes the chapter by outlining three primary reasons why ARRA and DOE investment programs resulted in the Solyndra fiasco, and not more sufficient gains in solar power transition. First, they have emphasized pre-commercial technologies and a ‘black swan’ approach (in which a high number of projects are supported in hopes that even a small percentage of them are truly transformative), rather than improving upon solar technology that is already commercial. Second, Mulvaney suggests that these programs “assumed that ‘disruptive technologies’ had agency and would survive on their own in the market” (p. 243), as if solar panels were the same as iPads or flat screen televisions...

USFWS biologists coined the term “streamers” to describe birds singed by solar flux at the Ivanpah site, which is particularly problematic when it is above the power tower receiver while the plant is in standby mode. Later research from Ivanpah raised the bird death totals upwards, with just under half of the deaths due to the heat flux.20 One public letter, submitted by a USFWS chief biologist, asked that the CEC not approve any more solar power towers until data could be collected on the impacts of power towers on avian ecology. Unlike the challenges with tortoises, which can be avoided by siting projects on non-habitat, the solar power towers’ impacts on birds may be unavoidable.21...

... A wide variety of bird types have died at USSE plants.24 Two endan-gered Yuma clapper rails (Rallus longirostris yumanensis), a population with only a thousand living individuals, were killed at the Desert Sunlight facility in Desert Center, California. At two solar power plants in the California desert (one photovoltaic farm and one parabolic-trough CSP), over 20 birds associated with aquatic habitat—yellow-headed blackbirds (Xan-thocephalus xanthocephalus), great blue herons (Ardea herodias), eared grebes (Podiceps nigricollis), western grebes (Aechmophorus occidentalis), pied-billed grebes (Podilymbus podiceps), surf scoters (Melanitta perspi-cillata), red-breasted mergansers (Mergus serrator), buffleheads (Bucephala albeola), black-crowned night herons (Nycticorax nycticorax), double crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus), American coots (Fulica americana), and brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis)—were found dead, apparently due to colliding with panels and mirrors, far from any sources of water.25 Other species known to have avian-solar mortality include migratory birds such as the yellow warbler (Setophaga coronate), Vaux’s swift (Chaetura vauxi), and loggerhead shrike (Lanius ludovicianus), and raptors such as the American kestrel (Falco sparverius), red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamicensis), golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), northern harrier (Circus cyaneus), and peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus). Some USSE sites have on-site ponds that may attract such birds.

Polarized-light cues cause aquatic insects to lay their eggs on photovoltaic modules rather than in water, prompting some to argue for more research into how polarized light might affect insect, bat, and bird behavior near USSE installations, since water bodies are the only sources of polarized light in nature.26 Many renewable energy advocates minimize the consequences of USSE bird mortality by comparing it to other sources such as cats, buildings, and automobiles, but this comparison seems incommensurate given that the impacts are cumulative, not tradeoffs, and it does not distinguish between mortality of different types of birds...

1. Introduction

Wastewater is increasingly considered a renewable resource linked to the industry–resource–environment nexus. (1) Recovery of valuable resources from wastewater not only contributes to solving an ecological crisis but also gives additional economic benefits. (2) Traditionally, a variety of technologies such as precipitation, adsorption, and electrochemical systems have been developed for the removal of pollutants from wastewater. (3?5) However, the looming concerns of the generation and disposal of secondary pollutants such as waste solids cannot be ignored. (6) Commonly, traditional technologies focus on the removal of typical pollutants from one type of wastewater (e.g., fluoride removal from fluoride-rich wastewater). Few techniques focus on the recovery of valuable ionic resources from various wastewaters. If a variety of wastewaters can be recovered simultaneously, wastewater treatment capacity can be significantly improved.

For the semiconductor industry, large amounts of fluoride-rich and silica-rich wastewaters are discharged. The fluoride-rich wastewater with a high fluoride concentration (e.g., 1–50 g L–1) causes severe crises for human health, (7?9) while the fluoride emission discharge is limited to a median value of 15 mg L–1. (10,11) Silica is a typical waste in silica-rich wastewater. (12) The high concentration of nanosized silica particles (around 2.6 g L–1 SiO2) in wastewater causes environmental issues such as the production of hazardous oxyradicals. (13?15) Traditionally, the treatment methods such as precipitation and coagulation–flocculation are applied to treat the fluoride and silica in semiconductor wastewaters separately. (16,17) However, the waste solid (e.g., calcium fluoride and silica slurry) generation will cause secondary pollution to the environment. On the contrary, capturing fluoride and silica from different wastewaters (e.g., fluoride-rich wastewater and silica-rich wastewater) as well as recovery of the ionic products such as sodium silicofluoride (Na2SiF6) will eliminate pollutants from the environment and bring economic values simultaneously. Na2SiF6 is an odorless and white hexagonal structure crystalline salt, which has been widely used in water fluoridation, as well as the photovoltaic and frosted glass industry. (18) Previous studies have reported that the chemical reaction of hydrofluoric acid (HF) and silica generates silicofluoride (SiO2 + 6HF ? SiF62– + 2H2O + 2H+). (19) Moreover, the precipitation reaction of silicofluoride with sodium ions can be used to produce Na2SiF6 (SiF62– + 2Na+ ? Na2SiF6? . (20) Due to the fluoride ions being transformed into HF at lower pH (pH < 3.16), (21) it is possible to acidify the fluoride-rich wastewater to form HF using a strong acid. Then, the HF in fluoride-rich wastewater can react with SiO2 to generate Na2SiF6 using silica-rich wastewater. Based on these reactions, a corresponding efficient and sustainable separation system could be designed for resource recovery from the fluoride-rich and silica-rich wastewaters.

In view of sustainability and superior separation efficiency, membrane technology is preferential for consideration in a closed-loop process for zero liquid discharge of wastewater. In particular, ultrafiltration (UF) shows a unique advantage in removing macromolecules from wastewater with high water flux and low energy consumption. (22) For example, Liu et al. achieved over 99% rejection rate of calcium fluoride particles by UF during the treatment of fluoride-rich wastewater. (23) Ohanessian et al. carried out a crossflow UF for silica-rich wastewater treatment due to its efficient rejection of silica particles. (14) Therefore, it can be inferred that UF is feasible to recover Na2SiF6 macrocrystals by capturing the fluoride and silica from the mixed fluoride-rich and silica-rich wastewaters. However, the generation of Na2SiF6 requires the use of an acid and a base, thus limiting the large-scale production of Na2SiF6. Bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BMED) can be used to generate H+ and OH– through the dissociation of water molecules in a bipolar membrane (BM). Then, the cation/anion will migrate through cation/anion-exchange membranes (CEMs/AEMs) to form a base/acid, respectively, under an electric field. (24?26) Therefore, BMED could be designed to produce acid and base for the continuous generation of HF in fluoride-rich wastewater. (27)

In this study, a closed-loop process based on resource capture ultrafiltration–bipolar membrane electrodialysis (RCUF-BMED) was designed to recover fluoride and silica as Na2SiF6 from fluoride-rich and silica-rich wastewaters, and the feasibility of the RCUF-BMED system was demonstrated. Two key parts are essential for the RCUF-BMED system: (1) capture of the fluoride and silica to generate Na2SiF6 in an acid environment, and recovery of the Na2SiF6 using a base by the UF system and (2) acid/base generation and freshwater recovery by the BMED system...

A plan to wall off Houston and nearby industry from flooding caused by hurricanes will cost tens of billions of dollars. Will it be enough?

GALVESTON, TEXAS—Plans for one of the world’s biggest and most expensive flood barriers were born in a second-floor apartment here in this city on the Gulf of Mexico, as water 4 meters deep filled the street below. In September 2008, Bill Merrell, an oceanographer at Texas A&M University, Galveston, was trapped with his wife, daughter, grandson, and “two annoying chihuahuas” in the historic building he owns. Outside, 180-kilometer-per-hour winds generated by Hurricane Ike rattled windows and drove water from the gulf and Galveston Bay into the city.

As saltwater swirled through the shops and restaurants downstairs, Merrell sat in his office and sketched plans for a project he hoped would put an end to the storm-driven flooding that had repeatedly devastated this part of Texas.

It was an ambitious vision: Seventy kilometers of seawalls rising 5 meters above sea level would stretch the length of Galveston Island and beyond. Enormous gates would span the 3-kilometer-wide channel through which ships pass in and out of Galveston Bay. The defensive perimeter would seal off not just Galveston, but the whole bay, with Houston at its far end, protecting more than 6 million people and the country’s largest collection of chemical plants and oil refineries.

Though Merrell had spent decades studying ocean currents and storm surges, he had no engineering experience. But as he watched the murky waters soak the city, including his own carefully restored 19th century landmark, he decided there had to be a better way. “The Dutch would never put up with this,” he said to his wife.

Today, that first brainstorm has morphed into a $31 billion plan from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the nation’s builder of mammoth water infrastructure. The state of Texas has embraced the idea, creating a taxing district to help pay its share. In July, Congress authorized the Corps to proceed—though it has yet to appropriate money for construction...

...In Galveston, Merrell and some other scientists think the Corps hasn’t struck the right balance. Merrell warns that its plan—a scaled-down version of his original blueprint—is destined to fail, perhaps catastrophically. “It’s too weak—[the defenses] would only stand up to like a 30-year storm,” he says. “Essentially you don’t have any protection” against the more extreme storms that have already left deep scars on Galveston—and are likely, as climate change advances, to leave more...

... But Burks-Copes said the agency will be able to blunt some of the flooding by closing the Bolivar Road gates at low tide before a big storm arrives, leaving room in the estuary for some of the overflow. Most beachfront homes, meanwhile, are now less vulnerable than when Ike arrived, Burks-Copes noted, because they’ve been elevated on pilings. “Unless the surge is over the first floor,” she said, “they’re not impacted.”

EVEN UNDER ITS PLAN, the Corps estimates that damages from multiple storms over 50 years could still reach $30 billion or more in the Galveston Bay region. The agency’s estimate of how often a storm of a certain size is likely to strike is based, however, on historical patterns. It does not take into account how a warmer future might alter that equation...

In 2008, winds and flooding from Hurricane Ike leveled shorefront homes along the Gulf of Mexico in Texas.SMILEY N. POOL/AP PHOTO

This week’s issue on the 75th anniversary of the transistor describes a triumph of both basic and applied science. What started out as studies on the fundamental physics of silicon led to the device that makes it possible to read this article online. The coinventor of the transistor, William Shockley, who along with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics, is correctly recognized as a primary architect of the computer age. Gordon Moore (cofounder of Intel Corporation) famously said that Shockley put the silicon in “Silicon Valley.” Appallingly, Shockley devoted the latter part of his life to promoting racist views, arguing that higher IQs among Blacks were correlated with higher extents of Caucasian ancestry, and advocating for voluntary sterilization of Black women. At the time, Science did not condemn Shockley for what he was: a charlatan who used his scientific credentials to advance racist ideology.

The failure of Science to condemn Shockley began in 1968, when it published a letter lamenting the fact that he was prohibited from speaking at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. The letter repeated the familiar trope that Shockley was simply asking questions about the role of race in intelligence. But Shockley had no scientific basis for doing so, he was not submitting peer-reviewed papers on the topic, and most importantly, he was using his ideas as the basis for promoting eugenics. Such a debate had no place in this journal...

...Following Shockley’s death in 1989, Nature correctly called out his racism in an obituary, but then published a letter from Seitz defending Shockley and claiming that the reason Shockley became a eugenicist was because of physical trauma he experienced in a near-fatal car accident. When Science wrote about this dustup, it referred to Shockley’s ideas as merely “unpopular” and “extremely controversial.” It then ran a letter from an even more notorious eugenicist, J. Philippe Rushton, who argued that by merely covering the disagreement at Nature, Science was delivering an “ad hominem attack.” In addition to an ill-advised decision to publish Rushton’s letter, Science posted a response saying, “no criticism of Shockley was intended.” Yikes...

...Shockley was part of a cadre of physicists who advanced ideas outside of their area of expertise to promote a right-wing agenda. He was a close friend of Frederick Seitz—president of both the National Academy of Sciences and Rockefeller University—who, following a career in physics, became a purveyor of misinformation on tobacco, nuclear weapons, and climate change...

More than 2,000 years after it was probably hung from the door of a mud-brick house in northern Spain to bring luck, a flat, lifesize bronze hand engraved with dozens of strange symbols could help scholars trace the development of one of the world’s most mysterious languages.

Although the piece – known as the Hand of Irulegi – was discovered last year by archaeologists from the Aranzadi Science Society who have been digging near the city of Pamplona since 2017, its importance has only recently become clear.

Experts studying the hand and its inscriptions now believe it to be both the oldest written example of Proto-Basque and a find that “upends” much of what was previously known about the Vascones, a late iron age tribe who inhabited parts of northern Spain before the arrival of the Romans, and whose language is thought to have been an ancestor of modern-day Basque, or euskera.

Until now, scholars had supposed the Vascones had no proper written language – save for words found on coins – and only began writing after the Romans introduced the Latin alphabet. But the five words written in 40 characters identified as Vasconic, suggest otherwise.

The first – and only word – to be identified so far is sorioneku, a forerunner of the modern Basque word zorioneko, meaning good luck or good omen.

Javier Velaza, a professor of Latin philology at the University of Barcelona and one of the experts who deciphered the hand, said the discovery had finally confirmed the existence of a written Vasconic language...

new study by researchers at the University of Melbourne has analyzed adverse effects reported by users of the hallucinogenic tea, ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca
The hallucinogenic beverage ayahuasca has been used for religious and medicinal purposes by Amazonian tribes for thousands of years. More recently, ayahuasca retreats and research projects – exploring the beverage’s potential effects on health, spirituality and personal growth – have seen its use expand globally.

The hallucinogenic effects of ayahuasca

Ayahuasca is made by prolonged heating or boiling of the Banisteriopsis caapi stem with the leaves of the Psychotria viridis plant. B. caapi provides a source of harmine, which inhibits the breakdown of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) supplied by P. virdis, increasing the bioavailability of DMT in the body and resulting in the hallucinogenic side effects.

At the University of Melbourne, Dr. Daniel Perkins is involved in a number of research projects surrounding medicinal psychedelics and medicinal cannabis. He is the director of the Global Ayahuasca Project, which aims to increase our understanding of ayahuasca drinking context across the world, including why people drink it, the reported impacts of ayahuasca on health and wellbeing and the potential risks associated. His team’s latest research, published in PLOS Global Public Health provides potentially the largest source of information on ayahuasca’s adverse side effects to date.

The Global Ayahuasca Project online survey

The researchers analyzed data from an online Global Ayahuasca Survey that ran from 2017–2019, recruiting 10,836 respondents from over 50 countries.

The questionnaire obtained demographic information, such as age, sex, level of education and history of mental health diagnoses, and data relating to ayahuasca drinking history, such as frequency, patterns and contexts of use...