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[Solar desalination]

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Size-Insensitive Vapor Diffusion Enabled by Additive Freeze-Printed Aerogels for Scalable Desalination . Paper by Xiaomeng Zhao et al, American Chemical Society (ACS).  Summary: ...[desalination] currently requires huge plants with expensive machinery that require tons of energy to separate salt from the water. But now, researchers have developed a sponge-like material that turns saltwater into freshwater using only sunlight.  To make the sponge, the team developed a so-called ‘additive freeze-printing’ technique that combines 3D printing and freeze-casting, a technique that uses ice to create a highly porous material. ...The researchers put the sponge in a cup full of seawater then covered it with a lid to collect the condensation. After six hours in the hot Hong Kong sunlight, they got around three tablespoons of drinkable water. The team notes that, unlike other evaporators which don’t work as well as they get larger, their aerogel lattice is just as effective at a lar...
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The Renewable-Energy Sector’s Relative Winners and Losers in the Megabill

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By Jennifer Hiller , The Wallstreet Journal.  Excerpt: Big wind and solar projects stand to be among the biggest losers, while hydrogen and other projects get a short reprieve. ...U.S. risks a slowdown in power delivery during the global artificial-intelligence race by ending the tax credits that were part of former President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act. The U.S. is also poised to cede advances in technologies from solar panels to batteries and electric vehicles to China. .... Loser: Big wind and solar power projects ... Winner: U.S. factories, ... Winner: Rooftop solar [??]  ... Loser: Electric vehicles  ....  Full article at https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/the-renewable-energy-sectors-relative-winners-and-losers-in-the-megabill-95e7ed48 .  See also July 2 Forbes article, Red States–And AI–Are Big Losers From Trump’s Clean Energy Massacre , and July 3 article in TechCrunch, Final GOP bill kneecaps renewables and hydrogen but lifts nuclear...
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Devices that pull water out of thin air poised to take off

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By Robert F. Service , Science.  Excerpt: More than 2 billion people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water, with global warming and competing demands from farms and industry expected to worsen shortages. But the skies may soon provide relief, not in the form of rain but humidity, sucked out of the air by “atmospheric water harvesters.” The devices have existed for decades but typically are too expensive, energy-hungry, or unproductive to be practical. Now, however, two classes of materials called hydrogels and metal-organic frameworks have touched off what Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), calls “an explosion of efforts related to atmospheric water harvesting.”...  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/devices-pull-water-out-thin-air-poised-take . 
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Methane tracker lost in space

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By Warren Cornwall , Science.  Excerpt: Less than 15 months into a scheduled 5-year mission, a pioneering satellite built to track rogue emissions of planet-warming methane has been lost. The demise of MethaneSAT  was announced today  by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the nonprofit behind the $88 million satellite. ...Methane is emitted by natural sources, such as wetlands, but also by leaky oil and gas infrastructure. Stanching those leaks  is an efficient way to slow global warming , many researchers argue, and MethaneSAT was developed specifically to identify them. ...Some existing satellites, such as the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5, can map methane on broader scales across hundreds of kilometers. Others can pinpoint large individual polluters such as a refinery. But MethaneSAT, funded with the help of a $100 million grant from Jeff Bezos’s Earth Fund, was unique in its ability to detect smaller emissions across entire oil and gas fields while also z...
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There’s a Race to Power the Future. China Is Pulling Away

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By David Gelles  in New York;  Somini Sengupta  in Brasília and in Tirunelveli, India;  Keith Bradsher  in Beijing; and  Brad Plumer  in Washington, The New York Times.  Excerpt: In China, more wind turbines  and solar panels were installed last year than in the rest of the world combined. And China’s clean energy boom is going global. Chinese companies are building electric vehicle and battery factories in Brazil, Thailand, Morocco, Hungary and beyond. At the same time, in the United States, President Trump is pressing Japan and South Korea to invest “ trillions of dollars ” in a project to ship natural gas to Asia. And General Motors just killed plans to make electric motors at a factory near Buffalo, N.Y., and instead will put $888 million into building V-8 gasoline engines there. The race is on to define the future of energy. Even as the dangers of global warming hang ominously over the planet, two of the most powerful countries in the wo...
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A Special ‘Climate’ Visa? People in Tuvalu Are Applying Fast

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By Max Bearak , The New York Times.  Excerpt: As sea levels rise, Australia said it would offer a special, first-of-its-kind “climate visa” to citizens of Tuvalu, a Polynesian island nation of atolls and sandbars where waters are eating away at the land. The visa lottery opened last week, and already nearly half of Tuvalu’s population has applied....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/climate/climate-visa-tuvalu.html . 
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China’s massive coastal restoration project could backfire

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By Sahas Mehra , Science.  Excerpt: In 2023, China embarked on the  largest coastal restoration project ever attempted . Threatened by an invasive, fast-growing weed known as smooth cordgrass ( Spartina alterniflora ), which was overrunning clam farms, bird habitats, and shipping channels, the country planned to remove the plant and replace it with environmentally friendly species, such as native reeds and mangrove trees. But  such efforts would have a huge downside, increasing methane emissions 10-fold , researchers report this month in  Geophysical Research Letters . The mangroves would eventually counter these effects, but it could take 5 decades for these native plants to absorb the increasing greenhouse emissions....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/china-s-massive-coastal-restoration-project-could-backfire . 
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