🌍 Plankton and carbon storage, world’s most powerful onshore wind turbine, climate action for 2025

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the 22nd issue of the Sustainability newsletter by Interesting Engineering. 

The end of last year witnessed the development of a new sustainable application for air conditioners using waste polystyrene. Scientists at RMIT University created a thin film by stacking multiple layers of polystyrene, harnessing the plastic's ability to generate static electricity from motion and wind.

This year is off to a great start for discoveries. Recently, MIT scientists found that tiny emerald-tinged plants in the ocean called Prochlorococcus cross-feed nightly with other microbes, especially SAR11. This could represent one of the most significant cross-feeding relationships in the ocean, playing a vital role in regulating the ocean carbon cycle.

In another development, Windey Energy, a Chinese firm, has announced plans to make the world’s most powerful onshore wind turbine as part of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region’s Science and Technology Innovation Major Demonstration Project. The company plans to develop the ultra-large 16MW onshore turbine that will be the first of its kind in the world.

The Met Office, the UK’s national weather and climate service, has projected that the average global surface temperature for 2025 is expected to be between 1.29 degrees Celsius and 1.53 degrees Celsius – and most likely 1.41 degrees Celsius – above the pre-industrial average. That's slightly less warm than 2024, which is expected to be the first year ever to surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

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NEWS BULLETIN

💨 China firm to build world’s most powerful ultra-large onshore wind turbine
The project will develop a 16MW wind turbine prototype with independent intellectual property rights.

☢️ 10 million megawatt-hours of nuclear power to fuel US federal agencies for 10 years
Starting April 25, new GSA contracts will deliver 10 million MWh over 10 years, powering over 1 million homes annually.

💥 Scientists explore laser ‘fingerprints’ to turn trees into jet fuel, carbon storage
LIBS offers unparalleled speed, analyzing samples in milliseconds and enabling scientists to test over 100 samples per day.

🌡️ Global forecast for 2025 sees temperatures falling back below 1.5°C
La Niña conditions are expected to lead to a slightly cooler average global surface temperature in 2025, though it does not mean the planet as a whole has stopped warming.

🏙️ Hanoi declared world's most polluted city, authorities seek action Vietnam's capital Hanoi has been covered in thick smog over recent weeks, putting it at the top of a list of the world's most polluted cities.

🏘️ US: New York City’s first offshore wind farm to power 500,000 homes secures financing
Equinor made a final investment decision on the wholly owned and operated Empire Wind 1 project earlier this year.

🌳 Wrong trees in the wrong place can make cities hotter at night, study reveals
While trees can cool some cities significantly during the day, new research shows that tree canopies can also trap heat and raise temperatures at night.

MUST READ

🪸 How phytoplankton feed the ocean's microbial world and impact carbon storage

A new MIT study has found that Prochlorococcus sheds DNA-building compounds (purines and pyridines) into the ocean environment, which are then taken up by other microbes, particularly SAR11. 

Simply put, tiny emerald-tinged plants in the ocean called Prochlorococcus have extra building blocks for their DNA. The extra blocks are used by other small sea creatures, such as SAR11, for their own growth. This is called cross-feeding, where resources shed by one organism are used by another that absorbs as nutrients, energy, or regulating metabolism.

The cross-feeding shows that such interactions significantly shape the metabolism and stability of ocean ecosystems. These findings have broader implications for the global carbon cycle and microbial community dynamics.

Scientists reported that the cross-feeding happens regularly where Prochlorococcus tend to shed their molecular baggage at night, when enterprising microbes quickly consume the cast-offs. 

The researchers now believe that the exchange of molecules between Prochlorococcus and SAR11 could represent one of the most significant cross-feeding relationships in the ocean, playing a vital role in regulating the ocean carbon cycle.

“By looking at the details and diversity of cross-feeding processes, we can start to unearth important forces that are shaping the carbon cycle,” stated the study’s lead author, Rogier Braakman, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS).

OTHER IMPORTANT UPDATES

• 🚗 EVs could store solar energy during day to power homes at night with new system

• ☀️ China develops perovskite cells with 26.39% efficiency, 95% retention after 1,100 hours

• ⚡ 300 MW solar power to meet Meta’s data center demands, Longroad Energy signs deal

• 💧 PacificLight Power to build hydrogen-ready gas power plant in Singapore

• 🏔️ Arctic tundra is now a source – not a sink – of carbon emissions

• 🚘 40-GWh annual capacity Tesla Megafactory in Shanghai to begin production in 2025

• 🌊 ‘Ironic’: climate-driven sea level rise will overwhelm major oil ports, study shows

🌍 Act to shrink your carbon footprint

Despite countries worldwide failing to address the climate crisis in 2024 adequately, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change designed a plan to guide nations towards achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.

The 2030 Climate Solutions and the priorities for COP 28 dictate:

Just energy and industry transition: Decarbonizing power and heavy industry, tackling supply, demand, policy, and investment to ensure a just transition in all regions are top priorities to halve emissions by 2030. The 2030 Climate Solutions add new targets on electrification, methane reduction, energy accessibility, energy security, economic growth and resilience, coming from the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda.

Equitable financial flows: The finance solutions show practical ways for public and private finance to turn net zero and adaptation finance commitments into financial flows, especially in emerging markets, to ensure a just transition, demonstrating that mitigation and adaptation projects and nature solutions are ripe for investment.

Nature and inclusion: Putting nature at the heart of climate solutions, emphasizing the importance of Indigenous People in leading that stewardship, these solutions include a full set of 2030 targets for nature-based solutions, spanning across the land, ocean, agriculture, food, and water, both for adaptation and mitigation purposes.

Adaptation and resilience: Tackling the climate crisis requires both adaptation and mitigation. To change the reality of insufficient adaptation action, planning, and finance, the work has been focused on showcasing that investing in adaptation solutions is not only a moral imperative but also it is economically savvy, offering investment opportunities and benefits to biodiversity, health, and improved livelihoods.

More to come in the forthcoming edition of Sustainability.