Friday, Feb 13

Welcome to Your Daily Dot where Dot will share tips, advice, and stories on how we can make our world better.

Dear Reader,

‘Tis time again to celebrate the big and small climate wins around the world.

We’ll start in China (which is raising the bar on clean energy and EV adoption), where engineers have developed the world’s first fully recyclable wind turbine blade. Wind energy struggles to achieve carbon neutrality (a balance between what is emitted and what is absorbed or, in the case of renewable energy, not produced in the first place), because conventional turbine blades are unrecyclable. Thus, as wind energy becomes more prevalent, we need to pay attention to the amount of waste that retired blades will create. But China’s new blades are constructed of “high-value carbon fiber that can be recovered, cleaned, and reused in everything from new turbines to car parts,” according to a story in Interesting Engineering.

Meanwhile, while plenty of us rely on the sweet-smell of lavender to lull us to sleep, its agricultural waste — roughly 1,000 to 1,500 tons annually of unused plant parts like stems — keeps others awake. Now, according to an article in Interesting Engineering, scientists have figured out that by heating this flower waste at high temperatures, they can convert it into hard carbon for use as a high-performance battery anode. Also we learn that, “the natural microstructures of the plant tissues are preserved during the conversion process, which significantly enhances electrolyte penetration by allowing for faster movement of ions and increases sodium diffusivity to improve the overall speed and efficiency of the battery.” 

Next up is the Feel-Good news that the former school of rock superstar Prince is being turned into a climate resilience hub. No longer a school, the Sabathani Community Center in South Minneapolis “is adding a geothermal heating and cooling system … solar panels and batteries.” The center will mostly send energy to the power grid, but, should the grid go down during a storm or disaster, the system will be able to provide power to those who need it to charge phones or medical devices, or to find shelter from extreme heat or cold. 

And finally, growing prosperity around the world might be the best climate adaptation we have, according to Anthropocene, which reports that, “as people move into the middle class and nations develop, they are able to invest in resilient infrastructure and electricity beforehand. They also have the resources (e.g., food and medicine) to make it through a disaster and bounce back afterward.” Even if we managed to stop emissions altogether, more frequent and damaging weather phenomena will continue to take a toll. Being prepared and resilient will go a long way toward reducing suffering. 

Positively,

Dot 

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