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Southern Co.'s coal plants are among the biggest carbon emitters in the U.S., but the company is about to build a new carbon-capture plant that could play a vital role in slowing climate change. The Mississippi plant, along with another in Canada, will capture carbon emissions and pump them into depleted oil reservoirs

SaskPower began full operation of its flagship carbon capture and storage project at the Boundary Dam power plant in Saskatchewan yesterday, making it the world's first commercial scale carbon capture and storage facility at a coal-fired power plant.

pilot project that sought to demonstrate that carbon dioxide emissions could be locked up by turning them into rock appears to be a success. Tests at the CarbFix project in Iceland indicate that most of the CO2 injected into basalt turned into carbonate minerals in less than two years, far shorter a time than the hundreds or thousands of years that scientists had once thought such a process would take. Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/iceland-carbon-capture-project-quickly-converts-carbon-dioxide-stone-180959365/#GpYzrDcLOjF1tUZx.99 Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

The EPA yesterday issued a final rule that the agency says will help create a consistent national framework to ensure the safe and effective deployment of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies.

Some scientists and analysts are touting carbon capture and storage as a necessary tool for avoiding catastrophic climate change. But critics of the technology regard it as simply another way of perpetuating a reliance on fossil fuels.

A new technology called bio-energy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS, could potentially eliminate the equivalent of China's total carbon emissions from the planet's atmosphere, dramatically slowing the rate of climate change, according to a draft U.N. report. The system, which involves capturing and burying carbon emissions from burning biomass, has not yet been tested at scale but is increasingly seen as "an essential component" of any effort to tackle climate change, the report notes.

Swiss company Climeworks has opened the world's first commercial carbon capture plant in Switzerland. The plant will capture around 900 tons of CO2 from the air annually.

India-based Carbon Clean Solutions has developed a technique to turn harmful carbon dioxide emissions into sodium carbonate. Several other companies want to acquire the technology and use the soda ash that's produced to manufacture baking soda, glass, detergents and sweeteners.

An analysis published Feb. 26 in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that the wastewater produced during the processing of palm oil is a significant source of heat-trapping methane in the atmosphere. But the researchers also present a possible solution: capturing the methane and using it as a renewable energy source.

The Department of Energy has made available $8 billion in loan guarantee authority to support advanced fossil energy projects that avoid, reduce or sequester greenhouse gases.

The $1.35 billion Quest carbon capture and storage project in Canada being developed by Shell Canada is now half finished. There are 600 workers on the project, scheduled to become operational late next year. When completed, the facility will reduce direct carbon dioxide emissions by 1 million tons per year, "equivalent to taking 175,000 cars off the road," the article notes

Norway is pioneering the use of captured carbon emissions to grow an algal soup that can be used as food for farmed fish, helping to reduce overfishing of the wild krill upon which fish farms more typically rely.

At VERGE 2015, a group of scientists and entrepreneurs talked about the innovation opportunities in carbon removal

Ford is developing new foam and plastic car components made from carbon dioxide. It expects the new biomaterials, produced by Novomer and still undergoing testing, will be in Ford production vehicles within the next five years.

With carbon dioxide emissions continuing to rise, an increasing number of experts believe major technological breakthroughs - such as CO2 air capture - will be necessary to slow global warming. But without the societal will to decarbonize, even the best technologies won't be enough.

The EPA today released final standards for new and modified municipal solid waste landfills and emission guidelines for existing landfills. Under the final rules, new, modified and existing landfills will begin capturing and controlling landfill gas emissions at levels that are one-third lower than current requirements, updating 20-year-old standards for existing landfills.

In a dystopian portrayal of the future, the landscape is rife with fires, rising seas, and thick clouds billowing from power plant smokestacks; humans must wear gas masks for their own survival. This apocalyptic vision is captured in a series of photos featuring 8 popular Vietnamese singers, actors and dance artists as part of a new anti-coal campaign. Pollution from coal-fired power plants already causes an estimated 4,300 premature deaths in Vietnam annually, yet the country has the third largest pipeline of new coal plants in the world - behind only China and India.

While modular data centers design aren't yet commonplace, they've captured the attention of facilities and IT managers seeking to squeeze even more energy efficiency out of mission-critical IT infrastructure.

The White House has announced a new plan to reduce America's methane emissions, which are thought to account for up to 14% of the country's total greenhouse emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency will monitor methane emissions from the fossil-fuel sector, and the Interior Department will develop a plan to capture and sell methane emitted by coal mines on federal land. The effort will depend on "cost-effective, voluntary actions and common-sense standards," said Dan Utech, special assistant to the president for energy and climate change

A new product could help people in remote, parched places gain easy access to clean drinking water. The Warka Water, a 30-foot-tall tower shaped like a vase, uses a straw mesh and a nylon net to capture airborne humidity in the form of dew, which it then collects for human use. The device can reportedly gather more than 25 gallons of potable water in a single day, even in desert conditions