Group items tagged

World leaders have agreed to double the clean energy research funding they pledged in December as part of an international push to reduce carbon emissions, the White House announced on Thursday.  During the first meeting of the 21 countries involved in the Mission Innovation project this week, international members said they would increase the clean energy research and development funding the project is designed to facilitate.  According to the White House, member countries will now spend $30 billion per year by 2021 on clean energy research. 

The World Wildlife Fund launched a research initiative that aims to identify and address the sources of pre-consumer food waste. The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and the Walmart Foundation are supporting the research initiative through a $1.3 million grant contribution.

Australian researchers say they have found a way to recycle plastic shopping bags into high-tech carbon nanotubes. That might reduce manufacturing costs in such fields as electronics, medicine and energy.

Just 15% of the environmental claims made by consumer brands in Brazil are confirmed by third-party certification, according to Brazilian research company Market Analysis. The number of products making sustainability claims has increased almost sixfold since 2010, the company's researchers found

China recently pledged to max out its carbon emissions by 2030 -- but some researchers say the country's carbon output might already have peaked. "We're reaching a point in much of China where the cities have been built, the roads have been built, a lot of the demand for cement and steel is essentially slowing," explained energy researcher Joanna Lewis.

Adidas launched its "Sports Infinity" research project, which aims to combine components from old sporting goods with excess materials from other industries to create new products. The goal of the research project is to provide soccer players with adhesive-free, recyclable, and zero-waste sporting goods.

Ford Motor Company announced intentions to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle for ride sharing by 2021. The company also announced 4 new investments and collaborations that expand its autonomous vehicle research, and set out plans to double its Silicon Valley Research and Innovation Center team by the end of 2017.

New research found that China's reforestation program, the world's largest, overwhelmingly leads to the planting of monoculture forests that fall short of restoring the biodiversity of native forests -- and can even harm existing wildlife. The researchers found, however, that multi-species forests could be planted without detracting from the economic benefits China's poor and rural citizens receive for replanting forests.

Coral reefs around the globe already are facing unprecedented damage due to warmer and more acidic oceans. If carbon dioxide emissions continue to fuel the rise in temperature, the widespread loss of coral reefs by 2050 could have devastating consequences, according to new research published in the scientific journal PLOS. "Some of the places that have the most to lose... are also among the biggest carbon emitters," Dr Pendleton said. "They really have it in their power to bring down the levels of carbon" they emit into the atmosphere. The researchers acknowledged that further study is needed to more fully understand what is happening to coral reefs around the globe and how that will affect humans.

McDonald's purchases 2.5% of all the beef produced in the European Union alone-is a key player in the launch of two sustainable beef pilot programs in the U.S. One will attempt to measure beef sustainability through the entire supply chain in a research initiative conducted by the Noble Foundation. The other is a $4.5 million matching grant program run by a group of researchers to test grazing practices that can lead to a negative carbon impact.

NASA, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the International Forum of Aviation Research are planning their first joint research flights to investigate alternative fuels for aviation.

Exposure to lead, mercury and organophosphate pesticides has led Americans to lose a collective 41 million IQ points, according to a study by a Harvard neurologist, and other common chemicals could be responsible for everything from ADHD to autism-spectrum disorders. Researchers compare the problem to climate change and say it's important for regulators to act even before the development of clear scientific evidence for safe exposure levels. "We don't have the luxury to sit back and wait until science figures out what's really going on," says environmental health researcher Philippe Grandjean

Look for Portland State University students climbing on the Walmart roof, the green roof, that is. Under a two-year research partnership between the Oregon school and the retail giant, PSU is building a green roof research site on Walmart's new North Portland store.

The world needs "immediate and substantial" reductions in carbon emissions to avoid huge and irreversible damage to the planet's oceans and fisheries, researchers say. "The oceans are closely tied to human systems, and we're putting communities at high risk," said fisheries researcher Rashid Sumaila

Precision Castparts, DuPont, Biomet, the Bayer Group and Dow Chemicals are the top five corporate air polluters in the US, say researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Cities could save a collective $22 trillion and vastly reduce global emissions by embracing green building, better infrastructure and other environmental measures, researchers say. "Becoming more sustainable and putting the world -- specifically cities -- on a low-carbon trajectory is actually feasible and good economics," said Seth Schultz, a researcher for the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. 

Arizona State University Professor Peter Lammers and researchers at New Mexico State University are developing an energy-positive wastewater treatment method using a special kind of algae. The researchers believe that the algal systems ultimately could eliminate sewage farms' electricity bills, which can account for anything up to 60 percent of operating costs today, or even generate a surplus. 

-The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Unilever announce a research collaboration to develop ground-breaking scientific approaches to better assess the safety of chemicals found in some consumer products without using animal data.

NASA research shows Earth's atmosphere contains an unexpectedly large amount of an ozone-depleting compound from an unknown source decades after the compound was banned worldwide.

New research points to more bad news for the state of China's water supply, as its booming economy continues to heap pressure on natural resources, according to scientists.