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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that to limit warming to 1.5 °C, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is required. Integrated assessment models (IAMS) predict that a land area between the size of Argentina and Australia is required for bioenergy crops, a 3–7 time increase in the current bioenergy planting area globally. The authors pose the question of whether vertical farming (VF) technology can enable BECCS deployment, either via land sparing or supply. VF involves indoor controlled environment cultivation, and can increase productivity per unit land area by 5–10 times. VF is predominantly being used to grow small, high value leafy greens with rapid growth cycles. Capital expenditure, operational expenditure, and sustainability are challenges in current VF industries, and will affect the ability to utilise this technology for other crops. The authors argue that, whilst challenging, VF could help reach wider climate goals. Application of VF for bioenergy crops could be a game changer in delivering BECCS technologies and may reduce the land footprint required as well as the subsequent associated negative environmental impacts. VF bioenergy could allow us to cultivate the future demand for bioenergy for BECCS on the same, or less, land area than is currently used globally.

Upwelling processes bring nutrient-rich waters from the deep ocean to the surface. Areas of upwelling are often associated with high productivity, offering great economic value in terms of fisheries. The sensitivity of spring/summer-time coastal upwelling systems to climate change has recently received a lot of attention. Several studies have suggested that their intensity may increase in the future while other authors have shown decreasing intensity in their equatorward portions. Yet, recent observations do not show robust evidence of this intensification. The Senegalo-Mauritanian upwelling system (SMUS) located at the southern edge of the north Atlantic system (12°N–20°N) and most active in winter/spring has been largely excluded from these studies. Here, the seasonal cycle of the SMUS and its response to climate change is investigated in the database of the Coupled Models Inter comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Upwelling magnitude and surface signature are characterized by several sea surface temperature and wind stress indices. We highlight the ability of the climate models to reproduce the system, as well as their biases. The simulations suggest that the intensity of the SMUS winter/spring upwelling will moderately decrease in the future, primarily because of a reduction of the wind forcing linked to a northward shift of Azores anticyclone and a more regional modulation of the low pressures found over Northwest Africa. The implications of such an upwelling reduction on the ecosystems and local communities exploiting them remains very uncertain.

Climate change, environmental degradation, and limited resources are motivations for sustainable forest management. Forests, the most abundant renewable resource on earth, used to make a wide variety of forest-based products for human consumption. To provide a scientific measure of a product’s sustainability and environmental performance, the life cycle assessment (LCA) method is used. This article provides a comprehensive review of environmental performances of forest-based products including traditional building products, emerging (mass-timber) building products and nanomaterials using attributional LCA. Across the supply chain, the product manufacturing life-cycle stage tends to have the largest environmental impacts. However, forest management activities and logistics tend to have the greatest economic impact. In addition, environmental trade-offs exist when regulating emissions as indicated by the latest traditional wood building product LCAs. Interpretation of these LCA results can guide new product development using biomaterials, future (mass) building systems and policy-making on mitigating climate change. Key challenges include handling of uncertainties in the supply chain and complex interactions of environment, material conversion, resource use for product production and quantifying the emissions released.

In Cameroon, as in other countries of the Congo basin region, policy processes and activities related to climate change have been hitherto geared mostly towards mitigation and related questions, with limited concern about adaptation issues. However, the increasing vulnerability of Cameroon to climate variability and change makes adaptation significant to its national climate-change policy. Nonetheless, it remains a challenge to make both adaptation and mitigation occupy the same policy space in Cameroon. This paper builds partly on studies carried out in two community forest carbon initiatives in the southern rainforest of Cameroon. It also argues, supported by existing literature on adaptation and mitigation, that mitigation activities have the potential to produce adaptation outcomes; a situation which avoids duplication of efforts and waste of financial and technical resources, if synergetic options are anticipated and planned. However, whether such integrated approaches succeed and are subsequently reflected in national-level climate policy depends on how actors across different sectors and at different levels engage and carry out their roles. The paper discusses these roles and how they can support each other in pursuing integrated initiatives – a context which is vital for Cameroon.

It is crucial to reduce the energy penalties related to CO2 capture processes if CCS is to be implemented at industrial scale. In this context, gas-solid sorption has become a relevant technology. The absence of large amounts of water when using dry solid sorbents and their high heat capacity reduce the energy requirements in the gas-solid sorption CO2 capture process. Depending on the sorbent composition, the gas-solid sorption process carries out at high or low temperatures. High temperature sorbents allow the utilization of waste energy while energy requirements in low temperature processes will be less demanding. This study is focused on the assessment and comparison of the final energy penalty of low-temperature (amine impregnated alumina-based solid particles) and high-temperature solid sorbents capture process (calcium oxide).

AbstractRevolutionary changes in energy storage technology have put forward higher requirements on next‐generation anode materials for lithium‐ion battery. Recently, a new class of materials with complex stoichiometric ratios, high‐entropy oxide (HEO), has gradually emerging into sight and embracing the prosperity. The ideal elemental adjustability and attractive synergistic effect make HEO promising to break through the integrated performance bottleneck of conventional anodes and provide new impetus for the design and development of electrochemical energy storage materials. Here, the research progress of HEO anodes is comprehensively reviewed. The driving force behind phase stability, the role of individual cations, potential mechanisms for controlling properties, as well as state‐of‐the‐art synthetic strategies and modification approaches are critically evaluated. Finally, we envision the future prospects and related challenges in this field, which will bring some enlightening guidance and criteria for researchers to further unlock the mysteries of HEO anodes.image

Model projections show that production of high-value products from microalgae could be profitable nowadays and commodities will become profitable within 10 years.