Arctic Oil Spill
A major oil spill in northern Siberia has prompted Vladimir Putin to declare a state of emergency in an environmentally fragile Arctic region after publically chastising local authorities for their bungled response.
The spill came as a tank lost pressure and collapsed last Friday in Norilsk in north-central Russia, leaking some 20,000 tons of what officials called “oil products” into the nearby Ambarnaya River – an accident that can likely be chalked up to melting permafrost due to climate change.
Hydrogen – Clean Power
Governments from Europe to Japan have scaled up efforts during the pandemic to develop hydrogen as a clean alternative to fossil fuels, with some using their economic stimulus programs to fund the research.
While hydrogen has long been touted as the way to rid the world of a large portion of its carbon emissions, it has proven to be very difficult and expensive to generate with renewable energy sources, such as sunlight.
But scientists at Japan’s Shinshu University say they have successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen using light and newly developed catalysts that achieve almost 100% efficiency with no undesired side reactions.
They say their findings open the door to scalable and economically viable solar hydrogen production.
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