A circular economy could save the world’s economy post-COVID-19

Under the blistering sun of Southern California’s Imperial Valley, it’s not surprising that subsurface drip irrigation is more effective and efficient than furrow (or flood) irrigation, a practice in which up to 50% of water is lost to evaporation.  But a recent study also concludes that drip irrigation can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from soil – which contribute to climate change and unhealthy air quality in the region – without sacrificing yields of forage crops alfalfa and sudangrass.  “It was really exciting to see,” said lead author Holly Andrews, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona. “The crop yield was at least maintained and in some cases increased, but the water use and gaseous emissions were especially decreased under drip irrigation.”

Development of CO2-free drive technologies is a top priority for the BMW Group. Hydrogen vehicles can also play an important role in the growth of e-mobility and will become an additional option in the long term. Just like electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles come with an electric drive train. However, they do not obtain the energy they need from high-voltage batteries, but produce it directly on board the vehicle from hydrogen. In this way, the use of innovative hydrogen technology can help further decarbonisation.
Read the full article at: fuelcellsworks.com

The Ocean Foundation, U.S.A. (TOF), and the National Maritime Foundation of India (NMF) will be co-hosting a webinar on sustainable shipping on May 4th, 2021. We will attempt to bring together different perspectives (science, economics, legal, and policy) and produce specific policy recommendations. The webinar will be roughly 2-hours beginning at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

Working around building occupants in institutional and commercial facilities is a challenging aspect of project management for maintenance and engineering managers.  A global pandemic is not the ideal strategy for managers addressing that challenge. But when colleges and universities switched to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, it gave managers an unexpected though hardly welcomed opportunity to address projects.  The pandemic sent home more than 30,000 students and hundreds of faculty members at Sacramento State University in California. The empty campus the exodus created gave the university’s maintenance team a chance to take on a tough project more easily – a lighting retrofit inside one of the university’s most vital buildings.