News by Subject Earth Science

Last year, dozens of major oil companies and oil-producing nations agreed to end the routine flaring of natural gas from wells by 2030. This burning off of uncaptured methane in addition to simply letting it escape into the air -- a process called venting -- releases pollutants and the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Now in ACS' journal Energy & Fuels, researchers report a strategy that could help producers work toward this goal.

The EU Commision requires Denmark to reduce drastically emissions of greenhouse gases from agriculture. But it is currently not possible to quantify emissions of methane from livestock manure -- and to document effects of changes in management. A new research article addresses this challenge and proposes a method which could be an important step towards quantifying methane emissions.

Traditional subsidized energy prices may be unnecessary for large numbers of residents of the Persian Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia, according to a new article from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Future climate warming will likely cause only minor cuts in energy output at most US coal- or gas-fired power plants, a new Duke study finds. The study -- based on records of changes in output levels and environmental temperatures at 39 power plants over recent years -- may help rebut recent modeling-based studies that have suggested rising temperatures will lower plants' cooling efficiencies and substantially decrease the amount of energy they produce.

New MIT study shows that electric cars that exist today could be widely adopted despite range constraints, replacing about 90 percent of existing cars, and could make a major dent in the nation's carbon emissions.