TPT March 2016

G LOBA L MARKE T P L AC E

The Paris-based autonomous agency did find that total carbon dioxide emissions from coal will go down by almost 6 gigatons from 2014 to 2040, largely because low prices will accelerate the shift to cleaner gas for producing electricity. Over the same period, however, inexpensive fossil fuels will undercut sales of electric vehicles. How? By boosting the cost of renewable-power subsidies; encouraging the use of oil for chemical feedstocks; and, most critically, making the payoff less attractive for people considering efficiency upgrades. Also by 2040 – provided that governments stick to the pollution- cutting pledges formalised in Paris – energy-related emissions would be just 0.3 per cent higher, an additional three gigatons. But, here again, in a cheap-oil era a counterforce will likely emerge. Nations would forgo improvements in cars, trucks, aircraft and other equipment. A key risk, the IEA warned, “is that the world locks in a less efficient and less climate-friendly capital stock that commits to higher long-term emissions.” Given that oil producers are unlikely to accept the pain of low prices for a quarter-century, this may seem an improbable scenario. But if cheap fossil fuels are here to stay, Mr Nussbaum wrote, it will be up to governments to hold the line on the promises made in Paris. › “Many analysts would take the classical view that a long period of low oil prices would prompt higher demand,” Bill Hare, chief executive officer at Climate Analytics, a Berlin- based research group, told BloombergBusiness . “It depends very much on what governments do to counteract that.”

Science

An atomically thin material has outsize potential for soaking up oil spills Working together, materials scientists from Drexel University (a private research university in Philadelphia) and Deakin University, in the Australian state of Victoria, have developed a material – boron nitride nanosheet – that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in oils and organic solvents. As reported on 1 December in R&D (Rockaway, New Jersey), the sponge- like material is made up of flakes just several nanometres (one billionth of a metre) in thickness and with tiny holes. This form enables the nanosheet to, in effect, increase its surface area per gram to the size of five and a half tennis courts, with obvious significance for limiting the environmental impact of massive oil spills. The nanotechnology team at Deakin’s Institute for Frontier Materials has been working on boron nitride nanomaterials for two decades. Researchers from Drexel’s College of Engineering helped to functionalise the new material, which started as boron nitride powder (“white graphite”). The Drexel team also discovered that boron nitride nanosheet is flame- resistant – meaning that it could also find uses in electrical and heat insulation.

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COFIM TOOLS Poland Tel : +49 39 73 22 97 office@cofim-tools.com

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M ARCH 2016