Carbon Dioxide

An innovative new battery design makes use of an element we’re producing too much of in carbon dioxide, and boasts an unprecedented ability to recharge 500 times.

Making cement is one of the biggest contributors of carbon emissions. Now MIT researchers have developed a new method that can clean up the process.

Researchers at the Salk Institute are approaching gene-editing technology with some very big-picture thinking, looking to tweak the genes of humankind’s most commonly sown crops so they store more carbon dioxide underground as a way of fighting climate change

It's not enough to just reduce our carbon dioxide emissions now – we need to remove some of what’s already in the atmosphere. Now, researchers at KIT have developed a simple way to turn the troublesome gas into a useful resource: by converting it into the “wonder” material graphene.

How effective would planting new trees be to combat climate change? A new study from ETH Zurich has found that Earth has room to reforest an area the size of the US, and calculates what benefits that might bring. But of course, the story is more complicated than just planting a trillion new trees.

Evolution is usually gradual, but half a billion years ago it took off at a gallop in an event that’s now known as the Cambrian Explosion. One of the leading theories is this came from a huge spike in oxygen levels, and now a team may have found where all that oxygen come from – plate tectonics.

Most oxygen in the universe isn’t in the form that we need to breathe: molecular oxygen, or O2. Now, researchers at Caltech claim to have created a reactor that can turn carbon dioxide into molecular oxygen, which could help us fight climate change here on Earth or generate oxygen for life in space.

New research led by the University of Cambridge has found that forests may not be as useful a carbon sink as we thought. The team found that a warming climate makes trees grow faster and die younger, releasing their captured carbon back into the air sooner.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra have tested a new method for sterilizing water using hot bubbles of carbon dioxide, which they've found to be both effective and efficient.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a major driver of shifts in the Earth’s climate, and in the past too little CO2 has been associated with triggering ice ages. Now a team of scientists has found a surprising new mechanism that could lead to ice ages: Tropical tectonic activity.

Capturing carbon from the air and sequestering it is emerging as a viable strategy, and now scientists have developed a new method to turn CO2 gas back into solid coal, that can then be buried, or even used for electronic components.

A study has found a huge new potential source of carbon emissions: reservoirs of gases trapped at the seafloor, which could be released as the oceans warm up. And the team suggests that these gases belched up from the deep thousands of years ago and put an end to the last ice age.