The Weekly Anthropocene, February 21 2024
Giant tortoises rewilded in Madagascar, OTEC in São Tomé and Príncipe, beef rice in South Korea, llamas after glaciers in Peru, geothermal, rare earths, and white hydrogen in America, and more!
Madagascar
In 2018, twelve Aldabra giant tortoises (Aldabrachelys gigantea) were rewilded to the Anjajavy Reserve in northwestern Madagascar, the first giant tortoises on the great “eighth continent” island nation since their relatives were hunted to extinction six hundred years ago. Five years later, the project is a resounding success: 152 baby giant tortoises (each of which could live for 200 years!) have hatched in their new homeland, with hopes to reach a population of 2,000 in the reserve by 2040. The hatchlings are living in a human-protected nursery until they’re old enough to reliably survive predators.
Eventually, this project could grow to make possible a population of hundreds of thousands of giant tortoises across Madagascar! The tortoises eat dry grass and leaves and help disperse the seeds of local tree species, so their reintroduction will likely help reduce fires and increase forest cover. Rewilding giant tortoises is also a climate resilience solution that will help the local Malagasy people! Great work.
European Union
Just recently, The Weekly Anthropocene discussed think tank Ember’s new statistics on the EU’s amazing progress towards clean energy. Now, Canary Media has revisualized some of the same Ember data into a striking chart that really underscores the depth of the transition taking place here. Wind and solar combined are on the verge of overtaking coal and gas combined in the EU electricity sector, with other clean energy sources like hydro and nuclear making up the rest! The argument that a clean energy-powered civilization is unrealistic, so prevalent during the 2010s, is becoming more and more ludicrously out of date. Spectacular work!
South Korea
Researchers at Yonsei University in South Korea have invented “cultured meat rice,” seeded with bovine stem cells that grow into beef muscle and fat within the rice grains. The resulting rice has 8% more protein and a characteristically meati umami flavor. It looks to be a while out from reaching commercial status, but this line of research offers fascinating potential to develop more sustainable and ethical foodstuffs!
Incidentally, there is TONS of awesome new sustainable food technology news coming out these days, but this newsletter can’t cover it all. Check out the Substack Better Bioeconomyby
for regular updates from this field!São Tomé and Príncipe
São Tomé and Príncipe, a tiny Portuguese-speaking island nation off the coast of West Africa, seems an unlikely spot for a new chapter of the renewables revolution to begin. However, this might be coming to pass with UK startup Global OTEC’s Dominique project, set to be commissioned as soon as 2025.
OTEC, or Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, uses the temperature difference between the sea’s warm-and-shallow and cold-and-deep layers to generate power: a refrigerant fluid like ammonia is turned into vapor by the warm layer, which turns turbines for electricity, then cold water is pumped up to condense it back into a liquid, allowing the same fluid to be used to turn the turbines over and over again.
The principle’s been well known for years, but the technology never took off beyond tiny, expensive test projects in Hawaii and Japan. If it works out, this’ll be a modular energy-generating barge generating 24/7 baseload power! Tech like this, able to economically scale, would be a huge help for small island developing states. Fingers crossed!
Peru
The Uruashraju glacier in Peru lost approximately half of its length from 1948 to 1990, and is still retreating. The barren rock left behind leaches acid when it’s rained on, harming nearby farms and villages. Now, scientists and a local llama herders’ association are collaborating to pioneer new ecosystems on these lands, bringing llamas to the areas exposed by glacial retreat for three days each month. The llamas bring seeds in their fur and hooves, while fertilizing the ground with their dung. A new study quantifies the innovative experiment’s success: after just three years, plant cover and soil richness in the llama plots had increased substantially compared to control plots. They’ve essentially kickstarted the “primary” ecological succession stage, helping launch a new ecosystem. This could be a great model to follow in newly iceless lands the world over!
United States
This newsletter has previously written about Fervo Energy, the enhanced geothermal startup that made great strides in 2023. Now, they’re kicking off 2024 with a bang. A new announcement reports that Fervo has drilled a new geothermal well at their site in Utah in just 21 days, using to a range of new techniques including polycrystalline diamond drill bits. That’s 70% faster than their first well in 2022, even though the new well was hotter and 2,100 feet deeper - and increased efficiency has rendered the process substantially cheaper as well!
As a recent Heatmap article put it, geothermal might be “about to become the solar of the 2020s,” another epic renewables technology on course for rapid price declines, a super-quick learning rate, and exponential capacity growth! And the Biden Administration is doing its best to speed this burgeoning boom along, recently investing $60 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding towards three American geothermal projects, including one from Fervo Energy! Enhanced geothermal tech, coming on top of the global solar and battery surges, might advance decarbonization by years if not decades. Absolutely spectacular news!
In the wake of the Inflation Reduction Act and consistent Biden Administration support supercharging American battery manufacturing, more and more critical mineral deposits have been discovered as it becomes potentially valuable to look for them. Now, the U.S. appears to have hit the biggest critical mineral jackpot yet with the recent discovery of the Halleck Creek lode: 2.34 billion metric tons of rare earth elements near Wheatland, Wyoming, rich in neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, samarium, terbium, and more. Neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium supply was ranked as a “critical” priority by the Department of Energy recently: now America has a gigantic domestic supply! Great news.
“If wisely exploited, this find—estimated to be the richest in the world—will give the U.S. an unparalleled economic and geopolitical edge against China and Russia for the foreseeable future.”
-The Wall Street Journal
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass seems to have found an incredible urban policy “cheat code,” a simple regulatory change that unlocks a much-needed boom in affordable housing construction (unsubsidized, even!). Bass’ landmark executive order, signed in December 2022, mandates that the city accept or reject new housing projects within 60 days, and that they must accept them if they meet certain basic criteria. This means no council hearings, no impact studies, no neighborhood surveys-in short, no lengthy and expensive “veto points” for NIMBY interests to choke off new projects. In the year-and-a-few-months since that order was signed, Los Angeles has received plans for 16,150 new affordable housing units, more than the total number approved in 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined. Now that it’s fast to build affordable housing, it’s become profitable as well. Super-streamlining the lumbering permitting process brings spectacular results: other cities take note!
Startup Koloma has raised a whopping $245 million in venture funding to search for and eventually extract subterranean reservoirs of white hydrogen, naturally occuring geological hydrogen that can be burned for heat or power without emitting greenhouse gases. The 2020s and 2030s may well see a wave of “clean drilling” for geothermal and white hydrogen; major new clean energy sources to help complement wind and solar and make the transition away from fossil fuels even faster!
Trying out something new: a bonus weekly news roundup item for paid subscribers!
Senegal
In the Sine-Saloum delta region of Senegal, a women’s entrepreneurial cooperative is diversifying their income in the face of climate shocks while helping sustainably manage the local mangrove ecosystem. The Mboga Yaye cooperative has voluntarily limited the amount of time they can harvest shellfish in the mangroves to 15 days a month per person, while collectively processing their catch to sell it for a higher price. They’ve also taken up beekeeping, which provides a valuable new income stream as well as providing pollinators for the mangrove forest.
The cooperative also provides a grassroots social safety net, particularly vital as 25 of the 67 members are widows and the sole breadwinners for their family. After paying for members’ children’s school fees and offering microloans to those who wish to start new business ventures, Mboga Yaye divides its remaining profits equally among its members. Classic Elinor Ostrom-style commons resource management! Local and international researchers are increasingly referring to Mboga Yaye as an example to follow. Great work!
You are providing an invaluable resource for your readership. The information, yes! But most importantly, I repeat- most importantly, you provide us hope. Hope that things are getting steadily better and that we'll get through these dark days of the Anthropocene. Shining light in this
gloom is no little thing. ☀️🔦
But avoid giving us a sense of complacency- a sense that the adults will fix things and we children need do nothing. Remind us that the initiatives you inform us of need our support and active participation! 🙂
OTEC will transform the infrastructure and economies of developing islands by reducing or eliminating the use of oil as an energy supply. This is great news for those islands. Thanks for a great news newsletter, Sam!