Barry Donovan’s Post

New paper and rooftop dataset in Nature Portfolio help us to understand and plan for a robust and sustainable decentralised energy system - it's difficult to estimate the potential for rooftop solar energy for example, without projections of the growth in rooftops

We didn't have high resolution projections of global rooftop area until now! We just published a new paper and dataset in Nature Portfolio Scientific Data Journal with projections for rooftop areas consistent with the shared socioeconomic pathways, 2020–2050. This research was led by #Siddarth_Joshi and involved a wonderful collaboration between MaREI's energy modelling team at University College Cork together with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Columbia | SIPA, the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment at Imperial College London, CICERO - Center for International Climate Research and Industrial Ecology NTNU The benefits of this dataset is to help us understand and plan for a robust and sustainable decentralised energy system. It's difficult to estimate the potential for rooftop solar energy for example, without projections of the growth in rooftops! We developed a machine learning framework that trained on big data containing ~700 million open-source building footprints, global land cover, road, and population datasets to generate globally harmonised estimates of growth in rooftop area for five different future growth narratives covered by Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. The dataset provides estimates for ~3.5 million fishnet tiles of 1/8 degree spatial resolution with data on gross rooftop area for five growth narratives covering years 2020–2050 in decadal time steps. Huge thanks to Science Foundation Ireland for supporting this research through SFI-NSFC Partnership Programme and to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) for support under the Young Scientists Summer Program and the European Commission under the Diamond-Horizon EU Project. The paper is freely available here https://lnkd.in/eFAg7gxK.

Funding will go toward large-scale observational projects and improved research capabilities. Scientific research centres across the country will receive £101million in new funding, which will boost their capabilities through innovations in platforms, sensors and data science. Key benefits will include natural resource management, biodiversity, improved human health, and greater resilience to climate threats and change.  The National Environment Research Council, part of #UK Research and Innovation, is behind the investment, which will help support wide economic growth in green sectors. NERC’s National Capability Single Centre Science and National Public Good initiatives, one of the UK’s largest environmental science investment programmes, has awarded the money. ‘This major investment by #NERC will build on the UK’s extensive environmental science capabilities, helping us better understand how our planet is changing at local and global scales and enhance resource and environmental management,’ said Dr Iain Williams, Director of Strategic Partnerships at NERC. ‘Through this investment, NERC is supporting scientists and policymakers in responding to major global challenges in #pollution, warming seas, biodiversity loss, and #climatechange, and our research will help us to live sustainably,’ he continued. £41.4M has been awarded to the National Oceanography Centre (and Marine Delivery Partners) to deliver the Atlantic Climate and Environment Strategic Science (#AtlantiS) programme which provides new capability to combine ocean observations from a range of platforms and sensors, next-generation models and innovation in digital tools to meet the aspiration of healthy, biologically diverse and resilient marine environments, a sustainable blue economy and communities safe from natural hazards.   £29.9M has been awarded to the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology to deliver the National Capability for UK Challenges ‘Understanding the UK Environment’ programme to increase the UK environmental scientific capability to quantify how the UK land, water and air are changing in response to the combined pressures of climate and land use change, and to provide integrated solutions to government, business, and industry.   £12.4M has been awarded to the National Centre for Atmospheric Science to deliver a programme of work that advances access to atmospheric data (including observatories) and the development of novel atmospheric models to improve our ability to predict the Earth’s climate system and provides evidence to e.g., government & industry, on topics such as air quality, climate, hazardous weather, sustainable fuel emissions & pollutant dispersion. 

Masahiro Suzuki, PhD graduate from CEU’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, received one of the university’s Best Dissertation Awards this year in recognition of his thesis research titled “Political Acceleration in Energy Transitions: Historical Interventions and Their Outcomes in the G7 and the EU, compared to Net-Zero Targets”. 👏 Learn more about the aim of his groundbreaking research and the motivation behind it: https://lnkd.in/d2mRMGHT

🌍 Today we are pleased to share that our Head of Science and Research, Dr. Christina Larkin, Ph.D. and our Impact and Science Lead, Dr. Philipp Swoboda are attending the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly next week! The annual EGU General Assembly is the largest and most prominent European geosciences event with over 16,000 scientists from all over the world each year. 🚀 Our scientists are leading the way in getting ERW science and the carbon industry on the same page. 📚 Dr Christina Larkin will present a talk on “Alignment of industry, regulation and academia for quantification of carbon dioxide removal by enhanced weathering”, as part of a session on “Enhanced Rock Weathering and River Alkalinity Enhancement for Carbon Dioxide Removal.” 🔬The presentation will explore the potential of Enhanced Weathering (EW) as a method for carbon dioxide removal, and how collaboration between industry and academia is essential to finding the best methods for tracking carbon removal and storage. 🌟 We are proud to participate and to pioneer the field of Enhanced Weathering, in order to develop a scalable solution for climate change! ➡ Find out more at: https://lnkd.in/e2ZX-5xc #ClimateScience #CarbonRemoval #ScienceConference #EnvironmentalResearch

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded $951,463 to the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal American University for the research project “Piloting a model for community-oriented deliberations on marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR).” Sara Nawaz, Director of Research at the Institute, is the principal investigator (PI) for the grant. “Most research to date on marine carbon dioxide removal has been on techno-economic and geophysical aspects," Nawaz said. "This project offers an opportunity to explore what communities think about mCDR while also building the capacity needed for local decision making." With this support from the Sloan Foundation, Nawaz and co-PI Alicia Karspeck, PhD ([C]Worthy) will work to test and refine a novel mCDR engagement model that centers communities and produces locally actionable insights on communities’ hopes, concerns, and priorities regarding mCDR and its future uses. https://lnkd.in/eypk_QAG

"Our framework interrogates whose perceptions are being studied, by whom, using what methods, following which lines of inquiry, and crucially, for what purposes." A new research article, co-authored by DSG Research Fellow Zachary Dove, Sikina Jinnah and Shuchi Talati, Ph.D., uncovers major gaps in solar geoengineering studies—highlighting the issues of neglecting Global South and youth perspectives and focusing on acceptance over critical inquiry. https://lnkd.in/g-jQr2wR

2025 marks 10 years of iCRAG. iCRAG Research Ireland Centre for Applied Geosciences is pleased to invite you to join us at our research showcase, iCRAG@10: Evolving for a Changing World, in O’Reilly Hall, UCD, Dublin, on Thursday February 13th, 2025 at 9:00am. Register now: https://lnkd.in/e4kZvqaG Our showcase conference will reflect on the impact of our research over the past decade and explore the opportunities for future applied research topics to shape a sustainable society. - The event will illustrate the evolution of iCRAG’s research portfolio in critical resources, the energy transition, geohazards, climate and environmental change and the societal dimensions of geoscience. - Speakers and posters will highlight significant scientific contributions of multidisciplinary research in the Centre and how members integrate their research with extensive public engagement activities to increase the local and global reach of their discoveries, and deepen connections with public audiences. - Early-career researchers will showcase their ongoing projects in a sequence of flash talks. - International keynote speakers and a distinguished panel will highlight the importance of geoscience research in understanding and sustainably managing our natural resources and ecosystems and in helping to develop strategies to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change. Research Ireland   Register now: https://lnkd.in/e4kZvqaG #geoscience #research #climate #sustainability

🌬️🎉Great news! WIMBY’s mini-symposium titled "Assessing Wind Power Integration in Europe While Considering Impacts on Society and the Environment" has been officially accepted for WESC 2025! 🤝 In collaboration with JustWind4All, this mini-symposium will explore innovative ways to deploy #windpower across Europe, while factoring in its #societal and #environmental impacts. 🔍 What’s this session about? Our mini-symposium, part of the "Policy, Economics, Planning, and Environmental Impacts" theme, will offer a platform to share research and case studies that go beyond traditional techno-economic optimisation. We welcome contributions addressing: - Societal and environmental impacts of wind power - Studies on wind power integration with a transdisciplinary approach - Successful examples of informed and collaborative decision-making 👩🔬 Call for abstracts: open now Are you working on the intersection of wind energy, society, and the environment? Join us in shaping the future of wind power integration! 🗓️ Submission period: November 20, 2024 – January 15, 2025 📍 How to submit: https://lnkd.in/dU7eRhaK It is open to everyone: invite your colleagues and collaborators! 📩 For questions or more details, feel free to reach out. DTU - Technical University of Denmark Utrecht University University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) CINEA - European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency

For nearly 2 years I've been moaning about the need for an #OceanAlkalinityEnhancement Open Science 'Sandbox', where scientists can come to our field trial sites, to places where the ocean's alkalinity is actually being enhanced! Well, it's now happening! We teamed up with Carbon to Sea Initiative, Dalhousie University, and COVE to make it GO, and now there are 4 additional research teams studying seafloor biogeochemistry, environmental DNA, particle dynamics, and Indigenous community interests, all related to Planetarys project in Halifax Harbour. https://lnkd.in/eBbzeZvf This is just the beginning. Joint Learning Opportunities are going to get bigger, and expand to other places, and all of it will just continue to expand our understanding of this exciting climate solution. Call it a Sandbox, a JLO, whatever you want, it's AWESOME!