Geoengineering is fraught with problems, but research on three approaches could lead to the greatest climate benefits with the smallest chance of unintentional environmental harm. The authors propose a model for thinking about geoengineering based on the concept of restoration, suggesting the...

Climate change policy involving a price on carbon would change the mix of power plants and the amount of water they withdraw and consume to generate electricity. We analyze what these changes could entail for electricity generation in the United States under four climate policy scenarios that...

China has a unique urban pipeline network of three types of fuel gases: manufactured gas (coal gas), Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), and natural gas. Manufactured gas, which is often seen as an outdated technology in the western world, is still widely used in Chinese cities. LPG is distributed...

Since China decontrolled coal prices, its coal price has risen steadily and been unusually volatile. In 2011 in particular, high coal prices and capped electricity prices in China discouraged coal-fired power generation, triggering widespread power shortages. We suggest that these coal-price...

For more than a decade, Nobel laureate George Olah and coworkers have advocated the Methanol Economy – replacing petroleum-based fuels and chemicals with methanol and methanol-derivatives – as a path to sustainable development. A first step to this vision appears to be occurring in China. In...

As concerns about global warming grow, societies are increasingly turning to the use of intermittent renewable energy resources, where energy storage becomes more and more important. Pumped-hydro energy storage (PHES) is the most established technology for utility-scale electricity storage....