Tác giả: Đào Thu Hằng

I'm from Hanoi, Viet Nam. I'm an author of Dot Chuoi Non (dotchuoinon.com/author/hangbelu/), a blog on Positive thinking, founded by Dr. Tran Dinh Hoanh, an attorney in Washington DC. I'm a co-founder of Conversations on Vietnam Development - cvdvn.net, a virtual think tank. I am a co-founder of two companies in Viet Nam working on children education services. I advise companies on STEAM education, English language education for children and students in Vietnam. I'm studying the Buddha's teaching and the teaching of Jesus. I practice mindful living including meditation. I hold a PhD on Sustainable Energy Systems from University of Lisbon and Aalto University. I graduated from Hanoi University of Technology on Environmental Engineering. I obtained a Master degree of the same major from Stanford University and Nanyang Technological University. My English-language blog at: hangbelu.wordpress/. I play table tennis as a hobby.

From Zero to hero, the various case of Vietnam’s renewable energy

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

On the boil

*On the boil newsletter co-founded by 2 girls with a dream to see Vietnam become a leader in the fight against climate change.  The newsletter delivers the information in a digestible format,

  • Global climate change and sustainability news? 
  • Updates on the environment and sustainability projects in Vietnam?
  • Inspiring stories of climate leaders and their projects?

From Zero to hero, the various case of Vietnam’s renewable energy

In January, a humble “S-shaped” country in South East Asia became the talk of the town. Having been “chasing the sun”, Vietnam saw a boom in rooftop solar installations at the end of 2020. It beat all forecasts, even that of Bloomberg, who made an entire podcast episode featuring Vietnam’s race to green energy.

Before we get to the real meat of what happened, let us first take a step back to look at the whole relationship between energy and climate, and why moving to green energy matters.

  • All living things on the planet contain carbon [insert Sir. David Attenborough‘s voiceover here]. When organisms died hundreds of millions of years ago, their remains got buried deep under layers of sediment and rock. Under high heat and pressure, they were slow-cooked into carbon-rich deposits we now call fossil fuels, i.e. coal, oil and natural gas.
  • Fast forward to the 18th century. The Industrial Revolution unlocked the huge potential of fossil fuels as an abundant source of energy. Since then, fossil fuels have rapidly established themselves as the major source of power, supplying about 84% of global energy in 2019.
  • Now back to Chemistry 101: when we burn fossil fuels for energy, the carbon atoms (C) that have been stored away for millennia meet with oxygen (O), releasing an enormous amount of CO2. Unsurprisingly, 81% of total CO2 emissions from 1959 to 2019 comes from burning oil, coal, and natural gas. This is bad news for our friend Earth, as CO2 is a long-lived greenhouse gas capable of trapping heat from sunlight, causing global warming.
  • The answer is no…if 1) we move away from fossil fuels and into low-carbon, renewable energy (RE) and 2) we reduce energy consumption and increase energy efficiency. In this issue, we’ll zoom in on the first solution.
  • From 1965 to 2019, the share of renewables (e.g. solar, wind, hydropower) in the energy mix almost doubled from 6% to 11%. This seems…puny compared to that of fossil fuels. On the bright side, the recent net-zero emission targets set by the world’s major economies as well as big corporates in an effort to slow climate change are expected to accelerate renewables’ growth.
  • Vietnam is also encouraging a shift from fossil fuel to renewables, in order to meet its CO2 emission mitigation target.

Vietnam – from zero to hero on the renewables Tiếp tục đọc “From Zero to hero, the various case of Vietnam’s renewable energy” →

6 Inventions You Wouldn’t Have Without Women

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Nationalgeographic.com

ENIAC computer
Two female computer programmers wire the right side of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, an early general-purpose electronic computer, with a new program.

PHOTOGRAPH BY SCIENCE HISTORY IMAGES, ALAMY

You can thank female inventors for these now-everyday things.

Coffee filters. Monopoly. Windshield wipers. Wireless tech. These very different inventions share one thing in common: they were created by women. Despite their significant contributions, many of these female inventors have gone unrecognized.

In honor of International Women’s Day, take a moment to appreciate these six inventions we wouldn’t have without women.

Coffee Filters

Thanks to Melitta Bentz from Germany, you don’t have to worry about grounds in your cup of joe. In 1908, Bentz was in search of a better coffee-drinking experience. She was annoyed with the beverage’s bitter taste and floating grounds, so she began experimenting with sheets of blotting paper.

After punching holes in the bottom of a brass cup and lining it with the paper, she found a solution and created the paper coffee filter. She received a patent for her invention and started her own coffee-filter company from a room in her apartment.

Monopoly

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Magie came up with the first version of the game, patenting it in 1904 as The Landlord’s Game. She wanted to use the game to teach the masses about economic inequality, so she sold the patent to Parker Brothers for $500.

Thirty years later, a man named Charles Darrow renamed and redesigned her concept as Monopoly. He sold it to the Parker Brothers in 1935, with no mention of The Landlord’s Game.

Magie finally received credit for the game’s invention in the 2015 book, The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game.

Summers could last for half the year by 2100

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

theguardian.com

Heatwaves and wildfires will be more likely and winter will be squeezed to just 31 days

A man walks in the dried-out lake of Jato near the Sicilian village of Partinico.
A man walks in the dried-out lake of Jato near the Sicilian village of Partinico. Photograph: Tony Gentile/Reuters
@katerav Sat 20 Mar 2021 06.00 GMT127

Our summers are already about 20% longer than they used to be, and if the climate crisis continues unabated then northern hemisphere summers could cover nearly half of the year by 2100, making them more than twice as long as they were in the 1950s. And unlike their counterparts of the 1950s, future summers will be more extreme, with heatwaves and wildfires more likely.

Researchers used historical climate data to measure how much the seasons have changed already. They defined summer as the onset of temperatures in the hottest 25% for that time period and winter as the onset of the coldest 25% of temperatures. Their results, published in Geophysical Research Letters, show that the average northern hemisphere summer has grown from 78 to 95 days between 1952 and 2011, while winter has shrunk from 76 to 73 days. Spring and autumn have contracted too.

Tiếp tục đọc “Summers could last for half the year by 2100” →

How to get the most out of research when universities and industry team up

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

theconversation.com

Australia has long been seen as failing to fully capitalise on its ground-breaking research. A consultation paper on university research commercialisation is the latest federal government effort to increase the impact of research. Its focus is on creating incentives for industry-university collaboration to translate and commercialise research.

Any government scheme resulting from these consultations might boost the number of such collaborations. Yet our research suggests many of these projects are unlikely to reach their full potential unless academics and their research partners working in industry strengthen their collaborative relationships.

Read more: Who cares about university research? The answer depends on its impacts Tiếp tục đọc “How to get the most out of research when universities and industry team up” →

Reimagining tourism: How Vietnam can accelerate travel recovery

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Tiananmen Square in London? UK council seeks to rename streets near Chinese embassy’s new site

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

SCMP.com 

  • The council of Tower Hamlets borough has backed a motion to rename streets nearby the area to ‘call out the CCP’s human rights violations’
  • The move is the latest controversy to surround the site, where the Royal Mint was formerly located and where thousands of Bubonic Plague victims may be buried
Hilary Clarke in London Published: 7:37pm, 18 Mar, 2021
The grass courtyard in front of the former Royal Mint building in London. Photo: Hilary Clarke
The grass courtyard in front of the former Royal Mint building in London. Photo: Hilary Clarke

China’s plans for a huge new embassy complex in the British capital faces more controversy, after the local authority in charge of approving the construction on the former Royal Mint site supported a motion to rename streets nearby to Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong Road, Uighur Court and Tibet Hill.

Councillor Rabina Khan, who seconded the motion on Wednesday evening, said she was delighted the Tower Hamlets London Borough Council was “making sure that we call out the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights violations against the Uygur Muslims, and also the fact we are standing for the people of Tibet and stand in solidarity with Hong Kong”.

The motion was approved on the condition the renaming process would not cost the council any money.

Tiếp tục đọc “Tiananmen Square in London? UK council seeks to rename streets near Chinese embassy’s new site” →

Scientists plan to drop the 14-day embryo rule, a key limit on stem cell research

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

technologyreview.com

As technology for manipulating embryonic life accelerates, researchers want to get rid of their biggest stop sign.

Antonio Regaladoarchive page

March 16, 2021
stem cell researchIn 2016, Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz grew human embryos in a lab dish for longer than anyone had before. Bathing the tiny spheres in a special broth inside an incubator, her team at the University of Cambridge watched the embryos develop, day after day, breaking all prior records. The embryos even attached to the dish as if it were a uterus, sprouting a few placental cells.

But on day 13, Zernicka-Goetz halted the experiment.

Zernicka-Goetz had hit up against an internationally recognized ethical limit called the “14-day rule.” Under this limit, scientists have agreed never to allow human embryos to develop beyond two weeks in their labs. That is the point at which a spherical embryo starts to form a body plan, deciding where its head will end up, and when cells begin taking on specialized missions.

For the last 40 years, the rule, which is law in some countries and a guideline in others, has served as an important stop sign for embryonic research. It has provided a clear signal to the public that scientists wouldn’t grow babies in labs. To researchers, it gave clarity about what research they could pursue.
Tiếp tục đọc “Scientists plan to drop the 14-day embryo rule, a key limit on stem cell research” →

EVN lo lắng về Quy hoạch điện VIII

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
baodautu.vn
Thanh Hương – 15/03/2021 11:45Do thời gian gấp, EVN mới chỉ góp ý vào các định hướng lớn của Quy hoạch Điện VIII. Bao trùm lên các góp ý này là sự lo lắng về việc thực thi sau này.
TIN LIÊN QUAN

Từng được coi là có vai trò chủ đạo và giờ đây là đóng vai trò chính trong việc đảm bảo cấp điện cho nền kinh tế cũng như quản lý hệ thống truyền tải xương sống của quốc gia, những ý kiến góp ý của Tập đoàn Điện lực Việt Nam (EVN) với Dự thảo Đề án Quy hoạch Điện VIII được giới chuyên môn rất quan tâm bởi sự liên quan mật thiết hơn cả.

Tiếp tục đọc “EVN lo lắng về Quy hoạch điện VIII” →

Nuclear energy, ten years after Fukushima

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
Nature.com
Amid the urgent need to decarbonize, the industry that delivers one-tenth of global electricity must consult the public on reactor research, design, regulation, location and waste.
 PDF version
Two people watch a nuclear power reactor though augmented reality equipment

Visitors to an industry exhibition in 2020 in China view a model nuclear-power reactor through augmented-reality headsets.Credit: Tang Ke/VCG via Getty

Ten years have passed since a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, triggering the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

The accident struck at a time of renewed hope and untested optimism surrounding a new wave of nuclear-energy technologies and the part they might play in achieving a low-carbon future. It led to retrenchment, amid fresh concerns over the technological, institutional and cultural vulnerabilities of nuclear infrastructures, and the fallibility of humans in designing, managing and operating such complex systems. Tiếp tục đọc “Nuclear energy, ten years after Fukushima” →

COVID-19: Schools for more than 168 million children globally have been completely closed for almost a full year, says UNICEF

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

UNICEF unveils ‘Pandemic Classroom’ at United Nations Headquarters in New York to call attention to the need for governments to prioritise the reopening of schools

 

An installation of UNICEF cyan backpacks and desks at the UN Headquarters
Chris Farber/UNICEF via Getty ImagesOn 1 March 2021, a view of UNICEF’s ‘Pandemic Classroom’ installation at United Nations Headquarters in New York, United States of America. To call attention to the education emergency wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to and raise awareness of the need for governments to keep schools open, UNICEF unveiled ‘Pandemic Classroom’ – a model classroom made up of 168 empty desks, each seat representing one million children living in countries where schools have been almost entirely closed since the onset of lockdowns.

Tiếp tục đọc “COVID-19: Schools for more than 168 million children globally have been completely closed for almost a full year, says UNICEF” →

The Role of Long-Duration Energy Storage in Deep Decarbonization: Policy Considerations

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

WRI.org

Download full report

  • A recent growth in targets for ambitious clean energy use and net zero greenhouse gas emissions has increased interest in the role of utility-scale storage, including long-duration energy storage, to achieve deep decarbonization of the power sector.
  • In future deep-decarbonization scenarios, energy storage holds the potential to address multiday weather-related events that lower the production of renewable energy, as well as seasonal differences in renewable energy resource availability that can last for weeks.
  • Today’s storage technologies provide only hours of storage, though with design and operational changes, compressed air energy storage and pumped hydro storage capacity could be stretched into days.
  • Other, less mature storage technologies may evolve to provide long-duration storage that compensate for seasonal variations in renewable energy supply, for example, technologies that create hydrogen through low-carbon processes.
  • Recent storage deployments in the United States have been driven by state storage mandates, utility investment, frequency regulation markets and declining battery costs.
  • Policymakers can play an important role in driving innovation, encouraging cost reductions and assessing the benefits of storage to provide greater options for maintaining reliability in future decarbonized grids through research and development, demonstration projects and regional studies. New approaches to financing, planning and procurement could reduce barriers to the adoption of long-duration storage technologies.

 

Lessons from Texas Freeze: 5 Ways to Strengthen US Energy Resilience

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
WRI.org
by Jennifer Layke Jennifer Layke, Karl Hausker and Lori Bird – February 19, 2021
      
Workers trying to fix a power line during a snowstorm in Texas.
A winter storm in Texas damaged multiple utility poles, including this one in Odessa, resulting in blackouts. Photo by Eli Hartman/Odessa American via AP

Even as people are suffering through the harshest winter storm Texas has seen in decades, the reasons for the state’s devastating power grid failure have become a political battleground. While vulnerable people freeze in their homes, pundits snipe about whether wind turbines are to blame. Tiếp tục đọc “Lessons from Texas Freeze: 5 Ways to Strengthen US Energy Resilience” →

In Defense of Bảo Tàng Địa Chất, Saigon’s Most Neglected Museum

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
saigoneer.com
Wednesday, 12 February 2020.
Written by Paul Christiansen. Photos by Alberto Prieto.
By (un)conventional standards, Saigon’s Geological Museum may warrant a score of 1.3/9, but if one considers it as a source of whimsy, it’s a solid 8.2/9.For years, Saigoneer’s editorial staff has discussed visiting and writing about the Geological Museum (Bảo tàng Địa chất), but it never got done. I’ve lived here for half a decade, and when I moved to a new neighborhood a year ago my daily walk to the office took me past the museum; yet I still had never entered. Then, on a whim, one random Tuesday morning several weeks ago, I went. The result? I didn’t think I could love Saigon more than I already did, and yet…

The Collection

When a meteor, a hulking hunk of prehistoric mass, shreds through Earth’s atmosphere and slams into the surface, the impact vaporizes terrestrial scraps of minerals and sends debris into the sky. The molten globs float like glassy raindrops and fall thousands of kilometers away. Buried under layers of rock laid over millions of years, occasionally the shiny shards work their way to the surface; shimmering examples of Earth’s immensity and the intensity of time. Have you ever seen one? If not, you can.

A case filled with these tektites awaits in District 1 alongside literal pieces of lava, impressions made by long-extinct sea creatures straight out of a science-fiction movie, and wood transformed to stone. Can you imagine, wood to stone! What was once a tiny seed and then a towering tube of pulp pumping sap to a canopy of soft leaves made into solid rock by the geological machinations of our exceedingly strange planet. No one seems to care. Tiếp tục đọc “In Defense of Bảo Tàng Địa Chất, Saigon’s Most Neglected Museum” →

The Role of the Private Sector in Protecting Civic Space

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Chathamhouse.org

See full paper

Robust civic space is essential for good governance, the rule of law and for enabling citizens to shape their societies. However, civil society space around the world is under significant pressure and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this situation.

The weakening of international institutions and democratic norms worldwide has resulted in fewer constraints on autocracies. Meanwhile, the rise of nationalism, populism and illiberalism is taking its toll on civil liberties.

The private sector is in a unique position to work with civil society organizations to uphold and defend civic freedoms and support sustainable and profitable business environments. Companies have the capacity, resources and expertise to enhance the protection of civic space. Tiếp tục đọc “The Role of the Private Sector in Protecting Civic Space” →

What Is Going on With China’s Crazy Clean Energy Installation Figures?

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

greentechmedia.com

China says it installed more wind than the rest of the world put together last year.

JASON DEIGN FEBRUARY 02, 2021

Chinese government reports of 120 gigawatts of wind and solar installed last year have confounded industry analysts.

Chinese government reports of 120 gigawatts of wind and solar installed last year have confounded industry analysts.

Analysts have been left dumbfounded after China last month released official 2020 wind and solar installation figures that were seemingly too big to be true.

The Chinese National Energy Administration (NEA) “stunned the world,” according to Wood Mackenzie senior analyst Xiaoyang Li, when it announced total wind and solar capacity additions of 120 gigawatts.

Notwithstanding uncertainty over COVID-19’s impact on the supply chain, China had been expected to report big numbers for last year. The International Energy Agency, for example, had predicted the country would add around 32 GW of wind and 50 GW of solar.

But the magnitude of the official figures caught even seasoned China watchers off guard. BloombergNEF had forecast 36 GW each of new solar and wind in 2020 and the official figure for PV capacity additions was 48 GW AC.
Tiếp tục đọc “What Is Going on With China’s Crazy Clean Energy Installation Figures?” →