Toxic relationship habits most people think are normal
Is this weird? (Reuters/Anatolii Stepanov)
There’s no class in high school on how to not be a
shitty boyfriend or girlfriend. Sure, they teach us the biology of sex,
the legality of marriage, and maybe we read a few obscure love stories
from the 19th century on how not to be.
But when it comes down to actually handling the
nitty-gritty of relationships, we’re given no pointers … or worse, we’re
given advice columns in women’s magazines.
Yes, it’s trial-and-error from the get-go. And if you’re like most people, it’s been mostly error.
But part of the problem is that many unhealthy
relationship habits are baked into our culture. We worship romantic love
— you know, that dizzying and irrational romantic love that somehow
finds breaking china plates on the wall in a fit of tears somewhat
endearing—and scoff at practicality or unconventional sexualities. Men
and women are raised to objectify each other and to objectify their
relationships. Thus, our partners are often seen as assets rather than
someone to share mutual emotional support.
A lot of the self-help literature out there isn’t helpful either (no, men and women are notfrom different planets, you over-generalizing prick). And for most of us, mom and dad surely weren’t the best examples either.
Fortunately, there’s been a lot of psychological
research into healthy and happy relationships the past few decades and
there are some general principles that keep popping up consistently that
most people are unaware of or don’t follow. In fact, some of these
principles actually go against what is traditionally considered “romantic” or normal in a relationship.
Below are six of the most common tendencies in
relationships that many couples think are healthy and normal, but are
actually toxic and destroying everything you hold dear. Get the tissues
ready.
1. The relationship scorecard
What it is: The “keeping score”
phenomenon is when someone you’re dating continues to blame you for past
mistakes you made in the relationship. If both people in the
relationship do this it devolves into what I call “the relationship
scorecard,” where it becomes a battle to see who has screwed up the most
over the months or years, and therefore who owes the other one more.
You
were an asshole at Cynthia’s 28th birthday party back in 2010 and it
has proceeded to ruin your life ever since. Why? Because there’s not a
week that goes by that you’re not reminded of it. But that’s OK, because
that time you caught her sending flirtatious text messages to her
co-worker immediately removes her right to get jealous, so it’s kind of
even, right?
Wrong.
Why it’s toxic: The relationship
scorecard develops over time because one or both people in a
relationship use past wrongdoings in order to try and justify current
righteousness. This is a double-whammy of suckage. Not only are you
deflecting the current issue itself, but you’re ginning up guilt and
bitterness from the past to manipulate your partner into feeling wrong
in the present.
If this goes on long enough, both partners
eventually spend most of their energy trying to prove that they’re less
culpable than the other, rather than solving the current problem. People
spend all of their time trying to be less wrong for each other instead
of being more right for each other.
What you should do instead:
Deal with issues individually unless they are legitimately connected.
If someone habitually cheats, then that’s obviously a recurring problem.
But the fact that she embarrassed you in 2010 and now she got sad and
ignored you today in 2013 have nothing to do with each other, so don’t
bring it up.
You must recognize that by choosing to be with
your significant other, you are choosing to be with all of their prior
actions and behaviors. If you don’t accept those, then ultimately, you
are not accepting them. If something bothered you that much a year ago,
you should have dealt with it a year ago.
2. Dropping “hints” and other passive-aggression
What it is: Instead of stating a
desire or thought overtly, your partner tries to nudge you in the right
direction of figuring it out yourself. Instead of saying what’s
actually upsetting you, you find small and petty ways to piss your
partner off so you’ll then feel justified in complaining to them.
Why it’s toxic:
Because it shows that you two are not comfortable communicating openly
and clearly with one another. A person has no reason to be
passive-aggressive if they feel safe expressing any anger or insecurity
within the relationship. A person will never feel a need to drop “hints”
if they feel like they won’t be judged or criticized for it.
What you should do instead:
State your feelings and desires openly. And make it clear that the other
person is not necessarily responsible or obligated to them but that
you’d love to have their support. If they love you, they’ll almost
always be able to give it.
3. Holding the relationship hostage
What it is: When one person has a
simple criticism or complaint and blackmails the other person by
threatening the commitment of the relationship as a whole. For instance,
if someone feels like you’ve been cold to them, instead of saying, “I
feel like you’re being cold sometimes,” they will say, “I can’t date
someone who is cold to me all of the time.”
Why it’s toxic: It’s emotional blackmail and it creates tons
of unnecessary drama. Every minor hiccup in the flow of the
relationship results in a perceived commitment crisis. It’s crucial for
both people in a relationship to know that negative thoughts and
feelings can be communicated safely to one another without it
threatening the relationship itself. Otherwise people will suppress
their true thoughts and feelings which leads to an environment of
distrust and manipulation.
What you should do instead: It’s
fine to get upset at your partner or to not like something about them.
That’s called being a normal human being. But understand that committing
to a person and always liking a person are not the same thing. One can
be committed to someone and not like everything about them. One can be
eternally devoted to someone yet actually be annoyed or angered by their
partner at times. On the contrary, two partners who are capable of
communicating feedback and criticism towards one another, only without
judgment or blackmail, will strengthen their commitment to one another
in the long-run.
4. Blaming your partner for your own emotions
What it is: Let’s say you’re
having a crappy day and your partner isn’t exactly being super
sympathetic or supportive at the moment. They’ve been on the phone all
day with some people from work. They got distracted when you hugged
them. You want to lay around at home together and just watch a movie
tonight, but they have plans to go out and see their friends.
So you lash out at them for being so insensitive
and callous toward you. You’ve been having a shitty day and they have
done nothing about it. Sure, you never asked, but they should just know
to make you feel better. They should have gotten off the phone and
ditched their plans based on your lousy emotional state.
Why it’s toxic: Blaming our partners for our emotions is a subtle form of selfishness, and a classic example of the poor maintenance of personal boundaries.
When you set a precedent that your partner is responsible for how you
feel at all times (and vice-versa), you will develop codependent
tendencies. Suddenly, they’re not allowed to plan activities without
checking with you first. All activities at home—even the mundane ones
like reading books or watching TV—must be negotiated and compromised.
When someone begins to get upset, all personal desires go out the window
because it is now your responsibility to make one another feel better.
The biggest problem of developing these
codependent tendencies is that they breed resentment. Sure, if my
girlfriend gets mad at me once because she’s had a shitty day and is
frustrated and needs attention, that’s understandable. But if it becomes
an expectation that my life revolves around her emotional well-being at
all times, then I’m soon going to become very bitter and even
manipulative towards her feelings and desires.
What you should do instead: Take
responsibility for your own emotions and expect your partner to be
responsible for theirs. There’s a subtle yet important difference
between being supportive of your partner and being obligated to
your partner. Any sacrifices should be made as an autonomous choice and
not seen as an expectation. As soon as both people in a relationship
become culpable for each other’s moods and downswings, it gives them
both incentives to hide their true feelings and manipulate one another.
5. Displays of “loving” jealousy
What it is: Getting pissed off
when your partner talks, touches, calls, texts, hangs out, or sneezes in
the general vicinity of another person and then you proceed to take
that anger out on your partner and attempt to control their behavior.
This often leads to insane behaviors such as hacking into your partner’s
email account, looking through their text messages while they’re in the
shower or even following them around town and showing up unannounced
when they’re not expecting you.
Why it’s toxic: It surprises me
that some people describe this as some sort of display of affection.
They figure that if their partner wasn’t jealous, then that would
somehow mean that they weren’t loved by them.
This is absolutely clownshit crazy to me. It’s
controlling and manipulative. It creates unnecessary drama and fighting.
It transmits a message of a lack of trust in the other person. And to
be honest, it’s demeaning. If my girlfriend cannot trust me to be around
other attractive women by myself, then it implies that she believes
that I’m either a) a liar, or b) incapable of controlling my impulses.
In either case, that’s a woman I do not want to be dating.
What you should do instead:
Trust your partner. It’s a radical idea, I know. Some jealousy is
natural. But excessive jealousy and controlling behaviors towards your
partner are signs of your own feelings of unworthiness and you should
learn to deal with them and not force them onto those close to you.
Because otherwise you are only going to eventually push that person
away.
6. Buying the solutions to relationship problems
What it is: Any time a major
conflict or issue comes up in the relationship, instead of solving it,
one covers it up with the excitement and good feelings that come with
buying something nice or going on a trip somewhere.
My parents were experts at this one. And it got
them real far: a big fat divorce and 15 years of hardly speaking to each
other since. They have both since independently told me that this was
the primary problem in their marriage: continuously covering up their
real issues with superficial pleasures.
Why it’s toxic: Not only does it brush the real problem under the rug (where it will always
re-emerge and even worse the next time), but it sets an unhealthy
precedent within the relationship. This is not a gender-specific
problem, but I will use the traditional gendered situation as an
example. Let’s imagine that whenever a woman gets angry at her
boyfriend/husband, the man “solves” the issue by buying the woman
something nice, or taking her to a nice restaurant or something. Not
only does this give the woman unconscious incentive to find more reasons
to be upset with the man, but it also gives the man absolutely no
incentive to actually be accountable for the problems in the
relationship. So what do you end up with? A checked-out husband who
feels like an ATM, and an incessantly bitter woman who feels unheard.
What you should do instead:
Actually, you know, deal with the problem. Trust was broken? Talk about
what it will take to rebuild it. Someone feels ignored or unappreciated?
Talk about ways to restore those feelings of appreciation. Communicate!
There’s nothing wrong with doing nice things for a
significant other after a fight to show solidarity and to reaffirm
commitment. But one should never use gifts or fancy things toreplace
dealing with the underlying emotional issues. Gifts and trips are
called luxuries for a reason, you only get to appreciate them when
everything else is already good. If you use them to cover up your
problems, then you will find yourself with a much bigger problem down
the line.
This post originally appeared on MarkManson.net. Follow @iammarkmanson on Twitter.
Mark Zuckerberg can’t believe India isn’t grateful for Facebook’s free internet
The nerve.(AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
All Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to do is make the world a better place for his new daughter.
While he’s technically on paternity leave, he couldn’t sit idly by as
India attempts to halt Internet.org, Facebook’s initiative to provide
free but limited internet to the developing world.
Last week, the Times of India reported that the
country’s telecom regulatory body had asked Facebook’s partner, wireless
carrier Reliance, to cease the Internet.org service
as it determines whether operators should be able to price their
services based on content. Responding to criticisms of the program,
Zuckerberg penned an op-ed published Dec. 28 in the English-language daily.
In it, he expressed annoyance that India is debating net neutrality—a
principle dictating that telecom operators provide people with equal
access to the internet—as the country struggles to connect its citizens
to the internet.
In the process of defending Internet.org,
Zuckerberg paints India—where about a billion people are not connected
to the internet—as backwards for even daring to question the benefits of
Facebook’s charity-like endeavor.
“Who could possibly be against this?” he asks
passive-aggressively. “Surprisingly, over the last year there’s been a
big debate about this in India.”
Yes, net neutrality is a big deal—and not just in India. In the US, for example, an appeals court is currently examining the legality of a new set of net-neutrality rules
enacted by the Federal Communications Commission this year. But
Zuckerberg almost portrays net neutrality as a first-world problem that
doesn’t apply to India because having some service is better than no
service.
Net neutrality activists have long argued that
Internet.org provides a “walled garden” experience because the sites
that users can access for free are determined by Facebook and its
telecom partners, essentially making them gatekeepers to the internet
for poor people.
While Zuckerberg acknowledges that Internet.org,
which is currently active in more than 30 countries, does not provide
people with access to the full web, he argues that it’s a step in the
right direction. According to the Facebook CEO, half of the people who
come online for the first time using Internet.org decide to pay for full
internet access within 30 days.
Instead of wanting to give people access to some basic internet services for free, critics of the program continue to spread false claims–even if that means leaving behind a billion people.Instead of recognizing the fact that Free Basics is opening up the whole internet, they continue to claim–falsely–that this will make the internet more like a walled garden.Instead of welcoming Free Basics as an open platform that will partner with any telco, and allows any developer to offer services to people for free, they claim–falsely–that this will give people less choice.Instead of recognizing that Free Basics fully respects net neutrality, they claim–falsely–the exact opposite.
Zuckerberg continues by offering an anecdote of a
farmer named Ganesh, who uses the free internet service to check
weather updates and commodity prices. “How does Ganesh being able to
better tend his crops hurt the internet?” he asks rhetorically.
But
examined more closely, his arguments don’t directly address the
concerns of net neutrality activists. For the people who choose not to
upgrade to or can’t afford to pay for full internet access, Internet.org
does indeed provide a walled garden of online content. Millions of
people already have a skewed perception of the web, believing Facebook to be the internet, a Quartz analysis has shown.
Furthermore, while Facebook can add more telecom
partners, which would theoretically open up the number of sites and
services Internet.org users could access for free, it currently has only
one partner in India, Reliance.
Zuckerberg also fails to address the claims that zero-rated services
such as Internet.org amount to economic discrimination—that this is
essentially poor internet for poor people. Furthermore, in an op-ed
published in the Times of India in October, net-neutrality advocacy
group Savetheinternet.in quoted Tim Berners-Lee, father of the internet,
as saying: “Economic discrimination is just as harmful as technical discrimination,
so [internet service providers] will still be able to pick winners and
losers online.” Facebook’s walled garden could very well determine the sites and services that will succeed in India.
Over and over again, Zuckerberg has pointed to
research showing that internet access can help lift people out of
poverty. The fact remains that Internet.org provides limited, slow, and
subpar access, and these limitations make it all the more difficult for
people to climb the economic ladder. As Naveen Patnaik, chief minister of the Indian state Odisha, has said: “If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their rights to choose what they think is best for them.”
Read this next: Mark Zuckerberg says the internet lifts people out of poverty, but is giving them subpar access
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China’s makeshift hoverboard industry is imploding after Amazon’s safety crackdown
A bumpy ride.(AP/Elaine Thompson)
Chinese companies that helped fuel the global hoverboard craze
are unraveling rapidly, after Western retailers like Amazon demanded
new safety and legality standards earlier this month. Some are so upset
by Amazon’s actions they plan to protest outside Amazon’s Guangzhou
office later today (Dec. 29).
“The whole industry has been wiped clean,” Lou
Bin, a Hangzhou-based hoverboard re-seller whose business has suffered
after Amazon introduced new requirements, told Quartz. “Small factories
have exited the market, and everyone is paying more attention to safety
and patents.”
In mid-December, Amazon, one of the last major
Western retailers where US and UK consumers could buy no-name Chinese
hoverboards, introduced strict new requirements
that wiped out most of its online listings, in response to a string of
fires linked to the boards (which don’t actually hover, but roll on the
ground).
Amazon told vendors they must submit documents proving the boards met specific safety standards, along with a letter
from a lawyer promising they would not implicate Amazon if they were
sued for patent infringement by Razor, the American toy company that owns the US patent for the hoverboard (though it still remains in legal limbo). After Amazon’s missive, e-commerce sites like Overstock stopped carrying them altogether (although Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant, continues to offer them).
As
a result, only seven hoverboard brands are currently listed on Amazon
in the US, a fraction of the dozens of importers and exporters that sold
hoverboards on the site just a month ago. Amazon’s UK site now only
sells hoverboard accessories, not actual hoverboards.
Millions of the boards were exported from China’s
electronics manufacturing center of Shenzhen in the past year, but now
that production has stalled.
Feng Jian of Shenzhen Bojulong Display
Technology, a manufacturer, told Quartz he estimates more than half of
of Shenzhen’s hoverboard factories have stopped making the product
completely. His company’s orders fell 50% after Amazon’s crackdown, he
said, and he cut his staff from 500 to 100.
“Before we were making about 1,000 hoverboards a
day. Now we’re doing few hundred,” Feng Jian said. “As soon as Amazon
sent out the notice, I went and laid off a few staff,” he adds.
British
importers who sold hoverboards from China on Amazon have been hit hard
too. Amazon advised all of its hoverboard customers to chuck devices
bought before the crackdown, and told UK customers they’d be eligible for refunds.
This caused a surge in returns, which ended up coming out of the UK
vendors’ pockets. Amazon has not made a similar promise about refunds in
the US.
Meanwhile, many Chinese hoverboard distributors
allege Amazon illegally froze their online accounts on the e-commerce
site, cheating them out of millions of dollars of sales they made before
the crackdown. Today, dozens of these Chinese companies are planning to
protest outside of Amazon’s Guangzhou office, several told Quartz,
demanding the cash they say Amazon owes them.
“These are not requirements, this is a violation
of the rights of sellers,” one former Amazon merchant based in Shenzhen
told Quartz. “Amazon never negotiated with us, and what they have done
is illegal.”
Amazon has not responded to multiple requests for comment or an interview.
Another seller, Ma Ning, told Quartz he sold 600
hoverboards in October over the course of ten days, earning 1 million
yuan (about $154,000) in sales, but still hasn’t received any payment
from Amazon.
“The patent and safety requirements are fair,” he
told Quartz, but Amazon should not be deducting refunds from sales they
made before the crackdown. “They’re like kings, and we’re getting
massacred.”
Next generation technology is turning throwaway plant parts into biofuels
Advanced biofuels made from sugarcane fields like these could be a game-changer.
Urbanization,
population growth, and an increasingly mobile culture are driving big
demands for the grid of the future. And while there’s no longer any
question that a sustainable global energy system needs to be lower
carbon, it also needs to deliver more energy to meet those expectations.
As part of a renewable energy driven future, biofuels make a lot of
sense: they’re cheap and burn much cleaner than fossil fuels.
The extent and timing of the role biofuels will play in that future is being defined today. Bioenergy accounts for roughly 10% of the world’s energy supply, and scientists are moving past a first-generation of biofuels toward advanced biofuels: second and third generation fuels comprised of truly sustainable materials that have the potential to fundamentally alter the clean energy market.
Chemists and engineers know how to convert all kinds of matter into burning fuel, and humans have been fermenting ethanol for thousands of years. That process is at the heart of producing first-generation biofuel, which takes carbon from plants and converts it into fuel that drives engines from cars to jet planes.
Plant carbon comes from its sugars, which have long been distilled into fuel and used in vehicles dating back to the Model T. Henry Ford himself envisioned a future marked by widespread use of ethanol—corn was abundant and easy to grow. Ultimately, though ethanol comprises 10% of the total volume of motor gasoline and fuels over 2,000,000 alternative fuel vehicles in the US, Ford’s hopes of a renewable fuel supply proved too optimistic.
Henry Ford’s excitement was understandable. The prospective benefits of biofuels were stirring, even then. But first-generation biofuels have their downside. Ethanol is made from plants rich in starch or sugar, and crops that fit the bill—like corn in the US, and sugarcane in Brazil—are used heavily in human foods and as feed for livestock. Because of high demand, tweaks to corn and sugar crops can ripple across commodity prices and impact food supply.
What’s more, corn uses more land than any other crop: In 2013, 40% of corn crops in the US were earmarked for ethanol—that’s a landmass (60,000 square miles) about twice the size of Portugal. Plus, harvesting corn reduces crop diversity and its fertilizer can sully water resources.
Because debate around the prudence of growing corn for ethanol is fraught with implication, over the last decade governments, legacy energy companies, and a host of aspirant tech startups have converged to tackle inefficiencies in biofuel production. They’re committed to solving these food and land-use issues by accelerating production of advanced biofuels.
One way to do that is to produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass instead of corn. This means converting non-food crops, agricultural waste, wood chips, and even algae into simple plant sugars to be used in biofuel production. The first challenge is finding a way to transform the potentially endless supply of plant biomass into a source of renewable energy—no easy task. The next is to be able to make money doing it efficiently. To do that would completely change the clean energy market.
Shell is close to achieving this. Raízen—a Shell joint venture with Cosan—is one of Brazil’s largest sugarcane based producers of ethanol. Typically, leftover cane stalks are burned to produce power for its mills, with any excess power pumped to the national grid. In fact, by 2012, electricity sourced from the leftover biomass already supplied 3% of Brazil’s demand, with expectations that it will meet 18% by 2020.
Last year, Shell’s joint venture in the country launched its first second-generation ethanol plant which will convert biomass waste from its sugarcane production into advanced biofuel. Output from the plant is predicted to produce 38 million liters of cellulosic ethanol a year. And with the first- and second-generation plants working in tandem, the process is streamlined, helping to increase yield and cut costs for both plants.
That kind of scalability will make advanced biofuels a real, cost-effective solution. Forty percent of Brazil’s demand for petroleum has been replaced by sugarcane ethanol, and the joint venture plans on investing in similar technology in another seven mills over the next several years.
“We’re convinced advanced biofuels will be a critical part of our transport fuels portfolio,” says Matthew Tipper, VP of Alternative Energies at Shell. “Importantly, advanced biofuels could ultimately supply a significant part, perhaps all, of Europe’s transport fuels needs. So we have big plans.”
The implications for the global energy market are truly remarkable. Cellulosic biofuel has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by around 86% compared to standard petroleum. And when derived from cellulosic by-products, biomass will increase biofuel production by 50% without needing to plant any more corn crops for ethanol. This eliminates the land for food conundrum.
Big plans indeed.
This article was produced on behalf of Shell by the Quartz marketing team and not by the Quartz editorial staff.
The extent and timing of the role biofuels will play in that future is being defined today. Bioenergy accounts for roughly 10% of the world’s energy supply, and scientists are moving past a first-generation of biofuels toward advanced biofuels: second and third generation fuels comprised of truly sustainable materials that have the potential to fundamentally alter the clean energy market.
Chemists and engineers know how to convert all kinds of matter into burning fuel, and humans have been fermenting ethanol for thousands of years. That process is at the heart of producing first-generation biofuel, which takes carbon from plants and converts it into fuel that drives engines from cars to jet planes.
Plant carbon comes from its sugars, which have long been distilled into fuel and used in vehicles dating back to the Model T. Henry Ford himself envisioned a future marked by widespread use of ethanol—corn was abundant and easy to grow. Ultimately, though ethanol comprises 10% of the total volume of motor gasoline and fuels over 2,000,000 alternative fuel vehicles in the US, Ford’s hopes of a renewable fuel supply proved too optimistic.
Henry Ford’s excitement was understandable. The prospective benefits of biofuels were stirring, even then. But first-generation biofuels have their downside. Ethanol is made from plants rich in starch or sugar, and crops that fit the bill—like corn in the US, and sugarcane in Brazil—are used heavily in human foods and as feed for livestock. Because of high demand, tweaks to corn and sugar crops can ripple across commodity prices and impact food supply.
What’s more, corn uses more land than any other crop: In 2013, 40% of corn crops in the US were earmarked for ethanol—that’s a landmass (60,000 square miles) about twice the size of Portugal. Plus, harvesting corn reduces crop diversity and its fertilizer can sully water resources.
Because debate around the prudence of growing corn for ethanol is fraught with implication, over the last decade governments, legacy energy companies, and a host of aspirant tech startups have converged to tackle inefficiencies in biofuel production. They’re committed to solving these food and land-use issues by accelerating production of advanced biofuels.
One way to do that is to produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass instead of corn. This means converting non-food crops, agricultural waste, wood chips, and even algae into simple plant sugars to be used in biofuel production. The first challenge is finding a way to transform the potentially endless supply of plant biomass into a source of renewable energy—no easy task. The next is to be able to make money doing it efficiently. To do that would completely change the clean energy market.
Shell is close to achieving this. Raízen—a Shell joint venture with Cosan—is one of Brazil’s largest sugarcane based producers of ethanol. Typically, leftover cane stalks are burned to produce power for its mills, with any excess power pumped to the national grid. In fact, by 2012, electricity sourced from the leftover biomass already supplied 3% of Brazil’s demand, with expectations that it will meet 18% by 2020.
Last year, Shell’s joint venture in the country launched its first second-generation ethanol plant which will convert biomass waste from its sugarcane production into advanced biofuel. Output from the plant is predicted to produce 38 million liters of cellulosic ethanol a year. And with the first- and second-generation plants working in tandem, the process is streamlined, helping to increase yield and cut costs for both plants.
That kind of scalability will make advanced biofuels a real, cost-effective solution. Forty percent of Brazil’s demand for petroleum has been replaced by sugarcane ethanol, and the joint venture plans on investing in similar technology in another seven mills over the next several years.
“We’re convinced advanced biofuels will be a critical part of our transport fuels portfolio,” says Matthew Tipper, VP of Alternative Energies at Shell. “Importantly, advanced biofuels could ultimately supply a significant part, perhaps all, of Europe’s transport fuels needs. So we have big plans.”
The implications for the global energy market are truly remarkable. Cellulosic biofuel has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by around 86% compared to standard petroleum. And when derived from cellulosic by-products, biomass will increase biofuel production by 50% without needing to plant any more corn crops for ethanol. This eliminates the land for food conundrum.
Big plans indeed.
This article was produced on behalf of Shell by the Quartz marketing team and not by the Quartz editorial staff.
Virtual reality filmmakers are discovering new things about the power of audio
The full setup.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
The stereotype goes that when directors are figuring out how to frame
a shot, they extend their arms, create a rectangle using their thumbs
and index fingers, and peer through that box. And because movies and TV
shows have traditionally been viewed on one kind of box or another, the
process provides a rough gauge of what the scene will look like.
But when shooting 360° video, what does framing even mean? How does a director draw the viewer’s attention to a specific point when there’s so much to look at, with continuous imagery at every direction?
Filmmakers dipping a toe into this kind of video are learning that virtual reality is a completely new beast, one that forces them to rethink the traditional storytelling techniques they’ve come to rely on.
In the process, they are discovering new things about the power of audio.
George Lucas is widely credited with having said that sound is 50% of the moviegoing experience. While audio indeed has played an important role in cinema since the 1920s, with the rise of talkies, it’s proving an especially vital tool in virtual reality. With composition and framing essentially boiling down to making sure the horizon is straight and keeping objects and people that don’t belong in a shot out of it, subtle sound cues like footsteps from behind or a knock at the door can help guide viewers to particular points in a scene.
“If you put earplugs in and try to go about your day-to-day life, you could say half the experience is gone,” says Joel Susal, Dolby’s director of virtual and augmented reality.
Audio has always been Dolby’s bread and butter. The division Susal runs only came about in March—largely because Jaunt, a VR studio whose backers include Disney, was searching for audio technology to create immersive “3D” sound. One of Jaunt’s board members, Peter Gotcher, happened to be the chairman of Dolby, and helped make the connection.
Dolby turned out to be a good fit because it already had a technology that could be adapted for virtual reality: Dolby Atmos. If you’ve ever been presented with the option to pay an extra dollar for “enhanced audio” at a movie theater, chances are it was for a film that was mixed in Atmos.
Atmos builds on the idea of surround sound, which literally surrounds viewers with speakers placed around them: in the center (behind the screen), left-front, right-front, left-side, right-side, left-back, and right-back.
Atmos goes a step further by placing an array of speakers on the ceiling. This setup allows filmmakers to position and move so-called “audio objects” anywhere in a three-dimensional space. So if you see a scene with a helicopter flying overhead, for example, you’d be able to hear very precise movement as the sound travels from speaker A to B to C to D.
This 3D audio technology provided a solid foundation for an extension into VR audio, but as Susal notes, it was “certainly not a layup.”
To translate Atmos to headphones, Dolby updated its algorithm to render audio in such a way that tricks the brain into believing sound is coming from multiple sources when there are only two speakers embedded in the headphone cups.
“It’s not really about the number of speakers,” explains Brett Crockett, Dolby’s vice president of research and development. “It’s about recreating spatial resolution.” To achieve this, Atmos directs the audio at specific angles so the sound waves bounce off parts of the ears before reaching the ear canal. (Dolby has also partnered with speaker manufacturers to create Atmos-enabled computer speakers and TV sound bars. In those products, the sound waves bounce off the ceiling to create 3D audio.)
Virtual reality also needs to take into account the fact that people’s left and right ears perceive sound differently, including time delay and volume. To create a general audio profile that’ll translate to a wide audience, many VR filmmakers are creating binaural recordings, a century-old recording technique that’s been revived largely because of virtual reality.
To get a binaural recording, microphones are placed in ear-shaped cavities on the sides of a dummy or a stand. This was how the LA Philharmonic recorded the audio for its VR performance of Beethoven’s Fifth, which viewers could experience in a special truck that was outfitted with carpet and seats from the Walt Disney Concert Hall—along with headphones. (The truck, dubbed the VAN Beethoven, was part of the orchestra’s outreach efforts to provide a vivid concert hall experience for Angelenos who might otherwise never attend a live orchestra performance.)
Because VR viewers are constantly moving their heads to see different parts of a scene, audio needs to remain consistent, so that a knock from the door doesn’t appear to come from the wall just because a viewer changed positions.
“It turns out to be quite difficult to do sound correctly,” says Arthur van Hoff, Jaunt’s cofounder and chief technical officer.
“This is a VR-specific feature that never existed before,” explains Susal. Adam Somers, a senior sound engineer at Jaunt, says the VR studio had the capability to mix both fixed and moving audio, but “I think our collaboration with Dolby helped us understand all the nuances of 3D audio.”
Because of the immersive nature of virtual reality, any inconsistencies—including audio—can become glaringly obvious. But done right, virtual reality can create a sense of presence, which in essence fools the viewer’s eyes and brain into believing what’s virtually around them is in fact real.
To Jaunt’s van Hoff, Black Mass, a short film the studio released in 2014 around Halloween, is one of the best examples of how audio can transport viewers to another place. The horror flick opens in an abandoned warehouse, where the viewer soon realizes that she’s been drugged and held captive. “I think you’re bleeding,” a small girl says. In between flashes of darkness, the scenery reveals chain saws, dismembered babies, skulls, dead animals, a hysterical woman dragged by who knows what under a garage door. One CNET writer said the experience “scared the bejeesus out of me.”
Black Mass was recorded with a type of surround sound called ambisonic audio. “It was scary, but it wasn’t as scary as we were hoping it’d be,” says van Hoff. But after mixing with Atmos in post-production, the short film “felt a lot scarier because you felt people creeping around you. You hear them in the right direction, and it really enhances the experience.”
Fine-tuning Atmos for VR is still an ongoing process. But Jaunt and Dolby have made substantial progress to overcome a number of hurdles.
But when shooting 360° video, what does framing even mean? How does a director draw the viewer’s attention to a specific point when there’s so much to look at, with continuous imagery at every direction?
Filmmakers dipping a toe into this kind of video are learning that virtual reality is a completely new beast, one that forces them to rethink the traditional storytelling techniques they’ve come to rely on.
In the process, they are discovering new things about the power of audio.
George Lucas is widely credited with having said that sound is 50% of the moviegoing experience. While audio indeed has played an important role in cinema since the 1920s, with the rise of talkies, it’s proving an especially vital tool in virtual reality. With composition and framing essentially boiling down to making sure the horizon is straight and keeping objects and people that don’t belong in a shot out of it, subtle sound cues like footsteps from behind or a knock at the door can help guide viewers to particular points in a scene.
The unexpected VR company
For someone who’s never tried virtual reality before, donning a pair of goggles for the first time can be an exercise in sensory overload. People are often so stunned by the visuals that they hardly notice the audio—but in fact it’s playing a crucial role.“If you put earplugs in and try to go about your day-to-day life, you could say half the experience is gone,” says Joel Susal, Dolby’s director of virtual and augmented reality.
Audio has always been Dolby’s bread and butter. The division Susal runs only came about in March—largely because Jaunt, a VR studio whose backers include Disney, was searching for audio technology to create immersive “3D” sound. One of Jaunt’s board members, Peter Gotcher, happened to be the chairman of Dolby, and helped make the connection.
Dolby turned out to be a good fit because it already had a technology that could be adapted for virtual reality: Dolby Atmos. If you’ve ever been presented with the option to pay an extra dollar for “enhanced audio” at a movie theater, chances are it was for a film that was mixed in Atmos.
Atmos builds on the idea of surround sound, which literally surrounds viewers with speakers placed around them: in the center (behind the screen), left-front, right-front, left-side, right-side, left-back, and right-back.
Atmos goes a step further by placing an array of speakers on the ceiling. This setup allows filmmakers to position and move so-called “audio objects” anywhere in a three-dimensional space. So if you see a scene with a helicopter flying overhead, for example, you’d be able to hear very precise movement as the sound travels from speaker A to B to C to D.
This 3D audio technology provided a solid foundation for an extension into VR audio, but as Susal notes, it was “certainly not a layup.”
From Atmos to VR
For starters, Atmos was designed for theaters, including home setups. Virtual reality, however, is a solitary experience, experienced with a pair of goggles and a set of headphones.To translate Atmos to headphones, Dolby updated its algorithm to render audio in such a way that tricks the brain into believing sound is coming from multiple sources when there are only two speakers embedded in the headphone cups.
“It’s not really about the number of speakers,” explains Brett Crockett, Dolby’s vice president of research and development. “It’s about recreating spatial resolution.” To achieve this, Atmos directs the audio at specific angles so the sound waves bounce off parts of the ears before reaching the ear canal. (Dolby has also partnered with speaker manufacturers to create Atmos-enabled computer speakers and TV sound bars. In those products, the sound waves bounce off the ceiling to create 3D audio.)
Virtual reality also needs to take into account the fact that people’s left and right ears perceive sound differently, including time delay and volume. To create a general audio profile that’ll translate to a wide audience, many VR filmmakers are creating binaural recordings, a century-old recording technique that’s been revived largely because of virtual reality.
To get a binaural recording, microphones are placed in ear-shaped cavities on the sides of a dummy or a stand. This was how the LA Philharmonic recorded the audio for its VR performance of Beethoven’s Fifth, which viewers could experience in a special truck that was outfitted with carpet and seats from the Walt Disney Concert Hall—along with headphones. (The truck, dubbed the VAN Beethoven, was part of the orchestra’s outreach efforts to provide a vivid concert hall experience for Angelenos who might otherwise never attend a live orchestra performance.)
Because VR viewers are constantly moving their heads to see different parts of a scene, audio needs to remain consistent, so that a knock from the door doesn’t appear to come from the wall just because a viewer changed positions.
“It turns out to be quite difficult to do sound correctly,” says Arthur van Hoff, Jaunt’s cofounder and chief technical officer.
A sense of presence
Filmmakers also have to reconcile moving audio objects and stationary sound—an orchestral soundtrack, for example, that doesn’t come from any particular direction.“This is a VR-specific feature that never existed before,” explains Susal. Adam Somers, a senior sound engineer at Jaunt, says the VR studio had the capability to mix both fixed and moving audio, but “I think our collaboration with Dolby helped us understand all the nuances of 3D audio.”
Because of the immersive nature of virtual reality, any inconsistencies—including audio—can become glaringly obvious. But done right, virtual reality can create a sense of presence, which in essence fools the viewer’s eyes and brain into believing what’s virtually around them is in fact real.
To Jaunt’s van Hoff, Black Mass, a short film the studio released in 2014 around Halloween, is one of the best examples of how audio can transport viewers to another place. The horror flick opens in an abandoned warehouse, where the viewer soon realizes that she’s been drugged and held captive. “I think you’re bleeding,” a small girl says. In between flashes of darkness, the scenery reveals chain saws, dismembered babies, skulls, dead animals, a hysterical woman dragged by who knows what under a garage door. One CNET writer said the experience “scared the bejeesus out of me.”
Black Mass was recorded with a type of surround sound called ambisonic audio. “It was scary, but it wasn’t as scary as we were hoping it’d be,” says van Hoff. But after mixing with Atmos in post-production, the short film “felt a lot scarier because you felt people creeping around you. You hear them in the right direction, and it really enhances the experience.”
Fine-tuning Atmos for VR is still an ongoing process. But Jaunt and Dolby have made substantial progress to overcome a number of hurdles.
Read this next: Sorry, YouTube: The virtual-reality revolution will not come via shaky footage shot by amateurs
The new Apple revealed itself in 2015
Hey Siri. How'd I do?(AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Apple became the next version of itself this year.
A changing public face
Among the biggest changes was how Apple presented
itself. Specifically, more of its executives spent more time in the
public view, granting access, often proactively.
This year, CEO Tim Cook did a lot of interviews by Apple standards, from this month’s “60 Minutes” episode to 20 minutes with BuzzFeed in the back seat of a Cadillac Escalade. He “crashed” a coding party—conveniently while a Mashable editor was in attendance—and “wrote a message” to CNBC’s Jim Cramer. You might even say he likes the attention.
Meanwhile, Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, participated in an FT profile and received the New Yorker treatment
earlier this year, inviting a journalist into his Bentley. To the
media, a “rare look inside Jony Ive’s design lab” seems to be the prized
new “rare look inside North Korea.” (And similarly staged.)
Jeff Williams, Apple’s newly named chief operating officer, represented the company at the Code conference, the stage where Steve Jobs made several of his rare public appearances. Two of Apple’s senior vice presidents, including long-time executive Phil Schiller, made appearances on “The Talk Show,” an indie podcast hosted by John Gruber, king of the Apple geeks.
This is in sharp contrast to the Jobs-era Apple,
which doled out public appearances sparingly, opting instead for an air
of mystery and opaqueness. (And it was usually only Jobs representing
the company back then, and usually only to the upper crust of old, big
media.)
Apple—after some criticism, and another Mashable appearance by Cook—also
shuffled the lineup of executives presenting at its product keynote
events, specifically to include more women. At its Worldwide Developers
Conference in June, two female executives presented:
Jennifer Bailey announced updates to Apple Pay, and Susan Prescott
unveiled Apple’s news-reading app. Later in the year, Jen Folse helped
unveil the new Apple TV. There’s more work to be done here, though, as Apple still shares many of Silicon Valley’s diversity problems.
New bets on the future
Apple’s last decade has been dominated by one
thing: The rise of the iPhone. It may never do something that big again.
Over the past four quarters, the iPhone represented two-thirds of
Apple’s revenue, likely more of its profits, and almost all of its
growth.
But this year, Apple shipped two bets on the future, revealing the new technology markets it finds most appealing.
The biggest was the Apple Watch, which went on sale in April, and has done pretty well—not great, not terribly—since then. The Apple Watch was an audacious bet on unfamiliar territory
for Apple: a bet that people would want to wear computers on their
wrists, and that Apple could provide the right mix of utility and
fashion to lead this nascent market.
Apple has likely sold more than 5 million so far,
and has probably learned many important lessons from its first version.
A second take is expected in early 2016. But it might be several more
iterations before something special happens, if ever. Fitbit has not been killed. Apple seems committed for now.
The second bet happened later in the year, when Apple shipped its latest Apple TV streaming box.
With it, Apple declared that it believes apps are
the future of TV. For the first time, there is an Apple TV App Store,
including games, and developers are free to try to reinvent how people
spend their time in the living room. (One of Apple’s key concepts, a
streaming television service, has reportedly been shelved for now due to stalled negotiations with television networks.)
The
stakes aren’t super high here. But a lot of money runs through the
television, so if Apple can become the leading software platform, that’s
a good position to be in. The top free apps on the US App Store on
Christmas Eve reflect a bit of the future and a bit of the past: a
Pac-Man game, a 360-degree video app, and apps for HGTV, Netflix, and
HBO.
Bigger picture: It’s rare for Apple to launch new
platforms, especially two at a time—in a year that the company also
shipped new versions of iOS and Mac OS X, a new iPhone, the iPad Pro, and a new MacBook design.
Indeed, one of the criticisms as Apple does more
things is that it’s increasingly sloppy, and its customers are
suffering. Apple Music, also introduced this year, was notoriously buggy
and remains overcomplicated. Many sounded the alarms about slipping software quality for Apple. But all-in, it’s doing pretty well.
At
Apple’s scale, neither the Apple Watch nor Apple TV hardware businesses
are likely to become big revenue growth drivers any time soon. And if
either or both fail, it won’t sink the company. But they’re important
bets on the future that Apple can win—or lose.
The road ahead
One of the big questions for 2016 is whether
Apple can keep growing at such a staggering pace. The smartphone boom is
reaching maturity, and many on Wall Street have projected tepid
growth—or even shrinkage—for the iPhone business next year. Overall, the
current consensus is for Apple to grow overall sales 4% in its 2016
fiscal year, which ends next September. That would represent a
significant slowdown from fiscal 2015, when Apple grew 28%
year-over-year.
Key questions include whether Apple can continue
taking share from Android, whether a new iPhone hardware subscription
can accelerate replacement sales, and whether the China market, which
has driven much of Apple’s growth, can keep going. Apple’s supposed car project isn’t likely to kick in for several years, so for now, the iPhone is going to have to do most of the work.
Meanwhile,
Apple’s stock price has ended up around the same place where it started
this year, reflecting the market’s concerns. (By comparison, Amazon
shares more than doubled this year.)
In many ways, the new Apple—and this year’s
activity—reflects that it has simply grown up. It’s now semi-transparent
about how it works, is grooming executives in public with a pretty
clear succession plan, has pending growth concerns, and even issues a
stock dividend and buys back shares. Apple is just like any big
corporation now.
Read this next: Half a year later, the Apple Watch feels like a stalled platform
Louis Vuitton’s new top model is a video-game star
Louis Vuitton's new 'it' girl.(Square Enix)
Louis Vuitton, one of the world’s most luxurious
and historic fashion houses, has cast an offbeat new model in its latest
campaign. She’s a sword-wielding warrior with hair dyed pink—or is it rose quartz?—and she’s technically more pixels than person.
Lightning, as she’s called, is a recurring character in Square Enix’s Final Fantasy series and the star of her own title, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.
To those credits she now adds heroine in a new ad for the French
fashion house, as creative director Nicolas Ghesquière recently revealed
when he posted her video spot to his Instagram page.
Ghesquière has had all things digital and fantasy
in mind lately. His spring collection for Louis Vuitton pulled heavily
from sci-fi, manga, anime, and video games, even down to the makeup. It
included allusions to popular works such as Sailor Moon and Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the set, which was lined with video screens, even threw in a reference to the game Minecraft.
The
opening look of the show—a pale pink motorcycle jacket, paired with an
elaborately detailed black skirt and chunky black sandals—was the same
seen on Lightning in the new ad, and even appeared on a model with
similarly rosy tresses.
Believe it or not, it’s not the first time a major fashion house has turned to Lightning as a model. Prada used her and other Final Fantasy characters to show off a collection back in 2012.
Since posting the video, Ghesquière has already shared
a few more shots of Lightning in Louis Vuitton, though it’s not clear
how central she will be to Louis Vuitton’s wider campaign, or if other
ads in the campaign will also opt for non-humans. Quartz has reached out
to Louis Vuitton and Square Enix for more information and will update
this post with any response.
But if other ads are any indication, the company and Ghesquière, who has a well-known predilection for the futuristic, will be feeling lots of love for cyber and sci-fi this season. In a nod to Star Wars, its recent window displays come from a galaxy far, far away—those were the label’s words—and a holiday message featured what looked like Uma Thurman’s character in the movie Pulp Fiction imagined as a robot.
A slow-motion disaster is unfolding in Los Angeles as a huge, two-month gas leak remains unsealed
Fed up.(Reuters/Gus Ruelas)
Utility engineers have finally located the source
of a natural-gas leak in northwestern Los Angeles that has been spewing
greenhouse gases into the air for two months now, but it will still be
weeks before they can plug the massive leak. The accident is drawing
comparisons to the BP oil spill in the Gulf Mexico five years ago, which
similarly took months to contain.
Methane has been gushing out of a well near the
upscale neighborhood of Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley since at
least Oct. 23, when Southern California Gas Co., or SoCalGas, detected
the leak at its Aliso Canyon facility.
Although methane dissipates more quickly than carbon dioxide, it’s many times more potent
in terms of its power to warm the atmosphere. The escaping gas also
contains chemicals that smell like rotten eggs, which are added to
detect leaks but make people feel sick. Los Angeles County health
authorities say they’ve received “a substantial number of reports” from area residents complaining of headaches, nausea, and other ills. More than 2,000 families have been relocated away from the fumes.
SoCalGas, a unit of Sempra Energy, has been
trying to stop the leak for weeks, so far with no success. That’s
because the well, which is connected to an underground natural-gas
storage facility, is more than 8,000 feet deep.
So far, the company has only drilled 3,800 feet deep. On Dec. 27, it
found the leaking well using special magnetic tools. Now it has to drill
down further and install a relief well to reroute the gas, a process
that could last until late March, the company said.
The slow-motion disaster is reminiscent of BP’s efforts to seal a ruptured well
that toppled the company’s enormous Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and
killed 11 workers in 2010. It took the company many attempts over nearly
three months to control the oil gusher as the public helplessly watched
footage of a dark plume spreading through the Gulf of Mexico.
Erin Brockovich, the consumer advocate played by
Julia Roberts in the movie with the same name, has called the Aliso
Canyon leak the worst environmental catastrophe since the BP oil spill.
It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison in terms of
pollution, Tim O’Connor, director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s
California oil and gas program, tells Quartz. But the well failure in LA
is “a very big orange,” he adds. His organization estimates that the
released methane is having the same greenhouse-gas effect as the
emissions from 7 million cars. For perspective, there are around 6.2 million registered cars (pdf) in Los Angeles County.
But like the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the
Aliso Canyon leak underscores how current regulations and oversight are
not enough, says O’Connor. Aliso Canyon is one of dozens of storage facilities around the country, and part of an aging network of processing plants, pipelines, and other infrastructure that is getting more use as natural gas becomes a more popular fuel.
“This type of event could happen at any one of these other sites,” O’Connor said.
Next generation technology is turning throwaway plant parts into biofuels
Advanced biofuels made from sugarcane fields like these could be a game-changer.
Urbanization,
population growth, and an increasingly mobile culture are driving big
demands for the grid of the future. And while there’s no longer any
question that a sustainable global energy system needs to be lower
carbon, it also needs to deliver more energy to meet those expectations.
As part of a renewable energy driven future, biofuels make a lot of
sense: they’re cheap and burn much cleaner than fossil fuels.
The extent and timing of the role biofuels will play in that future is being defined today. Bioenergy accounts for roughly 10% of the world’s energy supply, and scientists are moving past a first-generation of biofuels toward advanced biofuels: second and third generation fuels comprised of truly sustainable materials that have the potential to fundamentally alter the clean energy market.
Chemists and engineers know how to convert all kinds of matter into burning fuel, and humans have been fermenting ethanol for thousands of years. That process is at the heart of producing first-generation biofuel, which takes carbon from plants and converts it into fuel that drives engines from cars to jet planes.
Plant carbon comes from its sugars, which have long been distilled into fuel and used in vehicles dating back to the Model T. Henry Ford himself envisioned a future marked by widespread use of ethanol—corn was abundant and easy to grow. Ultimately, though ethanol comprises 10% of the total volume of motor gasoline and fuels over 2,000,000 alternative fuel vehicles in the US, Ford’s hopes of a renewable fuel supply proved too optimistic.
Henry Ford’s excitement was understandable. The prospective benefits of biofuels were stirring, even then. But first-generation biofuels have their downside. Ethanol is made from plants rich in starch or sugar, and crops that fit the bill—like corn in the US, and sugarcane in Brazil—are used heavily in human foods and as feed for livestock. Because of high demand, tweaks to corn and sugar crops can ripple across commodity prices and impact food supply.
What’s more, corn uses more land than any other crop: In 2013, 40% of corn crops in the US were earmarked for ethanol—that’s a landmass (60,000 square miles) about twice the size of Portugal. Plus, harvesting corn reduces crop diversity and its fertilizer can sully water resources.
Because debate around the prudence of growing corn for ethanol is fraught with implication, over the last decade governments, legacy energy companies, and a host of aspirant tech startups have converged to tackle inefficiencies in biofuel production. They’re committed to solving these food and land-use issues by accelerating production of advanced biofuels.
One way to do that is to produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass instead of corn. This means converting non-food crops, agricultural waste, wood chips, and even algae into simple plant sugars to be used in biofuel production. The first challenge is finding a way to transform the potentially endless supply of plant biomass into a source of renewable energy—no easy task. The next is to be able to make money doing it efficiently. To do that would completely change the clean energy market.
Shell is close to achieving this. Raízen—a Shell joint venture with Cosan—is one of Brazil’s largest sugarcane based producers of ethanol. Typically, leftover cane stalks are burned to produce power for its mills, with any excess power pumped to the national grid. In fact, by 2012, electricity sourced from the leftover biomass already supplied 3% of Brazil’s demand, with expectations that it will meet 18% by 2020.
Last year, Shell’s joint venture in the country launched its first second-generation ethanol plant which will convert biomass waste from its sugarcane production into advanced biofuel. Output from the plant is predicted to produce 38 million liters of cellulosic ethanol a year. And with the first- and second-generation plants working in tandem, the process is streamlined, helping to increase yield and cut costs for both plants.
That kind of scalability will make advanced biofuels a real, cost-effective solution. Forty percent of Brazil’s demand for petroleum has been replaced by sugarcane ethanol, and the joint venture plans on investing in similar technology in another seven mills over the next several years.
“We’re convinced advanced biofuels will be a critical part of our transport fuels portfolio,” says Matthew Tipper, VP of Alternative Energies at Shell. “Importantly, advanced biofuels could ultimately supply a significant part, perhaps all, of Europe’s transport fuels needs. So we have big plans.”
The implications for the global energy market are truly remarkable. Cellulosic biofuel has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by around 86% compared to standard petroleum. And when derived from cellulosic by-products, biomass will increase biofuel production by 50% without needing to plant any more corn crops for ethanol. This eliminates the land for food conundrum.
Big plans indeed.
This article was produced on behalf of Shell by the Quartz marketing team and not by the Quartz editorial staff.
The extent and timing of the role biofuels will play in that future is being defined today. Bioenergy accounts for roughly 10% of the world’s energy supply, and scientists are moving past a first-generation of biofuels toward advanced biofuels: second and third generation fuels comprised of truly sustainable materials that have the potential to fundamentally alter the clean energy market.
Chemists and engineers know how to convert all kinds of matter into burning fuel, and humans have been fermenting ethanol for thousands of years. That process is at the heart of producing first-generation biofuel, which takes carbon from plants and converts it into fuel that drives engines from cars to jet planes.
Plant carbon comes from its sugars, which have long been distilled into fuel and used in vehicles dating back to the Model T. Henry Ford himself envisioned a future marked by widespread use of ethanol—corn was abundant and easy to grow. Ultimately, though ethanol comprises 10% of the total volume of motor gasoline and fuels over 2,000,000 alternative fuel vehicles in the US, Ford’s hopes of a renewable fuel supply proved too optimistic.
Henry Ford’s excitement was understandable. The prospective benefits of biofuels were stirring, even then. But first-generation biofuels have their downside. Ethanol is made from plants rich in starch or sugar, and crops that fit the bill—like corn in the US, and sugarcane in Brazil—are used heavily in human foods and as feed for livestock. Because of high demand, tweaks to corn and sugar crops can ripple across commodity prices and impact food supply.
What’s more, corn uses more land than any other crop: In 2013, 40% of corn crops in the US were earmarked for ethanol—that’s a landmass (60,000 square miles) about twice the size of Portugal. Plus, harvesting corn reduces crop diversity and its fertilizer can sully water resources.
Because debate around the prudence of growing corn for ethanol is fraught with implication, over the last decade governments, legacy energy companies, and a host of aspirant tech startups have converged to tackle inefficiencies in biofuel production. They’re committed to solving these food and land-use issues by accelerating production of advanced biofuels.
One way to do that is to produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass instead of corn. This means converting non-food crops, agricultural waste, wood chips, and even algae into simple plant sugars to be used in biofuel production. The first challenge is finding a way to transform the potentially endless supply of plant biomass into a source of renewable energy—no easy task. The next is to be able to make money doing it efficiently. To do that would completely change the clean energy market.
Shell is close to achieving this. Raízen—a Shell joint venture with Cosan—is one of Brazil’s largest sugarcane based producers of ethanol. Typically, leftover cane stalks are burned to produce power for its mills, with any excess power pumped to the national grid. In fact, by 2012, electricity sourced from the leftover biomass already supplied 3% of Brazil’s demand, with expectations that it will meet 18% by 2020.
Last year, Shell’s joint venture in the country launched its first second-generation ethanol plant which will convert biomass waste from its sugarcane production into advanced biofuel. Output from the plant is predicted to produce 38 million liters of cellulosic ethanol a year. And with the first- and second-generation plants working in tandem, the process is streamlined, helping to increase yield and cut costs for both plants.
That kind of scalability will make advanced biofuels a real, cost-effective solution. Forty percent of Brazil’s demand for petroleum has been replaced by sugarcane ethanol, and the joint venture plans on investing in similar technology in another seven mills over the next several years.
“We’re convinced advanced biofuels will be a critical part of our transport fuels portfolio,” says Matthew Tipper, VP of Alternative Energies at Shell. “Importantly, advanced biofuels could ultimately supply a significant part, perhaps all, of Europe’s transport fuels needs. So we have big plans.”
The implications for the global energy market are truly remarkable. Cellulosic biofuel has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by around 86% compared to standard petroleum. And when derived from cellulosic by-products, biomass will increase biofuel production by 50% without needing to plant any more corn crops for ethanol. This eliminates the land for food conundrum.
Big plans indeed.
This article was produced on behalf of Shell by the Quartz marketing team and not by the Quartz editorial staff.
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