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The Spanish Emergency Military Unit (UME) sent a team of experts to Chile to support with technology that can fight the fire. Unmanned aircraft help to see the perimeter and report the altitude of the flames, among other relevant data. Technological advances are also serving to capture the carbon dioxide that pollutes the Earth.
Technology helps combat the adverse effects of the environmental crisis. This was evidenced by the forest fires in Chile, where drones support the work of firefighters.
Spain is among the ten countries that sent support to the southern nation and in the commune of Hualqui, in the Biobío Region, it set up its Emergency Military Unit (UME) operations center.
This group is characterized by using drones to analyze the behavior of the flames. The unmanned ships are equipped with telemetry tools to measure the physical magnitudes and with thermal cameras that report which are the hot spots and smoke areas. The information reaches the operations center, where the flight technicians analyze it and compare it with the wide panorama offered by the drones and with which they also find possible access routes.
France 24 correspondent in Chile, Patricia Luna, was with the UME showing how this Unit uses technology in its fight against forest fires.
And it is that although the conflagrations in forests occur once a year, with each southern summer, those of 2023 marked the second worst disaster due to forest fires in the country. This because of almost 440,000 hectares have burneda report second only to the wildfires reported from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017, according to historical data of the National Forestry Corporation (Conaf). In fact, that figure is well above the almost 60,000 hectares that are burned on average with forest fires each season in Chile.
Given the magnitude, drones made it possible, for example, to analyze the conditions of the fires without having to risk the people who make up the containment and rescue teams.
Ship technology applied to boats to reduce CO2
Drones are not only used to monitor fires. Its stabilization components are also in a boat that flies over the water.
The C-8 model of the Swedish company Candela is an electric motor boat with hydrofoils that allow it to rise from the sea surface. This generates less friction and requires 80% less energy. In addition, the boat emits 99% less CO2 than the rest.
For these characteristics, the C-8 won the European Award for the electric boat in 2023. Candela adds that they have the longest-lasting and fastest-charging boat batteries, since they come from a 100% electric car: the Polestar 2, brand of the Swedish Volvo.
With that battery, the boat travels 100 kilometers per charge, equivalent to 57 nautical miles, and that is about double that of other electric boats. But the solution is little, since recreational boats do not emit as much carbon dioxide as other types of transport and are rarely used.
New methods to capture carbon dioxide
Advances in science and technology are also crucial in sequestering CO2. The investigation ‘The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal‘, led by the University of Oxford, is the first independent report in the world to analyze how carbon dioxide removal is going.
One of the conclusions is that if we want to limit global warming to 2°C or 1.5°C as proposed by the Paris Agreement, it is necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while eliminating CO2. But until now, few countries have bothered to advance in this second path.
The report points out, for example, that it is necessary to eliminate 0.96 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide each year out of the nearly 40 that are emitted annually in the world. However, with the environmental pledges that countries have today, or NDCs for its acronym in English, between now and 2030 between 0.1 and 0.65 gigatons will be eliminated. That is why the report claims that there is a gap.
And to close it, he proposes accelerating the new methods of CO2 capture, and not only the conventional one that mainly focuses on reforestation. Instead, these scientists speak for example of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). This consists of burning large amounts of forests to convert the CO2 that the trees captured into energy.
Other options are direct air capture (DAC) and direct air capture with carbon storage (DACCS). Both mechanisms sequester the dioxide that is in the air through chemical solvents.
Many of the technological methods are in the oceans. Alkalization, for example, releases alkaline substances into the sea to increase its pH and combat the acidification that is affecting multiple marine ecosystems. There is also iron fertilization to increase the plankton that captures CO2.
Another even more outlandish idea is enhanced weathering, which speeds up a natural process that takes millions of years: grinding up silicate rocks so that their clay sequesters carbon dioxide.
However, many other scientists doubt these solutions because they are so expensive and will take decades to fully develop. Even so, technology shows more and more that it can propose applicable solutions.
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