In a first for Australia, carbon dioxide (CO2) has been captured from power station flue gases in a post-combustion-capture (PCC) pilot plant at Loy Yang Power Station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.

Energy from the sun and carbon dioxide fuel photosynthesis in plants and algae, making life on earth possible. Carbon that is fixed by plants is converted to starch and sucrose, which are utilized by plants for energy and to build biomass.

Of the current global environmental problems, the excessive release of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels and the related global warming is one of the most pressing. In an essay in the journal ChemSusChem , Fritz Scholz and Ulrich Hasse from the University of Greifswald introduce a possible approach to a solution: deliberately planted forests bind the CO 2 through photosynthesis and are then removed from the global CO2 cycle by burial.

A novel gas sensor system makes it possible to monitor large areas cost-effectively the first time. The patented gas sensor is based on the principle of diffusion, according to which certain gases pass through a membrane faster than others. Using a tube-like sensor it is possible to measure an average gas concentration value over a certain distance without influencing or distorting conditions in the measuring environment.

Over millions of years carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been moderated by a finely-tuned natural feedback system— a system that human emissions have recently overwhelmed. A joint University of Hawaii / Carnegie Institution study published in the advance online edition of Nature Geoscience links the pre-human stability to connections between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the breakdown of minerals in the Earth’s crust.

A new, high- resolution interactive map of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels has found that the emissions aren't all where we thought.

Changes in soil carbon occur with changes in land management. Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and The University of Tennessee investigated quantifying soil carbon changes over large regions. They integrated remote sensing products with a national carbon accounting framework in a project funded by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Earth Science.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising at an alarming rate, and new research indicates that soybean plant defenses go down as CO2 goes up. Elevated CO2 impairs a key component of the plant’s defenses against leaf-eating insects, according to the report.

A recent study at the University of Illinois created a bit of a mystery for soil scientist Michelle Wander – increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was expected to increase plant growth, increase plant biomass and ultimately beef up the organic matter in the soil -- but it didn’t.

The growth in China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is far outpacing previous estimates, making the goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases much more difficult, according to a new analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Diego.

Scientists and engineers in Georgia and Pennsylvania are reporting development of a new, low-cost material for capturing carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of coal-fired electric power plants and other industrial sources before the notorious greenhouse gas enters the atmosphere.

The research groups of the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences of the University of Helsinki and the University of California in San Diego have discovered a gene that is centrally involved in the regulation of carbon dioxide uptake for photosynthesis and water evaporation in plants.