How “Liquid Air” Could Help Solve the Climate Crisis

Typhoon Halong struck on the weekend of October 11 and 12. Rescue and evacuation efforts continued for days with the National Guard and Coast Guard assisting. Many villages and towns are accessible only by water or air. Homes were swept away, and the hardest hit communities, like Kipnuk and Kwigillingok were inundated by water six feet above the normal tide line, according to CBS News

Captain Christopher Culpepper of the Coast Guard told the Anchorage Daily News that it was absolute devastation, and if you think about Hurricane Katrina, it will paint a picture of what has happened along western Alaska. Hundreds of people were flown from the area to Anchorage more than 500 miles away where they could be sheltered. Before hitting Alaska, Halong was a cyclone that moved out of the tropics, and is referred to as an ex-typhoon, or extratropical.

Weather models had done a pretty good job of predicting the storm’s course, until it approached Alaska, Rick Thoman, of the University of Alaska wrote in The Conversation. The cyclone was forecast to move through the Bering Sea but instead veered to the east, striking Alaskan communities not in the original forecasts. The typhoon’s final track and its intensity weren’t clear until about 36 hours before crossing into Alaskan waters, which was too late for evacuations from the remote regions. 

Forecasting models use data collected by weather balloons, but since there were cuts to the National Weather Service by DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, initially run by Elon Musk, western Alaska has suffered a large gap in balloon coverage, according to CNN, with few balloon launches to measure what was happening as Halong neared Alaska. Without the information gathered by weather balloons, it was likely harder for weather forecasters to warn people earlier. The area of western Alaska, where the typhoon hit, is flat, and storms can push the ocean into a delta, where it spreads out. Thoman notes that the permafrost is thawing and land is subsiding, so sea-level rise is an additional threat.

Now, people who were evacuated are going to have to decide whether to rebuild after winter or relocate permanently. Reconstruction in such remote areas is 100 times more difficult, according to Thoman. Governor Mike Dunleavy said in a request to the White House at the end of last week, that damage from the typhoon was so extreme that many displaced people won’t be able to return to their homes for at least 18 months.

Now, those efforts appear to have worked. Sea turtle numbers have increased around the globe by nearly 30 percent since the 1970s, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Last week, they announced that the turtles have been reclassified from “endangered” to “least concern.”

The population of the animals had plunged because, in addition to being trapped by fishing gear, they were used to make soup and their eggs for decorations. Bryan Wallace of the University of Colorado Boulder, leader of the recent assessment, told NPR that the turtles were once so abundant that sailors on Christopher Columbus’s voyages could navigate around land at night by the sound of the turtles’ breathing and their hard shells hitting the boats.

That level of abundance has not been reached, as the number of sea turtles is still significantly depleted compared to the pre-colonization era. There are worries about some turtle populations in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and lower nesting numbers in places like Costa Rica. However, the rebound of the sea turtles is cause for celebration and continuing other conservation efforts.

“Liquefied air” to be exact. It’s air that has been cooled to the point it liquefies and can be stored in a tank, acting like a battery. When electricity is needed, the air is heated and expands to drive turbines that generate power. It’s super-efficient because liquifying the air generates heat. This heat can then be used to help restore the liquid to a gas.

The liquid air energy storage (LEAS) technology was first developed in the 1970s but wasn’t put into use because it’s expensive. The growth of renewables means it could now be cost effective—and a faster way to get off fossil fuels. To that point, the BBC reports, the world's first commercial-scale liquid air energy storage facility is being built in Manchester, England. Its developer, Highview Power, expects the system to come online in 2027 and have the capacity to store enough electricity from renewables to power nearly half a million homes.

If it catches on, it could be a game changer for the storage aspect of the renewable energy paradigm. Currently, electrical grids rely on pumped hydro and lithium batteries for storage, but those have drawbacks. Pumped hydro relies on water and only works in certain locations. Lithium mining has environmental impacts, and the batteries last only around ten years. In contrast, liquid air storage facilities use above-ground tanks, which can be situated practically anywhere, and they store energy for longer. The best part, the process runs on air—an abundant natural resource. 

Back in the 1800s, playing pool was a popular pastime, and billiard balls were made from ivory, which made for an ideal weight, roll, and rebound. Unfortunately, a single elephant tusk yielded only four or five balls, putting the animals at risk. So, in 1864, Scientific American announced a competition by a billiard-table manufacturer, offering $10,000 to anyone who could come up with a better ball. Also, according to the Albany Institute of History and Art, ivory aged and dried, causing the balls to crack and become misshapen.

As a recent edition of Scientific American explains, a New Yorker named John Wesley Hyatt won the contest with a solution made from celluloid—a moldable material made from cellulose, together with camphor and ground-up cow bones—the first plastic.

Instead of accepting the cash prize and calling it a day, Hyatt patented his invention and started his own company, which celebrated his billiard balls in advertisements as a conservation success story that offered an affordable substitute for wood, shell, and bone—and assured the survival of endangered animals.

The rest is history as they say. In 2023, conservation scientist Artur Neves called Hyatt’s invention the “founding object of the plastics industry.” Hyatt’s plastic, once lauded as a model of sustainability, has become unsustainable, and has led to our current microplastics problem, which not only threatens wildlife in our oceans but also human health—putting us behind the proverbial eight ball.