New research shows that hemp supercapacitors have the potential to fight climate change by improving how we store renewable energy, while also sequestering carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil and hemp biomass. 

As the world continues to expel 33.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, scientists are searching for carbon-neutral and carbon-negative sources of renewable energy and energy storage. In order to avert climate collapse, we need to rapidly develop energy infrastructure that runs on renewable energy sources. And to make renewable energy successful on a global scale, we also need energy storage that is environmentally sustainable.  

With scientists warning that we now have less than a decade to cut our global carbon emissions by at least 50%, finding an alternative to relying on lithium-ion batteries to defossilize the transit sector is an absolute necessity.

For all the benefits that electric vehicles can offer, serious political and technological problems involving energy storage remain in the way of a just transition to electrified transit on a large scale. In light of these challenges, it is all the more significant that promising new research is showing that the call for efficient, ethical, and inexpensive energy storage and delivery systems as an alternative to Lithium-Ion batteries may be answered by an unlikely contender: hemp supercapacitors.