[…] an adaptive tile, which when deployed in arrays on roofs, can lower heating bills in winter and cooling bills in summer, without the need for electronics. “It switches between a heating state and a cooling state, depending on the temperature of the tile,” said Xiao, the lead author of the study. “The target temperature Read more about Adaptive wax-motor roof tile can cut both heating and cooling costs[…]
Batteries that exploit quantum phenomena to gain, distribute and store power promise to surpass the abilities and usefulness of conventional chemical batteries in certain low-power applications. For the first time, researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo, take advantage of an unintuitive quantum process that disregards the conventional notion of causality to improve the Read more about New way to charge batteries using indefinite causal order, comes with counterintuitive findings[…]
The plane-maker on Thursday revealed it has “commissioned shipowner Louis Dreyfus Armateurs to build, own and operate these new, highly efficient vessels that will enter into service from 2026.” The ships will have conventional engines that run on maritime diesel oil and e-methanol, the latter fuel made with a process that produces less CO2 than Read more about Airbus commissions three wind-powered ships[…]
It’s been two years since Google first debuted Project Green Light, a novel means of addressing the street-level pollution caused by vehicles idling at stop lights. […] Green Light uses machine learning systems to comb through Maps data to calculate the amount of traffic congestion present at a given light, as well as the average Read more about Google’s AI stoplight program leads to less stops, less emissions[…]
Microsoft thinks next-generation nuclear reactors can power its data centers and AI ambitions, according to a job listing for a principal program manager who’ll lead the company’s nuclear energy strategy. Data centers already use a hell of a lot of electricity, which could thwart the company’s climate goals unless it can find clean sources of energy. Energy-hungry Read more about Microsoft is going nuclear to power its AI ambitions[…]
Heat pumps are more than twice as efficient as fossil fuel heating systems in cold temperatures, research shows. Even at temperatures approaching -30C, heat pumps outperform oil and gas heating systems, according to the research from Oxford University and the Regulatory Assistance Project thinktank. […] The research, published in the specialist energy research journal Joule, Read more about Heat pumps twice as efficient as fossil fuel systems in cold weather, study finds – gas lobby misinforms, blocks uptake[…]
Obtaining useful work from random fluctuations in a system at thermal equilibrium has long been considered impossible. In fact, in the 1960s eminent American physicist Richard Feynman effectively shut down further inquiry after he argued in a series of lectures that Brownian motion, or the thermal motion of atoms, cannot perform useful work. Now, Read more about Scientists design novel nonlinear circuit to harvest clean power using graphene[…]
[…] Reuters reports that scientists with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in California repeated a fusion ignition reaction. The lab’s first breakthrough was announced by the U.S. Department of Energy in December. While the previous experiment produced net energy gain, a spokesperson from the lab told the outlet that this second experiment, Read more about Nuclear Fusion Scientists Successfully Recreate Net Energy Gain[…]
Long-time Slashdot reader KindMind shares a report from The Register: Researchers at MIT claim to have found a novel new way to store energy using nothing but cement, a bit of water, and powdered carbon black — a crystalline form of the element. The materials can be cleverly combined to create supercapacitors, which could in Read more about MIT Boffins Build Battery Alternative Out of Cement, Carbon Black, and Water[…]
[…] The experiment is a part of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project, and the institute announced a successful transmission via press release yesterday. The researchers conducted the power transfer experiment using the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment, or MAPLE, which is a small prototype aboard the in-orbit Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1) that launched Read more about Scientists Beam Space-Based Solar Power to Earth for First Time[…]
Context & Scale Osmotic energy is a renewable energy with zero emissions and minimal daily variations. However, the membranes for osmotic energy harvesting must have multiple properties that are thought to be impossible to realize to make this technology viable. Here, we show that cartilage-inspired cation-selective composite membrane assembled from aramid nanofibers and boron nitride Read more about Bio-inspired Nanocomposite Membranes for Osmotic Energy Harvesting: Joule[…]
Australian scientists have discovered an enzyme that converts air into energy. The finding, published today in the journal Nature, reveals that this enzyme uses the low amounts of the hydrogen in the atmosphere to create an electrical current. This finding opens the way to create devices that literally make energy from thin air. The research Read more about Newly discovered enzyme that turns air into electricity, providing a new clean source of energy[…]
Mere weeks after achieving experimental airworthiness certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Universal Hydrogen has successfully taken its 40-passenger regional hydrogen electric plane to the skies. The aircraft took off from Washington state this morning and ascended to an altitude of 3,500 mean sea level (MSL) before safely landing, as you can see in Read more about 40-passenger hydrogen electric plane completes maiden flight[…]
Vestas, the world’s largest producer of wind turbines, says it has developed a chemical solution that allows the blades — made with durable epoxy resin — to be broken down and recycled. Bloomberg reports: “This signals a new era for the wind industry,” Vestas said in a statement. If it’s implemented at scale, the technology Read more about Wind Turbine Giant Develops Solution To Keep Blades Out of Landfills[…]
Researchers at the University of Adelaide announced this week that they made clean hydrogen fuel from seawater without pre-treatment. Demand for hydrogen fuel, a clean energy source that only produces water when burned, is expected to increase in the coming years as the world (hopefully) continues to pivot away from fossil fuels. The findings could Read more about Researchers can now pull hydrogen directly from seawater, no filtering required[…]
Britain’s Rolls-Royce (RR.L) said it has successfully run an aircraft engine on hydrogen, a world aviation first that marks a major step towards proving the gas could be key to decarbonising air travel. The ground test, using a converted Rolls-Royce AE 2100-A regional aircraft engine, used green hydrogen created by wind and tidal power, the Read more about Rolls-Royce successfully tests hydrogen-powered jet engine[…]
In France, solar just got a huge boost from new legislation approved through the Senate this week that requires all parking lots with spaces for at least 80 vehicles – both existing and new – be covered by solar panels. The new provisions are part of French president Emmanuel Macron’s large-scale plan to heavily invest Read more about In France, all large parking lots now have to be covered by solar panels[…]
To convert heat into electricity, easily accessible materials from harmless raw materials open up new perspectives in the development of safe and inexpensive so-called “thermoelectric materials.” […] The novel synthetic material is composed of copper, manganese, germanium, and sulfur, and it is produced in a rather simple process […] The powders are simply mechanically alloyed Read more about Team creates crystals that generate electricity from heat[…]
[…] in Memmott’s new reactor, during and after the nuclear reaction occurs, all the radioactive byproducts are dissolved into molten salt. Nuclear elements can emit heat or radioactivity for hundreds of thousands of years while they slowly cool, which is why nuclear waste is so dangerous (and why in the past, finding a place to Read more about BYU profs create new micro nuclear reactor to produce nuclear energy more safely[…]
China’s government-owned utility State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) has launched the world’s first commercial offshore floating solar that’s paired with an offshore wind turbine. SPIC is one of five major electrical utility companies in China, and the world’s largest photovoltaic power generation enterprise. The pilot is located off the coast of Haiyang, a city in Read more about The world’s first offshore floating wind-solar pilot just came online in China[…]
Back in 2013, Techdirt wrote about “the monster lurking inside free trade agreements”. Formally, the monster is known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), but here on Techdirt we call it “corporate sovereignty“, because that is what it is: a system of secret courts that effectively places companies above a government, by allowing them to sue Read more about Finally: Countries Start To Rebel Against Corporate Sovereignty, But Ten Years Too Late[…]
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have made a serendipitous scientific discovery that could potentially revolutionize the way water is broken down to release hydrogen gas—an element crucial to many industrial processes. The team, led by Associate Professor Xue Jun Min, Dr. Wang Xiaopeng and Dr. Vincent Lee Wee Siang Read more about Revolutionary technique to generate hydrogen more efficiently from water[…]
The San Diego County Water Authority has an unusual plan to use the city’s scenic San Vicente Reservoir to store solar power so it’s available after sunset. The project, and others like it, could help unlock America’s clean energy future. Perhaps a decade from now, if all goes smoothly, large underground pipes will connect this Read more about A California project would store solar energy to use when the sun goes down in water batteries[…]
1. Fossil Fuels View the full-size infographic While the U.S. is a dominant player in both oil and natural gas production, China holds the top spot as the world’s largest fossil fuel producer, largely because of its significant production and consumption of coal. Over the last decade, China has used more coal than the rest Read more about Charted: 40 Years of Global Energy Production, by Country[…]
[…] To avoid taking water from an already strained local supply, a team led by Gang Kevin Li, senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Australia, has built a system which extracts water from airborne vapor using a hygroscopic electrolyte, in this case sulfuric acid. The approach then uses solar-generated electricity to split the water Read more about Hydrogen could be harvested from thin air in the desert[…]