Green Energy

With all the developments in the auto industry you may think your next car will be electric, including a new federal target that would mean half of all new vehicles sold within a decade will have zero emissions. This will be a dramatic shift for car shoppers, and perhaps an unsettling one. With the future […]

Solar energy has the potential to supply up to 40% of the nation’s electricity within 15 years—a 10-fold increase over current solar output, but one that would require massive changes in U.S. policy and billions of dollars in federal investment to modernize the nation’s electric grid, a new federal report says. The report by the […]

A group of scientists at Empa has pushed the efficiency of flexible solar cells to a new limit. Independent measurements revealed an efficiency of 21.4 percent when these types of solar cells convert light into electricity. For comparison: the best efficiency of a non-flexible solar cell made of crystalline silicon is reported at 26.7 percent. […]

As Congress advances legislation to invest $550 billion in new funding for national infrastructure projects, the specific priorities in each industry category remain undefined. For example, the proposed framework directs $65 billion to foster greater use of renewable energy sources within America’s power grid, but it doesn’t exactly define how that will happen. “Wind is […]

Fraunhofer researchers have developed an intelligent coating for glass windows that darkens in the sun. This uses electrochromic and thermochromic materials that react to electricity and heat. In buildings with large glass façades, it stops the rooms from getting too hot because of solar radiation, thereby reducing the demand for energy-intensive air conditioning. The building […]

When the Swiss government decided to phase out nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima accident on 11 March 2011, it also launched a major nationwide research program to explore alternative energy sources, with the goal of fully replacing the country’s nuclear power with renewable energy by 2050. Some CHF 250 million in funding […]

Japan’s Nissan Motor Co Ltd has developed a new technology to halve the cost of recycling rare earths used in magnet motors for electric vehicles (EVs), the company said on Friday. With tension simmering between China and the United States, automakers are trying to reduce their reliance on a key driver of the EV revolution […]

Imagine an electric grid powered by clean, renewable energy. Now imagine that this grid provides all the comfort and convenience consumers have come to expect as well as grid reliability and resiliency services that are similar to—or better than—conventional plants. That is the promise of the FlexPower project. With support from the U.S. Department of […]

Marine shipping traffic has grown steadily over the past decade—and so have the associated greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon emissions from ships grew almost 10% between 2012 and 2018, and the industry is a large consumer of petroleum fuel. Substituting biofuel could reduce the amount of greenhouse gases and other pollutants entering the air from ocean […]

Sandia National Laboratories researchers combined large sets of real-world solar data and advanced machine learning to study the impacts of severe weather on U.S. solar farms, and sort out what factors affect energy generation. Their results were published earlier this month in the scientific journal Applied Energy. Hurricanes, blizzards, hailstorms and wildfires all pose risks […]