Novel yarns made with carbon nanotubes can generate electricity from mechanical energy better than any other material to date, a new study finds. The high-tech yarns, known as twistrons, can be sewn into clothes to produce electricity from human motion or deployed in the ocean to harvest energy from waves, researchers say. Electromagnetic generators, which […]
Electronics are slated to consume over a fifth of the world’s electricity use by 2030. Much of that energy is wasted as heat, requiring cooling that also consumes power, and often copious amounts of water. To put a dent in that energy and water use, researchers have now shown that hydrogels—used in contact lenses, wound […]
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. Water heaters are, according to new research, sizing up to be more than just water heaters in the modern, renewably-powered home. They could, in fact, be something closer to a battery. The concept is simple but effective—when energy supply […]
By replacing the traditionally flat electrodes and membranes in a flow battery cell with wire electrodes and tubular membranes, researchers have shrunk the battery cell size by 75 percent. This reduction in footprint and complexity could cut the cost of flow batteries, an important front-runner to store renewable energy on the grid. Solar and wind […]
Electric-vehicle batteries may help store renewable energy to help make it a practical reality for power grids, potentially meeting grid demands for energy storage by as early as 2030, a new study finds. Solar and wind power are the fastest growing sources of electricity, according to climate think tank Ember. However, the variable nature of […]
Among the most basic power equipment components—transformers—are in short supply in both the U.S. and Ukraine, increasing their power grids’ vulnerability. In the U.S., a spate of hurricanes, global supply holdups, domestic terror attacks on grid infrastructure, and a dearth of domestic manufacturing has depleted stocks. In Ukraine, relentless Russian bombardment of electrical substations is […]
If the steel industry were a country, it would be ranked third in the world in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, after China and the United States. Steel production accounts for between 7 and 9 percent of the world’s total annual carbon emissions, according to the World Steel Association. “That’s massive coming from one sector,” […]
MIT researchers have made solar panels thinner than human hair that provide 18 times as much power per kilogram as today’s glass and silicon-based solar panels. These solar cells are in fact one-hundredth the weight of conventional photovoltaics. Should it be possible one day to scale up this technology, the implications could be sizable. Hundreds […]
There is no unused arable land on a planet that’s already struggling to support a human population that cleared 8 billion last month, and where roughly 1 million plants and animals are threatened with extinction. The pressure is palpable. In Montreal this week, activists and diplomats are negotiating a biodiversity treaty in an effort to […]
It’s not about to solve climate change, but what happened at Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) early in the morning on 5 December is still noteworthy. In a press conference on the morning of 13 December, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced that one of NIF’s experiments had, for the first […]