Energy & Green Tech news

Energy & Green Tech

Carbon nanotube fiber 'textile' heaters could help industry electrify high-temperature gas heating

A cross-disciplinary team at Rice University has developed a new type of electric heating element—one that looks less like a traditional metal coil and more like a high-performance thread. In a study published in Small, ...

Energy & Green Tech

Breaking down the battery problem: Cheaper, more efficient cathodes could cut costs

Consider the humble rechargeable battery: Many people start their day by unplugging their phone from a charger to check the weather or commute to work, or throw on their favorite podcast. They'll end the day by plugging in ...

Engineering

Zeolite 'thermal batteries' could cut data center cooling power up to 86%

Data centers—the warehouse-sized buildings that store photos, stream movies and train artificial intelligence—are voracious consumers of electricity. A surprisingly large share of that power never reaches a microchip. ...

Energy & Green Tech

Cheaper EV batteries? How a fabrication tweak makes sulfur work in solid-state cells

Spurred by EVs and electrified aviation, global demand for lithium-ion batteries is expected to more than double its 2023 levels by 2030, far outstripping demand, according to S&P Global Insights. New batteries must be powerful, ...

Business

Power outages cost US electricity customers billions

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have provided the first comprehensive analysis of the specific costs of power outages to local customers across the nation. It found that the average ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Canadians toss electronics at a concerning rate

The first survey of Canadian consumers regarding their purchase and disposal of electronics reveals that 64% of people replace their items for reasons other than the device breaking down or being obsolete. This behavior points ...

Energy & Green Tech

AI tool predicts building emissions from simple text descriptions

Researchers at the University of Bath have developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) tool that predicts the carbon footprint of buildings from simple text descriptions, giving architects real-time feedback on sustainability ...

Energy & Green Tech

Microsoft says will foot AI's massive power bill

Microsoft said Tuesday it will shoulder the full electricity costs of its US data centers to prevent American households from facing higher power bills driven by surging AI energy demand.

Energy & Green Tech

Power grid testing boosts distribution innovations to utility scale

A historic legacy now translates to pioneering capabilities in electric grid technology at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The secure electrical infrastructure that enabled World War II nuclear advances ...

Energy & Green Tech

New technique could facilitate faster nuclear forensics

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have, for the first time, used a breakthrough technique with a goal of better identifying the origin of nuclear materials—a tool that could someday help efforts to prevent the ...

Energy & Green Tech

Ionogel innovation could power safe, enduring energy storage

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an innovative energy storage system design that introduces a safer, more efficient method for electrical charge transfer.

Energy & Green Tech

AI data centers could stabilize the power grid

The rapid development and widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems is posing new challenges for electricity consumption. This is because most AI systems rely on data centers, facilities hosting several computing ...

Energy & Green Tech

Q&A: How AI could optimize the power grid

Artificial intelligence has captured headlines recently for its rapidly growing energy demands, and particularly the surging electricity usage of data centers that enable the training and deployment of the latest generative ...