Energy & Green Tech news

Engineering

Study shows potential for sustainable azelaic acid production from vegetable oils

Azelaic acid is a renewable monomer used in the production of lubricants, polymers, and skincare. While conventionally produced via the energy-intensive ozonolysis of oleic acid, recent advances enable its production from ...

Energy & Green Tech

California wants to mix hydrogen with gas to cut climate pollution. Critics say that poses risks

Alma Figueroa began to worry when she learned that her gas provider wanted to test a controversial solution to curb global warming: blend hydrogen with natural gas to power her stove and other appliances. Figueroa, who has ...

Energy & Green Tech

Greenland's harsh environment and lack of infrastructure have prevented rare earth mining

Greenland's harsh environment, lack of key infrastructure and difficult geology have so far prevented anyone from building a mine to extract the sought-after rare earth elements that many high-tech products require. Even ...

Energy & Green Tech

Meta lines up massive supply of nuclear power to energize AI data centers

Meta has cut a trio of deals to power its artificial intelligence data centers, securing enough energy to light up the equivalent of about 5 million homes.

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 ...

Energy & Green Tech

Solar hydrogen can now be produced efficiently, no platinum required

A research team led by Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has presented a new way to produce hydrogen gas without the scarce and expensive metal platinum. Using sunlight, water and tiny particles of electrically conductive ...

Energy & Green Tech

Combining nuclear waste disposal with mobile energy generation

It is common for nuclear engineers to be concerned with the disposition of nuclear waste. After all, the United States alone currently has about 90,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel stored in concrete casks on nuclear ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

'Energy sandwich' could power next-generation solar and lighting

Researchers have achieved a new level of control over the atomic structure of a family of materials known as halide perovskites, creating a finely tuned "energy sandwich" that could transform how solar cells, LEDs and lasers ...

Energy & Green Tech

New hope for lithium extraction from old batteries

A new study shows that lithium—a critical element used in rechargeable batteries and susceptible to supply chain disruption—can be recovered from battery waste using an electrochemically driven recovery process. The method ...

Engineering

Producing bio-methane and CO₂ directly from moist biogas

Thanks to novel flat membranes, biogas can be processed directly and energy-efficiently—even in small plants. In the Bio4Value project, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP in the Potsdam Science Park, ...

Energy & Green Tech

The next frontier in clean flight? Jet fuel from city waste

Aviation currently contributes about 2.5% of total global carbon emissions, and with air travel demand expected to double by 2040, cutting those emissions has become a pressing priority. One path forward is sustainable aviation ...

Energy & Green Tech

Renewables outpace fossil fuels despite US policy shift: IEA

Renewable energy is still expanding faster than fossil fuels around the world despite policy changes in the United States, with oil demand possibly peaking "around 2030," the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.

Energy & Green Tech

Rewiring a sustainable, clean energy future with copper

We've heard a lot of talk about critical minerals recently. These are the metals and elements crucially important to the advanced technologies we have all become accustomed to: our mobile phones, electric vehicles (EVs), ...