https://techxplore.com/rss-feed/energy-green-tech-news/ en-us The latest news on energy sciences and green technology, energy technology, energy renovation, alternative energy, and green energy. Indoor photovoltaics (iPV) converts light from LEDs and fluorescent lamps found in homes and buildings into electricity, offering a route to self-powered sensors, remote controls, wearables and the tens of billions of connected devices expected to make up the internet of things (IoT). Whereas solar cells have had clear standards for measuring and reporting performance and stability outdoors under the sun, their use under indoor lighting has lacked a comparable consensus baseline standard. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-global-consensus-guidelines-solar-cells.html Energy & Green Tech Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:20:17 EDT news710773382 Data centers need water. And water byproducts from oil and gas and other industries need to go somewhere. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-salty-dirty-cool-centers-desalination.html Energy & Green Tech Fri, 09 Oct 2026 13:20:06 EDT news710770262 A team co-led by researchers at the University of California San Diego has developed a new way to make perovskite solar cells—a promising next-generation solar technology—more efficient and durable. By creating a temporary liquid while the material crystallizes, researchers were able to grow perovskite crystals that were larger, more uniform and contained fewer defects. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-temporary-liquid-perovskite-solar-cells.html Energy & Green Tech Fri, 09 Oct 2026 13:20:01 EDT news710768221 Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, together with Ooredoo Group, Nokia and Nvidia, plans to develop Zankore, an artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure platform aimed at serving the region. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-zankore-ai-factory-central-java.html Energy & Green Tech Fri, 09 Oct 2026 07:20:02 EDT news710748902 Heating and cooling buildings account for a large portion of global energy use. A research team in the Texas A&M University Department of Materials Science and Engineering was featured on the cover of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces for a study that aims to reduce that energy consumption. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-gel-energy-consumption.html Engineering Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:40:04 EDT news710696101 Scientists from Skoltech (part of the VEB.RF Group) and the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences have published the results of laboratory and numerical experiments in the International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-gas-ground-subsidence-arctic-oil.html Engineering Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:00:07 EDT news710693341 Researchers at Concordia University have found a way to use red mud, a waste product of aluminum production, to help turn low-quality clay and dredged sediment into useful ingredients for lower-carbon cement. They estimate that the swap could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% to 50%, depending on the formulation. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-industrial-key-ingredient-carbon-cement.html Engineering Thu, 08 Oct 2026 14:20:38 EDT news710687538 To mitigate climate change, direct air capture of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere has emerged as an increasingly attractive option for limiting global warming. But scaling up systems to remove and safely store enough CO₂ faces major obstacles, according to researchers at the Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE). https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-simple-modification-commercial-resin-air.html Engineering Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:40:12 EDT news710677588 The capacity of rogue AI agents to destroy our species within the next decade has recently been a hot topic of debate. Fears have been voiced within the industry about the rapidly increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-ways-rogue-ai-destroys-modern.html Energy & Green Tech Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:20:46 EDT news710668982 Researchers from Nagoya University in Japan have developed a durable fuel-cell catalyst by wrapping platinum nanoparticles in nitrogen-containing graphene and placing them on carbon nanotubes. This design retained 96.9% of its active surface after 30,000 durability cycles, pointing towards fuel cells with longer lifespans and lower platinum demand. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-platinum-fuel-cells-longer-nitrogen.html Engineering Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:20:01 EDT news710668801 Long development timelines increase the cost of energy from offshore wind (OSW) farms, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The research estimates that cutting approval timelines by just one year for a 1-gigawatt (GW) OSW farm lowers its energy costs by around €1 per megawatt-hour—roughly €110 million over the plant's 25-year operational lifespan. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-shortening-offshore-year-millions.html Business Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:00:01 EDT news710610601 A study published in the journal Nature Communications presents an advance in hydrogen production: a green, cost-effective process that generates hydrogen while simultaneously producing valuable chemicals for industry. The research was led by Avner Rothschild, a faculty member in the Technion Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering and head of the Technion Sustainability Frontier, together with postdoctoral researcher Dr. Guilin Ruan. A U.S. patent application has been filed for the technology. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-green-hydrogen-production-method-yields.html Engineering Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:40:14 EDT news710609221 Most electricity is generated by using heat to produce steam, which then turns a turbine. Although this approach performs exceptionally well in the high-temperature, superheated-steam regime, we currently lack widely applicable technologies that can exploit the much more abundant resource of low-temperature heat. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-method-reveals-efficiently-based-cells.html Engineering Wed, 07 Oct 2026 14:20:14 EDT news710600798 UNSW researchers have teamed up with industry partner UtmoLight to achieve a world-record efficiency for a large-area perovskite solar submodule. The UNSW team, led by Xiaojing Hao, a Scientia professor, achieved a certified stabilized power conversion efficiency of 23.5%, beating the previous benchmark by 0.6 percentage points. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-large-scale-perovskite-photovoltaic-efficiency.html Engineering Wed, 07 Oct 2026 07:20:01 EDT news710572802 A laboratory study has improved the production of green hydrogen using solar energy, thanks to photocatalysts that incorporate metals subjected to various treatments designed to enhance dispersion and photocatalytic activity. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-photocatalysts-boost-solar-hydrogen-production.html Energy & Green Tech Tue, 06 Oct 2026 15:20:07 EDT news710518622 Conventional metal recovery technologies do not adequately recover critical metals from effluents containing hydrophilic organic solvents. Researchers investigated dithiocarbamate-functionalized cellulose DPE6 to assess how organic solvents affect its metal sorption capability and to develop a separation and recovery technology applicable to actual effluents. The results show highly efficient critical metal recovery and are expected to contribute to the effective use of finite metal resources and the realization of a sustainable society. The research is published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-cellulose-methanol-based-solar-cell.html Engineering Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:40:11 EDT news710515504 Solar cells absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity. This process, however, is not perfect, and a large part of the solar energy is simply lost along the way. Some of it is lost as heat, while photons with insufficient energy pass through the cell without generating electricity. These are the sources of loss that most scientists in the field try to minimize, but there is another important one known as Boltzmann loss. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-solar-cells-gain-efficiency-emitting.html Engineering Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:00:06 EDT news710508901 A new approach to plastic recycling being explored at Penn State could make the process more efficient by using tiny particles of coal, according to researchers. On the latest episode of "Growing Impact," researchers discussed how the technique uses laser light to generate heat at the molecular scale, potentially allowing plastics to be broken down into their basic building blocks and reused. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-impact-explores-role-coal-play.html Engineering Tue, 06 Oct 2026 11:20:23 EDT news710503381 All-solid-state lithium batteries using nonflammable solid electrolytes are widely recognized as promising candidates for next-generation energy storage because of their superior safety and fast-charging capability. However, widely studied oxide-based solid electrolytes contain heavy elements such as lanthanum and zirconium, resulting in high densities (e.g., 5.12 g/cm3) that limit improvements in overall battery gravimetric energy density. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-element-crystal-framework-paves-safer.html Engineering Tue, 06 Oct 2026 09:00:01 EDT news710495401 A new form of steel could be used to reduce low-frequency vibration in machinery operating in harsh environments, where conventional damping materials can degrade and quickly lead to failure. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-steel-damp-vibration-harsh-industrial.html Energy & Green Tech Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:00:01 EDT news710431021 From the street straight into the battery: Researchers have developed a wireless charging system that charges electric buses via their wheels at bus stops. This technology is expected to significantly reduce the costs of running a bus line. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-electric-buses.html Energy & Green Tech Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:40:01 EDT news710421901 Wireless charging has already transformed how people power phones, wearables and even electric vehicles. The next leap is to advance wireless technologies beyond delivering electrical energy to directly producing nonelectrical outputs, such as optical, thermal and mechanical energy, according to actual needs. This would create an energy delivery network as flexible and efficient as the internet. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-wireless-energy-internet-roadmap-path.html Energy & Green Tech Mon, 05 Oct 2026 11:00:11 EDT news710416081 Oregon State University scientists have filed a patent application for a new carbon-capture material that turns water in factory flue emissions from a problem into an advantage. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-material-boost-carbon-capture-technologies.html Energy & Green Tech Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:40:11 EDT news710147868 Water electrolyzers are promising devices that use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. If powered by solar cells or other renewable energy technologies, they could contribute to the sustainable production of hydrogen used to make ammonia, which in turn is used to produce fertilizers and other valuable compounds. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-09-scaled-seawater-hydrogen-fresh-higher.html Engineering Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:00:01 EDT news709821798 The shift toward distributed electricity systems is changing the work of operators responsible for keeping high-voltage grids stable, according to a study in the International Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics. The researchers looked at the concerns of employees at 15 Nordic grid operators. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-renewable-energy-reshaping-grids-stable.html Energy & Green Tech Fri, 02 Oct 2026 17:20:07 EDT news710166090 Anyone calculating how much electricity an offshore wind farm will deliver looks at the wind and not at the clouds. Researchers at the University of Twente show that this leaves part of the yield unaccounted for. Low cloud cover speeds up the recovery of the wind behind a wind farm and can benefit the next farm in line. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-cloud-offshore-farms-easing-shadows.html Energy & Green Tech Fri, 02 Oct 2026 11:40:10 EDT news710159521 The transition to clean energy is underway, but major structural obstacles are slowing it down. Wind and solar power accounted for a record 17% of electricity generated by U.S. utilities last year. However, fossil fuels still supply the lion's share, and a huge number of new natural gas plants are in development to power data centers. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-energy-bottleneck-isnt-technology.html Business Fri, 02 Oct 2026 07:00:01 EDT news710140202 What if the energy powering your home or office could be generated, stored and used all in the same place? This is the hope for the next generation of buildings, powered by renewable sources with energy stored nearby—possibly even within the concrete used to construct the building itself. Reporting in ACS Nano, researchers have developed an efficient, energy-storing cement supercapacitor that holds up as well as commercial concrete in tests. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-cement-based-supercapacitors-power-generation.html Energy & Green Tech Thu, 01 Oct 2026 17:09:19 EDT news710093324 Manufacturers looking to include sustainable upholstery, mattresses and vehicle seats in their product lines will soon have an environmentally friendly alternative to the petroleum-based polyurethane (PU) foams currently used for these applications. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-upholstery-foam-bio-based-ingredients.html Engineering Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:00:47 EDT news710088541 Satellite data could help governments decide where to build the data centers behind the growth of AI by showing where renewable power, water and land are available and where drought and climate risks are highest, according to researchers at the University of Surrey. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-require-satellite-ai-centers-urge.html Business Thu, 01 Oct 2026 15:00:05 EDT news710084182