Energy & Green Tech
International flights can transport us to most of the world's major cities within a day or two and later bring us home—often for less than a thousand dollars per seat. This jet-setting, however, comes with a heavy carbon ...
Feb 27, 2024
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Energy & Green Tech
Researchers at Kyushu University have found that Japan's current policy of stopping the sale of gas vehicles by 2035 and transitioning only to hybrids and electric vehicles may be insufficient to reduce the country's CO2 ...
Feb 7, 2024
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Business
A new analysis by MIT researchers shows the places in the U.S. where jobs are most linked to fossil fuels. The research could help policymakers better identify and support areas affected over time by a switch to renewable ...
Feb 5, 2024
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Energy & Green Tech
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have developed an algorithm to predict electric grid stability using signals from pumped storage hydropower projects. The method provides ...
Feb 5, 2024
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Energy & Green Tech
Researchers at McGill University have come up with an innovative approach to improve the energy efficiency of carbon conversion, using waste material from pulp and paper production. The technique they've pioneered using the ...
Feb 1, 2024
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Energy & Green Tech
Countries worldwide have been introducing new policies aimed at mitigating climate change and reducing carbon emissions. Many of these interventions focus on deploying more sustainable systems to supply electricity on a large ...
Energy & Green Tech
A team in Turkey has tested different machine-learning algorithms for predicting electricity demand from different sources. They trained the algorithms on electricity demand data for the period 2000–2022 and used them to ...
Jan 25, 2024
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Energy & Green Tech
The hurrying pace of societal electrification is encouraging from a climate perspective. But the transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable sources like wind presents new risks that are not yet fully understood.
Jan 24, 2024
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Energy & Green Tech
In the switch to "greener" energy sources, the demand for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries is surging. However, their cathodes typically contain cobalt—a metal whose extraction has high environmental and societal costs. ...
Jan 18, 2024
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Energy & Green Tech
A joint study by the University of Tübingen, the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research, the University of Osnabrück and the University of Rwanda has found that 80% of the energy required in Africa could come from renewable ...
Jan 16, 2024
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Renewable energy is energy generated from natural resources—such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat—which are renewable (naturally replenished). In 2006, about 18% of global final energy consumption came from renewables, with 13% coming from traditional biomass, such as wood-burning. Hydroelectricity was the next largest renewable source, providing 3% of global energy consumption and 15% of global electricity generation.
Wind power is growing at the rate of 30 percent annually, with a worldwide installed capacity of 121,000 megawatts (MW) in 2008, and is widely used in European countries and the United States. The annual manufacturing output of the photovoltaics industry reached 6,900 MW in 2008, and photovoltaic (PV) power stations are popular in Germany and Spain. Solar thermal power stations operate in the USA and Spain, and the largest of these is the 354 MW SEGS power plant in the Mojave Desert. The world's largest geothermal power installation is The Geysers in California, with a rated capacity of 750 MW. Brazil has one of the largest renewable energy programs in the world, involving production of ethanol fuel from sugar cane, and ethanol now provides 18 percent of the country's automotive fuel. Ethanol fuel is also widely available in the USA. While most renewable energy projects and production is large-scale, renewable technologies are also suited to small off-grid applications, sometimes in rural and remote areas, where energy is often crucial in human development. Kenya has the world's highest household solar ownership rate with roughly 30,000 small (20–100 watt) solar power systems sold per year.
Some renewable energy technologies are criticised for being intermittent or unsightly, yet the renewable energy market continues to grow. Climate change concerns coupled with high oil prices, peak oil and increasing government support are driving increasing renewable energy legislation, incentives and commercialization. New government spending, regulation, and policies should help the industry weather the 2009 economic crisis better than many other sectors.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
