Clean Energy

The first generation-IV nuclear reactor design has been approved for certification by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NuScale's small modular reactor design promises safe, clean energy at radically reduced cost, land use and installation time.

Wave Swell Energy's remarkable UniWave 200 is a sea platform that uses an artificial blowhole formation to create air pressure changes that drive a turbine and feed energy back to shore. After a year of testing, the company reports excellent results.

Nuclear fusion is an incredibly complex scientific problem that researchers are coming at from all sorts of angles, and company Zap Energy is starting to make waves through one of the lesser-known approaches.

In a world first, a team at the University of New South Wales has demonstrated measurable power generation from "the inverse of a conventional solar cell." It could eventually produce around one tenth as much power as a solar panel – but at night.

Australian company Strategic Elements says it's made a step-change breakthrough in self-charging battery technology that harvests electrical energy from humidity in the air to directly power devices without ever needing to plug them in.

A UK company says it's demonstrated fusion in record time, on a shoestring US$59 million budget, using an innovative new approach that embeds fuel pellets in tiny, falling cube targets, then shoots projectiles at them at 19 times the speed of sound.

Australian nuclear fusion company HB11 says its disruptive laser-powered reactor design has demonstrated results "many orders of magnitude higher than those reported by any other fusion company," without requiring multi-million degree temperatures.

A kilogram of hydrogen holds 39.4 kWh of energy, but typically costs around 52.5 kWh of energy to create. Hysata says its capillary-fed electrolyzer cell slashes that energy cost to 41.5 kWh, smashing efficiency records and lowering green H2 prices.

Quaise's ultra-deep geothermal power plan is one of the most exciting and fascinating green energy projects we've seen, and it's generated some excellent – and terrible – questions from our readers. We gave the company the chance to answer you.

MIT spin-off Quaise says it's going to use hijacked fusion technology to drill the deepest holes in history, unlocking clean, virtually limitless, supercritical geothermal energy that can re-power fossil-fueled power plants all over the world.

Electrolysis is a key component of the cost of green hydrogen, and a Korean team says it's made a huge breakthrough with an anion exchange membrane that's not only cheaper than current proton exchange tech, but offers some 20 percent better performance.

The UK's Reaction Engines has announced the details of a joint venture to create its compact, lightweight ammonia reactor intended to decarbonize difficult sectors like shipping and off-grid energy generation – and surprisingly, also aviation.