Energy

There’s plenty of ambient radiation just floating around in the air, and now MIT researchers have laid out the blueprints of a system that could tap into this wasted energy source and use it to charge electronic devices.

Stacking perovskite solar cells on top of silicon ones is one way to increase the amount of sunlight harnessed. Now researchers at Australian National University (ANU) have broken a new efficiency record for these tandem solar cells.

The US Department of Defense (DOD) has awarded contracts to three companies to develop mobile nuclear microreactors for military applications under a Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) initiative called Project Pele.

According to the latest report from IEA, in 2019 global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions stayed steady from the previous year. That’s cause for some cautious optimism, but may not signal the start of the long-term downward trend that we need.

Semi-transparent solar cells could be built into the glass roof panels of greenhouses, capturing light at wavelengths that plants don’t use anyway. Models suggest that in some cases these greenhouses could become completely self-sufficient.

Researchers from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) and Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh are looking at a method of extracting methane from Arctic permafrost, in a way that reduces carbon dioxide emissions.

A new report declaring a climate emergency has been signed by thousands of scientists. But it remains hopeful, outlining six steps we can take to mitigate the worst effects of climate change – provided we act sooner rather than later.

A new prototype device works like a kind of reverse solar panel, harvesting energy from the cold night sky to passively power an LED.

It’s not unusual to find rust around salt water, but now the pairing might be more useful. Researchers have found that electricity can be produced when salt water flows over the top of thin films of rust. The process was previously seen in – what else – graphene, but rust is far easier to scale up.

Coastal wastewater treatment plants may be a nasty but necessary way to handle the effluent from our cities, but a new study by Stanford University indicates that by mixing fresh water from the plants with seawater, they have the potential to recover 18 gigawatts of electricity worldwide.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has made some groundbreaking discoveries for physics, but it’s hard to tell how exactly that benefits the average Joe/Jill. Now CERN has announced that the LHC will soon divert some of the waste heat from the collider to help heat thousands of nearby homes.

One of the largest natural sources of renewable energy could be right under our feet – literally – with geothermal energy. Now researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Sanoh Industrial have developed a new type of battery cell that can directly convert heat energy into electricity.