Wind

​Wind storms can cause a great deal of damage to coastal areas, producing waves that erode the shoreline and destroy facilities such as marinas. A newly-proposed "floating forest" could help, however, by blocking both the wind and the waves.

In 2014, US Army engineers Charles Marsh and Carl Feickert envisioned a wind-power system inspired by fluttering Venetian blinds. They have since teamed up with eight colleagues, creating a system that generates power in breezes that are too light to turn the blades of a traditional wind turbine.

A new satellite built by the Europeans Space Agency has now slipped into orbit, and will soon start using a sophisticated instrument to bounce lasers through the atmosphere to paint a more detailed picture of global wind patterns than ever before.

​Last year we detailed how Norsepower had rediscovered an engineering innovation, which sees large cylinders installed atop big ships harness wind for propulsion. Now a passenger ship has been treated to the Rotor Sail Solution and has set sail on wind-assisted trips between Finland and Sweden.​

Finnish company Norsepower has looked to the past for inspiration in making modern shipping more environmentally efficient, finding a solution in a nearly century-old engineering innovation relegated to the annals of quirky mechanical history.

Employing dual oscillating blades that mimic the figure-8 motion of the wings of a hovering hummingbird, Tyer Wind's new and quirky turbine has a compact design that's a potential fit for residential use.

Solar chargers are one means of keeping a smartphone charged when in remote locations, but they're dependant on hours of daylight and sunlight intensity. Portable turbines are an alternative and product designer Nils Ferber has created one he says is more portable and effective than any other.

The prolific Studio Roosegaarde has followed its Smog Free Tower and Waterlicht projects with a work that combines their respective environmental and light installation elements. Windlicht seeks to show the beauty of green energy by linking the blades of neighboring wind turbines with LED beams.

A freshly built indoor tank designed to study category five storms is now open for business at the University of Miami. As the only one of its kind in the world, it is hoped to bring a new understanding of these destructive superstorms.

The European Space Agency's Aeolus mission, designed to study the world's winds, is on track for a 2016 take-off. Following a troubled development process, the two lasers central to the project are now complete, allowing the team to ramp up testing ahead of launch.

VTT Technical Centre of Finland unveiled its decorative, mass-producible organic photovoltaic (OPV) leaves in January. Now, the company has followed the logical path and come up with an energy-harvesting tree that generates electricity from a variety of sources.

Generally speaking, wind turbines are banished to uninhabited countryside, or even out to sea.A French entrepreneur says that sculpting them in the form of artificial trees could see them more widely adopted in urban centers, making use of weaker winds that circulate around buildings and streets.