Turning Solar Energy Into Liquid Fuel How About Turning Sunshine Into Liquid Fuel For Solar Thermal Energy Storage? Of all the strange things we do as a race on this planet, refining and over-complicating things are some of them. We’re never satisfied with letting things be and often time favor extravagant conspiracy theories over reality. After all, how would the opposing piston...

Schneider + Greentown Labs = Renewable Energy Innovation Powerhouse Navigating the seas of today’s renewable energy revolution is a tricky business. Startups rise and fall like mushrooms, and some legacy companies have had trouble figuring it out. Schneider has roots in machine manufacturing that go back to 1836, and with its 200th anniversary in range, the company is making some...

All of Norway’s short-haul airliners should be entirely electric by 2040, the country’s airport operator said, cementing the Nordic nation’s role as a pioneer in the field of electric transport. Avinor, the public operator of Norwegian airports, “aims to be the first in the world” to make the switch to electric air transport, chief executive Dag...

EPFL researchers have developed a simulator that can calculate the performance of wind farms over 30 years while also factoring in the need to preserve local biodiversity. Tested at a site in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, the simulator could be applied to the Swiss Jura region, which has a similar landscape. Three EPFL labs were involved in developing the model in...

Hydrogène de France (HDF) Energy’s French Western Guiana Power Plant would couple a 55-megawatt solar farm with hydrogen storage to deliver steady, clean power at any time of day. This process is supported by secondary storage in batteries. The €90 million ($105 million) plant would generate a fixed electrical output of 10 megawatts in the daytime and 3 megawatts during the...

Pope Francis has told oil company chiefs that the world must switch to clean energy because climate change risks destroying humanity. “Civilisation requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilisation,” he said at the end of a two-day conference at the Vatican. The pontiff said climate change was a challenge of epochal proportions, and that the world needed to come up with...

Honda and General Motors have announced a partnership to jointly develop battery cells and modules for electric vehicles. The companies want their next-generation batteries to have higher energy density in a smaller packaging, with faster charging, and to make them more viable to manufacture. With the two companies joining forces, there are manufacturing efficiency benefits along...

A contentious proposal to link oversight of California’s electric grid with other western states faces a crucial test in a state Senate committee. Supporters say rationalizing the grid would make it easier and cheaper to deploy renewable energy across the western United States. But critics, including some environmentalists and consumer advocates, say California would...

They are green, clean and make very little noise. It is this latter quality, initially seen by many as a good thing, that has become an acute concern for safety campaigners, who fear that the rising number of electric vehicles constitutes a silent menace. When they travel at under 20mph the vehicles can barely be heard, especially by cyclists or pedestrians listening to music...

Developers from Bosch and scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are using neutrons to analyze the filling of lithium ion batteries for hybrid cars with electrolytes. Their experiments show that electrodes are wetted twice as fast in a vacuum as under normal pressure. One of the most critical and time-consuming processes in battery production is the filling of...