Energy & Green Tech

New research at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis is the first to show that a solid-state electrolyte has a high level of similarity to liquid electrolytes, which is good news for designing safer and more efficient solid-state batteries based on reliable mechanistic knowledge.

Hydrogen, seen as the “ultimate energy” for the 21st century, boasts benefits such as being clean and renewable as well as storable and versatile. The International Energy Agency predicts that 115 million tons of hydrogen will be required in 2030 to make global carbon dioxide net emissions zero by 2050. This makes green hydrogen a promising avenue to a carbon-free society.

Hydrogen, or H₂, is getting a lot of attention lately as governments in the U.S., Canada and Europe push to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Solar energy is the cheapest and most accessible form of energy. Now, it promises to be more efficient than ever. Scientists from a Chinese solar technology company have developed a new type of solar cell that could be a game-changer in the world’s transition towards renewable energy.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast with wind speeds reaching 140 mph, eventually causing more than 1,800 deaths and $1.8 billion in damage.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists led the development of a supply chain model revealing the optimal places to site farms, biorefineries, pipelines and other infrastructure for sustainable aviation fuel production.

The cost to secure thousands of inactive oil and gas wells in the US Gulf of Mexico could top $30 billion, according to research published Monday weighing potential environmental damage against the estimated price tag.

A team led by Prof. Song Li from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) proposed the concept of intercalant-induced V t2g orbital occupation and developed an NH4+-intercalated vanadium oxide (NH4+-V2O5) for high-performance aqueous zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs). This work was published in PNAS.

Solar energy is at the forefront of the global shift toward producing sustainable energy sources and addressing energy poverty. However, the intermittent nature of solar energy limits its use for applications such as IoT devices, live remote sensing and an off-grid power supply. Conventionally the batteries are powered by solar cells to store the energy for later use. However, the physical combination of these two technologies requires separate packaging of both systems, is cumbersome to install, and requires more electrodes, which increases the cost and ohmic losses in the device.

Germany’s energy minister announced plans Friday to ease bureaucratic hurdles for solar power as the country set a new record for photovoltaic installations during the first quarter.