Renewables

Windows and solar panels in the future could be made from one of the best—and cheapest—construction materials known: wood. Researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed a transparent wood material that's suitable for mass production. Lars Berglund, a professor at Wallenberg Wood Science Center at KTH, says that while optically transparent wood has been developed for microscopic samples in the study of wood anatomy, t...

Splitting water into its hydrogen and oxygen parts may sound like science fiction, but it's the end goal of chemists and chemical engineers like Christopher Murray of the University of Pennsylvania and Matteo Cargnello of Stanford University. They work in a field called photocatalysis, which, at its most basic, uses light to speed up chemical reactions. They've come a step closer to such a feat by tailoring the structure of a material called tita...

Researchers found that short, stunted mangroves living along the coastal desert of Baja California store up to five times more carbon below ground than their lush, tropical counterparts. The new study led by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego estimates that coastal desert mangroves, which only account for 1% of the land area, store nearly 30% of the region's belowground carbon.

Emerson Network Power has released a case study with Digital Realty Trust, showing how the two companies are partnering to drive environmentally sustainable innovation by saving energy and eliminating water usage in Digital Realty’s data centres. Digital Realty is utilising the Liebert DSE pumped refrigerant economiser cooling system to save more than 300m gallons of water annually in its data centres, compared to using ...

Cars of the future which advise how to drive more safely and economically could bring significant cuts in fuel consumption and emissions. Eco-driving systems offer visual guidance to drivers, usually built in to satellite navigation systems or via smartphone apps. The systems are not yet widely available, but manufacturers are looking at installing them in their next generation of cars.

When seeking clues to how well conservation efforts are working in the present, sometimes scientists look to the past—and there may be no better historical record than the forest surveys conducted in Missouri by the Bureau of Land Management in the 1800s. Using these historical records, University of Missouri researchers were able to shed light on how the interaction of natural disturbances, such as wildfires, and human actions shape forest...

A small team of researchers at Oxford University has published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailing their attempts to merge region-specific health models that are based on diet and weight related risk factors with global emission economic modules, to produce impact estimates on health, economics and climate change, if the consumption of meat were to be drastically reduced in the near future.

The Silicon Valley innovation miracle that has ushered in dizzying new ways for people to live, work and play also has intensified the pressure to find environmentally responsible ways to dispose of gadgets rendered obsolete. "This is more complex than cans and bottles," said Jeff Hunts, manager of the CalRecycle electronic waste recycling program. "The bottle or can you drank from will soon become another bottle or can. E-waste is much more comp...

The impact humans have made on Earth in terms of how we produce and consume resources has formed a 'striking new pattern' in the planet's global energy flow, according to researchers from the University of Leicester. The research suggests that the Earth is now characterised by a geologically unprecedented pattern of global energy flow that is pervasively influenced by humans - and which is necessary for maintaining the complexity of modern human ...

By rapidly heating silicon wafers covered with thin iron silicide and aluminum films, A*STAR researchers have developed a way to eliminate many of the complicated, time-consuming steps needed to fabricate light harvesting solar cells. Silicon photovoltaic devices typically sandwich two semiconductor layers containing positively or negatively charged impurity atoms, or dopants, into a so-called p-n junction.