Climate change's impacts are being felt everywhere, from health and food security to extreme weather, sea level rise and collapsing ecosystems. World leaders have been slow to adapt to the warnings, despite an ever-growing body of evidence showing the compounding risks of greenhouse gas emissions.

But despite fossil fuels remaining the world's primary source of energy and emissions continuing to rise, there are changes afoot.

In his book "Despite it All" (Granta, 2026), author and journalist Fred Pearce looks at the shifts that have taken place over the last 40 years, highlighting how far humanity has come in the green transition. He believes this progress gives us reason to hope that we can eventually overcome the challenges we face today.

Pearce spoke with Live Science about his book, which has been shortlisted for the 2026 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.

Hannah Osborne: There are a lot of positive environmental stories throughout the book, including those that aren't necessarily being told. Do you think that there is a growing appetite for positive climate news now? And will it help us?

Fred Pearce: I detect a kind of desire to be told something other than it's all hopeless and there's nothing we can do. Some people are therefore saying, "Well, what can I do?" And they're very sort of personal stories about how they can contribute. But also people who think more, if you like, strategically: What can the world do, what can governments do, what, how can we influence that?

I try not to write what I think people want to read. I try to write what I want to say. And it seems to me that we do so many things so badly, whether it's managing our resources or water or handling forests or the climate, or pollution or whatever. We do things so badly that there is a great deal of scope for doing things a lot better. So, we need optimists and we need pessimists. We need pessimists to point out the problems. We need optimists to come up with some solutions or suggest where [there are] half open doors that we can push open.

I wrote this book in that kind of spirit to say "Look, yes, things are bad, yes, I'm not denying that they're bad, but there's an awful lot that we can do about it and in some cases are doing about it." That then divides into whether we're talking about human activity, our technical solutions to climate change. Tech fixes are good, not bad, which is something that can be a hard sell in the environment community sometimes, so I want to stress that.

I went to the Earth Summit 30 years ago where they agreed [upon] the original climate change convention. Back then they said we [need to] prevent dangerous climate change, but they really didn't know much about how to do it. Wind turbines were just, you know, a few masts on a hill in California. Nobody was dealing much in solar power because it was just so expensive. It had been developed for powering satellites and electric cars. Nobody was talking about [it].

We have made quite a lot of progress and it's not fast enough and CO₂ emissions are stable, they're not going down. We need to do a hell of a lot more and we may have passed climate tipping points. I'm not denying any of that, but rather than throwing up our hands or saying it's hopeless, let's get on with the tech, let's also recognize that nature is very good at recovering. You destroy a forest, a rainforest, it doesn't mean that it's destroyed forever. It will, given the chance, come back if we give it room. So let's give forests room to recover.

In large parts of the world it's already happening — in Europe, even in North America. Agricultural land is being abandoned, and when it's abandoned nature comes back and not necessarily in the sort of ways that we might think. But nature does come back, stuff regrows. We can see how evolution is being kickstarted, if you like, by the chaos that we're creating. That's not to say we shouldn't stop creating the chaos, but we can see how nature recovers.

These are things that we can recognize and respond to; giving nature room to recover, rewilding projects, therefore I'm all in favor of [them]. We're not rewilding where we're trying to garden nature to get back to some sort of perfected past, a pristine system where we thought that everything was great — pre-industrial revolution or before Europeans arrived in North America or whatever it might be. But, we can give nature room to evolve and adapt and change. We can see that nature's doing that all the time, with or without climate change and with or without humans. Nature is constantly, if you like, remaking itself.

I'm not saying nature always comes back in ways that we approve of. Let's recognize the distinction between our sort of slightly romanticized idea of what nature should be and what nature actually is.

HO: You talk about rewilding and letting nature take its course, but how do humans fit in with this? Can we adapt our own perceptions of what nature is allowed and what's not?

FP: I think we can probably forget about what's allowed and what's not. Nature will do what it wants to do. We pride ourselves on our ability to garden nature in a way, or manage ecosystems. We're not really very good at it. Nature will very often take over and do what it wants to do.

Some of the world's biggest rewilding projects have gone quite badly wrong because we haven't quite thought it through. The one I'm thinking of really is the large project in the Netherlands where they're trying to sort of recreate ancient European ecosystems and they ended up with mass deaths of animals because their conception of the ecosystem didn't quite figure out. They then largely abandoned the project because they didn't like to see large numbers of animals dying.

A hardline rewilder would say let nature take its course. I see the case for that, and often I would support that, but we have our own sensibilities and our own concerns and we are living in a world where we are very much in charge of what's going on. So while I'm in favor of standing back and letting nature take its course, we have our own sensibilities, and it's not wrong for us to want to intervene sometimes.

HO: There's a chapter on human population and fertility rates, and how this is very much a climate change story as well. We're now seeing a lot of the rhetoric around this, and rights being stripped back and taken away. What's it like for you, having seen the changes from the UN International Conference on Population in Mexico in the 80s, to Cairo in the 90s to now?

FP: It's an extraordinary story. I've been working on these issues for 40 years now so I've seen a number of changes. Some of the changes I've seen are how technical fixes somehow became a reality when they seemed very distant a while ago.

But our perceptions change too on many things. We are, in many ways, more attuned to environmental issues now than we were 30 or 40 years ago. One of the big changes that I've seen is the notion of the population bomb, which for much of the 20th century was seen as the number one issue. People would say, "Well, there's no point in fixing the climate, there's no point in reducing our pollution because there are more and more people on the planet, and we're kind of doomed for that reason."

Well, it hasn't [happened]. When I went to my first international conference, which was the UN Population Conference in Mexico City in 1984, that was all the rage. They gave the UN Population prize to the mastermind of China's one child policy, which — in terms of human rights and what I would regard as acceptable human behavior — was dreadful. But such was the concern about population issues that they wanted to give a prize to the operator of that program.

A lot has changed. A feminist agenda, if I could put it that way, and I would say that approvingly, has taken over in reproductive politics. I saw it at a UN population conference in Cairo in 1994, 10 years after the Mexico event, that we need to assert reproductive rights. Many environmentalists said that's a cop out. It was all "it's feminist perspective, but it's dooming us."

Well, it didn't, because what we found was that by and large, women wanted to have smaller families because their children got to grow up. Medical improvements meant that you didn't have to have four or five children to secure the next generation. Two would usually do, sometimes you just wanted one. Women wanted to have lives outside the home. The population people seemed to be a bit surprised by that.

The environmental agenda was a very male-dominated one for a long time. So that came as a bit of a surprise, but the net result is that we've halved our fertility rates. They're more or less down to replacement levels [of reproduction] now globally.

I'm not just talking about Europe or North America. I'm talking about almost everywhere except Africa, and African levels have come down. Sometimes they're coming down to super low levels, so that people are now talking about not having enough babies and how we can encourage people to have babies. There are parts of the world where we're down to one child per woman and even a bit less.

My argument is that we need to carry on. Not take a sort of Elon Musk approach [or] send the women back to the home and [do] reproduction and that's what their job is. We need to complete the feminist revolution so that women have more rights, can make better choices, and indeed couples can make more and better choices about the family size that they want. We can arrange things so that it is possible to have children and a career, or make it easier to do that, and at that point probably reproduction levels will come back up.

What I'm really saying is that the agenda is now vastly different from what it was as recently as the 1980s and, and into the 1990s. The population bomb is being defused, to put it simply, there's a residual momentum effect which means that our numbers will carry on going up a bit. Sure, that creates strains on the planet, but we're not now talking about double the world population every 30 years, which is what was being talked about back in the mid 20th century. It's tailing off.

We now have, if you like, a consumption bomb more than a population bomb. The global issue is consumption in the rich world, and that's what's stressing the planet now — not too many babies in poor parts of the world.

HO: Inequality between the super rich and people in developing countries is becoming more and more stark. How do we bridge the gap to make sure there's a reasonable living standard for regular people without a huge cost to the environment?

FP: The truth is, and the numbers have been done by a number of different people, a reasonable standard of living for everybody on the planet is perfectly feasible without destroying the planet.

We need to do some things better, we need to have better technology, but for me, right up there with climate change is an issue of global inequality. When I was young, it was taken [that] inequalities were diminishing and it was taken almost as read that they would carry on diminishing, and a lot of aid policies were directed towards that. That's kind of disappeared since the sort of Reaganomics of the 1980s, all the changes in the finance system and perhaps the fall of the Berlin Wall, which meant that the sort of socialist or, or equality-based agendas collapsed politically.

We're now finding increased inequality, and that, it seems to me, is a threat to the lives of millions and billions of humans, but also to global stability and our ability perhaps to manage.

Serious global issues like climate change and many others are all undermined by the political stresses and economic stresses created by rising inequality. I see them going together.

It's also clear that it's important to level up, but also level down from the obscene riches that we see among a small number of individuals, who seem to be accumulating a greater share of the world's wealth, whether we're talking about dollars or natural resources.

HO: You have a whole chapter on renewables and how they're outpacing fossil fuels. They're the cheaper alternative. How do you see the political opposition to clean energy panning out over the next five to 10 years?

FP: It's fizzling out. It's a weird political backlash and yes, any big social trend or economic trend, they all have backlashes and it feels to me like this is it. What we see in the real world is that the U.S. — not just the U.S., but principally the U.S. — are in a state of near denial about climate and they're wanting to go back to fossil fuels.

In the rest of the world, if you look at it in terms of geopolitics of [the] U.S. versus China, then the U.S. is pushing this rather old agenda of fossil fuels, and China is absolutely going to reap the benefits in many, many ways in its drive towards renewables. China has been a really bad story in the past with its coal burning — and it's still building a few coal-fired power stations. But the really big story is how China has been principally responsible for bringing down the costs of renewable energy, particularly solar power.

You can now go to the most remote corners of rural Africa and you find people putting up their solar panels to recharge car batteries so that they can run their lights in the evening or whatever it is. And then you've got megacities operating using increasing amounts of solar power. India is getting on the bandwagon as well. It's got the fastest growing solar energy economy in the world.

In the real world, renewable [energy] is mostly cheaper than fossil fuels. It is also quicker to install, you don't have to build a huge power station, you can do it in bits and pieces, bolt bits on.

Yes, there are grid issues and they need to be addressed, and there are limits on operating. There are challenges, but renewables are just growing so fast, and it is growing so fast because it is so cheap.

And it's become so cheap, to put it very simply, because the Chinese 20 or 30 years ago decided this is what's going to happen. While everybody else was sort of talking about it and fussing about it and doing it in research labs, the Chinese kind of got to grips with it. I remember back in the 1990s talking about people who were going into China and coming back and telling me stories about how the Chinese are really serious about renewable energy. To be honest, I didn't quite believe them, but they were right, and 30 years on, the world is living with the benefits. That's true whether you're talking about Europe or rural Africa or big cities in Asia or wherever. It's coming.

There will be different solutions in different places and there are undoubtedly things that are harder to do than, you know, running our national grids on renewable energy, which is becoming really quite easy and something that everybody wants to do. The cement industries, fertilizers perhaps, some of these industries will take some more technical innovation. But it's happening, these are technical fixes that are working in the real world. Will we do it in time? Well, we're a bit late on the case, but we are on the case.

HO: We're now seeing a massive rise in AI data centers as well. Is this bad tech, shall we say?

FP: It's a serious issue. Partly because they're growing so fast — they can't just plug into the grid because the grid really can't deliver, so these companies are developing their own energy systems. Even in the U.S. they are very often renewable systems because they're cheaper. If you've got a data center out in Texas, then you're going to use wind power or solar power because it's cheaper and you're in control of it.

I suppose we reach a point where [we have to decide], do we want to reduce our use of energy or have almost as much energy as we want, but just green it and green it very fast. It is true that if all the renewable investment is going into electricity for data centers, that leaves less investment for other sectors of the economy, so I'm sure there are trade-offs, and I'm not saying that we should embrace data centers. But they can be a driving force for adoption of different forms of energy, renewable energy, and for perhaps changes in the grid systems as well.

I think we can have both. I think we need to have both because we're probably not going to stop the data engines, so we've got to find ways of greening them. There are issues and there are challenges ahead, and I don't want to diminish any of those, but you know, let's, let's be hopeful.

The title of the book uses the word hopeful rather than optimist because I don't want to sound Panglossian, but I do want to inject some hope.

HO: When you started writing the book, what did you hope people would take from it, and did that change after you'd finished?

FP: Well it kind of evolved. It began as an idea to sort of [be a] retrospective of my reporting, and then the publisher said, "Well, the story changes rather a lot along the way, so rather than just showcasing your reporting over 40 years, why don't you showcase the change, and be hopeful in the context of how things have changed over the last 40 years?"

That was [the] kind of starting point, and we sharpened up on it, as we went along it did become "Despite It All" and you know, the title is important, and not diminishing the "All." There's a lot of bad stuff out there, but despite it all we can have hope and we can find, develop and demand solutions.

HO: Did you find anything during the process of writing the book that surprised you?

FP: As I say, it started as a sort of retrospective project and going through it, [there were places I went years ago] and it did look bad, then I checked up on what had happened over the intervening years and suddenly things looked a lot better.

I went to Alaska and saw how the conflicts over managing caribou herds and the huge migrations that go on and it felt like that was doomed. I was talking to people who were hunting the animals and they were trying to protect them because they wanted to hunt them, therefore they wanted them still to be there, which is kind of counterintuitive for many environmentalists, but you know, they were the best defenders of the caribou because they ate them.

But it felt doomed, and yet 20 years later I checked out the numbers and the population of that herd has doubled and tripled. So stuff does happen and I suppose my surprise was how much good change I found when I looked into it further. Maybe that's me being better at looking for good news stories. I've written quite a lot of "bad news" books over the years and done a lot of "bad news" journalism over the years, so I certainly don't discount that. But if you step back and you think, well did good stuff happen? Well, yeah, sometimes it did.

The bison herds are coming back on the plains of parts of North America, if you go to Montana. The ranches are disappearing and big areas are being set aside for bison, and I've been seeing how farmland in parts of southern and eastern Europe has been abandoned over the years. It's not necessarily good news that we're abandoning farmland, but again, the way that nature comes back and woodlands are growing, there are more forests in Europe than there have been for probably centuries.

There's a lot of bad stuff to say. But it does seem to me that we have to not just cling onto, but embrace good stuff and try [to] take it forward.

Something I really hadn't thought about till I went back was what were the big issues in the 1980s, 1970s when I started out. Well, all our industrial rivers in Britain were filthy. Now our industrial rivers are relatively clean. It's our agricultural rivers that are filthy, so, I mean, there's been a big change there.

Nobody has to talk much about the ozone layer now. That was the number one issue in the mid 1980s, and the absolutely terrifying prospect if we hadn't fixed that. But it's been fixed.

We banned the chemicals that were doing it.

Remember acid rain, lead in petrol. They were hot topics, headline news, part of the rise of the environmental agenda in the 1980s — and they're the ones that we don't have to talk about anymore.

Now we're talking about climate change. I think there are other things coming up. I think the issue of nitrogen pollution is a fast growing one, and we need technical solutions to that.

The green revolution of crops, the high-yielding crops, which got us out of a cycle of ever worsening hunger and famines in the mid 20 century. That was a solution which created new problems. Those crops grew very well, but they required large amounts of inputs, including water, and water is now a growing issue — finding enough irrigation water, but also fertilizer and other agrichemicals. We're now reaping some of the bad effects of that, and we need to solve that. Scientists I know are working on, if you like, high-yielding crops that don't require so much fertilizer and don't require so much water.

It's doable because as I think I said at the start, we do a lot of things really very badly, but that does give us a lot of scope to do things a lot better, so let's get on with it.

This interview has been condensed and edited lightly for clarity.

PORNAINEN, Finland ‪—‬ Engineers will soon begin testing a new "sand battery" that will convert energy stored as heat back into power that can be fed into the electricity grid. However, they say challenges lie ahead, with investment cost potentially putting customers off.

Polar Night Energy's existing sand battery model stores renewable electricity by using power to heat up sand and sand-like materials to temperatures up to 752 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius). That heat is then extracted to deliver hot water, steam or hot air.

The new power-to-heat-to-power sand battery will advance this design by operating at even higher temperatures to improve its efficiency, with the exact temperature range under investigation as part of this pilot project.

The new sand battery is "basically totally different" from the existing power-to-heat version, Tommi Eronen, co-founder and CEO of Polar Night Energy, told Live Science here at the site of the existing sand battery in Pornainen. Although he could not give specifics, he said the shape is one key difference between the two batteries; the power-to-heat-to-power sand battery has a horizontal configuration rather than being a vertical silo like the power-to-heat version.

The new sand battery's efficiency will depend on its size and how it is integrated into preexisting systems. However, its expected efficiency is about 30% to 35% — comparable to that of combustion-based power plants, Polar Night Energy representatives wrote in a statement. For reference, the average efficiency of fossil-fuel-based combustion power plants in the U.S. was 39% in 2023.

By converting this heat back to power, the new battery will "help balance the grid, cut emissions, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and create a pathway to large-scale, affordable energy storage," representatives added in a separate statement.

But the new battery will output both heat and electricity to increase the efficiency of the system to around 90%, Eronen said. This sand battery could be used by any industry that requires both heat and electricity, such as utility companies, he added.

The new sand battery is currently being piloted in the Finnish town and municipality of Valkeakoski, around 90 miles (150 kilometers) north of Helsinki. Construction commenced in October 2025, and testing will begin within weeks, with the pilot phase lasting roughly two and a half years in total. However, Polar Night Energy is already drawing up designs for a commercial product.

During the pilot project, engineers will trial different technological solutions that could enable electricity production in the future, Liisa Naskali, Polar Night Energy's chief operating officer, told Live Science in Pornainen. This will include developing new materials. For example, they will "develop and test new materials and designs capable of withstanding higher operating temperatures," representatives wrote in a statement.

The main barrier to this new sand battery is its cost. "The one challenge when selling this to the customers is that the investment price is so high," Naskali added. "Almost nobody has had the courage to invest in our product because we have these wood-chip boilers [currently], and wood chip is quite cheap."

Although she said that a power-to-heat-to-power sand battery is achievable, the question now is how to find an economically viable and technologically efficient solution. If it were straightforward, someone would have done it by now, she pointed out. "It's doable, but at what price?"

President Donald Trump's war on Iran is the perfect embodiment of all that is wrong with our ongoing fossil fuel dependence. And it puts an exclamation mark on the case for a clean energy transition. Renewable energy promises a more secure, domestically sustainable and inexhaustible energy source — via wind, solar, geothermal and energy storage technology.

It doesn't lead to the further warming of our planet and the destabilization of our climate. And it doesn't lead to us fighting dangerous, often misguided, wars in far-flung lands.

This isn't the first time a global event has placed a huge, shining light on the benefits of moving away from fossil fuels. Five years ago I opined that there might be just the slightest sliver of a silver lining in the tragic COVID pandemic. Despite the devastating loss of life, perhaps it provided us with an occasion to rethink our unsustainable ways, an opportunity to choose a better path — a "green reset."

The pandemic, and lockdowns that ensued, saw oil prices dropping for the first time ever. We didn't need fossil fuels to get around because no one could go anywhere. Renewables, however, are largely unaffected by demand and proved resistant to the global economic shock.

As governments sought to jump start the economy, it seemed an opportune time to retire our dirty fossil fuel energy infrastructure and rebuild in its place a clean, green global economy, tackling the greatest challenge we face today — the climate crisis.

But it was not to be. As my co-author Dr. Peter Hotez and I detail in our recent book "Science Under Siege" (PublicAffairs, 2025), petrostates, plutocrats and bad actors who benefit from the fossil fuel status quo simply doubled down in their efforts to spread propaganda and disinformation, turning the idea of a "great reset" into a boogie man of the right-wing conspiracy theory fever swamps.

Another reason for this failed opportunity was that the connection between the immediate crisis and the underlying environmental factors was subtle. Habitat destruction and climate change both favor the conditions that allow for the type of zoonotic transmission (e.g. from bats or pangolins to humans) involved in the spread of novel coronaviruses. But look at how long that last sentence was.

In the case of Trump's war on Iran (and his previous attack on Venezuela for that matter), the connection is comparatively simple: It's about the fossil fuels, stupid!

The warming of the planet poses an unprecedented threat in the form of more dangerous storms, rising sea levels, coastal inundation and deadly, damaging extreme weather events. It is a direct consequence of the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels. And Trump's war on Iran is fundamentally about fossil fuels.

The war against Iran advances the interests of petrostates like Saudi Arabia and Russia and supports the fossil fuel industry by attempting to seize from Iran control of the flow of oil and liquified natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. itself is a petrostate under Trump and GOP rule — with the administration actively opposing green energy projects that could help make the country's energy supply self-sufficient. And our continued fossil fuel dependence poses a great threat to our nation. It's a double whammy. It makes us dependent on buying oil and gas from dangerous foreign nations, as epitomized by this unpopular war, expending tremendous amounts of blood and treasure in the effort to maintain access to fossil fuel reserves around the world. And it damages the climate, pushing us toward a dangerous, unstable planetary future.

We now understand the market instability associated with our continued reliance on fossil fuels, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz causes gasoline prices in the U.S. spike to levels not seen in years, driving a broader increase in the cost of goods and services that is propagating through the economy and negatively impacting consumers.

Renewable energy is actually cheaper than fossil fuel energy now on a levelized basis (and that’s not even accounting for the tremendous cost of climate damages). They can be produced on a domestic level and provide something fossil fuels cannot — predictability and security.

That's why the fossil fuel-driven Trump administration has put its thumb on the scales to block, or at least slow down, the inevitable transition to clean energy. The absurdity of these efforts has reached new levels with the recent report that the Trump administration paid a major energy company $1 billion to stop a project to build wind farms off the U.S. East Coast and invest the money in a Texas natural gas facility instead.

Trump's assault on renewable energy, meanwhile, is raising energy prices, along with his tariffs. His war of choice against Iran is adding to the affordability crisis that, ironically, now threatens his presidency.

Fortunately, we are seeing progress at the state and regional level. Virginia, for example, with its Democratic, climate-forward governor Abigail Spanberger, is forging ahead with a new offshore wind farm that has just begun producing electric power, having prevailed against the Trump administration and its effort to block the project.

Elections have consequences, and the midterm election — less than a year from now — will be an opportunity to put a check on a misguided administration that is taking us down an ever-more-treacherous road of fossil fuel dependence, war and economic devastation.

We need, in the meantime, to envision a better future — a clean energy future with a livable climate, in which we don't start dangerous foreign wars in a desperate effort to extract every last bit of fossil fuel.

Opinion on Live Science gives you insight on the most important issues in science that affect you and the world around you today, written by experts and leading scientists in their field.

A funny thing happened on the way to President Donald Trump's mission to obliterate renewable energy. Solar and wind energy use is surging, especially globally, but even in the United States.

Solar and wind electricity generation grew 109% worldwide last year, pushing these renewable sources past coal for the first time as a global energy supplier, according to an analysis by Ember Energy Research. More than 600 gigawatts of solar electricity were added last year, led by China and also including India, Brazil, Vietnam, the European Union, Kenya, and Mozambique. African experts say much of the continent is leaning heavily into solar and wind as it electrifies new regions and industries, bypassing fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, investment in new clean energy, including storage, grid upgrades, efficiency measures, and electric vehicles, soared as of 2024 year-end to $2.2 trillion — double the investment in new fossil fuels projects of $1.1 trillion — according to the International Energy Agency. Globally, the future for renewable energy looks bright.

Even in the U.S., renewable generation grew substantially, with solar generation up 37% last year and wind up 12%. The Energy Information Administration says renewables provided 24% of U.S. electricity generation last year. For at least one month, March 2025, renewables supplied more than half the electricity generated nationwide. That was the first time ever that fossil fuels supplied less than half of total U.S. electricity generation. Solar alone provided about 85% of all new electricity added to the U.S. grid last year, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association.

Why? It's simple economics. The cost of solar and wind generation plummeted in the past 15 years. Utility-scale solar generation, meaning the cost to an electric utility to generate electricity from solar, fell 85% in the decade between 2010 and 2020. Things got complicated during the pandemic because of supply chain snags, but then in 2023 prices fell by 12%. Prices fell again in 2024.

Solar and wind are less expensive for generating electricity than natural gas or coal, according to PV Magazine's report on Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy for 2025. Utility-scale solar costs between four and eight cents per kilowatt-hour, even without the subsidies that Republicans killed with the reversal of the Inflation Reduction Act. With battery storage added, solar generation costs five cents to 13 cents. By comparison, generating electricity from natural gas costs 13.8 to 26 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to PV magazine and Lazard. Coal is even more expensive.

"The big thing that is happening is the very rapid rise of clean energy around the world, happening over the last six months," said climate author and activist Bill McKibben, speaking to journalists in January, citing this as one of the major developments in climate right now.

The cause is "the dramatic reduction in the price of clean energy, which is shaking up all of our assumptions," he added. For a long time, solar and wind were called "alternative energy," but now they are the dominant source of new energy across the globe, "so there's nothing alternative about them," he added.

When battery storage is added to a utility's system, the cost of generating electricity from solar and storage is five to 13 cents per kilowatt-hour — still considerably cheaper than natural gas and coal. Battery storage allows wind and solar to be reliable sources even when the sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing. Battery storage deployment doubled in the U.S. during 2024.

Climate solutions investor Tom Steyer said solar and wind adoption are experiencing the sharp upward trajectory that other successful new technologies, like mobile phones, experienced after an initial period of slow growth.

"When it really gets cheaper, faster, and better, then (adoption) goes up almost vertical," Steyer said on an MCJ podcast a few months ago. Steyer is the cofounder of Galvanize Climate Solutions investment firm and recently entered the race for governor of California.

Solar and wind energy have become so cheap that big utilities, corporations, and residents alike have been choosing them over natural gas, coal, or oil. However, the loss of federal tax incentives in the U.S. for solar and wind, and the U.S. administration's cutting back on permits for new wind and solar projects, are expected to slow the adoption of renewables this year.

"Unless this administration reverses course, the future of clean, affordable, and reliable solar and storage will be frozen by uncertainty, and Americans will continue to see their energy bills go up," said Solar Energy Industry Association president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper in a statement last month. She added that the U.S. has a lot to lose: "America's manufacturing surge, our global competitiveness, and billions of dollars in private investment are on the line."

Even though the Republican federal administration favors fossil fuels over renewables, the SEIA noted that 73% of new solar capacity added in the U.S. in 2025 was installed in Republican states. Among the 10 states adding the most solar capacity were Texas, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, Utah, Kentucky, and Arkansas.

Iowa gets 60% of its electricity from renewable sources, according to the state government, and at certain times last year, wind energy alone accounted for 64% of its electricity generation. In Texas, renewable energy supplied 40% of electricity generation in early 2024, according to Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation. Wind and solar became the cost-effective bet partly because battery storage improved and adoption of battery storage doubled.

In 2026, wind adoption is expected to fall in the U.S. after the administration revoked permits for five major offshore wind projects — although Trump's efforts to block offshore wind have faced legal setbacks.

The energy transition continues to accelerate elsewhere — in almost all corners of the globe.

"What is often missed in global discussions is the speed at which change is happening," said Mohamed Adow, founder and director of Power Shift Africa, a climate and energy think tank based in Kenya. "Our continent is making a huge energy leap," skipping fossil fuel adoption to go straight to deploying renewables instead, much the way the continent skipped over adopting landline telephones and adopted cellphones instead.

"In many countries, renewable energy is central to their economic development," Adow said.

Across Africa, 18 countries added more than 100 megawatts of solar power last year, up from two doing so the year before. The continent is estimated to have added 66.9 gigawatts of renewable capacity last year, and at least 10 countries get more than 90% of their electricity from renewables.

This article was originally published by Yale Climate Connections.

MIT researchers have improved a new type of "concrete battery" by tenfold, paving the way for its use in turning buildings, bridges and sidewalks into giant energy stores capable of powering entire cities.

The material is called electron-conducting carbon concrete — or ec³ — and is made by combining cement, water, a common liquid electrolyte and an extremely fine carbon powder called nanoscale carbon black.

When mixed together, the ingredients create a dense, conductive network capable of carrying an electrical charge. Once set into concrete, the material and anything built from it (whether they’re buildings and bridges or pavements) is able to store and release energy as needed.

It’s a concept known as supercapacitive energy storage, and researchers hope it can offer a viable solution to one of renewable energy's biggest challenges: namely, how to store power locally when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.

Related: Your household gadgets could soon be battery-free — scientists create tiny solar cells that can be powered by indoor light

In a new study published Sept. 29 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers said they achieved a tenfold increase in the energy storage capacity of ec³ since 2023. Fivecubic meters (176.5 cubic feet) of the material can now store more than 10 kilowatt-hours of electricity — roughly enough to power a typical household for a day.

Just two years ago, achieving that level of storage would have required nine times the volume, the team said.

"With these higher energy densities and demonstrated value across a broader application space, we now have a powerful and flexible tool that can help us address a wide range of persistent energy challenges," lead author of the study Damian Stefaniuk, research scientist at MIT, said in a statement.

"One of our biggest motivations was to help enable the renewable energy transition. Solar power, for example, has come a long way in terms of efficiency. However, it can only generate power when there's enough sunlight. So, the question becomes: How do you meet your energy needs at night, or on cloudy days?"

Building batteries

While ec³ doesn't match the energy density of traditional battery technologies like lithium-ion (which pack hundreds of times more energy into the same weight or volume), the fact that it can be cast directly into building components and may last as long as the structure itself, without relying on scarce or toxic materials, makes it especially attractive to scientists.

The new performance boost came from a better understanding of the interaction between the carbon network inside the concrete and the electrolyte and from changes to how the material is made.

Rather than soaking slabs of the material in the electrolyte after it hardened, the researchers added the electrolyte directly to the water used in the initial mix. That enabled the production of thicker, more energy-dense slabs without compromising conductivity.

The team also tested different types of electrolytes, including seawater, and found several viable options. The best results came from a mix of quaternary ammonium salts — used in household disinfectants — and acetonitrile, a conductive solvent common in industrial processes.

Powering the block

Most exciting to the scientists was the realization that it only took small changes to how concrete is made to produce ec³. This potentially opens up huge opportunities in sustainable construction, where the material could be used to develop what the researchers dubbed "multifunctional concrete" that can store energy, absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and even repair itself.

The material has already been tested in Japan to heat sidewalks in snowy conditions, offering a potential alternative to road salt. The team is now working toward real-world applications, from homes that operate off-grid to parking spaces and roads that could one day charge electric vehicles.

"What excites us most is that we've taken a material as ancient as concrete and shown that it can do something entirely new," study co-author James Weaver, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell University, said in the statement.

"By combining modern nanoscience with an ancient building block of civilization, we're opening a door to infrastructure that doesn't just support our lives, it powers them."

A small municipality in southern Finland recently installed the world's largest "sand battery" to supply the town's heating.

The new sand battery, designed by Polar Night Energy, is effectively a giant sandpit encased in a roughly 43 foot tall by 49 foot wide (13 by 15 meter) steel container.

The sand is heated using closed-loop heat transfer pipes and this heat is trapped by two layers of steel sandwiching an insulation layer. The energy is then extracted by blowing cool air through the pipes, capturing the heat to generate hot water, steam or hot air.

Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, differ from traditional energy sources, like oil and coal, because they do not contribute to the carbon footprint — making them essential for reaching net zero by 2050.

But solar and wind power is not constantly available, with supply waxing and waning over the course of each year. This makes it critical to find ways of storing renewable energy for use during periods of shortfall in the energy supply.

"The main challenge to large-scale implementation of renewable energy is energy storage," Matteo Chiesa, a professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering at the Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi who was not involved in the project, told Live Science.

Related: How to store renewable energy

By channelling excess energy from the grid and locally produced solar and wind energy to heat up sand to a whopping 842 degrees Fahrenheit (450 degrees Celsius), this new sand battery can store heat energy for potentially months on end, Polar Night Energy representatives say.

With a heating power of 1 megawatts — meaning it can provide 1 million joules of energy per second — it can output temperatures of 140-752 degrees F (60-400 degrees C).

"It’s proving successful in Finland," Chiesa said, adding that there’s strong potential for it to succeed elsewhere.

Heating using the power of sand

Using sand and sand-like materials to retain heat is an age-old phenomenon, with brick ovens being popular worldwide. This is because sand — which is most commonly made up of a combination of silicon and oxygen — is readily available globally. It can be heated to extremely high temperatures before it melts, and retains its heat for a long time.

Sand batteries are not batteries in a conventional sense as they do not directly produce electricity. Instead, they are thermal energy storage systems, meaning they are charged up using renewable energy, which is then stored as heat energy for use when energy demand exceeds supply.

Chiesa said that the Polar Night Energy design is "very robust," but the current configuration would be too expensive to translate over to household contexts, which face similar energy storage challenges.

"Every single time you add metal, you add costs," he said. "Ideally, we should design the sand battery’s porosity so that air can be distributed evenly throughout all pores without relying on expensive materials."

Chiesa also noted that Polar Night Energy does not currently provide seasonal storage, instead using its system to store energy for shorter durations — primarily to balance fluctuations in wind power generation.

Thermal energy storage systems like this are well-suited for storing renewable energy seasonally because it takes so long for sand to lose its heat.

"A battery that enables you to store summer solar energy and use it during winter — when heating demand is highest — is a powerful solution for seasonal energy needs," Chiesa said.

Editor's Note: This story was updated on Friday, Sept. 12 at 12:19 p.m. EDT to correct the size of the plant, the temperatures it reaches and the power it outputs.

Scientists have made a cheap and flexible solar cell that lasts nearly 10 times longer than others of its type, an advance that could one day help to revolutionize solar energy production.

Often referred to as the "holy grail" of solar power, perovskite cells offer a lightweight alternative to traditional silicon-based solar technology. Their flexible structure enables them to be applied to cars and phones in the form of a printable layer so they can charge on the go.

Sounds too good to be true? So far, you're right. Perovskites come with some major flaws. Notably, they degrade quickly due to chemical reactions with moisture in the air that make them leak iodine.

But now, a team of researchers has found a solution to this problem. By embedding nanoparticles within the perovskites, they produced a new cell that lasts for 1,530 hours, a near-tenfold increase on previous perovskite solar cell designs. The researchers published their findings Feb. 20 in the journal EES Solar.

"By addressing these common challenges we see with perovskite solar technology, our research blows the doors wide open for cheaper, more efficient and more widely accessible solar power," study co-author Imalka Jayawardena, an engineering researcher at the University of Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute in the U.K., said in a statement. "What we've achieved here is a critical step toward developing high-performance solar cells that can withstand real-world conditions — bringing us closer to their commercial use at a global scale."

Solar power surge

As the fastest-growing and cheapest form of renewable energy, solar power is key to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But the technology's growth is hampered by its reliance on silicon, a finite and non-renewable resource that, in its purest form, is costly to produce.

To get around this bottleneck, scientists have looked to develop perovskite alternatives — synthetic versions of naturally occurring calcium titanium oxide crystals that can be made at a fraction of the cost. But unlike pure silicon cells, which can last for decades, solar cells made from perovskite only last for 100 or so hours, drastically limiting their utility.

Related: Ultra-thin solar 'coating' can turn phone cases and EVs into mini power generators

In the new study, the scientists looked for a way to trap the iodine that leaks from perovskites. Their solution was to embed tiny nanoparticles of aluminum oxide within the cells as they were manufactured. This not only prevented the iodine from leaking but also created a more uniform and electrically conductive structure.

After testing these cells under extreme heat and humidity, the researchers found that the modified cells maintained a high performance for more than two months (1,530 hours), a significant improvement on the 160-hour lifespan of unenhanced perovskite cells.

The researchers plan to continue investigating their new technique to see if these gains can be built upon further.

"A decade ago, the idea of perovskite solar cells lasting this long under real-world conditions seemed out of reach," study lead author Hashini Perera, a researcher at the Advanced Technology Institute, said in the statement. "With these improvements, we're breaking new ground in stability and performance, bringing perovskite technology closer to becoming a mainstream energy solution."

Chinese scientists have announced a plan to build an enormous, 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) wide solar power station in space that will beam continuous energy back to Earth via microwaves.

The project, which will see its components lofted to a geostationary orbit above Earth using super-heavy rockets, has been dubbed "another Three Gorges Dam project above the Earth."

The Three Gorges Dam, located in the middle of the Yangtze river in central China, is the world's largest hydropower project and generates 100 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. According to one NASA scientist, the dam is so large that, if completely filled, the mass of the water contained within would lengthen Earth's days by 0.06 microseconds.

The new project, according to lead scientist Long Lehao, the chief designer of China’s Long March rockets, would be "as significant as moving the Three Gorges Dam to a geostationary orbit 36,000km (22,370 miles) above the Earth."

"This is an incredible project to look forward to," Long added during a lecture in October hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), as reported by the South China Morning Post. "The energy collected in one year would be equivalent to the total amount of oil that can be extracted from the Earth."

Despite recent advances in the cheapness and efficiency of solar power, the technology still faces some fundamental limitations — such as intermittent cloud cover and most of the atmosphere absorbing solar radiation before it hits the ground.

Related: NASA and Japan launch world's 1st wooden satellite into orbit. Here's why it could help solve a huge problem for our planet.

Scientists have proposed a number of Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP) technologies which would continuously collect and transmit energy from sunlight in space, where it is 10 times more intense than at Earth's surface.

But building an appropriately giant array would take many launches, meaning that most proposals failed to get off the ground.

To overcome this challenge, Long and his team are working on the development of the Long March-9 (CZ-9) reusable heavy-lift rocket, which will have a lift capacity of at least 150 tons (136 metric tons).

Besides being used for satellites, the rocket will also be key to China's plans to reach the moon — where it wants to build an international lunar research base by 2035.

China isn't the only nation eyeing plans for solar satellite arrays. The U.S. companies Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, the European Space Agency, and Japan's JAXA space agency have also been investigating the technology, with the latter scheduling the launch of a small, proof-of-concept satellite this year to assess its feasibility.

The way scientists think about fusion changed forever in 2022, when what some called the experiment of the century demonstrated for the first time that fusion can be a viable source of clean energy.

The experiment, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, showed ignition: a fusion reaction generating more energy out than was put in.

In addition, the past few years have been marked by a multibillion-dollar windfall of private investment in the field, principally in the United States.

But a whole host of engineering challenges must be addressed before fusion can be scaled up to become a safe, affordable source of virtually unlimited clean power. In other words, it's engineering time.

As engineers who have been working on fundamental science and applied engineering in nuclear fusion for decades, we've seen much of the science and physics of fusion reach maturity in the past 10 years.

But to make fusion a feasible source of commercial power, engineers now have to tackle a host of practical challenges. Whether the United States steps up to this opportunity and emerges as the global leader in fusion energy will depend, in part, on how much the nation is willing to invest in solving these practical problems — particularly through public-private partnerships.

Related: Nuclear fusion reactor in UK sets new world record for energy output

Building a fusion reactor

Fusion occurs when two types of hydrogen atoms, deuterium and tritium, collide in extreme conditions. The two atoms literally fuse into one atom by heating up to 180 million degrees Fahrenheit (100 million degrees Celsius), 10 times hotter than the core of the sun. To make these reactions happen, fusion energy infrastructure will need to endure these extreme conditions.

There are two approaches to achieving fusion in the lab: inertial confinement fusion, which uses powerful lasers, and magnetic confinement fusion, which uses powerful magnets.

While the "experiment of the century" used inertial confinement fusion, magnetic confinement fusion has yet to demonstrate that it can break even in energy generation.

Several privately funded experiments aim to achieve this feat later this decade, and a large, internationally supported experiment in France, ITER, also hopes to break even by the late 2030s. Both are using magnetic confinement fusion.

Challenges lying ahead

Both approaches to fusion share a range of challenges that won't be cheap to overcome. For example, researchers need to develop new materials that can withstand extreme temperatures and irradiation conditions.

Fusion reactor materials also become radioactive as they are bombarded with highly energetic particles. Researchers need to design new materials that can decay within a few years to levels of radioactivity that can be disposed of safely and more easily.

Producing enough fuel, and doing it sustainably, is also an important challenge. Deuterium is abundant and can be extracted from ordinary water. But ramping up the production of tritium, which is usually produced from lithium, will prove far more difficult. A single fusion reactor will need hundreds of grams to one kilogram (2.2 lbs.) of tritium a day to operate.

Right now, conventional nuclear reactors produce tritium as a byproduct of fission, but these cannot provide enough to sustain a fleet of fusion reactors.

So, engineers will need to develop the ability to produce tritium within the fusion device itself. This might entail surrounding the fusion reactor with lithium-containing material, which the reaction will convert into tritium.

To scale up inertial fusion, engineers will need to develop lasers capable of repeatedly hitting a fusion fuel target, made of frozen deuterium and tritium, several times per second or so. But no laser is powerful enough to do this at that rate — yet. Engineers will also need to develop control systems and algorithms that direct these lasers with extreme precision on the target.

Additionally, engineers will need to scale up production of targets by orders of magnitude: from a few hundreds handmade every year with a price tag of hundreds of thousands of dollars each to millions costing only a few dollars each.

For magnetic containment, engineers and materials scientists will need to develop more effective methods to heat and control the plasma and more heat- and radiation-resistant materials for reactor walls. The technology used to heat and confine the plasma until the atoms fuse needs to operate reliably for years.

These are some of the big challenges. They are tough but not insurmountable.

Current funding landscape

Investments from private companies globally have increased — these will likely continue to be an important factor driving fusion research forward. Private companies have attracted over US$7 billion in private investment in the past five years.

Several startups are developing different technologies and reactor designs with the aim of adding fusion to the power grid in coming decades. Most are based in the United States, with some in Europe and Asia.

While private sector investments have grown, the U.S. government continues to play a key role in the development of fusion technology up to this point. We expect it to continue to do so in the future.

It was the U.S. Department of Energy that invested about US$3 billion to build the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the mid 2000s, where the "experiment of the century" took place 12 years later.

In 2023, the Department of Energy announced a four-year, $42 million program to develop fusion hubs for the technology. While this funding is important, it likely will not be enough to solve the most important challenges that remain for the United States to emerge as a global leader in practical fusion energy.

One way to build partnerships between the government and private companies in this space could be to create relationships similar to that between NASA and SpaceX. As one of NASA's commercial partners, SpaceX receives both government and private funding to develop technology that NASA can use. It was the first private company to send astronauts to space and the International Space Station.

Along with many other researchers, we are cautiously optimistic. New experimental and theoretical results, new tools and private sector investment are all adding to our growing sense that developing practical fusion energy is no longer an if but a when.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many countries have seen extremely hot weather lately, but in most of the inhabited world, it's never going to get "too hot for people to live here," especially in relatively dry climates.

When it's hot outside in dry places, most of the time our bodies can cool off by evaporating water and heat from our skin as sweat.

However, there are places where it occasionally gets dangerously hot and humid, especially where hot deserts are right next to the warm ocean. When the air is humid, sweat doesn't evaporate as quickly, so sweating doesn't cool us the way it does in drier environments.

In parts of the Middle East, Pakistan and India, summer heat waves can combine with humid air that blows in off the sea, and this combination can be truly deadly. Hundreds of millions of people live in those regions, most without access to indoor air conditioning.

Scientists like me use a "wet bulb thermometer" to get a better sense of this risk. A wet bulb thermometer allows water to evaporate by blowing ambient air over a damp cloth. If the wet bulb temperature is over 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius), and even at lower levels, the human body won't be able to let enough heat out. Prolonged exposure to such combined heat and humidity can be fatal.

During a severe heat wave in 2023, wet bulb temperatures were very high over the lower Mississippi Valley, though they didn't reach fatal levels. In Delhi, India, where air temperatures were over 120 degree F (49 C) for several days in May 2024, the wet bulb temperatures came close, and several people died from suspected heatstroke in the hot and humid weather. In conditions like that, everyone has to take precautions.

Is it climate change?

When people burn carbon — whether it's coal in a power plant or gasoline in a vehicle — it creates carbon dioxide (CO2). This invisible gas builds up in the atmosphere and traps the sun's warmth near the Earth's surface.

The result is what we mean by "climate change."

Every bit of coal, oil or gas that ever gets burned adds a little bit more to the temperature. As temperatures rise, dangerously hot and humid weather has begun to spread to more places.

Areas of the U.S. Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas are increasingly at risk of dangerous hot and humid conditions in summer, as are heavily irrigated areas of the desert Southwest where water sprayed over farm fields adds moisture to the atmosphere.

Climate change causes a lot more problems than just hot, sweaty weather.

Hot air evaporates a lot more water, so crops, forests and landscapes in some areas dry out, which makes them more susceptible to wildfire. Each Celsius degree of warming can cause a sixfold increase in wildfire over parts of the western U.S.

Warming also makes ocean water expand, which can flood coastal regions. Rising sea levels threaten to displace as many as 2 billion people by 2100.

All of these impacts mean that climate change threatens the global economy. Continuing to burn coal, oil and gas could cut global incomes by about 25% by the end of the century, according to one estimate.

Good news and bad news

There's both bad news and good news about climate change in the future.

The bad news is that as long as we keep burning carbon, it will continue to get hotter and hotter.

The good news is that we can substitute clean energy, like solar and wind power, for burning carbon to power the products and services of modern life.

There's been tremendous progress in the past 15 years in making clean energy reliable and affordable, and almost every country on Earth has now agreed to stop climate change before too much damage is done.

Just as our ancestors built better lives by switching from outhouses to indoor plumbing, we will avoid making our world unlivable by switching from coal, oil and gas to clean energy.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Wind and solar power has generated more electricity than coal for the first time ever in the U.S, according to new federal data.

Wind and solar sources produced a combined 252 terawatt-hours in the first five months of 2023, compared with coal's output of 249 TWh, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) seen by E&E News has revealed. This marks the very first time that renewable energy has outperformed coal without including hydroelectric power in the count.

The milestone is a consequence of the continuing decline of coal usage in the U.S., as coal facilities shut down and are replaced by renewable energy and natural gas energy sources. At its peak in 2007, coal accounted for 49.9% of the U.S.'s energy production.

Related: Climate change could trigger gigantic deadly tsunamis from Antarctica, new study warns

"Our official estimates from the Electric Power Monthly show that combined electricity generation from wind and solar exceeded generation from coal in January, February and March," Chris Higginbotham, a spokesperson for the EIA told E&E News. "Our real-time data, which is subject to revision, indicate that trend continued in April and May."

The news comes after a brief resurgence in coal demand last year, caused by the war in Ukraine and the rebounding of post-pandemic economies — both of which sent natural gas prices soaring. However, since then, a mild winter, a step-up in natural gas production and slowing global economic growth has driven down gas prices and subsequent demand for coal, according to the World Bank. 

The U.S. has shut down around 14 gigawatts of its coal capacity — roughly 7% of its coal fleet — since the start of 2022. Since April 2022, U.S. fossil fuel emissions have declined by 5.6%, according to the emissions tracker Carbon Monitor.

This change reflects a shift in focus of U.S. energy policy toward more carbon-neutral energy sources, which has led to the closing down of many coal plants across the nation.

"We expect that the United States will generate less electricity from coal this year than in any year this century," Joe DeCarolis, the EIA administrator, said in a forecast in May. "As electricity providers generate more electricity from renewable sources, we see electricity generated from coal decline over the next year and a half."

However, fossil fuels still dominate the U.S.'s power generation. Natural gas is still the largest source of power in the country, accounting for about 39% of US electricity in 2022. It is expected to fall to 38% this year and 37% in 2024.

Our species faces a pivotal moment in human history. Either we develop the technology to safely harness the energy needed to escape our planet, or we kill ourselves in some great cataclysm, a stark new study claims. 

But, the new paper argues, if we can achieve the former and avoid the latter, then we might just become a truly interplanetary species in as little as 200 years.

"The Earth is a tiny dot surrounded by darkness," study lead author Jonathan Jiang, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Live Science. "Our current understanding of physics tells us that we are trapped on this tiny rock with limited resources." 

To leave our planet for good, humans need to drastically ramp up the use of nuclear and renewable energy, and simultaneously safeguard those energy sources from being used for malicious purposes.

And the next few decades will prove critical: If humanity can safely transition away from fossil fuels, it might just have a shot, the study suggests.

The Kardashev scale

In 1964, the soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed a measurement scheme, later modified by Carl Sagan, to estimate the technological capability of an intelligent species. It all comes down to energy, and how much of it (from whatever source) a species can utilize for its own purposes, whether those are exploring the universe or playing video games.

Related: 9 Strange, scientific excuses for why scientists haven't found aliens yet

A Kardashev Type I civilization, for example, can use all the energy available on the species’ home planet, including all the sources of energy in the ground (such as fossil fuels and materials that can be used for nuclear fission) and all the energy falling onto that planet from its parent star. For Earth, this is somewhere around 10^16 watts.

Type II civilizations consume 10 times the amount of energy, and are able to exploit the entire energy output of a single star. Type III species can go even further and use most of the energy in an entire galaxy.

Needless to say, the human species is well below the Type I threshold, but our energy consumption grows with every passing year. More people are using more power per capita, but that power comes at a cost: namely, the threat to our biosphere from the release of carbon and pollutants, and the risk posed by the ability to use powerful means of energy storage and delivery for destructive purposes, such as nuclear bombs.

The great filter

The danger posed by the increased consumption of energy may explain why scientists have found no evidence of advanced alien civilizations. If Earth isn't very special and the development of life and intelligence isn't all that unique (and there's no reason to assume that it is), then the galaxy should be teeming with intelligent critters. Sure, we haven't been around for very long, astronomically speaking, but the Milky Way is billions of years old. Surely by now somebody, somewhere should have reached the Type III stage and begun exploring the galaxy in earnest. 

This means that by the time humans became intelligent, there should have been someone there to meet us, or at least leave behind a welcome gift.

But as far as we can tell, we're alone. Life, and especially intelligent life, appears to be exceedingly rare. So perhaps some set of processes removes intelligent life from the scene before a civilization can reach higher stages of development. Most of these so-called "great filters" are different forms of species self-destruction.

Indeed, we're already capable of self-destruction as a species, and we haven't even cracked the first rung of the Kardashev scale. A handful of countries now have the nuclear-armed capacity to wipe out every single human on the planet. 

"We are our own Great Filter," Jiang said.

The trick is to avoid self-destruction while we ramp up our energy use to the point where we can reliably exist on multiple worlds at once, even if it's just in the solar system, Jiang said. Having a human presence on more than one planet serves as a strong bulwark against self-destruction. But to achieve multi-planetary status requires an enormous amount of energy, not just for establishing short-term colonies, but for maintaining full-fledged, self-sustaining cities.

The knife's edge

Jiang and his team explored the best way to reach Type I status in a paper uploaded in April to the journal preprint server arXiv. The researchers followed the recommendations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which charted clear consequences for the continued unabated use of fossil fuels. In short, unless humanity rapidly switches energy supplies to nuclear and renewable options, we will do too much damage to our biosphere to continue climbing the Kardashev scale.

The study also assumed an annual 2.5% growth in the use of renewable and nuclear energy, and found that in the next 20 to 30 years, those forms of energy use will steadily displace fossil fuels. Nuclear and renewable energy sources have the potential capability to keep on growing in output without putting further strain on the biosphere, and if we continue at our current rate of consumption we will reach Type I status in the year 2371, the team found.

Jiang acknowledges that the calculations included a lot of assumptions, and that the uncertainty on the estimate was probably around 100 years. The calculations had to assume that we would identify safe ways to handle nuclear waste, and that the increased ability to harness energy wouldn't lead to disaster. Still, if we can maintain this course, we can set the stage to potentially protect our species for generations to come within the next few hundred years.

Originally published on Live Science.

Renewable-energy storage is important to help humanity reduce its dependence on fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause climate change. 

Harnessing the power of the sun with solar panels and utilizing wind power with wind turbines are two common ways to generate renewable energy. But the sun isn't always shining and the wind isn't always blowing when we want electricity, and sometimes they produce surplus energy when demand is low. 

To reduce the impact of inconsistent energy generation from renewable sources, scientists and engineers are developing ways to store excess energy for use when it's needed. There are many different ways energy can be stored, and new storage techniques are being developed and refined all the time. Here are some of the best and most promising methods for storing renewable energy.

Related: Tesla to the rescue? Elon Musk offers solution for Australian blackouts

1. Batteries

Batteries are probably the most familiar method of storing energy. Humans use batteries in all sorts of electrical devices, from smartphones to cars. The most popular batteries are lithium-ion batteries, which are used in small devices and also make up more than 90% of battery storage on the global electricity grid, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute in Washington, D.C., a non-profit organization that promotes sustainable energy. 

The negative end of a battery is connected to an electrode called the anode and the positive end is connected to another electrode called the cathode. Electrolyte, a liquid substance of electrically charged ions inside the battery, combines with the material of the electrodes to produce a chemical reaction that generates an electrical current. In lithium-ion batteries, the anode and cathode store lithium, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The electrolyte carries positively charged lithium-ions from the anode to the cathode to power something and vice versa when the battery is charged, which can be done using renewable energy. 

Lithium-ion batteries have some disadvantages. For example, they become less efficient and more likely to fail over time, according to the Clean Energy Institute at the University of Washington. They are also expensive to produce on a large scale, and extracting the raw materials needed to make them has a negative environmental impact. Like most other energy-storage methods, batteries don't retain all the energy that is put in them; they have an efficiency of 85% to 95%, according to a 2020 report by the World Energy Council, a network of energy leaders promoting sustainable energy. 

Related: 3 scientists win Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing the lithium-ion Battery

2. Pumped hydro energy storage

Pumped hydro energy storage, or pumped storage hydropower,  uses two water reservoirs to store electricity. Excess energy is used to pump water from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir. Then, when the electricity is needed, water in the higher reservoir is released to flow back down to the lower reservoir through turbines that generate electricity, according to a 2021 review of pumped hydro energy storage published in the journal Progress in Energy. Not all of the energy used to pump the water up is regained when it is released; hydro energy storage has an efficiency of about 75% to 85%, according to the 2020 World Energy Council report. 

The largest pumped hydroelectric storage facility in the world is in Virginia and serves power to about 750,000 homes, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Pumped hydro energy storage systems are typically built into, or near, rivers alongside the production of hydroelectric energy. However, they can also be used using seawater from oceans. A pumped hydro energy storage system on Okinawa Island, Japan, pulls seawater out of the ocean and up a hill through a pipeline. The system then releases the water back down through the pipe to power turbines and generate electricity, according to the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. 

Related: Hoover Dam reservoir reaches record-low water levels

3. Pumped thermal electricity storage

Pumped thermal electricity storage involves using electricity generated from renewable sources to heat gravel or another heat-retaining material inside an insulated tank. This heat can then be used to generate electricity when needed, according to a 2020 article in The Conversation by Antoine Koen, a doctoral candidate in pumped thermal energy storage, and Pau Farres Antunez, a researcher in energy storage, both at the University of Cambridge in England. 

The method uses easily accessible materials such as gravel, so it can be set up almost anywhere. Pumped thermal electricity storage has an expected efficiency range of between 50% and 70%, according to a 2017 paper published in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. This technology is still being developed. The first demonstration Pumped thermal electricity storage facility at Newcastle University in England demonstrated an efficiency of 65% in 2019, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Frontiers in Energy Research.

4. Gravity energy storage

A U.K. company called Gravitricity is developing a technology to take full advantage of gravity. The method uses electricity to lift weights on a winch, which are later released to turn an electricity generator, regaining most of the energy used to lift them. This equipment could be built in disused mine shafts to drop around 13,200 tons (12,000 metric tons) down a shaft more than 2,620 feet (800 meters) deep, The Guardian reported in 2019. The technology has a predicted efficiency of 80% to 90%, according to the Gravitricity website. Another gravity-based system uses excess power to pull trains up an incline before letting them roll back down to release the stored energy, Live Science previously reported. A company called Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) is developing one of these systems in Nevada, according to the ARES website.   

Related: How 139 countries could be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2050

5. Compressed air energy storage

Compressed air energy storage systems pump air into an underground chamber to increase pressure, which can be released on demand to power gas turbines, Live Science previously reported. More energy is produced if the plant burns natural gas in the high-pressure air, but this produces carbon dioxide emissions. This system can have an efficiency of between 70% and 89%, according to the 2020 World Energy Council report. There are at least two operational compressed air energy storage facilities. The first facility was established in Huntorf, Germany in 1978, and a second facility in Alabama has been in operation since 1991, according to a 2021 study in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.

6. Hydrogen storage

Hydrogen is used as a form of chemical energy storage. Electricity is converted into hydrogen through a process called electrolysis, which breaks up water into its hydrogen and oxygen elements, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The hydrogen can then be stored and used as fuel to generate electricity. Hydrogen can also be used to power hydrogen vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport. 

Using hydrogen to store energy has an efficiency of 35% to 55%, according to the 2020 World Energy Council report. Hydrogen fuel cells are costly, as they require expensive metals such as platinum. However, they are used to power and backup critical facilities such as telecom relays and credit card processing, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. 

Related: 'Burning' hydrogen plasma in the world's largest laser sets fusion records

Additional resources

To learn more about how we can use renewable energy to power the world, watch this short YouTube video by TED-Ed. You can find out how to save money by conserving energy and fuel on the U.S. Department of Energy website. Read more about the benefits of renewable energy from the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy nonprofit.  

Bibliography

Advanced Rail Energy Storage, "ARES Nevada Project," 2022. https://aresnorthamerica.com/nevada-project/

Alexandra Zablocki, Environmental and Energy Study Institute, "Energy Storage (2019)," Feb. 22, 2019. https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/energy-storage-2019

Antoine Koen and Pau Farres Antunez, The Conversation, "How heat can be used to store renewable energy," Feb. 25, 2020. https://theconversation.com/how-heat-can-be-used-to-store-renewable-energy-130549

Blakers et al. "A review of pumped hydro energy storage," Progress in Energy, Volume 3, March 25, 2021. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2516-1083/abeb5b

Clean Energy Institute, University of Washington, "Lithium-ion battery," 2020. https://www.cei.washington.edu/education/science-of-solar/battery-technology/

Davenne, T. R. and Peters, B. M. "An analysis of pumped thermal energy storage with de-coupled thermal stores," Frontiers in Energy Research, Volume 8, Aug. 11, 2020. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2020.00160/

Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, University of Strathclyde, "Seawater pumped hydro storage." http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_sites/17-18/cumbrae/Seawater%20pumped%20hydro.html

Elizabeth Palermo, Live Science, "How Do Batteries Work?" April 29, 2015. https://www.livescience.com/50657-how-batteries-work.html

Gravitricity, "Fast, long-life energy storage." https://gravitricity.com/technology/

Jillian Ambrose, The Guardian, "How UK's disused mine shafts could be used to store renewable energy," Mon. 21, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/21/how-uks-disused-mine-shafts-plan-to-store-renewable-energy

Jim Park, Clayton Ashley and Dave Brody, Live Science, "Renewable Energy Rides the Rails to More Efficient Power Storage," Feb. 07, 2014. https://www.livescience.com/43211-renewable-energy-rides-the-rails-to-more-efficient-power-storage.html

King et al. "Overview of current compressed air energy storage projects and analysis of the potential underground storage capacity in India and the UK," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 139, April 2021. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032121000022

Michael Schirber, Live Science, "How Compressed Air Could Power the Future," June 04, 2008. https://www.livescience.com/4955-compressed-air-power-future.html

Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, "How Does a Lithium-ion Battery Work?" Sep. 14, 2017. https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/how-does-lithium-ion-battery-work

Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, "Hydrogen Production: Electrolysis." https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-electrolysis

Steinmann, W. D. "Thermo-mechanical concepts for bulk energy storage," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 75, Aug. 2017. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032116307341?via%3Dihub

World Energy Council, "Five Steps To Energy Storage: Innovation Insights Brief," 2020. https://www.worldenergy.org/assets/downloads/Five_steps_to_energy_storage_v301.pdf

Biofuels can be made from some of the same ingredients used to bread and pizza, but instead of feeding your stomach they are used to power your car. 

It’s well-established that fossil fuels are incredibly harmful, and they’re not renewable, either. When so many people rely on petrol- and diesel-power vehicles, it makes sense to develop a renewable alternative that’s easy to use. 

That’s where biofuel comes in. The most common biofuel produced globally is ethanol, and it’s used frequently in Brazil and the U.S., while biodiesel is more popular in Europe. 

Ethanol is a clear, flavourless alcohol that’s created by fermenting and distilling sugary crops like wheat, corn, and sugar cane. It’s combined with petrol to make fuel more environmentally friendly, and it’s already in widespread use. More than 95% of the petrol sold in the U.S. contains ethanol, and E10 fuel – made from 10% ethanol – is the standard petrol in the U.K., according to the BBC. 

Alcohol combines with oil or fat to create biodiesel, and it works directly in many car engines. However, it’s usually combined with conventional diesel to create a more effective blend. This is usually produced from vegetable oil, animal fat, soy or palm oil.

Creating ethanol is a complex chemical process that starts with simple plant matter – whether it’s corn, wheat, sugar beet or some leftover potato skins. The plant’s cells contain a mixture of substances called cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Acids, enzymes, and other chemicals break the plants down, and the result is a pure sugar solution called sucrose.

At this point, scientists add yeast and the solution heats to between 482 and 572 degrees Fahrenheit ( 250 and 300 degrees Celsius). The yeast has an enzyme called invertase. Heat activates the enzyme and converts the sucrose into glucose and fructose. These sugars combine with another enzyme, called zymase, which converts them into ethanol, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

That ethanol still has lots of water, though, so the next step involves boiling. Because ethanol boils at 172.94 °F (78.3°C) and water boils and 212 °F (100°C), the ethanol boils and turns into vapour first – so it can be separated from the water, condensed back to liquid, and used for biofuel. 

Biofuel pros and cons

There’s a huge amount of potential in biofuel, and most of the big energy companies have already invested — but emerging energy sources like ethanol are first-generation biofuels, and they’ve got issues that need fixing before they can go mainstream, according to The Guardian.

It currently takes more ethanol than gasoline to produce the same amount of energy, for instance. Production is expensive, and several parts of the process sometimes use fossil fuels — which means that some biofuels aren’t actually carbon neutral.

Some environmental campaigners also say that it would be more useful to grow crops for food rather than biofuel, and that growing crops for biofuel can cause problems with soil erosion and deforestation. Using land for fuel rather than food can lead to an increase in food prices, too, and can hinder natural habitats. 

Crop and fat-based biofuels may not be perfect, then, but those aren’t the only biofuels available — some organizations are creating biofuel with algae instead. This process uses water and land that often isn’t suitable for many other situations, so it doesn’t take up space that’s useful for food production, and it often has better yields than other types of biofuel.

There’s plenty of development beyond algae, too. Many companies are developing crops specially for biofuels, and those will improve yields, increase efficiency, and reduce costs. Some even use seaweed, according to The Guardian.

Scientists are also working on schemes that will be able to extract biofuels from household waste, wood chips and other junk – a move that could massively increase the material that’s viable for biofuel production. These second-generation biofuels could make biofuel far cheaper and more accessible.

Additional resources

For more information about biofuels, check out the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy’s page on Biofuel Basics, “Handbook of Biofuels” by Sanjay Sahay and “Bioenergy and Biofuels” by Ozcan Konur. 

Bibliography

• Clarence Lehman, “Biofuel”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, September 2021. 
• U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Biofuels explained” August 2020. 
• James Chen, “Biofuel”, Investopedia, October 2020. 
• John Abraham, “Biofuels can help solve climate change, especially with a carbon tax”, The Guardian, March 2018. 
• Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, “Biofuel Basics”, Bioenergy Technologies Office, accessed January 2022. 
• Christina Nunes, “Biofuel, explained”, National Geographic, July 2019. 
• Damian Carrington, “Seaweed biofuels: a green alternative that might just save the planet”, The Guardian, July 2013. 
• BBC News, “E10 petrol: Eco-friendly fuel being introduced to filling stations”, September 2021
• Tristan Shale-Hester, “E10 petrol explained: checker tool, UK prices and is it OK for your car”, Auto Express, December 2021. 

Are solar panels worth it when it comes to saving money on your energy bills? 

In recent years, it's a question more and more people are asking. In 2020, the global output for solar power energy was 156 terawatt-hours, according to the International Energy Agency. Over 13,400 megawatts of that energy was produced by the United Kingdom, which accounted for over a million installations, according to the UK Government. Between 2020 and 2021, the installation of solar panels also increased by an impressive 1.6%. The solar energy market is projected to grow 20.5% to $222.3 billion (around £164 billion) from 2019 to 2026, according to ResearchandMarkets.com. 

At present the UK is facing an energy bill crisis, which could see bills rise by as much as 50%, according to the Guardian. Ofgem, the energy regulator in the UK, announced an increase in the energy price cap (the maximum amount that energy suppliers can charge) from April 1, 2022. This means that many people are looking to get the most for their money when it comes to energy providers and energy sources, such as solar power. But are solar panels worth it? 

What are solar panels?

Solar panels, known as photovoltaics (PV), consist of several semi-conducting cells, typically made from silicon. The silicon is in a crystalline state and sandwiched between two conductive layers, the top layer is seeded with phosphorus and the bottom with boron. When sunlight passes through these layered cells, it causes electrons to move through the layers and generate an electrical charge. The electrical charge can then be harvested and stored to power household appliances, according to the Energy Saving Trust. 

The amount of energy solar PV’s produce can change depending on their size and location, but typically produce between 200-350 watts per panel per day, with each PV system consisting of between 10 to 15 panels. At present, electrical consumption for the average household in the UK ranges between 8 to 10 kilowatts per day, according to the energy comparison site UKPower.co.uk. 

Benefits

The main financial difference between traditional energy sources and solar power is the upfront cost to install a solar PV system. "The installation cost of £4,800 [around $6,500] we provide, is for a typical 3.5-kilowatt domestic installation, including labour but not including a battery. This is the average size for domestic systems in the UK and requires around 15 to 20 square metres [around 162 to 215 square feet] of panels," Brian Horne, senior insight & analytics consultant at the Energy Saving Trust, told LiveScience in an email.

Although the initial cost is substantial, the average operational lifespan for a solar PV system is around 30-35 years, although some manufacturers claim much longer, according to the office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

There is also the option to invest in storage batteries to collect any excess energy a solar PV system generates. Or you could sell it.

If a PV system produces more electricity than your household uses, there is the potential to sell excess energy to energy suppliers under the smart export guarantee (SEG). SEG's are only available in England, Scotland and Wales. 

Under the scheme, different energy companies set tariffs on how much they are willing to buy any excess electricity from your solar PV system, along with other renewable energy sources such as hydro or wind turbines. For example, energy provider E.ON is currently offering up to 5.5 pence (around 7 cents) per kilowatt, as of February 2022. There is no set rate of pay under an SEG and suppliers can offer fixed or variable rates, however, the prices must be above zero at all times, according to the Energy Saving Trust. 

"For a home with solar panels and the Smart Expert Guarantee, in London and South East England, whose occupants are home the majority of the time, could see a saving of £385 [around $520] a year, with a payback of around 16 years [figures correct November 2021]", says Horne.  

According to Horne, solar panels are not just an investment to save money on your energy and perhaps even make money in the process, but they can add value to your home. "There is clear evidence that homes with a better energy performance are selling for higher prices and solar panels are one factor influencing that performance. It seems likely that the impact of solar panels on house prices will increase following recent price rises across the market and the associated focus on ways to reduce energy requirements and switch to renewable energy," says Horne. A report by the trade association Solar Energy UK found that solar power systems could increase the sale price of a house by £1,800 (around $2,400).

Of course, solar energy isn't only beneficial to our bank accounts but helps to reduce the devastating effects that the energy industry has on our environment. The economic sector that emits the most greenhouse gas is electricity and heat production. The sector contributes 25% of the total global emissions, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

As a sustainable and renewable energy source, solar PV systems are carbon neutral and emit no greenhouse gases. According to the Energy Saving Trust, an average UK home implementing a PV system could reduce carbon emissions by 1.3 to 1.6 metric tonnes (1.43 to 1.76 tons) per year.

"You can also combine solar PV with other renewable technologies such as heat pumps. These technologies work well with each other, as the solar PV output will sometimes power the heat pump directly, helping to keep your heating costs down," says Horne. "We advise consulting with your installer for exact maintenance requirements before you commit to installing a solar PV system," he adds. 

Limitations

Solar PV panels aren’t without their limitations and unfortunately not every home is compatible with a solar PV installation. "There may be some limitations depending on the size and amount of suitable roof space available to install PV panels," says Horne. 

Another consideration is whether or not you require planning permission to install a solar PV system. Listed buildings, first-floor apartments and homes in conservation areas, may require permission before installation. 

The weather can affect how efficient a solar PV system is at producing energy. Although solar panels will be exposed to enough sunlight to produce electricity, including cloudy days and during the winter, the maximum efficiency might not always be achieved, according to E.ON. 

"However large your system, you won’t always be able to generate all the electricity you need and will need to support it with the grid. However, you may be able to adapt your electricity consumption, such as using appliances when the panels are generating electricity in the day," says Horne. 

There are also other costs to consider than installing a solar PV system, such as maintenance. The electricity produced by solar panels is known as direct current (DC), however, household appliances use alternating current (AC), therefore an inverter is installed to convert the DC. These inverters have a lifespan of between 5 to 10 years, according to energy comparison site GreenMatch.co.uk. The price of a replacement can vary depending on the supplier, however, according to the standards organisation MCS (Microgeneration Certification Scheme), this cost is £800 (around $1,088). 

Providers

Getting the best deal on a solar PV system for your home means shopping around. "We advise choosing a certified system and a certified installer when installing any type of home renewable energy system. Costs can vary between installers and products, so we recommend getting quotes from at least three installers before starting any work," Horne advises. "The Microgeneration Certification Scheme is the best place to start when finding accredited installers in your area," says Horne.

It’s a no-brainer that solar panels are worth it when it comes to their positive impact on the environment. As for their financial viability, a solar PV system has the potential for big savings, but hefty initial costs. Each home is different in terms of energy usage and capacity for solar panels, which will ultimately affect how much money you can save with a solar PV system. To help you make a final decision the Energy Saving Trust has a handy calculator to estimate how much you could save with solar energy.

Additional resources

For more information about solar panel energy and head to Solar Energy UK and the Energy Saving Trust. You can also find out which energy companies offer SEG licences on this handy list by Ofgem. 

Are you looking for new answers about how to save on electricity bills? With the general rise in energy prices across much of the globe, it's easy to feel helpless when faced with incessant expenses. For example, it was recently announced that in April 2022, the U.K. will see an energy bill rise of 54 percent, according to the U.K. Parliament website. 

However, there are many ways that you can reduce your energy consumption, make significant monetary savings and benefit the environment too. Fossil fuels are the most common source of energy used for electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. When these fossil fuels are burned, they release greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere and contribute to global warming. 

Using renewable sources, such as solar and wind power, to supply energy to your home appliances can make you and the planet better off. According to research by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), generating 35 percent of electricity using wind and solar energy in the western U.S. would result in 25-45 percent lower carbon dioxide emissions. It would also reduce fuel costs by 40 percent.

From completely altering your energy sources, to small habit changes around the home, here are ten life hacks to help you save energy, and cut bills.

1. Turn appliances off standby

When you leave electrical appliances on but unused, many enter ‘standby mode’. While the device looks like it isn’t using up any energy, it is using electricity in the background — called phantom power — while it prepares to instantly switch back on. 

According to gas and electricity supplier Utilita, leaving appliances on standby can increase your energy consumption by 75 percent. This convenient setting can end up costing you $108 (£80) more a year. To prevent increased bills, make sure to check that your appliances and plugs are completely powered off when not in use. 

2. Wash clothes efficiently

The process of washing and drying your clothes contributes significantly to your energy bills, but there are ways to lower these costs just by changing the settings on your washing machine. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that you can save $38 (£28) annually just by lowering the temperature of your washing machine’s cycle to around 86 degrees fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) and using it once a week. 

Tumble dryers should be avoided altogether and replaced with drying racks or washing lines. This can save $75 (£55) a year. According to the Centre for Sustainable Energy, using an iron can to smooth the creases in clothes can cost you around 6.1 cents (4.5 pence) per ten minutes of use. One hack to avoid ironing completely is to hang creased clothes in the bathroom. The air humidity created by the shower will actually smooth the wrinkles in your clothes. 

3. Choose energy-saving bulbs

One of the fastest ways to reduce your energy bills is to install energy-efficient lighting, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. 15 percent of a home’s electricity usage goes towards lighting, but your choice of light bulb can determine how much money you spend and carbon dioxide you produce. According to the U.K. Energy Saving Trust, replacing all the bulbs in a home with LED lights can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by around 40kg a year.

Incandescent light bulbs, which are the traditional bulbs that have been in use for over 100 years, only convert five percent of their electricity into visible light. The first energy efficient bulbs made available to purchase were compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). These last ten times longer and use up to 80 percent less electricity than traditional bulbs. More efficient again are light emitting diodes (LEDs), which display full brightness as soon as they are turned on. It is important to turn lights off when leaving a room to reduce unnecessary energy usage.

4. Insulate your home

You can keep your home warmer for longer, and save money on your heating bill, by using a few techniques to prevent heat from escaping. About one third of escaped heat from an uninsulated home is lost through its walls, while a quarter can be lost through the roof according to the Energy Saving Trust.

Draught-proofing your home is one of the best ways to cut energy costs, blocking cracks, gaps and holes in windows and doors through which heat can escape.

Heat can also easily escape from water tanks and pipes if they are not  properly insulated. If you invest in a better-insulated water tank, it will remain hotter for longer, meaning it will need to be reheated less often, saving you money on bills.

5. Harness the Sun’s power

Solar panels can be installed onto roofs and used to convert direct or indirect sunlight into usable energy. When the sun shines on the panels’ semiconducting material, a flow of electricity is produced. In direct sunlight, a single panel can generate 200-350 watts of energy, according to the Energy Saving Trust. 

Solar panels will cost you around $6,500 (£4,800) to install, depending on the size of the solar panel array. However, this investment saves money over time. Sunlight is free and sustainable, meaning that you won’t have to pay as much in energy bills after the initial purchase. 

There are also additional benefits, as many energy companies will pay for any excess energy your panels produce. In the U.K, the Smart Export Guarantee support mechanism ensures that households are paid by the National Grid for any electricity they export. 

Related: How do solar panels work?

6. Take more showers

The popular phrase of “throwing money down the drain” becomes more literal when considering the price of showering. While some people enjoy a long shower, reducing the time of your wash can result in substantial savings. 25 percent of U.K. indoor domestic water is used when showering, according to the Journal of Industrial Ecology. 

If you regularly have baths, replacing them with showers has the potential to greatly reduce energy usage. According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, replacing two baths with two seven minute showers every week could save up to 6,200 gigawatt hours per year (GWh/y). This is a greater saving than reducing shower times by two minutes, four times a week, which has the potential to save 5,400 GWh/y.

7. Reverse your ceiling fan

Ceiling fans are installed in some homes to move the air during warm weather, making people feel cooler. However, it is less commonly known that these systems can be used to warm homes in the winter. 

Most fans rotate both clockwise and anticlockwise. When the setting is switched to anticlockwise, the air is moved downwards from the ceiling to the floor. Warm air that has risen can be pushed downwards to make a room feel less cold. As long as the fan is set to a slow setting, no uncomfortable breeze will be generated. According to the University of Arkansas, heating costs can be reduced by 20 to 30 percent using this tip.

8. Watch your water

Water is used for many purposes in the kitchen, from brewing a hot beverage to washing dishes. It may seem convenient to keep your kettle full to limit trips to the tap, but to save energy it is best to only fill the kettle with the volume of water you are going to use immediately. Boiling excess water not only takes longer, but uses more energy in the process– only to cool in the kettle and be reboiled later. According to the BBC, $92 million (£68 million) is wasted across British households due to overfilled kettles.

Other easy ways to reduce excess energy being used to heat water is to first boil water in a kettle before transferring to a pan and then cover pots and pans when water is boiling to trap heat. 

9. Pack a full freezer

The more you store in your freezer, the less energy you use, according to the South East Wales Energy Agency. By filling the space, there is less surrounding air that needs to be cooled. In addition, a cool temperature can be maintained for longer in the event of a power cut. 

Regularly defrosting your freezer is also worthwhile. The more ice there is built up in a domestic freezer, the more energy it uses, according to the journal Measurement.

10. Tweak your thermostat

Reducing your home's temperature by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (one degree Celsius) may not seem like a lot, but this small amount  can produce a great difference in energy prices. Setting your room thermostat one degree higher, could increase your heating bill by ten percent, according to the Energy Saving Trust. 

To save money on your heating, set your thermostat to the lowest comfortable temperature. Generally, thermostats save energy because they automatically turn the heating off when the desired temperature is reached.

Additional resources

Find out how much you could save by installing solar panels in your area using the Energy Saving Trust’s Solar Energy Calculator. You can read the latest information about the U.K. Government’s support for energy bills in the cost of living factsheets on the government website.

Bibliography

• “The influence of consumer behavior on energy, greenhouse gas, and water footprints of showering”. Journal of Industrial Ecology (2019). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.12858
• “How much energy could be saved by making small changes to everyday household behaviours”. A report for Department of Energy and Climate Change (2012). https://www.minuvida.com/uploads
• “Ceiling fans”. Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Arkansas. https://www.uaex.uada.edu/publications/PDF/FSA-1053.pdf
• “Experimental investigation of energy consumption and environmental impact of adaptive defrost in domestic refrigerators”. Measurement (2016). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263224116302639

Solar panels crown rooftops and roadside signs, and help keep spacecraft powered. But how do solar panels work?

Simply put, a solar panel works by allowing photons, or particles of light, to knock electrons free from atoms, generating a flow of electricity, according to the University of Minnesota Duluth. Solar panels actually comprise many, smaller units called photovoltaic cells — this means they convert sunlight into electricity. Many cells linked together make up a solar panel.

Each photovoltaic cell is basically a sandwich made up of two slices of semi-conducting material. According to the Proceedings National Graduate Conference 2012, photovoltaic cells are usually made of silicon — the same stuff used in microelectronics.

To work, photovoltaic cells need to establish an electric field. Much like a magnetic field, which occurs due to opposite poles, an electric field occurs when opposite charges are separated. To get this field, manufacturers "dope" silicon with other materials, giving each slice of the sandwich a positive or negative electrical charge.

Specifically, they seed phosphorous into the top layer of silicon, according to the American Chemical Society, which adds extra electrons, with a negative charge, to that layer. Meanwhile, the bottom layer gets a dose of boron, which results in fewer electrons, or a positive charge. This all adds up to an electric field at the junction between the silicon layers. Then, when a photon of sunlight knocks an electron free, the electric field will push that electron out of the silicon junction.

A couple of other components of the cell turn these electrons into usable power. Metal conductive plates on the sides of the cell collect the electrons and transfer them to wires, according to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). At that point, the electrons can flow like any other source of electricity.

Researchers have produced ultrathin, flexible solar cells that are only 1.3 microns thick — about 1/100th the width of a human hair — and are 20 times lighter than a sheet of office paper. In fact, the cells are so light that they can sit on top of a soap bubble, and yet they produce energy with about as much efficiency as glass-based solar cells, scientists reported in a study published in 2016 in the journal Organic Electronics. Lighter, more flexible solar cells such as these could be integrated into architecture, aerospace technology, or even wearable electronics.  

There are other types of solar power technology — including solar thermal and concentrated solar power (CSP) — that operate in a different fashion than photovoltaic solar panels, but all harness the power of sunlight to either create electricity or to heat water or air.

Additional resources

To learn more about solar energy, you can watch this video by NASA. Additionally, you can read the article Top 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Solar Energy by America’s Energy Department.

Bibliography

“Solar Power: A Feasible Future”. Sustainability, University of Minnesota Duluth (2020). https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream

“A Review on Comparison between Traditional Silicon Solar Cells and Thin- Film CdTe Solar Cells”. Proceedings National Graduate Conference (2012). https://www.researchgate.net

“How Solar Cells Work”. The American Chemical Society. https://www.acs.org

“Solar Photovoltaic Cell Basics”. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-photovoltaic-cell-basics

New satellite photos captured the widespread and disastrous power outages that plunged the Houston area into darkness this week, when a powerful Arctic weather system swept through the state. 

Millions of Texas residents lost power when the polar air mass hit the state on Feb. 13, according to a NASA statement. More than 1 million people in the Houston area were still without power at 1 a.m. on Feb. 16, when the Suomi NPP satellite soared by and measured nighttime light emissions and reflections from the region.

A team of scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and Universities Space Research Association (USRA) processed the data to produce a snapshot of the power outages. Compared with an image captured before the cold snap, in the early morning on Feb. 7, sprawling patches of the Feb. 16 image appear pitch-black rather than brightly illuminated.

Related: 10 signs that Earth's climate is off the rails 

The rolling blackouts began as Texas residents turned on their heaters, placing much more demand on the power grid than is typical for winter, The Associated Press reported. In general, Texas has a generating capacity of about 67,000 megawatts in the winter, compared with 86,000 megawatts in the summer, when temperatures soar and the state's energy demands usually peak. 

But when the polar weather system hit, 28,000 megawatts from natural gas, coal and nuclear plants and 18,000 megawatts from wind and solar sources fell offline, as gas supply lines froze and some turbines stopped spinning, according to the AP. In cold, northern states, these power sources are routinely protected against winter weather and energy reserves are stored in advance of storms; Texas did not apply these same winterization guidelines, AP reported.

The NASA/USRA team has documented many blackouts in this way, but it's unusual to see such a large power outage in a developed country, Miguel Román, director of the Earth from Space Institute at USRA, said in the statement. He also noted that Texas is the only state that has isolated its power grid from the rest of the country, to avoid federal regulation.

The weather-related outages have already led to several deaths in Texas, as some people died while attempting to keep warm in their powerless homes, The Associated Press reported. 

Originally published on Live Science. 

Renewable energy comes from sources that are replenished naturally, such as the sun and wind. Traditional energy sources, like coal and oil, are finite and when burned, release carbon in the form of carbon dioxide and methane — two greenhouse gases that significantly contribute to the acceleration of global climate change. Renewable energy, on the other hand, either does not emit carbon or is carbon neutral, meaning it absorbs as much carbon as it emits.

Related: US could reach 'net zero' carbon by 2050. Here's how.

Why is renewable energy important?

Tapping into sources of renewable energy is a relatively new development in the history of human energy production. Early human ancestors used wood to generate heat energy, then switched to coal, a fuel with higher energy density, as summarized in the textbook "The Cambridge World History" (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Petroleum oil now fuels the majority of the world's transportation industry, including cars, airplanes, boats and trains, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Coal, oil and natural gas are called "fossil fuels" because the products are formed over the course of millennia as heat and pressure transformed the fossilized remains of dead plants and animals trapped underground, according to the Geological Survey Ireland. 

Burning fossil fuels, such as in power plants or cars, releases the carbon that had been trapped underground into the atmosphere. Humanity's dependence on fossil fuels is a leading cause of climate change because of the large amounts of carbon that fossil fuels dump into the atmosphere as they burn.

Related: The human fossil-fuel addiction: Greenhouse emissions soar to record levels

Not only are fossil fuels accelerating global climate change, but the supply is limited, so they're not a sustainable source of energy. Industries, countries and individuals around the world are now turning to renewable energy sources, which either do not produce carbon to generate energy or are carbon neutral, to minimize humanity's contribution to climate change and help make sure our planet has energy for the future.

Types of renewable energy

Here are some of the most common sources of renewable energy, and some concerns about them:

Solar

Solar energy involves converting the sun's radiation into trapped heat, then using that heat to create or sustain a chemical reaction, or generate electricity, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. This can be achieved with photovoltaic solar panels or by concentrating solar-thermal power, which enables solar-generated heat to be stored until energy is needed.  

Although solar energy is free, it's not always available — the sun doesn't shine at night, which often coincides with peak energy demand, according to the University of Calgary. For this reason, the fate of renewable energies such as solar and wind relies on the development of efficient battery storage.

Related: Solar power stations in space could be the answer to our energy needs

There are also environmental concerns about solar energy because some of the chemicals used to manufacture solar panels are toxic to the environment, according to the EIA. The agency's website states that "some solar thermal systems use potentially hazardous fluids to transfer heat. Leaks of these materials could be harmful to the environment."

Wind

Wind turbines are giant windmills with huge blades that get pushed around by the wind. As the blades rotate they spin a generator, which creates electricity. However, environmental groups and scientists are concerned about the impact of wind turbines on local bird and bat populations. 

According to a 2015 review published in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, wind turbines kill bats and birds when they fly into the turbine's enormous blades. A 2013 review published in the journal Renewable Energy estimated that wind turbines killed an estimated 20,000 birds in the United States in 2009, while fossil-fuel power stations killed about 14 million birds that year.

Related: How do wind turbines kill birds? 

Electricity production from wind is also not 100% reliable because it depends on whether or not the wind is blowing, and even in the windiest areas there can be wind lulls.

Hydropower

There are a number of ways in which water can be used to create energy. For example, energy can be generated via the free-flow of water in a river or stream, or from water released out of a dam with a higher elevation, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. As the water flows, it turns turbines that generate electricity. Pumped storage is another method of hydropower that involves pumping water into a dam at a higher altitude during off-peak periods and then releasing it to transfer energy to the electricity grid when there is high demand. 

Large dams and reservoirs, however, come with environmental concerns of their own, as these large-scale pieces of infrastructure drastically change water flow and affect local ecosystems, according to American Rivers, a nonprofit organization promoting river conservation. For example, the Itaipu Dam, a hydroelectric dam across the Paraná River between Paraguay and Brazil, was constructed in the 1970s and 1980s and has resulted in a 70% loss of biodiversity in the surrounding river habitat, Michigan State University professor Emilio Moran told the German news agency Deutsche Welle in June 2020. 

But what about the largest body of water on our planet? Although the ocean contains an abundance of wave power, locating and building an efficient power station in the unforgiving saltwater environment presents huge logistical and financial challenges. Nonetheless, researchers and engineers are developing and testing new energy-capture systems with the goal of finding an efficient way to harness the energy of ocean waves, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. 

Geothermal

There are two main methods of tapping into the energy below the Earth's surface. 

One method, known as a geothermal heat pump, is used to heat or cool homes and other buildings. This system works by taking advantage of temperatures just a few feet underground where it's a relatively stable 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit (10 to 16 degrees Celsius), according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Water-filled pipes are buried between 30 to 100 feet (9 to 30 meters) below ground and are connected to a surface-level pump that circulates the water through the pipes. In cold weather climates, as water is pumped through the warmer pipes in the ground to the cooler pipes in the house, it releases energy in the form of heat, which dissipates into the building, warming it up. Nine out of 10 houses in Iceland heat their houses using this method, according to Iceland's National Energy Authority. Geothermal heat pumps can also be used to help cool buildings down in warmer climates where the below-ground temperature is cooler than the air temperature. 

Related: Magma power: Scientists drill into volcano to harness its energy

Further below Earth's surface are reservoirs of scalding water under extreme pressure from the tons of rock above. Another method of geothermal energy generation uses deep wells to access this water. As the hot water rises to the surface (driven by the pressure decrease) it turns to steam that creates enough force to turn the turbines of a powerstation, similar to the mechanism of a coal-fired powerstation. These deep geothermal vents produce substantially less toxic gas and 99% less carbon emissions than coal-fired power stations, according to the EIA.

Biofuel

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a nonprofit organization promoting sustainable energy, defines biomass as "living or recently dead organisms and any byproducts of those organisms, plant or animal. The term is generally understood to exclude coal, oil and other fossilized remnants of organisms, as well as soils." These biomass products absorb energy and carbon during their lifetime and are then burned for fuel, similar to fossil fuels, or converted into liquid fuel.

Related: Are biofuels worse than gasoline for the climate? 

Biofuel, or energy created from burning biomass, is one of the more controversial renewable energy options because of its dependence on farms, forests and other ecosystems as sources of biomass. The largest agricultural biofuel industries, for example, turn crops such as sugar cane and soybeans into energy rather than selling the crops as food. But agriculture is a carbon-intense industry, which means those biofuels aren't exactly environmentally friendly. Using food crops for biofuel also threatens food security as biofuel crops affect the price and availability of food crops, according to a 2010 NATO report.  

Is renewable energy cheaper or more expensive than traditional forms of energy?

In the first quarter of 2020, renewables accounted for 28% of global electricity generation, according to the International Energy Agency, an autonomous intergovernmental organization. Coal and gas, however, remain the global mainstays, representing 60% of global electricity supply.

A major impediment to the uptake of renewable energy has been its price tag, but as these technologies mature, their costs have decreased significantly. Between 2010 and 2019, the cost of solar panel technology dropped 82%, followed by concentrating solar power at 47%, onshore wind at 40% and offshore wind at 29%, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental organization.

More than half of the renewable capacity added in 2019 achieved lower electricity costs than new coal generation, and new solar and wind projects are undercutting the cheapest of existing coal-fired plants, according to IRENA's 2019 report.

Can renewable energy sources replace fossil fuels?

Considering how heavily humanity still depends on fossil fuels, will sources of renewable energy ever replace them? 

"The simple answer is 'yes,'" said Tomas Kåberger, a technology management and economics expert and affiliated professor at Chalmers University in Sweden. The major reason is that industrial technology development has pushed down the price of renewables, particularly wind and solar, allowing them to compete with fossil fuels, Kåberger said. Commercial advances in efficient battery technology, driven by cellphones, laptops and automotive manufacturers, has also led to cost decreases.

Related: This new cellphone uses such little power it doesn't need a battery

We may see a big shift in the next 10 years from fossil fuels to renewable energy, particularly in the electricity generation and transportation industries, said Ken Gillingham, an associate professor of energy economics at Yale University. But in order to accelerate the process, he said, the world needs policy interventions, such as carbon taxes or shifting government subsidies towards energy storage rather than generation.

Without government intervention, "we would get continual uptake of renewable energy over the next decade," Gillingham said, "but it won't, on its own, take us to the level we need to fully decarbonise electricity."

Additional resources: 

• Learn how to conserve energy in your home with tips from the U.S. Department of Energy. 
• Watch a video explainer about hydropower from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  
• Learn more about geothermal energy from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. 

It sounds like science fiction: giant solar power stations floating in space that beam down enormous amounts of energy to Earth. And for a long time, the concept – first developed by the Russian scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, in the 1920s – was mainly an inspiration for writers.

A century later, however, scientists are making huge strides in turning the concept into reality. The European Space Agency has realised the potential of these efforts and is now looking to fund such projects, predicting that the first industrial resource we will get from space is “beamed power”.

Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, so there’s a lot at stake. From rising global temperatures to shifting weather patterns, the impacts of climate change are already being felt around the globe. Overcoming this challenge will require radical changes to how we generate and consume energy.

Renewable energy technologies have developed drastically in recent years, with improved efficiency and lower cost. But one major barrier to their uptake is the fact that they don’t provide a constant supply of energy. Wind and solar farms only produce energy when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining – but we need electricity around the clock, every day. Ultimately, we need a way to store energy on a large scale before we can make the switch to renewable sources.

Benefits of space

A possible way around this would be to generate solar energy in space. There are many advantages to this. A space-based solar power station could orbit to face the Sun 24 hours a day. The Earth’s atmosphere also absorbs and reflects some of the Sun’s light, so solar cells above the atmosphere will receive more sunlight and produce more energy.

But one of the key challenges to overcome is how to assemble, launch and deploy such large structures. A single solar power station may have to be as much as 10 kilometres squared in area – equivalent to 1,400 football pitches. Using lightweight materials will also be critical, as the biggest expense will be the cost of launching the station into space on a rocket.

One proposed solution is to develop a swarm of thousands of smaller satellites that will come together and configure to form a single, large solar generator. In 2017, researchers at the California Institute of Technology outlined designs for a modular power station, consisting of thousands of ultralight solar cell tiles. They also demonstrated a prototype tile weighing just 280 grams per square metre, similar to the weight of card.

Recently, developments in manufacturing, such as 3D printing, are also being looked at for this application. At the University of Liverpool, we are exploring new manufacturing techniques for printing ultralight solar cells on to solar sails. A solar sail is a foldable, lightweight and highly reflective membrane capable of harnessing the effect of the Sun’s radiation pressure to propel a spacecraft forward without fuel. We are exploring how to embed solar cells on solar sail structures to create large, fuel-free solar power stations.

These methods would enable us to construct the power stations in space. Indeed, it could one day be possible to manufacture and deploy units in space from the International Space Station or the future lunar gateway station that will orbit the Moon. Such devices could in fact help provide power on the Moon.

The possibilities don’t end there. While we are currently reliant on materials from Earth to build power stations, scientists are also considering using resources from space for manufacturing, such as materials found on the Moon.

Another major challenge will be getting the power transmitted back to Earth. The plan is to convert electricity from the solar cells into energy waves and use electromagnetic fields to transfer them down to an antenna on the Earth’s surface. The antenna would then convert the waves back into electricity. Researchers led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency have already developed designs and demonstrated an orbiter system which should be able to do this.

There is still a lot of work to be done in this field, but the aim is that solar power stations in space will become a reality in the coming decades. Researchers in China have designed a system called Omega, which they aim to have operational by 2050. This system should be capable of supplying 2GW of power into Earth’s grid at peak performance, which is a huge amount. To produce that much power with solar panels on Earth, you would need more than six million of them.

Smaller solar power satellites, like those designed to power lunar rovers, could be operational even sooner.

Across the globe, the scientific community is committing time and effort to the development of solar power stations in space. Our hope is that they could one day be a vital tool in our fight against climate change.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook and Twitter. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

We're drowning in plastic.

In 2017, the U.S. produced nearly 35.4 million tons (32 million metric tons) of the stuff, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. If you want to reduce your own contribution to the plastic pollution problem, recycling might seem like an easy solution. 

But what happens after you clean out those plastic containers and dump them into a recycling bin? 

Related: If you throw a compostable cup in the trash, does it still break down?

Unfortunately, the outcome isn't as rosy as many people think; recycling is unlikely to give plastic to-go containers new life, said John Hocevar, a marine biologist with Greenpeace USA. Of all the waste produced in 2017, only 8.4% of it eventually got recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It's not so much that consumers aren't motivated to recycle or that they don't have ready access to recycling programs; the United States simply doesn't have the proper infrastructure.

"In most of the country, most types of plastic are not recyclable," Hocevar told Live Science.

A recent report released by Greenpeace surveyed the United States' 367 materials recovery facilities — the facilities that sort our recycling — and found that only plastic bottles are regularly recycled. The fate of most other types of plastic, from clamshells to packaging, is usually a landfill or incineration. 

Not all plastic is created equal. If you turn over a clear plastic bottle, like those used to hold ketchup or laundry detergent, you'll notice a number "1" inside a triangular recycling symbol — that means it's made of a material called PET (polyethylene terephthalate). Opaque jugs, like the kind that hold milk, get a "2," meaning they're made of a material called HDPE (high-density polyethylene). At materials recovery facilities, or MRFs, plastics get sorted based on these numbers (they go up to 7), which designate how recyclable they are. 

Numbers 1 and 2 are relatively recyclable, said Kara Pochiro, communications director for the Association of Plastic Recyclers. These materials get chopped up, melted into pellets and sold to manufacturers for reuse.

"They can be made into carpet, clothing, plastic packaging," as well as other products, Pochiro told Live Science. 

Recycling gets more complicated with higher numbers, called "mixed plastic," Pochiro said. This waste makes up around 69% of all the plastic we use, according to the Greenpeace report. It's much more expensive and energy intensive to process than numbers 1 and 2. In the past, many recycling facilities would export mixed plastics, often to China. But two years ago, China banned the import of foreign plastic waste. 

Recycling facilities had to scramble to find a new market. Many failed. For example, in Los Angeles, recycling facilities still won't process any plastics with numbers higher than 2. Instead, MRFs are dumping them in landfills or incinerators, The Guardian reported last year.

China's new policy, however, hasn't done much to change the fate of U.S. plastic, Hocevar said. Many of the bales of plastic that got shipped to China were contaminated with non-recyclable trash, he said. Those unusable bales got thrown in landfills or into the ocean.  The problem hasn't gotten worse — it's just moved onto U.S. soil, he said.

"They would just bundle it all together and ship it off to China. What happened to it was not at all transparent," Hocevar said. There was no way to tell what was or wasn't getting recycled, he added. 

What the United States needs is infrastructure equipped to process other kinds of plastic, Pochiro said. But Hocevar envisions a different solution: "The really simple answer is we have to stop making so much throwaway plastic."

That said, is recycling worth it? For bottles labeled "1" or "2", the answer is "yes," Pochiro said. There's also a growing market for plastics labeled "5," a flexible plastic that includes mini-yogurt containers. An increasing percentage of fives are actually getting recycled. For other numbers, it's important to check the restrictions of your local recycling facility, Pochiro said.

Hocevar's answer was simpler: a resounding "no" on numbers 3, 4, 6 and 7. These plastics just gunk up an already strained recycling system, he said. 

"It does more harm than good," Hocevar said.

• What happens inside a landfill?
• Why doesn't plastic biodegrade?
• Where does all our poop go?

Originally published on Live Science.

When you drop your plastic waste into the recycling bin, it most likely makes its way around the world, where it can pose a health and security risk to developing countries, according to a new Guardian report.

The planet is getting buried under plastic: beaches are littered with it, sea life is choking on it, and a new report finds that we're even drinking a credit-card-size amount of plastic every week from our drinking water. Needless to say, recycling is a good idea.

Until it's done wrong. That plastic bottle that you drop into a recycling bin on the streets of New York isn't always broken down and crafted into a brand-new product. Sometimes, it ends up across the world in someone's backyard, taking its place among scores of supermarket bags and snack pouches. 

Related: If You Throw a Compostable Cup in the Trash, Does It Still Break Down?

The U.S. ships about 1 million tons of plastic waste overseas every year. Much of that plastic used to end up in China, where it was recycled — that is, until the country abruptly stopped most of the plastic waste imports in 2017. Now, a good part of U.S. plastic waste is shipped to the world's poorest countries for recycling, including Bangladesh, Laos, Ethiopia and Senegal, the Guardian reported.

Last year, about 68,000 shipping containers' worth of plastic recycling waste from the U.S. were shipped to developing countries, which mismanage over 70% of their own plastic waste, they wrote. For example, Malaysia dumps or improperly disposes 55% of its own plastic waste, yet it receives more U.S. recyclables than any other country, they wrote. What's more, an estimated 20% to 70% of plastic waste that goes to recycling facilities worldwide is unusable and discarded as trash, according to the report.

Beyond just having to live among the trash that litters their beaches and streets, the increasing number of plastic processing facilities that are popping up in these countries is posing health risks to citizens who live among contaminated water supplies and the smell of plastic fumes, they wrote.

This report is part of the Guardian's six-month-long Toxic America series.

• 7 Everyday Toxic Things You Shouldn't Toss in the Trash
• In Photos: Litter Transforms Into Sea Creatures in Stunning Shots
• In Images: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Originally published on Live Science.

The Bitcoin network could use 0.5 percent of the world's energy consumption by the end of this year, and it could soon cost so much to mine the cryptocurrency that it stops being profitable.

These figures come from a new commentary published today (May 16) in the journal Joule. In it, Alex de Vries, a financial economist and blockchain specialist, carefully worked through a number of known data points — the number of bitcoin-mining computers made in the past year, the energy consumption of those computers and the minimum energy costs of cooling large facilities of tightly packed computers, among others — to arrive at an absolute lowest bound for the energy consumption of the bitcoin network today: 2.55 gigawatts, or a bit less than the energy consumption of Ireland.

By the end of 2018, de Vries calculated, based on data about ongoing bitcoin mining production, that number could rise to 7.67 gigawatts, or a bit less than the energy consumption of Austria. And that, he said in a statement, amounts to about 0.5 percent of the world's energy consumption.

This is a problem for several reasons, environmental concerns among them. But de Vries showed that it represents a particular problem for the bitcoin miners themselves: It could soon be so expensive to mine bitcoin that the process simply stops being profitable. [Top 10 Emerging Environmental Technologies]

Why is bitcoin sucking up all this energy? To understand that, you have to know a little about how the bitcoin network works.

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency. That means there's no central agency that records who owns what. Instead, bitcoin users rely on a shared, time-stamped digital record of their transactions. And maintaining that shared record, adding a "block" to it every 10 minutes or so, is the work of a competitive effort by thousands of computers all over the world. Those computers collectively perform quintillions of calculations per second, each "mining," trying to solve a math problem that will give it the right to form the next block on the chain. And the winner every 10 minutes is rewarded with 12.5 bitcoins. That's more than $100,000 at the coin's current exchange rates.

Given those incentives, bitcoin miners have filled up warehouses with computers devoted to mining. Those computers, even the most efficient ones, need a significant amount of power to run. Certain details, like how many of these computers actually get made per year, or what tricks different mining operations use to keep them cool, are industry secrets. But de Vries worked around that secretiveness to find the data he needed for his calculation.

"[This calculation] marks the first time that bitcoin miner production has been estimated with the help of upstream [chip] production numbers," he wrote. "Given the ongoing secrecy of bitcoin miner manufacturers, this could prove to be a valuable addition to the toolkit for substantiating trends in bitcoin's electricity consumption."

De Vries also pointed out that when bitcoin mining becomes more costly than profitable, that doesn't mean all the bitcoin miners will stop. Some miners, he pointed out, might steal electricity or otherwise figure out ways to mine bitcoin at no personal cost. For example, he said, one researcher mined $8,000 to $10,000 worth of bitcoin on a university supercomputer, costing the university about $150,000. Other, less-nefarious miners, he wrote, might keep mining for reasons like anonymity or libertarian ideology.

Still, de Vries wrote, bitcoin's potential to become so energy-hungry that it stops being profitable is a real threat to the network.

Originally published on Live Science.

Gaza has often been invaded for its water. Every army leaving or entering the Sinai desert, whether Babylonians, Alexander the Great, the Ottomans, or the British, has sought relief there. But today the water of Gaza highlights a toxic situation that is spiralling out of control.

A combination of repeated Israeli attacks and the sealing of its borders by Israel and Egypt, have left the territory unable to process its water or waste. Every drop of water swallowed in Gaza, like every toilet flushed or antibiotic imbibed, returns to the environment in a degraded state.

When a hospital toilet is flushed, for instance, it seeps untreated through the sand into the aquifer. There it joins water laced with pesticides from farms, heavy metals from industry, and salt from the ocean. It is then pumped back up by municipal or private wells, joined with a small fraction of freshwater purchased from Israel, and cycled back into people's taps. This results in widespread contamination and undrinkable drinking water, about 90 percent of which exceeds the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines for salinity and chloride.

Incredibly, conditions are getting worse, thanks to the emergence of "superbugs." These multi-drug resistant organisms have developed thanks to an over-prescription of antibiotics by doctors desperate to treat the victims of the seemingly endless assaults. The more injury there is, the more chance there is of re-injury. Less regular access to clean water means infections will spread faster, bugs will be stronger, more antibiotics will be prescribed – and the victims will be ever-more weakened.

The result is what has been termed a toxic ecology or "biosphere of war," of which the noxious water cycle is just one part. A biosphere refers to the interaction of all living things with the natural resources that sustain them. The point is that sanctions, blockades and a permanent state of war affects everything that humans might require in order to thrive, as water becomes contaminated, air is polluted, soil loses its fertility and livestock succumb to diseases. People in Gaza who may have evaded bombs or sniper fire have no escape from the biosphere.

War surgeons, health anthropologists and water engineers – including ourselves – have observed this situation developing wherever protracted armed conflict or economic sanctions grind on, as with water systems in Basrah and health systems throughout Iraq or Syria. It's now well past time to clean it up.

There is water – for some

It's not as if there is no fresh water nearby to alleviate the situation in Gaza. Just a few hundred metres from the border are Israeli farms that use freshwater pumped from Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) to grow herbs destined for European supermarkets. As the lake is around 200km to the north and lies 200 metres below sea level, a massive amount of energy is used to pump all that water. The lake water is also fiercely contested by Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Palestinians in the West Bank, each of which is seeking their legal entitlement of the Jordan River basin.

Meanwhile, Israel desalinates so much seawater these days that its municipalities are turning it down. Excess desalinated water is being used to irrigate crops, and the country's water authority is even planning to use it to refill Tiberias itself – a bizarre and irrational cycle, considering the lake water continues to be pumped the other direction into the desert. There is now so much manufactured water that some Israeli engineers can declare that "today, no one in Israel experiences water scarcity."

But the same cannot be said for Palestinians, especially not those in Gaza. People there have resorted to various ingenious filters, boilers, or under-the-sink or neighbourhood-level desalination units to treat their water. But these sources are unregulated, often full of germs, and just another reason children are prescribed antibiotics – thus continuing the pattern of injury and re-injury. Doctors, nurses, and water maintenance crews meanwhile try to do the impossible with the minimal medical equipment at their disposal.

The implications for all those who invest in Gaza's repeatedly destroyed water and health projects are clear. Providing more ambulances or water tankers – the "truck and chuck" strategy – might work when conflicts are at their most acute, but they are never more than a band aid. Yes, things will get better in the short term, but soon enough Gaza will be onto the next generation of antibiotics, and dealing with teflon-coated superbugs.

Donors must instead design programmes suited to the all-pervasive and incessant biosphere of war. This means training many more doctors and nurses, providing more medicines, and infrastructure support for health and water services. More importantly, donors should build-in political "cover" to protect their investments (if not the local children), perhaps by calling for those who destroy the infrastructure to foot the bill for repairs.

And there is an even bigger message for the rest of us. Our research shows that war is more than simply armies and geopolitics – it extends across entire ecosystems. If the dehumanising ideology behind the conflict was confronted, and if excess water was diverted to people rather than to lakes, then the easily avoidable repeated injuries suffered by people in Gaza would become a thing of the past. Palestinians would soon find their biosphere a whole lot healthier.

Mark Zeitoun, Professor of Water Security, University of East Anglia and Ghassan Abu Sitta, Founder, Conflict Medicine Program, American University of Beirut

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Scientists have published a detailed road map to move 139 countries to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, according to a recent study.

Energy experts at Stanford University reported that using wind, solar, geothermal and water (hydropower, tidal and wave) energy to electrify all economic sectors that need power to operate — including the electric grid itself, transportation, heating and cooling, industrial, and the agriculture, forestry and fishing industries — would significantly reduce energy consumption, decrease deaths from air pollution, create millions of jobs, stabilize energy prices and save trillions of dollars on health care and climate-related costs.

"We have individual plans for each of the 139 countries, and these represent more than 99 percent of all of the emissions worldwide," Mark Jacobson, director of Stanford University's Atmosphere and Energy program, told Live Science. [Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas]

The study looked at the world's energy needs, beginning with 2012 and projecting out to 2050. In 2012, the world used 12.105 terawatts (TW) of energy, which is equal to 12.105 trillion watts. By 2050, the world will need 20.604 TW if nothing changes and every country continues with the same approach it currently uses to meet energy demand, the researchers wrote in the study.

But if those same business sectors were to turn to renewable energy sources to electrify their all of their power requirements, the world would need just 11.804 TW to meet global power demands, according to the study. This is because electricity is more efficient than combustion, according to the researchers.

In a video explaining the main points of the study, Jacobson offered an example: In an electric car, he said, 80 to 82 percent of the electricity used goes toward moving the car; the rest is wasted as heat. In a gasoline-powered vehicle, on the other hand, only 17 to 20 percent of the energy in the fuel goes toward moving the car, and the rest is wasted as heat, he said.

Energy is also needed to mine, refine and transport fossil fuels. As such, switching to 100 percent renewable energy would eliminate these energy-intensive and environmentally destructive processes, the report authors said.

Road map for the future

In their study, Jacobson and his colleagues show how wind, water, geothermal and solar power can meet the worldwide demand for 11.804 TW of energy while avoiding the predicted global temperature increase of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2050. The researchers outline how doing so would save the lives of 4 million to 7 million people who might have otherwise died from diseases caused by air pollution, save countries more than $20 trillion overall in health and climate costs, and produce a net increase of more than 24 million long-term jobs.

"It seems like a no-brainer to me," Jacobson told Live Science.

The study builds on previous work from Jacobson, who began his career as a research scientist trying to understand how air pollution affects the climate. He said that in the early years, he focused on the problems, but by around 1999, he started looking at solutions.

In 2009, Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, a research scientist at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study in Scientific American that outlined a plan to power the world with 100 percent renewable energy.

In the ensuing years, Jacobson and Delucchi worked on follow-up studies that examined these issues at the state level, and the researchers have now expanded that research to 139 countries. Detailed energy data for the remaining 59 countries in the world did not exist and thus could not be included in the study, the scientists said.

The overall cost of transitioning to an infrastructure of 100 percent renewable energy — a plan that sees countries moving first to 80 percent renewable energy by 2030 — may, at first glance, seemcost-prohibitive, but Jacobson and his team have crunched those numbers, too.

Jacobson said that, when averaged over all countries, the cost of building renewable energy systems, including storage and transmission, is 8.9 centsper kilowatt-hour (kWh). In a world that doesn't transition and keeps the current fossil-fuel system, the cost is 9.8 cents/kWh.

And that doesn't include the cost to society.

Climate change's price

Fossil-fuel energy comes with health- and climate-related costs. The authors estimate that by 2050, countries will spend upwards of $28 trillion per year in costs for environmental, property, and human health issues related to global warming, includingfloods, real-estate destruction, agricultural loss, drought, wildfires, heat stress and stroke, air pollution, influenza, malaria, dengue fever, famine, ocean acidification and more. [5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Your Health]

And if the world takes no action to address climate change and ice continues to melt at Earth's poles at the current pace, 7 percent of the world's coastlines will be underwater, Jacobson said.

Jacobson said the total societal cost of renewable energy — which includes the cost of health and climate issues, as well as the direct cost of energy for wind, water and solar power — is about one-fourth that of fossil fuels.

"In other worlds, you reduce the total cost to society by about 75 percent," he said. "The cost benefits of this are huge."

Several countries are already moving toward a renewable energy portfolio to meet 100 percent of their power demands for all business sectors, according to the study. The list includes Tajikistan (76.0 percent), Paraguay (58.9 percent), Norway (35.8 percent), Sweden (20.7 percent), Costa Rica (19.1 percent), Switzerland (19.0 percent), Georgia (18.7 percent), Montenegro (18.4 percent) and Iceland (17.3 percent).  

So far, the United States has just 4.2 percent of its total electricity generated by renewable sources. But the country has an advantage, according to the researchers. The study found that countries like the U.S., with more land per population size, would have the easiest time making the transition. Countries expected to have the most difficult time are those that are small, geographically, but have very large populations. Countries such as Singapore, Gibraltar and Hong Kong will have the biggest challenges transitioning to 100 renewable energy, according to Jacobson.

Still, there are ways to solve the problem, he said. These regions could turn to offshore wind energy, or they could exchange energy with a neighboring country, he added.

"With this information, we're giving confidence to countries that they can be self-sufficient," Jacobson said. "I'm hoping that different countries will commit to 100 percent renewable energy [by 2050] and 80 percent by 2030."

The study was published online Aug. 23 in the journal Joule.

Originally published on Live Science.

Are we flushing away a greener future?

Perhaps, according to scientists who found a way to turn used toilet paper into electricity.

The researchers found that they could generate energy from waste toilet paper with about the same efficiency as a natural gas plant and for the same cost as in-home solar panels, they said.

For their study, the sustainable-chemistry researchers from the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University in the Netherlands developed a two-step procedure with the goal of returning grimy toilet paper to a state where it most resembles the wood it was made from. So, they collected dirty toilet paper from the sludge at water-treatment plants. Then they dried it out and converted it into a gas in a chamber that can reach up to 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit (900 degrees Celsius). They removed tars, ashes and moisture from the gas to leave behind mostly methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Those gases were fed into solid-oxide fuel cells, which maintain very high temperatures to generate low-emission electricity from methane.

The process is designed to maximize efficiency and sustainability: Residual heat created by the fuel cell is then used to dry out the next round of toilet paper, and the entire process gives off about one-sixth the carbon emissions of a coal plant, according to the research detailed in August in the journal Energy Technology.

According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, this puts toilet paper power on a par with renewable resources in terms of emission rates. Thanks to the closed-loop nature of this system and the increased efficiency of the fuel cell, this new process captures two to three times more electricity than that from merely burning used toilet paper, the researchers said. [Poop Sausage to Pee Drinks: 7 Gross 'Human Foods']

If all the toilet paper in the Amsterdam region, the researchers' native country, were converted to electricity daily, then water treatment facilities would save 40 percent of their energy on separating toilet paper from water, the researchers calculated. Furthermore, the captured energy could power as many as 6,400 homes, they added.

But don't go saving your used toilet paper just yet. Even though plants could acquire the paper at negative cost because it's treated as waste rather than a resource, fuel-cell technology hasn't quite reached the point where building these systems is cost-effective, the researchers said.

Editor's Note: This article was updated to state that converting all the toilet paper in the Amsterdam region (not the Netherlands) could save energy at water treatment facilities. 

Original article on Live Science.

Even a "fatberg" — an enormous clotted, mass of fat and garbage found clogging a London sewer — deserves a second chance, and the biggest fatberg ever found in a British sewer recently got one.

The fatberg, a cement-like plug of accumulated cooking grease, diapers, wipes, sanitary products and other refuse that was flushed down toilets, extended through 820 feet (250 meters) of Victorian sewage pipe, and weighed an estimated 143 tons (130,000 kilograms).

Thames Water is partnering with sustainable biodiesel producer Argent Energy, to change what was formerly a "rancid blob" into "pure green fuel," Alex Saunders, a waste network manager with Thames Water, said in the statement.

Bit by bit, workers are chipping away at the giant fatberg with high-pressure water jets and then sending the loosened globs to a processing plant that will separate the oils and fat from the other refuse and convert it into biodiesel, a type of fuel that burns cleaner than fossil-derived diesel, Thames Water representatives said. The amount of environmentally friendly fuel that the fatberg could produce would be enough to run 350 double-decker buses for a day, according to the statement.

Plugs of congealed fat forming in sewer pipes from improperly discarded oils are a recurring problem in the U.K., where sewage systems in some areas date back to the Victorian era. In 2013, waste management officials discovered a fatberg weighing 15 tons (13,608 kilograms) that almost completely blocked a sewer in Kingston, Surrey, near London.

Repairing sewer damage from the Whitechapel fatberg is expected to occupy cleanup crews into October, Thames Water representatives added. Though fatbergs are disgusting and destructive, the biofuel conversion of the Whitechapel fatberg shows that they can also do some good, Saunders said in the statement.

"Even though they are our worst enemy, and we want them dead completely, bringing fatbergs back to life when we do find them — in the form of biodiesel — is a far better solution for everyone," Saunders said.

Original article on Live Science.

Solar power took a dip in the United States when the total eclipse swept across the country Monday (Aug. 21), as a new video shows.

As the solar eclipse moved from coast to coast, solar-energy generation dropped. The map shows the hottest zones — in dark orange — fading to nothingness as the moon covers the sun overhead, and then slowly coming back as the eclipse concludes.

The video was released by SolarEdge, a company that sells equipment that's designed to work with solar photovoltaic (PV) cells. It has 300,000 systems across the country.

"The solar eclipse reminded us all today of the importance of sunlight in our lives," SolarEdge said in a statement. "With solar energy now having greater significance for national power generation, we were able to track the path of the eclipse by monitoring energy production from PV systems."

While SolarEdge did not reveal exactly how much solar power was lost from its systems during the event, Mark Chediak, Naureen Malik and Brian Eckhouse reported at Bloomberg that across the country, about 12,000 megawatts of electricity come from solar power. The eclipse was billed as a major test of solar-power generation in the United States — a test that the country passed, they wrote.

In solar-heavy California, for example, the state reportedly used gas plants and hydropower generators, because these are systems that can be brought online quickly in the case of an outage. The state also urged users to conserve energy during the eclipse, to ease the burden on the grid.

The next major test of the grid will come in 2024, when a total solar eclipse crosses the United States through a swath that includes the population-heavy Eastern Seaboard. The affected states will include Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

The total solar eclipse of 2017 could cost U.S. companies nearly $700 million in lost productivity on Monday (Aug. 21) when workers pause to watch the moon block the sun.

Based on an analysis from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the worker outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. estimates that employers could lose as much as $694 million because of the solar eclipse, which occurs during a workday, company representatives said in a statement.

Challenger arrived at its cost estimate by using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2016 American Time Use Survey. The company used survey data for the country's average hourly wage data and number of full-time employed workers age 16 and higher to calculate what the lost productivity on solar eclipse day would cost if workers took 20 minutes out of their day to observe the total solar eclipse. [What Time Is the Solar Eclipse Where You Are?]

Andrew Challenger, vice president of the Chicago-based company, told NBC News that he estimates 87 million workers across the country will take a break to see the solar eclipse. But in the grand scheme, that potential $694 million in lost productivity isn't a major hit.

According to NBC News, worker distractions from March Madness can reach up to $615 million per hour as employees take time out to track college basketball games, set up brackets or catch up on game highlights. And there is a benefit to companies that celebrate the eclipse together, Challenger said.

"Since this is happening over the lunch hours, the financial impact is minimal. It offers a great opportunity to boost morale. Employers could offer lunch to their staff, give instructions on how to make viewing devices, and watch together as a team," Challenger said in his company's statement.

In fact, Space.com's parent company Purch is one of the many businesses doing just that.

The roof of our New York City office — the home of Space.com — will be open for employees of our sister sites (and the entire nine-floor building) to observe a partial solar eclipse. At Purch's headquarters in Ogden, Utah, employees will head outside to experience their own partial eclipse.

"Building in time around lunch to mark the special occasion will encourage employees to interact and have something to be excited about," Challenger said in the statement.

Visit Space.com to see the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, with a live webcast from NASA beginning at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT). 

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. 

A tech startup on a mission to make modern commercial and housing estates energy neutral has outfitted the headquarters of a Dutch bank with the world's first commercial, fully transparent solar-power-generating windows.

The windows have solar cells installed in the edges at a specific angle that allows the incoming solar light to be efficiently transformed into electricity.

"Large commercial estates consume a lot of energy," said Ferdinand Grapperhaus, co-founder and CEO of the startup, called Physee. "If you want to make these buildings energy neutral, you never have enough roof surface. Therefore, activating the buildings' facades will significantly contribute to making the buildings energy neutral." [Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas]

The windows could generate 8 to 10 watts of power, according to Grapperhaus.

"This enables the user to charge a phone per every square meter [11 square feet] two times a day," he told Live Science.

The first installation of Physee's PowerWindows was unveiled in June in Eindhoven, in the south of the Netherlands. The headquarters of Rabobank, the Netherlands' biggest bank, has been fitted with 323 square feet (30 square m) of the PowerWindows. The bank's employees will be able to plug their smartphones into the windows using USB ports to charge their batteries, according to Physee.

Other buildings in the Netherlands are already lined up to receive the innovative solar technology, which has won Physee a place on the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneers 2017 list.

At the end of June, the headquarters of the Amsterdam-based charity the Postcode Lottery were fitted with the PowerWindows. After that, Physee will move forward with its first large-scale project: a 19,000-square-foot (1,800 square m) installation in a large, newly built residential complex in Amsterdam, the Bold tower.

"I believe that every new type of glass needs power," Grapperhaus said. "Either for the glass to be tinted electrically or heated or inside windows there are these solar blinds, which are electrical and can go up and down but also more and more you can see video glass."

Grapperhaus said that the cost of the wiring that brings power from the grid to such windows is considerable in large commercial estates, and investing in power-generating windows would therefore make commercial sense.

Physee is already working on the next-generation technology that would triple the efficiency of the PowerWindows. The surface of the second generation of PowerWindows will be coated with a special material that transforms oncoming visible light into near-infrared light, which is then transported toward the solar cells in the edges of the windows.

"It works similarly to a [glow-in-the-dark star]," Grapperhaus said. "The difference is that the glow star emits the green wavelength, but the coating on our windows emits light in near-infrared wavelength."

The coating is based on the rare-earth metal thulium. Grapperhaus, together with his friend Willem Kesteloo, discovered the ability of thulium to transform a broad spectrum of light into near-infrared light in 2014, during their studies at the Delft University of Technology.

"Over time, our efficiency will improve further due to the development of better solar cells but also because of the economies of scale," Grapperhaus said. "Right now, we are looking for iconic projects all over the world to show that a large glass building can be made energy neutral in an aesthetic way."

Physee was among 30 early stage technology pioneers highlighted for 2017 and selected by the World Economic Forum for their potential to change the world. The list, announced June 14, consisted of firms developing various technologies, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity solutions and biotechnology.

Physee's presence on the list shows that the world is starting to take climate change seriously, Grapperhaus said.

"Ten years ago, sustainability was something that wasn't taken very seriously — not by venture capitalists, not by many governments and neither by large corporations," Grapperhaus said. "What I have seen over the last three years is that corporations are becoming more and more responsible, governments are becoming more and more supportive, and venture capitalists are becoming more and more interested" in sustainability.

Original article on Live Science.

A total solar eclipse that will sweep across the United States on Aug. 21 is expected to make a noticeable dent in solar-energy collection, prompting energy workers to concoct workarounds that will help them meet energy demands while the eclipse passes overhead.

Utility workers already have a game plan in California, where 9 percent of electricity came from utility-scale solar plants in 2016.  During the eclipse, when the sun disappears behind the moon, power grid workers plan to ramp up energy output from other sources, including from hydroelectricity and natural gas, and then quickly reintroduce solar power as the sun reappears.

In all, California's residents shouldn't notice a difference in their power supply during the duration of the eclipse, said Steven Greenlee, a spokesman for California Independent System Operator (ISO), a nonprofit that manages California's power grid. [Sun Shots: Amazing Eclipse Images]

Even though the eclipse isn't passing directly over California — it's traveling in a curved path from Oregon to South Carolina — it will still affect the Golden State, which has nearly half of the nation's solar-electricity-generating capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

"The solar eclipse is farther north of us, but we will see between 50 [percent] and 75 percent of solar production from our solar plants reduced during that [time]" Greenlee told Live Science.

The state is expected to lose almost 4,200 megawatts during the eclipse, which will partially darken the state from about 7:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. local time, with peak occlusion happening from 10:19 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. local time on Aug. 21, according to the ISO. To put that in perspective, 1 megawatt powers about 1,000 typical homes, so the eclipse could affect the equivalent of about 4.2 million homes, Greenlee said. 

In addition, units that rely on power from rooftop solar panels will go offline, "which means that those mostly residential units will then look to the grid for their power support," Greenlee said.

When these units are added to the expected loss of 4,200 megawatts, the total estimated demand on the power grid will be about 6,000 megawatts, or the equivalent of about 6 million homes, according to the ISO. (California had a population of about 39.2 million people in 2016, according to the U.S. Census.)

"[The 6,000 megawatts] is the amount of megawatts that we expect that we'll have to generate to make up for the effect of the solar ellipse," Greenlee said. "For us here at the ISO, we're going to need to make sure that we have our reserves properly procured," which involves having 100 percent of the expected demand plus an additional 6 percent in reserves, just in case, he said.

The ISO is talking with other energy providers, particularly natural gas, which provides about 53 percent of California's energy resources, Greenlee said. This way, the generators will know that they'll need to acquire more natural gas for the morning of the eclipse.  

In addition, the ISO will have to properly time the fading out and sudden return of the sun's light. As the eclipse begins passing over California, solar-energy collection will decrease at 70 megawatts per minute until the sun is fully blocked by the moon. Then, as the eclipse ends, it will return at 90 megawatts per minute, which is "very fast," Greenlee said.

"The challenge on our end is going to be able to time bringing up the resources, the natural gas or the hydro-generation that we're going to need, as the solar is ramping down," he said. "And then, we're going to have to ramp the gas and hydro-generation down as the solar is ramping up."

Original article on Live Science.

President Donald Trump yesterday justified pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord largely, he said, because it would hurt the United States economy.

"As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the nonbinding Paris accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country," Trump said at yesterday's (June 1) news conference.

But the idea that the Paris Agreement will harm the economy is nonsensical, said Jonathan Koomey, a lecturer in Earth Systems at the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. For one, the agreed-upon emissions cuts are nonbinding; the only legal obligation is that the United States report its carbon emissions. So if the required cuts are too damaging to the economy, the United States is free to revise its emissions goals, he said.

"You can't have nonbinding standards that are draconian," Koomey told Live Science.

Beyond that, most economic analyses suggest that environmental regulations may actually boost the economy, both because they spur innovation and because they prevent harm, Koomey said. [Trump Pulls Out of the Paris Climate Deal: 5 Likely Effects]

Harm reduction

In his speech, Trump cited statistics from a coal-industry-funded think tank, called the National Economic Research Associates, which claimed that the burdens from the nonbinding climate agreement would cost about $2.7 million in total jobs lost by 2025. He claimed it would cut production in the paper industry by 12 percent, the cement industry by 23 percent, the iron and steel industry by 38 percent, and the coal industry by 86 percent. He also cited a $3 billion pledge the United States made to help developing countries reduce their carbon emissions. (The annual United States budget is $3.8 trillion, meaning the pledge amounts to less than 0.1 percent of yearly expenditures.)

The idea that environmental regulation hurts the economy is not a new one, Koomey said. With almost any new regulation, entrenched interests say the costs will harm the economy and eliminate jobs.

"In virtually every case that's been false," Koomey said.

The reason is simple: Environmental pollution costs money, reduces productivity and kills people, so reducing it typically has financial benefits for society. For instance, because carbon dioxide acts as a lung irritant,, fully implementing the Clean Power Plan set up by President Barack Obama would lead to about 3,500 fewer deaths by 2020, according to a 2015 study in the journal Nature Climate Change. A peer-reviewed study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2001 found that the Clean Air Act, which was passed in 1990, prevented 160,000 premature deaths in 1990, 130,000 heart attacks, 86,000 emergency-room visits and 13 million lost days of work due to the negative health consequences of air pollution. The benefit-to-cost ratio, according to the EPA, was 30 to 1. [5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Your Health] 

"Environmental pollution costs society money and it kills people," Koomey said. "So if you fix that problem, then society is better off."

That's not even addressing the trillions of dollars that will be spent if climate change leads to some combination of coastal flooding, droughts, water shortages, heat waves, crop loss, famine and war, he added. According to a 2015 study by Citigroup, negative effects from climate change could total $44 trillion if the United States fails to shift to more renewable energy sources.

Innovation and wealth creation

However, environmental regulations and climate change goals don't just prevent harms and lead to job loss from more polluting endeavors, they also fuel innovation and new technologies, which directly grow the economy and produce new jobs, Koomey said.

As new regulations or incentives come on board, companies find ways to meet improved standards in the most cost-effective way possible. Thus, cleaner technologies get cheaper and become a bigger portion of the environment.

For instance, the cost of solar energy has plummeted 80 percent in the last five years, while wind technology has dropped in cost by two-thirds over the same period, and are now often cheaper than more-polluting energy sources, Koomey said. That is largely thanks to natural efficiencies that come with scaling up manufacturing levels. Technical innovations ― such as the use of carbon-fiber blades rather than metal blades in wind turbines, the elimination of extra gears, and computers that use sophisticated modeling to best harness and release energy from wind and solar power plants ― have also played a role, he said.

"We're substituting smarts for parts, we're substituting better materials and figuring out more clever ways to do the same tasks," Koomey said.

Improved energy storage has progressively increased the fraction of energy that can be reliably pulled from renewable sources such as wind and solar, without causing energy shortages and brownouts, he said. For instance, energy companies are now using old, abandoned coal mines to generate hydroelectric power during the day by pouring water deep into mines, then pumping it out at night, when the energy grid has much lower power demands, he said.

"People complained about wind and solar technology 30,40 years ago and said if you put even a few percent of that on our grid it will destabilize it, and that turned out to be nonsense," Koomey said.

Now, utility systems can easily use 30 to 40 percent renewable energy without causing any interruptions in power supplied. With regulations in place, that same cycle of innovation is likely to proceed for years.

OF course, a major source of carbon emissions comes from cars, and electric vehicles have not taken off in the same way as solar and wind power have. However, China has already mandated that a certain fraction of its cars must be electric by 2025, and because it's such a huge market, any major car companies will need to develop attractive electric vehicles for this market if they want to compete, Koomey said. By relaxing fuel-efficiency standards and removing momentum for producing electric cars, Trump's policies will only encourage U.S.-based car manufacturers to lag behind, he said.

All of these new technologies create jobs and products that grow the economy, Koomey said. A report by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean-energy think tank, estimates that "decarbonizing" the economy will add $5 trillion to the economy. A 2016 study, funded by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and hedge-fund manager Thomas Steyer, found that reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2100 would actually save money, because the increased investment in renewable energy would be more than offset by reduced costs associated with fossil fuels.

People who oppose climate regulations "are looking at this exactly wrong. They think this is somehow this great burden." But entrepreneur Richard Branson "has called the climate problem the single greatest wealth creation opportunity in human history," Koomey said.

Originally published on Live Science.

The Swiss have spoken, and nuclear power has been voted out in favor of renewable energy.

On the ballot yesterday (May 21) was the Swiss government's Energy Strategy 2050, a referendum that called for the ban of new nuclear power plants and investment in renewable energy. Under this energy plan, the country's five existing nuclear power plants will remain operational for as long as safety standards are met, The Local, an English-language news network in Europe, explains. Energy production would instead focus on hydropower, according to The Local, along with other renewable energy sources like solar and wind.

Though the votes have not been finalized, the New York Times reported that initial figures show Swiss voters passed the energy plan with 58.2 percent support. The country's direct democracy system gives voters the power to pass major policy issues.

"[The public] wants a new energy policy and does not want any new nuclear plants," Doris Leuthard, the Swiss energy minister, said at a news conference, according to The Times. "The law leads our country into a modern energy future."

Leuthard said the Energy Strategy 2050 will reduce the use of fossil fuels and foreign energy — Switzerland was a net power importer in 2016 — while supporting and expanding domestic production of renewable energy, the Times reported. Though some aspects of the plan will take effect in 2018, a fourfold increase in solar and wind power is targeted for 2035.

Less than 5 percent of Switzerland's current energy production is solar and wind, according to the Times, while hydropower accounts for 60 percent of energy output and nuclear for 35 percent. The nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, following the major earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, is partly responsible for the lack of support for such energy in Switzerland and the rest of Europe, according to the Times.

In 1978, legislation prohibited nuclear power plants on Austrian territory. After the Fukushima disaster, Germany decided to accelerate its plan to phase out nuclear power, the news site Deutsche Welle reported.

Polls suggest Europe is not alone in this nuclear cold-shoulder: A Gallup poll conducted in 2016 found that the majority of Americans (54 percent) oppose the use of nuclear energy. For comparison, in 2011 just days before the Fukushima disaster, 57 percent of Americans said they were in favor of nuclear energy, Gallup reported.

Original article on Live Science.

Can South Australia's power crisis be solved in 100 days? Elon Musk said he thinks so, and he even bet on it.

The Tesla CEO took to Twitter on today (March 10) to offer the Australian state a solution to its worsening blackouts. South Australia is a renewable-energy-dependent state, and the market has been in short supply recently, causing blackouts across the region, reported Reuters.

Backup battery power could avert blackouts, Reuters reported, and Musk offered to install $25 million in Tesla battery storage for South Australia. In fact, Musk gave himself a 100-day deadline for the installation — or the batteries would be free. [Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas]

Musk's offer came in response to a call-out on social media by Mike Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of Australian software company Atlassian, Reuters said. Cannon-Brookes said he would find funding and political support for the battery farm if Tesla would supply the batteries.

"Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature, or it is free. That serious enough for you?" Musk replied in a tweet, Reuters reported.

In a follow-up tweet, Musk offered Cannon-Brookes a pricing quote for the project: $250 per kilowatt-hour of energy for 100-megawatt-hour systems, according to Reuters, which amounts to a total of $25 million for the batteries.

Cannon-Brookes told Reuters he was already fielding calls from people in support of the project, including companies offering funding. Though the offers were made on social media, the South Australia government said it would support the offer of Tesla batteries, according to Reuters.

"The government stands ready through ARENA [the Australian Renewable Energy Agency] and the CEFC [the Clean Energy Finance Corporation] to work with companies with serious proposals to support the deployment of more storage," Josh Frydenberg, the Australian environment and energy minister, said in an email to Reuters.

Tesla's work in renewable energy was in the news earlier this week, too, with the completion of a solar farm on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The project includes a 13-megawatt solar farm and a 52-megawatt-hour battery installation, reported The Verge. Solar energy generated from the farm could reduce fossil fuel consumption by 1.6 million gallons of fuel per year, the Verge said.

Original article on Live Science.

On the Tibetan Plateau in eastern China, 4 million solar panels silently soak up the sun as part of the Longyangxia Dam Solar Park. It’s the largest solar farm in the world, spreading over 10 square miles of the high desert landscape.

The complex sprung into existence in 2013 and has been rapidly expanding ever since. Satellite imagery curated by NASA’s Earth Observatory chronicles its growth from a cluster of panels to a sprawling solar farm that looks like a giant, angular thought bubble as of January 2017.

Unlike the world’s largest ball of twine, it’s more than just a roadside attraction. The installation currently has the capacity to generate 850 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power roughly 140,000 U.S. homes.

The Longyangxia Dam Solar Park is one piece of the massive renewable energy revolution taking place in China. The country invested $103 billion into renewables in 2015, the last year with data available. That helped the world set arenewable investment high water mark of $286 billion.

Related:

China to Plow $361 Billion into Renewable Fuel by 2020 Google Earth Shows 30 Years of Climate Change Renewable Energy Investments Set a Record in 2015

According to Greenpeace’s Energydesk, preliminary 2016 data show China installed the equivalent of one and a half soccer fields of solar panels every hour. That puts the country on track to meet its 2020 renewable goals sometime in 2018.

The renewables targets line up with China’s international climate commitments. The government previously announced it would lower the carbon intensity of its economy 40-45 percent below 2005 levels. Under the Paris Agreement, China has pledged to peak its carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

Looking ahead, the government announced in early January that it plans to spend $361 billion on renewable power generation from now through 2020. The influx of cash is expected to help China produce a total of 110 gigawatts of solar power and 210 gigawatts of wind power by 2020.

The increase in investment coincides with a 40 percent drop in the cost of installing utility-scale solar in China since 2010. Solar is expected to become even cheaper in the coming years, further creating more bang for China’s buck (or yuan as the case may be).

Despite the growth in capacity, China has struggled to balance demand and production. An economic slowdown has caused some solar and wind farms to sit idle or produce energy that can’t be used. Local governments and strong coal interests also present obstacles to China’s transition from the world’s biggest carbon polluter to an economy largely powered by clean energy.

China continues to see its emissions rise due largely to heavy coal use, which will increase the risks associated with climate change. The Longyangxia Dam Solar Park is a step toward ensuring China has the capacity to change that.

You May Also Like: Scientists Foresee Losses as Cities Fight Beach Erosion California Farmers Use Floodwater to Replenish Aquifers This January Was the Third Warmest on Record Globally Antarctica Just Shed a Manhattan-Sized Chunk of Ice

Original article on Climate Central.

It's not every day that scientists can study a volcano up close, but researchers investigating the feasibility of volcano-powered electricity successfully drilled into the core of one in Iceland.

Scientists studied the volcanic system at Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland, which has been dormant for more than 700 years, according to a hazard assessment by Verkis Consulting Engineers for Invest in Inceland.

The depths of Reykjanes' geothermal field — an area with high heat flow — had never been explored, researchers with the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) said in a statement. Beginning in August 2016, the IDDP spent 168 days drilling into the volcanic belly of Reykjanes. This well was completed on Jan. 25, reaching a record-breaking depth of nearly 3 miles (4.8 kilometers). [The 11 Biggest Volcanic Eruptions in History]

At this depth, the hole does not enter the magma chamber but does penetrate the rock surrounding it, which the researchers measured to be about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius). 

Geothermal energy uses the heat trapped beneath the Earth's surface to generate electricity. Conventional geothermal energy utilizes steam from natural sources such as geysers, or by drawing water from the hot, high-pressue depths of the Earth. The hot vapors are then used to drive electric turbines.

In the case of volcanic geothermal energy, the heat comes from "supercritical water." The researchers explained that energy from so-called supercritical water is much higher than conventional geothermal steam. When molten rock and water meet, the extreme heat and pressure bring water to a "supercritical" state, where it is neither liquid nor gas. In this form, the water can carry more energy than normal steam, which could create up to 10 timesthe power output of other geothermal sources.

Research will continue through 2018 to explore how the volcano's thermal energy could be used, including as a form of alternative energy, according to IDDP scientists.

"If deep supercritical wells, here and elsewhere in the world, can produce more power than conventional geothermal wells, fewer wells would be needed to produce the same power output, leading to less environmental impact and improved economics," IDDP researchers said in the statement.

Geothermal energy is a major source of energy in Iceland, with about 25 percent of the country's electricity generated from tapping the Earth's heat, according to the National Energy Authority of Iceland. About 90 percent of Icelandic households are heated with geothermal energy.

In its 2016 power production report, the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) found that only 6 to 7 percent of global geothermal power potential has been tapped. However, production is on the rise and the GEA predicts global geothermal energy production will more than double by 2030.

Original article on Live Science.

In these days of transition, President Barack Obama summed up his view of the progress the U.S. had made on clean energy as well as his vision for its future.

Obama laid out this argument in an article that was published online today (Jan. 9) in the journal Science, saying that clean energy is not only sustainable, but that progress toward adopting such environmental policies is also an "irreversible" trend that benefits economic growth, and it will continue long after he leaves office.

In the journal article, Obama talked about how U.S. dependence on fossil fuels has declined since 2008, and explained that the economic opportunities presented by clean energy left him confident that this progress would continue after his presidency ends this month. 

In fact, evidence from around the world suggests that decreasing the use of fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gas emissions does not restrict economic growth, Obama added. Further evidence hints that ignoring the costs on the environment that are exacted by fossil fuels can only strain the global economy and restrict growth. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]

Between 2008 and 2015, carbon emissions dropped by 9.5 percent, even as the economy grew by over 10 percent, supporting the conclusion that reducing emissions neither reduces living standards nor hobbles markets and the economy, according to the article.

Adopting clean energy allows businesses to operate more efficiently, lowering costs to their customers and creating capital that can be reinvested in the business — a direction that drives job creation, Obama said.

And the costs of reversing this trend and thereby accelerating the pace of global warming could be severe. Economic models predict that a temperature rise of 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) over average temperatures from preindustrial times could drive annual losses in U.S. revenue of approximately $340 billion to $690 billion, Obama said.

"It's good business and good economics to lead a technological revolution and define market trends," Obama said in the study. "The latest science and economics provide a helpful guide for what the future may bring."

Original article on Live Science.

At least once a week, Nelson Sepulveda gets on one of his bikes and rides 35 miles or more. He gets a good workout on those days, but as an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan State University, he knows some of it is wasted energy. All of that pedaling could be harnessed and converted into electricity to power his phone or some other electronic gadget.

This week, Sepulveda and his colleagues report in the journal Nano Energy on a new film-like material capable of turning motion into electricity. The material is similar to other piezoelectrics in that it generates a voltage when it's squeezed or pressed. But what sets this one apart is that it's paper thin and flexible and each time it's folded, the voltage increases.

"This increased voltage upon folding is not possible using other solid piezoelectric materials," Sepulveda told Seeker.

If that voltage could be efficiently directed into a current, it could reduce the nuisance of recharging or even eliminate it.

'What if you could take the mechanical energy from swiping pages on your tablet and use that to charge the battery of the device itself?" said Sepulveda. "That could reduce the time required to recharge your device."

To create the device, Sepulveda and his team used a combination of fabrication techniques and thin layers of substances including silver, polyimide, polypropylene ferroelectret and electrically charged particles onto a silicon wafer, creating a sheet that was peeled away from the chip as if it were a sticker.

The researchers conducted a few tests using different sizes of the piezoelectic sheet to measure its voltage. In one test a palm-sized sheet cranked out about 50 volts was able to power 20 LED lights.

RELATED: Road Crystals Generate Energy from Traffic Jams

When they folded the film-like piezoelectric material, the voltage increased exponentially.

Although producing a high voltage is promising, said Sepulveda, it's not enough. The researchers need to tweak the material so that its energy potential can be converted into a current. Sepulveda compared the voltage to water contained in a huge tower at the top of a mountain. The water pressure would be enormous.

"But that's just the force," he said.

The water's flow — it's current — depends on the pipes. How big are they? How long are they? What route do they take? If there are no pipes or the pipes take a convoluted route, the pressure may be very small by the time the water reaches a home faucet.

It's the same for voltage. "I could have a million volts and no current," he said.

Sepulveda told Seeker that he and his team have engineered at least one solution to converting the high voltage generated by the device into a flow of charge, but they were still trying to nail down the science of why it worked. He said it was too early to discuss the details.

One day soon, though, he could have a wearable device that attaches to his knee and generates power while he bikes. That would turn his 35-mile ride into an energy-harvesting bonanza.

'That should probably give me enough energy to charge my cellphone," he said.

Original article on Seeker.

A solar plane powered entirely by the sun has completed a journey around the world, making it the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the globe without using any fuel.

The Solar Impulse 2 plane landed in Abu Dhabi today (July 26), ending a 17-leg journey that crossed Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the United States, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. Pilots Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg's ambitious flight began on March 9, 2015, with Borschberg at the controls for the first leg of the expedition. The pilots then took turns in the single-seater cockpit as they traveled around the world, logging a total of 23 days of flight and traveling 26,744 miles (43,041 kilometers).

"This is not only a first in the history of aviation; it's before all a first in the history of energy," Piccard said in a statement. "I'm sure that, within 10 years, we'll see electric airplanes transporting 50 passengers on short- to medium-haul flights. But it's not enough. The same clean technologies used on Solar Impulse could be implemented on the ground in our daily life to divide by two the [carbon dioxide] emissions in a profitable way." [See more photos of the plane's round-the-world flight]

Solar Impulse 2 was designed to fly day and night without using any fuel. It is powered entirely by 17,000 solar cells and onboard batteries, which charge during the day to power the plane at night and during cloudy weather.

The flight around the world garnered international attention, and a total of 19 world records were set along the way or are still awaiting confirmation by the World Air Sports Federation. Borschberg achieved the longest-duration solo flight when he flew five consecutive days and nights over the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Hawaii. Piccard became the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a solar airplane.

After beginning the journey in Abu Dhabi in March 2015, the plane made stops in India, Myanmar, China and Japan before the record-breaking flight across the Pacific Ocean. In Hawaii, the plane was grounded for nearly a year due to overheated batteries, which caused irreversible damage to the plane.

The journey resumed when Solar Impulse 2 flew from Hawaii to California in April 2016. After it crossed the United States — making stops in Arizona, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York — the plane became the first solar-powered aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean, flying from New York to Spain in 71 hours and 8 minutes. Earlier this month, the solar-powered airplane flew over the pyramids in Egypt, offering a striking contrast between ancient and futuristic technology.

Borschberg and Piccard aimed for the historic flight to showcase the power of renewable energy sources and to encourage further development of "green" technologies.

"More than a demonstration, it's the confirmation that these technologies are truly dependable and reliable," Borschberg said. "There is so much potential for the aeronautical world: While 100-percent-solar-powered airplanes might take longer to materialize, electric airplanes will develop in the near future because of their tremendous advantages, such as energy efficiency."

Original article on Live Science.

Instead of just flushing it away, your pee could one day generate power. Researchers have developed a way to create affordable and renewable electricity with a fuel cell that runs on urine.

The new device relies on natural biological processes of so-called electric bacteria, essentially living cells that eat and breathe electricity.

"These electric bacteria are a fascinating type of bacteria that are capable of transferring electrons generated by the breaking down of organic compounds extra-cellularly," said study co-author Mirella Di Lorenzo, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Bath, in the United Kingdom. [5 Amazing Technologies That Are Revolutionizing Biotech]

Extracellular processes are things that happen outside a cell, in the space on the other side of the cell membrane.

For the new fuel cell, researchers at the University of Bath, Queen Mary University of London and the Bristol Bioenergy Centre collected electric bacteria from sewage at a water treatment plant in the U.K.

Di Lorenzo said it is still not well understood how these bacteria can transfer electrons; in normal electricity generation, electrons move by being given to "electron acceptors" inside the fuel cells. These electrons are donated to an electrode and power is gathered through this movement.

"Some bacteria have conductive wires that carry the electrons, others will use some specific compounds in solution that act as electron shuttles," Di Lorenzo told Live Science. "In other cases, the transfer is done by direct contact between the bacterial cell and the electrode."

The scientists worked on this idea to develop a means of generating electricity at low cost, which could help with combatting dependence on fossil fuels (since urine would be the only fuel needed to run the cell).

"The advantages of microbial fuel cells rely in the simplicity of the design," Di Lorenzo said.

The device is also carbon-neutral, according to the researchers, which means no additional carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere when it operates. The cost-effectiveness of the materials used, the zero emission of harmful gasses, and the use of waste as fuel with the additional advantage of treating waste while generating electricity all contribute to how the device can support secure, affordable and environmentally friendly energy, Di Lorenzo said.

Furthermore, microbial fuel cells, or "bio-batteries," are much cheaper to develop than similar technologies. They measure just 1 square inch, or about the size of a postage stamp, and use a carbon catalyst at the cathode that is made up of glucose and ovalbumin, which is a protein found in egg white. This means the catalyst is renewable and a much cheaper alternative to the platinum that microbial fuel cells often use, the researchers said.

According to the International Energy Agency, around 1.2 billion people in the world don't have access to electricity. By developing cheap and simple ways of generating electricity, such as microbial fuel cells, people in these poor and developing or rural areas could be helped much sooner, the researchers said.

"The technology has the potential of addressing the poor sanitation in developing countries and remote areas while generating electricity," Di Lorenzo said.

Currently, the urine-powered fuel cell can generate around 2 watts per cubic meter of energy, which is about enough to power a cellphone, but the team is working on improving the design, and the researchers said they are confident they will be able to increase the fuel cell's performance.

"To have created technology that can potentially transform the lives of poor people who don't have access to, or cannot afford electricity, is an exciting prospect," study lead author Jon Chouler, a Ph.D. student at the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies at the University of Bath, said in a statement. "I hope this will enable those in need to enjoy a better quality of life as a result of our research."

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Lynn Scarlett, is a former deputy secretary and chief operating officer of the U.S. Department of the Interior and currently is global managing director of policy at The Nature Conservancy. Explore the Conservancy's latest thinking, science and recommendations on climate, energy and other global issues at www.nature.org/global. Scarlett contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

John F. Kennedy once said, "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." While this quote may be more than 50 years old, the idea resonates for the global challenge of climate change. Looking to the present may highlight the issues at hand, but if we fail to take aggressive action now, we may not see that future. 

China is embracing this change as it is poised to move from leading emitter of greenhouse gasses to leader in renewable energy investments. Whether from global pressure or financial opportunity, the change is clear.

A seismic shift

The United States and China are the world's largest carbon emitters , so the 2014 agreement by U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping to reduce their countries' greenhouse gas emissions represented a major shift in momentum for addressing the effects of climate change.

Both countries committed to substantial emissions-reduction efforts over the next 10 to 15 years, with the understanding that they would continue to grow more ambitious with their efforts in the future. The pledges were fundamental to each country's national commitments for the Paris Agreement, adopted during the United Nations' 2015 climate conference and awaiting signatures this month at the United Nations in New York City. 

Once a minimum of 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of total global greenhouse gases sign on, the agreement will come into effect. Already 100 countries are expected to attend the U.N. meeting on Earth Day this April 22. 

An energy explosion

While China vowed to put a peak on its growing carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2030, a new report from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the London School of Economics and Political Science argues that the past year brought a changing economic and energy landscape. This is because China's rapid growth, which consumed tremendous amounts of energy and produced record-setting emissions, is slowing. 

China's economic model over the past few decades — like that of many other developing countries — was based on heavy investment in construction and related industries, such as steel and cement, in order to expand the nation's infrastructure. Such industries are energy-intensive and in China relied heavily on coal, which produces large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions . 

Now that much of China's infrastructure build-out is slowing, the demand for steel, cement and other building materials is decreasing, while at the same time China is expanding energy investments in hydroelectric, nuclear, wind and solar power. 

In fact, the increase in China's renewable energy generation is expected be larger than energy-investment increases in the European Union, the United States and Japan combined, according to the 2013 World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency (IEA). 

These promising shifts in energy investment are not unique to China. In the United States, the Energy Information Administration suggests that in the coming year, more new solar electricity-generating capacity will come online than natural gas, wind or petroleum combined.

Industries shifting while governments hesitate

Industries are making the transition even faster than government: American businesses made deals to acquire 3.4 gigawatts of renewable energy in 2015, nearly double the peak power generation of the Hoover Dam. 

Of that amount, two-thirds came from first-time buyers, according to the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, a leading source on addressing climate change through market-based solutions. The most-promising trend shows older established companies — like Owens Corning, Procter & Gamble and HP — joining well-publicized new industry leaders like Amazon, Google and Ikea in making the transition toward renewable energy purchases. For example, last year, Owens Corning signed an agreement with Chicago-based Invenergy for 125 megawatts of capacity, equivalent to the power needed for 30,000 households or more, from a wind farm being built in Texas.

Beyond industry — beyond government — a third, large-scale stakeholder is innovating in the context of climate change: academia. Responding to a growing demand from their students and faculty to transition away from fossil fuels, colleges and universities such as Ohio State University and the University of Oklahoma are among the partners with the largest U.S. green power contracts, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Chinese energy evolution

Like recent progress in the United States and European Union, China's energy landscape has continued to diversify, according the Grantham report. Hydroelectric, nuclear, wind and solar power are all expanding and accounted for more than 11 percent of the nation's primary energy consumption by the end of 2014. 

Perhaps most notably, coal consumption, which powered so much of China's forward momentum in the previous decade, saw no growth in 2014 and actually declined in 2015. 

Whether China's emissions peak has actually crested, the trends there and elsewhere are becoming more evident: Nations and companies across the world are making the transition to clean energy alternatives and putting their money behind those investments in order to foster new, innovative paths to a lower-emission future. 

Global perspectives have shifted toward encouraging nations to finally respond to climate change, but the window for action to avoid catastrophic climate impacts is limited. New technology is opening opportunities to reduce global emissions, and China's move toward renewable energies is at the forefront, such as their world-leading number of solar-voltaic installations for power generation. 

It's up to the rest of the world to continue to look forward, not back, to enhance global prosperity, reduce risks to communities, and sustain healthy ecosystems on which people depend.

Read more on conservation policy at Lynn Scarlett's Expert Voices landing page.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science .

Scientists have created the thinnest, lightest solar power cells yet — so lightweight that they can be draped on top of a soap bubble without popping it.

The researchers suggested that these ultrathin solar cells could be placed on almost any solid surface, including fabric, paper and glass.

Solar cells, technically known as photovoltaic cells, directly convert energy from light into electricity. The new solar cells are as small as 1.3 microns thick. In comparison, the average human hair is about 100 microns thick.

The new devices are also superlightweight, weighing only about 0.01 lbs. per square yard (3.6 grams per square meter). In comparison, typical piece of office paper weighs about 20 times more. [Top 10 Inventions That Changed the World]

The idea to drape a solar cell on top of a soap bubble came because "we wanted people to see how thin this solar cell was, but you can't tell the difference between a 10-micron and a 1-micron film by eye," said study lead author Joel Jean, an electrical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "My lab mate Patrick Brown suggested floating the cell on a bubble to make the weight difference much more dramatic, so I tried it. My first reaction to seeing it was probably a lot like yours — 'Cool!'"

The new solar cells convert light to electricity with about the same efficiency as conventional, glass-based solar cells, the researchers said. "It's unusual for flexible cells to perform as well as rigid cells on glass," Jean told Live Science.

In addition, the power-to-weight ratio of the new devices is among the highest ever achieved for solar cells. This is key to applications in which weight is important, such as on spacecraft or on high-altitude research balloons, the researchers said.

Conventional silicon-based solar modules produce about 6.8 watts per lb. (15 watts per kilogram), but these new devices can generate more than 2,720 watts per lb. (6 watts per gram), or about 400 times as much.

"It could be so light that you don't even know it's there, on your shirt or on your notebook," study senior author Vladimir Bulović, an electrical engineer at MIT, said in a statement. "These cells could simply be an add-on to existing structures."

The new cells use an organic compound known as DBP as their primary light-absorbing material. The solar cells are sandwiched between layers of parylene, a commercially available, flexible, transparent plastic that is widely used to protect circuit boards and implanted biomedical devices from environmental damage.

The solar cells and their parylene supports and coatings are fabricated in a vacuum chamber at room temperature without the use of any solvents, the scientists said. In contrast, conventional solar-cell manufacturing requires high temperatures and harsh chemicals. [Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas]

The solar cells and the parylene are grown together. The parylene never needs to be handled, cleaned or removed from the vacuum during fabrication, which minimizes exposure to dust and other contaminants that could degrade the performance of the solar cells, according to the researchers.

The scientists acknowledged that the solar cell they created to sit atop a soap bubble might be too thin to be practical — an errant breath could blow it away, they said. "It's, of course, just for show, but we think it makes for a good show," Jean said.

The researchers noted they could easily fabricate parylene films up to 80 microns thick using commercial equipment without losing the other benefits of their manufacturing technique.

"Using this approach, you could imagine laminating lightweight or even invisible solar cells onto windows or other solid surfaces for building- and device-integrated electronics," Jean said. "A more robust consumer product might use these cells laminated onto a conventional flexible plastic sheet, which you could carry around with you for portable power."

The researchers noted their fabrication technique can use a variety of photovoltaic materials beyond the ones they have demonstrated so far. "A more efficient photovoltaic technology could reach even higher power-to-weight ratios than the 6 watts per gram that we showed in this first demonstration," Jean said.

The MIT team's ultrathin solar cells are almost an order of magnitude thinner and lighter than the previous record holder, said Max Shtein, a materials scientist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, who was not involved in this work, said in a statement. As a result, he noted that this research "has tremendous implications for maximizing power-to-weight [ratios] — important for aerospace applications, for example — and for the ability to simply laminate photovoltaic cells onto existing structures."

It's not yet known when these solar cells might be commercially available, "but a general rule of thumb is that it takes a decade for a technology to go from research lab to market," Jean said. Some of the main challenges in scaling up this approach for commercial use might include developing an integrated system for high-throughput manufacturing — for example, roll-to-roll processing — increasing the deposition speed, and identifying applications where an ultralight and flexible cell would provide some unique value to the user."

Jean, Bulović and their colleague Annie Wang, also at MIT, detailed their findings in the April issue of the journal Organic Electronics.

Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

The U.S. solar power industry continued its hiring spree in 2015, growing nearly 12 times faster than overall U.S. employment.

The solar industry has seen 123 percent growth in employment since 2010, adding 115,000 jobs in that time. Last year, industry employment totaled 208,859, with 35,000 new jobs added in 2015, up from about 31,000 in 2014, according to the annual solar jobs census released by The Solar Foundation on Tuesday.

"Solar is surging," former U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in a statement. "Renewable energy employment is on track to transform our world, helping to lessen our reliance on coal and other polluting fossil fuels."

The foundation had expected jobs in the industry to grow by 36,000, but it missed that projection. Overall, year-over-year employment growth in the U.S. solar power industry was somewhat flat, growing by 20.2 percent in 2015, down from 21.8 percent in 2014. Growth in 2013 was 19.9 percent, adding 23,682 jobs that year.

Solar Foundation Executive Director Andrea Luecke said she did not know why the industry's job growth was flat last year, but that the pace of earlier hiring may have been tied to the industry's rush to expand before a 30 percent federal solar investment tax credit expired.

North Carolina, Georgia Growing New Crop of Solar Farms Solar Energy Jobs Growing By Leaps and Bounds Cities Could Be Ideal for Utility-Scale Solar Plants

Congress extended the tax credit at the end of last year, however, which will likely result in lower solar industry employment growth in 2016, according to the census. Growth this year is expected to total about 30,000 new jobs.

Solar power in the U.S. has seen tremendous growth since 2010 as solar panel costs have continued to fall and state and federal climate policies, such as the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, have given solar and other low-carbon electricity sources a boost.

Solar is seen as one of the primary low-carbon alternatives to coal-fired power plants, the globe's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. About 25 percent of all the nation's solar power capacity has been installed in just the last year, according to the census. However, solar remains a small player in the U.S., representing about 1 percent of U.S. electric power generation.

Most of the employment growth in the solar industry is in solar panel installation, which covers about 80 percent of all the jobs in the industry.

Solar jobs are well-paying. Installers earn an average of $21 per hour, while designers make $27 per hour and sales and marketing workers earn $29 per hour.

"It takes people to install (solar panels), and you have 80 percent of the jobs on the demand side," Luecke said. "The more demand you have, the more need you have for those jobs — a signal the industry is healthy and growing."

Eventually, the solar industry will begin growing much faster than its employment as technology advances, she said.

"At some point, we may see solar workers leveling out as the industry becomes more efficient and automated," Luecke said.

You May Also Like: El Niño Heat Peaks, But Impacts Still to Come El Niño Could Usher in a Decade of Stronger Events Earth Has Lost a Third of Arable Land in Past 40 Years With CO2 Boost, Marshes Can Rise to Meet Flood Risks

Originally published on Climate Central.

Richard Houghton is a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, an independent research institute where scientists investigate the causes and effects of climate change to identify and implement opportunities for conservation, restoration and economic development. Houghton contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Negotiators in Paris face a tough job hammering out a global agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions far enough and fast enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change. But a fresh look at forests might reveal a solution. 

If governments could reverse tropical deforestation, the planet could buy some time, a point my colleagues and I highlighted in a recent commentary in the current issue of Nature Climate Change. Management of tropical forests could stabilize current CO2 concentrations while nations transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. [Study Shows, for Chile, Renewables Benefits Outweigh Costs (Op-Ed )]

It's a matter of time

Climate negotiations have revolved around limiting global warming to an increase of between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). To do that requires stopping the use of fossil fuels, and quickly, because once CO2 enters the atmosphere, its warming effect lasts for centuries.

Can governments act quickly enough? It will be difficult if they rely solely on transitioning from fossil to renewable fuels. But the world's vast tropical forests can help, by withdrawing large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, emissions that would otherwise contribute to climate change. Management of tropical forests could withdraw as much as 3 billion metric tons of carbon, about 30 years' worth of current carbon emissions.

Forests' carbon-storing abilities cannot compare to the potential emissions in the planet's current fossil fuel reserves. But the value of forests is clearer when you compare their climate-stabilizing potential to the emission cuts that would be necessary to avoid a warming of 2 degrees Celsius. It then becomes clear that forests are capable of balancing the scales while the world completes its clean-energy transition. 

Scientists often explain that deforestation contributes about 10 percent of the world's global greenhouse gas emissions each year. But that statistic obscures the unique role forests play in the climate. When farmers clear forests for agriculture, and when you account for other sources of emissions like soil tilling, deforestation sends 4 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. But trees and soil also absorb carbon from the atmosphere, to the tune of 3 billion metric tons a year. 

Thus, net emission from deforestation are "just" 1 billion metric tons a year, which can seem relatively small compared to the 9 billion metric tons of emissions from fossil fuel burning. But based on the raw amount of emissions going into the atmosphere, forests remain a major player, not a minor one, in the global climate system.

If climate leaders could change the dynamics that drive deforestation — if they could get farmers on the edge of the world's vast tropical forests to stay on the same land, keep remaining forests intact and allow cleared areas that aren't being used to grow back — the carbon storage potential is truly impressive. 

Not only would that stop 4 billion metric tons of emissions from going into the atmosphere, it would also mean the world would continue to enjoy the benefits of forests and lands absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. Additional policies aimed at reforestation could lead to another billion tons of emissions being stored in forests instead of the atmosphere. Such a scenario would cut total global emissions in half, from 10 billion metric tons today to 5 billion metric tons. [Momentum Builds for Deforestation-Free Palm Oil (Op-Ed )]

And people wouldn't have to do it forever. Once the world stops emitting vast amounts of greenhouse gases, the forests' role as carbon sink becomes less important. Truly sustainable forestry becomes a lot easier in an age of clean energy and low emissions. 

Moving off of fossil fuels might sound unrealistic to some. But the truth is that releasing 10 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, as the world does now, is unrealistic. It is not sustainable. It needs to change.

A serious forest strategy would help negotiators get a climate deal done — and make it easier for countries to deliver on their climate promises.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

This fall, about 50 teams from around the world will take part in a competition in Australia to prove that their specially designed solar-powered cars have what it takes to survive the Outback. 

The competition, called the World Solar Challenge, will be held from Oct. 18 to Oct. 25, and will involve racing about 1,900 miles (nearly 3,000 kilometers) from Darwin to Adelaide. Although speediness is important, teams will also have to craft effective energy management strategies.

One of the competition's rules is that the solar cars will be allowed to store only 5 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy at a time. For comparison, 1 kWh on an average electricity bill would cost about 12 cents and is enough to power one light bulb for approximately 8 hours. The rest of the energy must be reaped from the sun or be harnessed from the kinetic energy of the car (i.e., energy produced by the motion of the car). As such, teams will depend on the sun to charge the cars' batteries during daylight hours in the unforgiving Australian desert. [Images: Cross-Country Flight in a Solar-Powered Plane]

"The climate is no easy task," said Alex Lubkin, a materials science student at Stanford University in California, who is part of the Stanford Solar Car Project, one of the teams that will compete in the upcoming World Solar Challenge.

The Stanford team’s car looks nothing like a regular road vehicle. The driver sits very low to the ground, on the right side, and is contained inside a futuristic-looking transparent bubble that acts like the windshield. The driver gets in and out not by a door, but by a hatch that opens like the lid of the box, and there's not much room to maneuver once inside.

The hood of the Stanford team's car is long, flat and covered in solar panels. The vehicle's wheels are hidden behind two plastic sides, giving the whole car a sort of oblong shape.

"We build our cars to focus on reliability," Lubkin told Live Science. "Our motto is, 'Test it again,' so we do an enormous amount of test driving and preparing for the race to hopefully sort out any problems that could arise."

With temperatures easily topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) in the Outback, it is important for team members to stay hydrated throughout the race. But it's also critical that the cars be built to withstand the immense heat.

Toby McBride, who is part of the Durham University Electric Motorsport team in the United Kingdom, said the car that he and his colleagues entered in 2011 ended up cracking under the pressure when the solar panels fractured in the stifling heat. This hadn't happened when the engineers tested the car in the mild English weather, he said.

Dom Browne, a member of the Cambridge University Eco Racing team in the U.K., added that "the race has the opportunity to throw up challenges that you could never have envisioned," whether it's enduring sandstorms that leave you stranded by the side of the road, navigating around bushfires or running out of food and water. [The 7 Harshest Environments on Earth]

The drivers also have to be wary of obstacles on the road. Lubkin recalled that in 2013, a huge modular house was spotted blocking both lanes.

To ensure the safety of all the participants (and avoid collisions with the region's nocturnal kangaroos, which tend to hop all over the roads), racing will stop each day when the clock hits 5 p.m. local time.

"You don't want to be driving at night with something that could pop out and hit you, especially when it's similar in weight to your vehicle," Lubkin said.

The teams will have to make the most of every sunbeam and every millisecond, as they must contend with a finite amount of stored power. Lubkin emphasized the importance of monitoring weather reports and adjusting strategies as the race progresses. If it's a cloudy day, for example, teams can conserve energy by driving a bit slower through the sunny patches and sprinting through the shade.

McBride's team at Durham has the expertise of a Ph.D. student specializing in Formula 1 aerodynamics who designed the solar car to be as "slippery as possible." The vehicle is also superlight, with an exterior shell made of carbon fiber.

"It's basically an airplane's wing in shape, so it creates as little drag as possible," he said.

Browne, of the Cambridge team, thinks the event highlights the types of environmentally friendly technology that will be even more important in the future. "Sooner or later, we won't be able to rely on finite fossil fuel reserves," he said. "We are striving to innovate and show what can be achieved using solar power."

Granted, the cars competing in the World Solar Challenge are not intended for commercial use. The vehicles function more like platforms to test pioneering technologies in an interesting way. The race also provides an opportunity for people to see what solar power can achieve.

For instance, the team from Durham University has developed a solar car that runs on the same amount of electricity as a kettle.

"I just made a cup of tea, and that power we're using to drive a car 3,000 kilometers," McBride said. "It's quite weird to think about it like that. It is really incredible."

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Japanese paper art is typically used to create dainty folded cranes and paper snowflakes, but now, researchers are using it to inspire innovations in the energy world.

Scientists from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (UM) have used the ancient art of paper cutting, known as kirigami, to create a unique thin-film solar cell that can use a method of following the sun called optical tracking. These movements allow the cell to absorb more energy from the sun throughout the day.

The idea was initially hatched by Matt Shlian, one of the authors of the new study and a professor in the University of Michigan's School of Art and Design. Shlian had been experimenting with ways to incorporate kirigami and origami in the design for new technologies. [Top 10 Inventions That Changed the World]

"The problem of tracking the sun has been there for years and years," said study lead author Max Shtein, a professor in UM's Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "There are lots of ways that involve motors and gears. [This design is] meant to be lighter and more elegant."

The new kirigami-inspired solar cell uses a bending motion to change the angle of its surface. To achieve this, the structure is slowly stretched out using a small, motorized mechanism. Strategically placed cuts in the material make it possible for an object that is normally rigid to stretch and bend.

"If you begin to stretch things, you can deform things in this particular way," Shtein told Live Science.

The base of the solar cell has a fairly simple kirigami structure of lines cut into Kapton, a polyimide film that is flexible and remains stable across a wide range of temperatures (from minus 452 degrees Fahrenheit to 752 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 269 degrees Celsius to 400 degrees Celsius). The structure of the design put a series of short parallel cuts in the polyimide film that were slightly out of alignment so that the top of one cut would be several inches below the top of the other or several inches above them.

Kyusang Lee, a student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Aaron Lamoureux, a student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, collaborated on a way to construct the material. Their method cold-welds (fuses together without heat) the top of the metalized surface of the semiconductor to the metalized surface of the Kapton sheet, which acts as a backing for the photovoltaic cells. Both the Kapton sheet and the photovoltaic cell were cut into the simple kirigami pattern, because they both need to have the same base structure when they are stuck together with atomic bonds of the metal.

This type of design is less clunky and offers a more cost-effective way to do optical tracking than traditional solar panels that have to be attached to large motors to move the much heavier panels with the sun the researchers said. The kirigami-inspired solar cell can also increase energy generation by between 20 and 40 percent, they said.

"The idea is to spend less money and get as much energy as you would before," Shtein said, "or spend the same amount of money and get more energy."

The researchers are hopeful they will be able to market their newly designed solar cell in the near future, but this art-inspired innovation has the potential for a wide range of applications, the scientists said. Shtein added that he and his colleagues are looking into applications for these types of designs in filtering and electromagnetic devices, such as radio technology, and in acoustics tools, such as tuning devices.

The detailed findings of the study were published Sept. 8 in the journal Nature Communications.

Follow Elizabeth Newbern @liznewbern. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Solar explosions can threaten power grids even in areas near the equator, places long thought safe from such disruptions from the sun, say researchers who studied a weird flow of electricity pulsing above the equatorial regions.

Solar eruptions can blast Earth with super-heated electrically charged particles. When these explosions slam into Earth's magnetosphere— the shroud of electrically charged particles around Earth held together by the planet's magnetic field — they can trigger disturbances known as geomagnetic storms.

Geomagnetic storms can generate geomagnetically induced currents — electrical currents in power lines, telecommunications cables, oil and gas pipelines, and other long wires that can damage power grids. For example, in 1989, an extreme geomagnetic storm blacked out the Canadian province of Quebec in about 90 seconds, leaving 6 million customers in the dark for nine hours, damaging transformers as far away as New Jersey, and nearly taking down U.S. power grids from the Eastern Seaboard to the Pacific Northwest. [Sun Storms: Incredible Photos of Solar Flares]

The impacts of geomagnetic storms are strongest at high latitudes near the poles. As such, there was previously little concern that solar activity could lead to blackouts in lower latitudes near the equator.

Now, scientists find that so-called interplanetary shocks — gusts of solar wind — can trigger damaging geomagnetically induced currents even in equatorial regions.

Interplanetary shocks accompany high solar activity, just as extreme geomagnetic storms do. However, interplanetary shocks can strike even during what researchers might otherwise classify as quiet periods of space weather. "Shocks that are not associated with geomagnetic storms tend to occur a few to several times per year," said study lead author Brett Carter, a space physicist at Boston College's Institute for Scientific Research and at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

The researchers analyzed 14 years of geomagnetic data collected in space and on Earth by NASA and Intermagnet, a global network of observatories monitoring the Earth's magnetic field. They focused on the equatorial electrojet, a naturally occurring flow of electric current found about 60 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth's surface that wends its way along the magnetic equator, the zone of equal distance between Earth's magnetic poles, traveling above large swaths of Africa, South America, Southeast Asia and the southern tip of India.

Interplanetary shocks usually create only weak geomagnetically induced currents in mid-latitudes. However, the equatorial electrojet can amplify the effects of interplanetary shocks, resulting in potentially damaging geomagnetically induced currents near the equator, Carter explained.

While the electrical surges the researchers discovered are less destructive than ones seen during extreme geomagnetic storms, they can still disrupt unprotected power grid equipment. Since equatorial regions have long been considered safe from geomagnetic storms, they lack safeguards against them, and so may prove especially vulnerable.

In addition, the electrical surges caused by interplanetary shocks may also influence electricity prices by confusing electronic systems monitoring rates of power supply and demand, Carter said.

"The most important implication of our findings is that those installing and operating power grid infrastructure in these equatorial regions need to be aware that these interplanetary shocks can influence their systems more so than surrounding areas — for example, mid-latitudes," Carter told Live Science. "Exactly how these events affect different grids in different locations, under various conditions, is likely to be the topic of research that spawns from these results. But the realization that these seemingly minor events affect these locations is a significant first step."

The scientists detailed their findings in a paper accepted online Aug. 6 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Follow Live Science@livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

A solar-powered plane able to fly in sunshine or darkness without using any fuel took off today (June 29) on a planned 120-hour flight across the Pacific Ocean, from Nagoya, Japan, to Kalaeola, Hawaii.

The Solar Impulse 2 took off from Nagoya Airfield at 3:03 a.m. local time in Japan (2:03 p.m. EDT on June 28). The flight, which is expected to take five days and five nights, is part of an ambitious attempt to circumnavigate the world using only solar power.

"This flight will be demanding and challenging particularly given its duration and the fact that no immediate landing is possible and will be a feat never accomplished before in the world of aviation," Solar Impulse officials said in a statement. [See more photos of the plane's round-the-world flight]

The round-the-world attempt began March 9 in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. On May 31, Solar Impulse 2 attempted to complete the seventh leg of its journey, from Nanjing, China, to Kalaeloa, but the flight was diverted to Nagoya because of bad weather. Last week, after spending weeks in Japan, the plane was again grounded due to poor weather conditions. But today's attempt went off without a hitch, Solar Impulse officials said, marking the start of the mission's longest leg.

"Now fully into the flight to Hawaii. Very strong emotions as I passed the point of no return: exploration starts here," pilot Andre Borschberg, who is also the CEO and co-founder of Solar Impulse, wrote in an update on Twitter. Borschberg included a photo of the Solar Impulse 2 soaring over a bed of fluffy clouds.

Bertrand Piccard, the chairman and founder of Solar Impulse and its other pilot, will support Borschberg from the Mission Control Centre in Monaco. Borschberg and Piccard have been alternating being at the controls of the single-seater plane.

Staying alert for such a long solo flight poses many challenges, but Borschberg plans to take 20-minute naps and meditate to keep his blood moving and his muscles relaxed. Piccard previously told Live Science that he uses self-hypnosis to keep focused during long flights. Piccard is expected to pilot the solar plane on the next leg of its journey, from Hawaii to Arizona.

The Solar Impulse 2 is powered by 17,000 photovoltaic cells on its wings, which drive propellers during the day and charge batteries that power the aircraft at night. After arriving in Hawaii, the plane will continue to Phoenix, with a stop planned in the middle of the U.S., before the pilots head to New York City. Following these stops in the U.S., the plane will fly to Europe, and eventually will return to Abu Dhabi to complete their round-the-world expedition. There will be 13 flights in total, if all continues as planned, according to Solar Impulse officials.

Elizabeth Goldbaum is on Twitter. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science

Catherine Trifiletti, multimedia intern for the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Every single day, the average American family of four uses four hundred gallons of water, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That's water that has to make its way back to municipal treatment plants, consuming money and energy along the way. 

At the University of Miami, a residence hall apartment of four has now treated their water for two years, helping revolutionize the underlying water treatment technology to make it economically leaner and environmentally greener. 

Re-using dorm wastewater

The idea was dreamed up by Jim Englehardt, professor of environmental engineering at the University of Miami, and brought to life with support from NSF. Englehardt wanted to create a closed-loop water re-use system to treat wastewater and recycle it back to be used — all in one place.

Using the Miami on-campus apartment as his guinea pig, Englehardt gave the net-zero water system of his dreams the old college try. And it's working. 

So far, the water has been treated and recycled for laundry, dishwashing and showering. The students have used city water for drinking, although the dorm water has been independently verified as safe for consumption, and Englehardt drinks it himself. 

Here's how the system works: Wastewater from the four bedroom, four bath dormitory apartment (with kitchen and laundry) goes first to a buried septic tank, where solids settle and decompose slowly. Liquids then flow to the buried membrane bioreactor (MBR), where the water is aerated to support aerobic microbiological decomposition of the organics. Purified wastewater is removed from the MBR by vacuum pump through a membrane filter (with pores about 1/50 the size of a typical bacterium) to a buried holding tank. In addition, three buried cisterns collect rainwater. 

The purified wastewater, together with 15 percent rainwater, then enters a tank where aluminum electrodes are corroded by a tiny electric current, producing a gelatinous aluminum hydroxide coagulant in the water that traps impurities. Water containing that aluminum mineral coagulant passes through a "floc tank" to further attract impurities, and then passes to a second vacuum membrane filtration unit with even smaller pores (about 1/4 the size of a typical virus). Next, clean water is drawn by vacuum pump to a large tank, where it spends about two days circulating with hydrogen peroxide and traveling past ultraviolet lamps. The combination of those natural oxidizers produces an even stronger oxidant (hydroxyl radical), which converts any remaining carbon compounds and microbes to carbon dioxide, while the oxidants decompose to oxygen and water. 

Because minerals are only partially removed, 15 percent of the treated potable water is disposed, to provide a sink for excess minerals that would otherwise accumulate. The finished mineral water is stored in a tank, with chlorine residual to prevent re-growth of microbes, before being pumped to the apartment for use. At the taps and showers, treated water passes through two activated carbon filters, as a polishing barrier.

Bypassing the waste of wastewater treatment

The problem with letting water go the traditional municipal treatment system route is that hot water energy goes down the drain — far more energy than is used to treat and transport the water, Englehardt said. 

Specifically, household water heaters use electric or gas or another energy source to heat the hot water drawn at the tap. When the water goes down the drain to the sewage treatment plant, it carries that energy with it, to be disposed to the environment (ocean, river or aquifer). In a net-zero water system, that energy remains in the water, about 85 percent of which returns to the tap. Hence, for many uses the water needs no further heating, and when needed, re-heating of the warm water requires less energy.

And, roughly eighty percent of the energy used in municipal water management is for transporting water back and forth from central treatment plants; only twenty percent of the energy used goes into treating the water itself, according to a report from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). And for all that, it's not even better water. 

The water treated at the dorm "more closely [resembles] water purified naturally in the environment," than that treated at municipal plants, Englehardt said, and because hot-water energy is retained in the system, the process is highly carbon-negative (it saves more energy than it uses).

He also said that most wastewater that leaves treatment plants is already very close to meeting drinking water standards. Even raw sewage is typically more than 99.9 percent freshwater, according to the Florida Water Environment Association. Often, in south Florida, the water management system dumps the treated waste into the ocean, re-contaminating it instead of treating it further, continuing the cycle of waste. 

Closing the water-cycle loop

A closed-loop water system seems like the obvious choice, but the project still faced profound challenges. 

The first challenges were economic. Englehardt and his team's initial estimation of $100,000 for retrofitting the system in the test apartment came in far below the actual price. Reworking plans to get the price down to $500,000 and securing additional funds tacked on a year and a half to the completion date. [Everyday Tech From Space: Water Recyclers Make Pee Potable]

In addition to the economic and engineering challenges of an on-site, single-home system, Englehardt foresees issues with regulatory permitting as the technology is so new that it's not yet supported by necessary data. 

The technology is ready for larger-scale implementation now, according to Englehardt. It is a very attractive and economical option particularly for drought-stricken and arid areas where water is a commodity. 

The team estimates that the system would be most economical for a community of 100 to 100,000 homes. Moreover, the system destroys pharmaceuticals and other chemicals that pass through conventional treatment plants and can cause hormone disruption in fish and wildlife. 

In Cloudcroft, N.M., for example, the first closed-loop system was implemented in 2011 out of sheer necessity. At 9,000 feet above sea-level, the small mountain community could not fully depend on a larger centralized water source. The small population of 1,000 residents didn't need much convincing to put the innovative water system into action after one dry summer where they were forced to truck 20,000 gallons of water to town — each day — in order to sustain demand in their peak tourist season.  

Even in Miami, despite 40 to 60 inches of recorded rainfall each year, the issue of clean water and its availability remains. If implemented in south Florida, this system could stockpile a half-billion gallons of water from the Everglades for reuse in a sustainable loop that benefits both the natural environment and its human inhabitants. 

The other challenge? The "yuck" factor. This system faces a stigma from people who don't respond well to the idea that they are drinking second-hand water. Researchers, like Englehardt hope that this can be diminished through education and community outreach. [Would You Drink Recycled Sewage? Why It Grosses Us Out ]

So, reimagining how we use and treat water could lead to the standardization of this practice, lowering costs and any inhibitions about embracing it. This can get people off the grid and on to a more efficient, environmentally, and economically friendly way to use this natural resource. 

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

More efficient cars, trucks and airplanes. Less-polluting electric power plants. So many solar and wind farms that no transcontinental road trip in an electric car could take place beyond the sight of one.

Those may be the most obvious changes everyone sees if and when America’s proposed climate policies fully bloom in the next decade or so. The biggest of those policies, the Clean Power Plan, was announced a year ago and is slated to take effect in 2016. It could help low-carbon energy such as wind and solar spread quickly across the country and significantly change where Americans get their electricity and the effect it has on the climate.

In a nutshell, the Clean Power Plan aims to cut the United States’ biggest source of climate change-driving greenhouse gas emissions — carbon dioxide from existing power plants that run on fossil fuels, especially coal. The goal, as the EPA proposed it, is to slash those emissions 30 percent below 2005 pollution levels through 2030 by allowing states to find their own ways cut pollution. They’ll do that mainly by boosting overall energy efficiency, switching a lot of electric power generation from coal to natural gas and using more wind, solar and other renewables.

Here are four things to know about what the Clean Power Plan means for electricity in the U.S., based on a recent analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA):

Energy Diversity Will Rule the Future

To a degree, the U.S. already gets its electricity from a variety of sources. Hawaii, for example, uses crude oil to generate most of its power. Washington state gets nearly 30 percent of its power from hydroelectric dams. Texas gets about a 10th of its electricity from wind. And natural gas, which is the source of about 32 percent of electricity in the U.S.,  is gaining on coal, which generates 35 percent, as the top source of electricity nationwide.

In other words, the U.S. relies on many different energy sources, but coal and natural gas are the heavy lifters today. As states begin to comply with federal climate policy, wind, solar and other renewables will do the heavy lifting alongside natural gas as coal begins to diminish.

So, if the Clean Power Plan works as proposed, the EIA projects that by 2040, renewables, natural gas and coal will generate about the same amount of the nation’s electricity — between 26 and 29 percent each.

Coal Goes Down, But Not Out

That means coal, the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions from electricity production,  isn’t going away anytime soon. More than half of U.S. electricity was generated by coal in 2000. By 2040, it could drop to 26 percent under the Clean Power Plan.

Analysts, States Bullish on Success of Clean Power Plan Basis for EPA Clean Power Plan Cuts a ‘Mystery’ Clean Power Plan Follows Uneven CO2 Emissions Trend

The mines that provide all of that coal will take a hit from climate policy. And that’s one of the main reasons major coal-producing states such as Kentucky are vehemently opposed to the Clean Power Plan and are suing the Obama administration to stop it before it takes effect. The plan is expected to reduce coal production in the U.S. by about 25 percent after 2020, when most of its provisions take effect.

Solar and Wind Power Are About to Grow . . . A Lot

It’s a no-brainer that slashing emissions from fossil fuels means boosting wind, solar and other renewables. And grow they will. Nationwide, solar and wind power and other renewables could be set to grow by 5 percent each year, so that they could make up about 25 percent of all U.S. electricity generation by 2030 — the year the Clean Power Plan’s goals must be met. That’s up from about 14 percent today, about 6 percent of which is wind and solar. The rest is hydropower.

Renewables growth will be unique to each region, EIA analyst Chris Namovicz said. The fastest growth under the Clean Power Plan is expected to be in places that have weak renewable energy mandates today or none at all. So Southern states, most of which have no renewables mandates, will see annual renewables growth rates of 10 percent or higher over the next 15 years.

Other states, where renewables are already big business, could see a slower rate of growth because they have a head start on building up their wind, solar and other clean energy sources. California, for example, may see its renewables grow about 2 percent each year after 2020.

Nuclear Power? Not So Much

One thing that isn’t likely to change much under the Clean Power Plan is nuclear power. Yes, several new nuclear reactors are expected to start operating in Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee by 2017 — the first new nuclear reactors in the U.S. in nearly 30 years — but the amount of power that nuclear reactors will generate in the coming decades is expected to fall slightly.

Today, about 20 percent of U.S. power comes from nuclear. That is expected to shrink to 16 percent by 2040 under the Clean Power Plan, which the EIA says favors renewables and natural gas over nuclear power.

In other words, the Obama administration is betting on no new nuclear power plants other than those that are being built today.

The caveat to all of this is that Clean Power Plan as it was proposed could change dramatically by the time it takes effect. Fourteen states, many of them major coal producers, are suing to stop it before it becomes official. And, when the final version of the plan is released, the details could change significantly.

So, stay tuned.

You May Also Like: Texas’s Warmer Future: Drought and Heavy Rains? Heat is Piling Up in the Depths of the Indian Ocean Canada Sets Goal to Cut Emissions by 2030 Washington’s ‘Wet Drought’ Gets Worse

Originally published on Climate Central.