The rapid proliferation of robots and electronic devices is placing the world under a new and growing environmental burden. According to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), global electronic waste (e-waste) reached approximately 62 million metric tons in 2022, a significant portion of which was neither properly...
Read more
Researchers from the Photovoltaics and Thin-Film Electronics Laboratory (PV-Lab) in EPFL's School of Engineering and CSEM have developed a new solar cell that combines exceptional voltage, high efficiency, and scalable manufacturing. The triple-junction device is composed of a silicon bottom cell, onto which middle and top cells made of semiconductors...
Read more
Multilateral development banks have emerged as major financiers of green hydrogen production in emerging markets and developing countries. However, a new study published in The Journal of Environment & Development finds that their approach to managing environmental and social risks often falls short. Despite the existence of sustainability frameworks, the...
Read more
Off-grid buildings in warm climates could cut their carbon emissions by more than half and reduce energy costs to just $0.15 per kilowatt-hour through a combination of rooftop solar panel shading and thin layers of heat-absorbing material in the roof, according to new research from the University of Surrey. The...
Read more
A research team led by Dr. Ji-Hyung Han from the Convergence Research Center of Sector Coupling & Integration at the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) has developed a new seawater electrolysis system that overcomes the precipitate formation issue long blamed for performance degradation and process interruptions, while also presenting...
Read more
To handle increasing wastewater loads, sewage treatment plants are adopting more advanced treatment processes. However, many of these approaches require additional space and energy, highlighting the need for more efficient alternatives....
Read more
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, Israel's Tel Aviv University and other institutions have developed a first-of-its-kind membrane through which charged molecules pass using nothing more than a rapidly switching low-voltage signal. This "ratchet-based ion pump" has no moving parts and requires no chemical reactions....
Read more
There is a new, U.S.-based, environmentally friendly method for mining rare-earth elements used in consumer electronics, clean energy, defense and biomedical imaging. By using oxalic acid made by sugar-eating engineered yeast, the new technique can extract almost all the rare-earth elements from low-grade ore....
Read more
A new UC open dataset reveals how New Zealand's hourly and regional energy demand could evolve by 2050. Published in the journal Scientific Data, the dataset provides publicly available projections of energy demand across three major sectors—electricity, heating and transport—under multiple future scenarios....
Read more
Among the biggest complaints inhibiting growth in the electric vehicle market is the limited lifespan and range of lithium-ion batteries. Consumers fear being stranded far from home with long wait times at recharging stations. A promising area of research has focused on layer-structured metal oxide cathodes. Specifically, a material known...
Read more
For the first time, scientists have observed how tiny metal "thorns" called dendrites sprout inside lithium-ion batteries, which can cause the batteries to short-circuit. Their findings, published in the journal Science, shed light on previously unknown mechanical properties of lithium dendrites as they grow....
Read more
Cobalt and nickel are vital components for batteries, superalloys and catalysts, used in technologies ranging from smartphones to jet engines. But when it comes to recycling, they are notoriously difficult to separate because they are chemically nearly identical. To solve this, a team led by scientists at Johns Hopkins University...
Read more
New research suggests that concerns about relying too heavily on Chinese manufacturing are shaping climate policy—and could even delay the adoption of green technologies around the world. The study by Dr. James Jackson from The University of Manchester, working alongside Dr. Mathias Larsen from the London School of Economics, examined...
Read more
As tech giants race to power AI data centers and extreme weather becomes more frequent, America's electrical grid is straining under conditions it was not built to handle. Alice Hill, senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council during the Obama administration, has a message for business leaders...
Read more