Hopegirl 
One of the worst sources of pollution in New England will be home to clean, renewable energy. The Mount Tom Power Station in Holyoke, Massachusetts—known as one of the worst polluters in New England—is on its way to a renewable rebirth. The plant’s owners broke ground on a 5.76-megawatt solar farm in October on the … Read more
Researchers at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), and the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute have developed a thermoelectric paint that can generate electricity from waste heat. The paint could help power homes, vehicles and even ships. The idea of harnessing the energy in waste heat … Read more
Not all the big news during the last two weeks has been about space. There’s been another development, one apparently just starting, that probably has a few jaws on the floor in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Canberra, New Delhi, and a few other places. In fact, when Mr. J.H. shared this article, I had to … Read more
Investors are pouring money into supergrids, which can carry electricity generated by huge but remote wind and solar farms across national borders. A new report from Navigant Research finds that investment in supergrids—large-scale power networks that could carry energy from wind and solar farms and across international borders—will hit $10.2 billion by 2025. That’s up … Read more
SURGE is a documentary featurette film that highlights the story of an American family of inventors building a Tesla inspired clean energy device while living in Morocco. In this film we hear the personal accounts of energy suppression, innovations and grassroots developments. SURGE shows how a different approach to open sourcing technology must be taken … Read more
Tourists who suffer from vertigo need not apply. The world’s highest and longest glass-bottomed bridge opened Saturday in China’s spectacular Zhangjiajie mountains — the inspiration for American blockbuster Avatar. Some 430 metres (1,400 feet) long and suspended 300 metres above the earth, the bridge spans the canyon between two mountain cliffs in Zhangjiajie park in … Read more
In many parts of the world, the only way to make germy water safe is by boiling, which consumes precious fuel, or by putting it out in the sun in a plastic bottle so ultraviolet rays will kill the microbes. But because UV rays carry only 4 percent of the sun’s total energy, the UV … Read more
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have discovered a new type of Weyl semimetal, a material that opens the way for further study of Weyl fermions, a type of massless elementary particle hypothesized by high-energy particle theory and potentially useful for creating high-speed electronic circuits and quantum computers (Nature Materials, “Spectroscopic evidence … Read more
A powerful new material developed by Northwestern University chemist William Dichtel and his research team could one day speed up the charging process of electric cars and help increase their driving range. An electric car currently relies on a complex interplay of both batteries and supercapacitors to provide the energy it needs to go places, … Read more
Energy storage is crucial for taking full advantage of solar power, which otherwise suffers interruptions from cloudy skies and nightfall. In the past few years, concentrating solar power plants have begun producing additional electricity at night and during peak demand periods by using stored heat energy to propel a steam turbine. Current thermal energy storage … Read more