Cleantech and Environmental News – Latest Headlines

Emissions pricing revenues could overcompensate profit losses of fossil fuel owners

The instrument of pricing global CO2 emissions could generate a revenue of 32 trillion US dollars over the 21st century, exceeding by far the 12 trillion US dollars reduction of fossil fuel owners' profits, according to a study now published by scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

November 5, 2013 Read more

New ideas needed to meet California's 2050 greenhouse gas targets

California is on track to meet its state-mandated targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for 2020, but it will not be able to meet its 2050 target without bold new technologies and policies. This is the conclusion of the California Greenhouse Gas Inventory Spreadsheet (GHGIS), a new model developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to look at how far existing policies and technologies can get us in emissions reductions.

November 4, 2013 Read more

Researchers turn waste cooking oil into biodiesel

Scientists in Taiwan have developed a microwave-based process that transforms waste cooking oils into biodiesel in 10 seconds.

November 1, 2013 Read more

'Green' concrete under construction

It is all around us. But most of the time, you can't see it. And there is a good reason why scientists are currently focusing their research efforts on it.

October 31, 2013 Read more

New wind energy research focuses on turbine arrangement, wind seasonality

Research into the best ways to arrange wind turbines has produced staggering results - quite literally.

October 31, 2013 Read more

Thin-film photovoltaics achieves 20.8% efficiency and overtakes multicrystalline silicon technology

In the race for higher power yields, the Zentrum für Sonnenenergie- und Wasserstoff-Forschung Baden-Württemberg (Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research, ZSW) has set a new world record. The Stuttgart researchers have improved the efficiency of CIGS thin-film solar cells to 20.8%. This figure is a record for converting sunlight into electrical energy and, for the first time, it exceeds the efficiency of market-dominating multicrystalline silicon solar cells.

October 31, 2013 Read more

EU marine project advances global progress on renewable energy

A multi-million Euro project has advanced global progress on capturing tidal and wave energy thus bringing the EU closer to its target of generating 20% of its energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020.

October 30, 2013 Read more

Extracting energy from bacteria

Microbial electrode catalysts that turn wastewater into watts.

October 29, 2013 Read more

Klimagune: Opportunities, challenges and barriers for transitions towards sustainability

The aim of this initiative is to share knowledge, projects and developments in terms of scientific advancements, based on the creation of synergies and possible frameworks for cooperation between the various research groups, organisations and institutions that address this matter.

October 29, 2013 Read more

Stanford faculty awarded $2.2 million for innovative energy research

Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy, the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center and the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy have awarded 11 seed grants totaling $2.2 million for promising new research in clean technology and energy efficiency.

October 29, 2013 Read more

How green is your city? And how do you know?

In a new book, an engineer and an architect lay out a program for urban development based on the cold hard facts about environmental sustainability.

October 29, 2013 Read more

Energy-saving: it's a social thing

With energy bills again rising and the winter approaching, researchers from Keele University in the UK have found a positive way of helping householders to keep their energy costs down and houses warm.

October 28, 2013 Read more

Urban underground holds sustainable energy

Vast energy sources are slumbering below big cities. Sustainable energies for heating in winter and cooling in summer may be extracted from heated groundwater aquifers. Researchers from KIT and ETH Zurich developed an analytical heat flux model and found that increasing heat in the underground is mainly caused by an increase in surface temperatures and heat release from buildings.

October 28, 2013 Read more

Bio-electrochemical systems: electricity generators of the future?

Billions of euros are spent treating trillions of litres of wastewater every year, consuming substantial amounts of energy. However, this wastewater could act as a renewable resource, saving significant quantities of energy and money, as it contains organic pollutants which can be used to produce electricity, hydrogen and high-value chemicals, such as caustic soda.

October 25, 2013 Read more

A thermoelectric materials emulator

Converting heat directly into power could be a major source of renewable energy. A novel approach to study this so called thermoelectricity may help to design new materials that are highly efficient. In an experiment with cold atoms trapped by lasers at ETH Zurich an international group of physicists precisely simulates the behavior of thermoelectric materials.

October 24, 2013 Read more

Opportunities and challenges for photovoltaic device design

The ongoing challenge in the PVEG industry is to decrease the overall cost of a photovoltaic electricity generation system per peak watt generated.

October 24, 2013 Read more

New Worldwatch Institute analysis finds that fossil fuels still dominate primary energy consumption

Coal, natural gas, and oil accounted for 87 percent of global primary energy consumption in 2012, as the growth of worldwide energy use continued to slow due to the economic downturn, according to a new Vital Signs Online trend released by the Worldwatch Institute.

October 24, 2013 Read more

Using forest waste to develop cheaper, greener supercapacitors

Researchers report that wood-biochar supercapacitors can produce as much power as today's activated-carbon supercapacitors at a fraction of the cost - and with environmentally friendly byproducts.

October 24, 2013 Read more