Cleantech and Environmental News – Latest Headlines

Climate models underestimate costs to future generations

Future generations will have to pay more for today's carbon emissions than what governments across the world currently understand. The climate models used by policymakers around the world to estimate the economic and social costs of CO2 emissions have to be improved.

April 9, 2014 Read more

Geographers develop a system to track the dynamics of drought

Detecting drought before it causes more catastrophe: the news could go down like a cool drink of water for regions feeling the heat.

April 8, 2014 Read more

Ten companies chosen as 2014 New Energy Pioneers

Companies from around the world are recognized as leaders driving change in the energy system.

April 8, 2014 Read more

Free report: Global trends in renewable energy investment 2014

Report from UNEP-Frankfurt School analyses why green energy investment fell last year, and identifies a number of encouraging signs for the future.

April 8, 2014 Read more

Pilot water conservation project uses treated groundwater for cooling

A pilot project uses a reverse osmosis system to reduce potable water use by using treated groundwater to cool equipment and research facilities.

April 8, 2014 Read more

Researching materials to optimize battery performance

Creating environment friendly energy storage systems, non-explosive and with charge/discharge long-term cycles, motivated a group of scientists to research which polymeric materials have the properties to maintain the highest level of energy in a lithium - ion battery.

April 8, 2014 Read more

Climate killer as a climate rescuer

The iC4 project aims to optimize the conversion of carbon dioxide into synthetic natural gas - a process that has been known for over 100 years - to make the process economically viable. First successes have now been made.

April 7, 2014 Read more

'Unzipping' poplars' biofuel potential

What began 20 years ago as an innovation to improve paper industry processes and dairy forage digestibility may now open the door to a much more energy- and cost-efficient way to convert biomass into fuel.

April 3, 2014 Read more

Wind energy: On the grid, off the checkerboard

Researchers have developed a new way to study wake effects that includes the airflow both within and around a wind farm and challenges the conventional belief that turbines arrayed in checker board patterns produce the highest power output.

April 1, 2014 Read more

Using mines as pumped storage power plants

Pumped storage power plants are firmly established in the German power grid: surplus electricity can be stored for a moment and then quickly supplied during a demand peak. The BINE Projektinfo brochure 'Storing wind energy underground' presents a concept of how to reuse abandoned ore mines as pumped storage power plants.

April 1, 2014 Read more

Hybrid vehicles more fuel efficient in India, China than in US

What makes cities in India and China so frustrating to drive in - heavy traffic, aggressive driving style, few freeways - makes them ideal for saving fuel with hybrid vehicles, according to new research.

March 31, 2014 Read more

PECDEMO: sunlight to hydrogen

Within just three years, research partners of the EU project PECDEMO are planning on developing a practical system capable of converting over eight percent of solar energy into hydrogen. This could prove a real breakthrough in terms of practical applicability.

March 31, 2014 Read more

Making nylon clothes from sugar

Researchers have found a green and efficient method to produce nylon from sugar.

March 31, 2014 Read more

Putting the pressure on carbon dioxide

At a certain pressure, gas abandons clay's surface, reducing chances for fuel recovery or carbon sequestration.

March 27, 2014 Read more

Uncovering the details of proton relays vital to creating new catalysts for energy storage

Storing intermittent solar and wind energy in chemical bonds for later use requires a detailed understanding of how protons flow. Researchers describe how proton relays and other factors influence the catalysts that produce the desired chemical bonds.

March 27, 2014 Read more

Sugar, not oil

No more oil - renewable raw materials are the future. This motto not only applies to biodiesel, but also to isobutene, a basic product used in the chemical industry. In a pilot plant researchers now want to obtain this substance from sugar instead of oil for the first time.

March 25, 2014 Read more

On track to climate prediction

At the Bjerknes Centre, researchers are exploring the potential for seasonal to decadal climate prediction. This is a field still in its infancy, and a first attempt was made public for the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

March 25, 2014 Read more

New magnetic materials for extracting energy from tides

The objective of the MAGNETIDE project is to develop a new type of generator that transforms the mechanical energy produced by the movement of the tides into electric energy.

March 25, 2014 Read more