Cleantech and Environmental News – Latest Headlines

One step closer to low cost solar cells

Researchers are investigating solar cells based on organic materials that have electrodes both flexible and transparent, enabling the fabrication of these solar cells at a low cost.

January 27, 2014 Read more

Forget intermittency - Active power control of wind turbines can improve power grid reliability

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), along with partners from the Electric Power Research Institute and the University of Colorado have completed a comprehensive study to understand how wind power technology can assist the power grid by controlling the active power output being placed onto the system.

January 25, 2014 Read more

Cheap hydrogen gas? Probing hydrogen catalyst assembly

Biochemical reactions sometimes have to handle dangerous things in a safe way. New work from researchers at UC Davis and Stanford University shows how cyanide and carbon monoxide are safely bound to an iron atom to construct an enzyme that can generate hydrogen gas.

January 24, 2014 Read more

China's 12GW solar market outstripped all expectations in 2013

Last year was a record year for PV installation worldwide, with a rush of activity in China on the back of a national feed-in tariff one of the main drivers.

January 23, 2014 Read more

World's first magma-enhanced geothermal system created in Iceland

In 2009, a borehole drilled at Krafla, northeast Iceland, as part of the Icelandic Deep Drilling Project, unexpectedly penetrated into magma (molten rock) at only 2,100 meters depth, with a temperature of 900-1,000 C. The January 2014 issue of Geothermics is dedicated to scientific and engineering results arising from that unusual occurrence.

January 23, 2014 Read more

New industrial processes for the recycling of critical metals from waste batteries

The CoLaBats iniciative works in provide new industrial processes for the recycling of the critical metals Cobalt and Lanthanides and key economic metals Nickel and Lithium, from waste batteries, significantly improving recycling efficiencies and metal purity from existing recovery routes.

January 22, 2014 Read more

Hefty subsidies prop up unsustainable energy system

New Worldwatch Institute report reviews extent of global energy subsidies.

January 22, 2014 Read more

NPL to lead 7 new energy and environment projects

The National Physical Laboratory in the UK will lead seven new European collaborative projects, following the final round of project calls from the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) before the proposed introduction of its successor, the European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research (EMPIR) in 2014.

January 22, 2014 Read more

Climate change research is globally skewed

The supply of climate change knowledge is biased towards richer countries - those that pollute the most and are least vulnerable to climate change - and skewed away from the poorer, fragile and more vulnerable regions of the world. That creates a global imbalance between the countries in need of knowledge and those that build it.

January 22, 2014 Read more

Largest Danish research award goes to energy pioneer

Frede Blaabjerg, Professor in Energy at Aalborg University, is the recipient of the largest individual Danish research award, the Villum Kann Rasmussen Annual Award for Technical and Scientific Research of DKK 5 million (EUR 0.67 million).

January 22, 2014 Read more

Bringing environmentally-friendly coatings to the aeronautics industry

The European ECOPROT project aims to industrialise an innovative procedure for producing corrosion-protecting environmentally friendly coatings for aluminium and magnesium alloys, to be used in the aeronautics market.

January 22, 2014 Read more

Study: Electric drive vehicles have little impact on US pollutant emissions

A new study indicates that even a sharp increase in the use of electric drive passenger vehicles by 2050 would not significantly reduce emissions of high-profile air pollutants carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides.

January 21, 2014 Read more

Clean energy investment falls for second year

Investment in renewable energy and energy smart technologies dropped 11% in 2013, after falling 10% in 2012. Japan was the most significant among several countries seeing increasing activity.

January 21, 2014 Read more

Researchers develop energy-dense sugar battery

A new sugar battery that could be on the market and powering the world's gadgets in three years has an energy density and order of magnitude higher than others.

January 21, 2014 Read more

Making e-mobility user friendly

How can companies break into the electromobility market faster and more effectively? In what way can innovative services help to focus electromobility solutions on users' needs? What shape should IT support take? And what will the mobility markets of the future look like? DELFIN project develops innovative services and methods.

January 20, 2014 Read more

Energy storage in miniaturized capacitors may boost green energy technology

Researchers study the properties of a novel material that could help build high heat-tolerant supercapacitors.

January 17, 2014 Read more

Renewable chemical ready for biofuels scale-up (w/video)

Using a plant-derived chemical, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have developed a process for creating a concentrated stream of sugars that's ripe with possibility for biofuels.

January 16, 2014 Read more

EU could cut emissions by 40 percent at moderate cost

The costs of achieving a more ambitious EU climate target are estimated to be moderate. Upscaling greenhouse-gas emissions reduction from the current 20 percent by 2020 to 40 percent by 2030 would be likely to cost less than an additional 0.7 percent of economic activity.

January 16, 2014 Read more