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Ecological intensification of agriculture

Putting a halt to the profound changes affecting agricultural landscapes: With this goal in mind, scientists, farmers and official representatives teamed up to look into ecological intensification as a potential solution.

Sep 9th, 2016

A polyphenyline fuel cell membrane outperforms the market

Fuel cells provide power without pollutants. But, as in the Goldilocks story, membranes in automobile fuel cells work at temperatures either too hot or too cold to be maximally effective. A novel polyphenyline membrane, though, seems to work just about right.

Sep 8th, 2016

Harvesting water from air with less energy

Getting clean water to communities in parched areas of the planet remains an ongoing challenge. Recent developments that harvest water from air have been proposed as a solution. Based on new modeling results, scientists report that a new system design would require less energy and produce high-quality water.

Sep 7th, 2016

Textile fiber waste helps improve the sustainability of materials

Researchers have developed a panel with textile waste that improves both the thermal and acoustic conditions of buildings and reduces the energy impact associated to the production of construction materials and greenhouse gases emissions.

Sep 7th, 2016

New tool can calculate renewable energy output anywhere in the world

Researchers have created an interactive web tool to estimate the amount of energy that could be generated by wind or solar farms at any location.

Sep 6th, 2016

Updated baseline of cost and performance data for electricity generation technologies

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released the 2016 Annual Technology Baseline. In addition to updated data for utility-scale renewable and conventional energy technologies, this year's version includes cost and performance data for residential and commercial rooftop photovoltaics systems.

Sep 1st, 2016

Time window for action to limit climate change is closing rapidly

The window of opportunity for limiting climate warming up to 2 C is closing rapidly. However, a reinforcing upward spiral of national government policy, non-state actions and transformative coalitions will be essential even after the Paris agreement, if dangerous climate change is to be avoided.

Sep 1st, 2016

Extending the life span of wind turbines

The Spanish technology centre Cener gives an overview of the first results coming from the testing phase on the software, the blade configurations and the control strategies developed during the European Windtrust project.

Sep 1st, 2016

New step towards clean energy production from enzymes

Scientists have combined theory and experiment to characterize each chemical reaction step that results in the reduction of oxygen by the enzyme.

Sep 1st, 2016

Help slash the world's carbon footprint from just 5 euros

Start-up company launches crowdfunding campaign to build compact wastewater treatment unit to clean up the environment.

Aug 31st, 2016

A software 'detective' for wind power generation

Advanced detection of wind anomalies could help prolong the lifespan of wind turbine components and reduce the cost of wind energy generation. In this context, European researchers have developed smart control software.

Aug 30th, 2016

Solar houses scientifically evaluated

A new brochure 'Assessing solar houses in energy and economic terms' details the costs and energy requirements of the various solar house concepts.

Aug 30th, 2016

New solar cell is more efficient, costs less than its counterparts

Exposed in step-like formation, layers of new photovoltaic cell harvest more of sun's energy.

Aug 29th, 2016

New approach to computing boosts energy efficiency

A European research project has launched a set of tools that will make computer systems more energy efficient - a critical issue for modern computing. Using the framework of the project programmers has been able to provide large data streaming aggregations 54 times more energy efficient than with standard implementations.

Aug 29th, 2016

Study: Biofuels increase, rather than decrease, heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions

A new study challenges the widely held assumption that biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are inherently carbon neutral.

Aug 25th, 2016

New method developed for producing some metals

Using electricity rather than heat can reduce both energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

Aug 25th, 2016

Green light: Biochemists describe light-driven conversion of greenhouse gas to fuel

By way of a light-driven bacterium, biochemists are a step closer to cleanly converting harmful carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion into usable fuels. Using the phototropic bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris as a biocatalyst, the scientists generated methane from carbon dioxide in one enzymatic step.

Aug 25th, 2016

An effective and low-cost solution for storing solar energy

Researchers have combined components that have already proven effective in industry in order to develop a robust and effective system. Their prototype is made up of three interconnected, new-generation, crystalline silicon solar cells attached to an electrolysis system that does not rely on rare metals.

Aug 25th, 2016