Report (in English, .pdf file) dated May 29, 2014 from the U.S. Department of Energy showing that liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is mostly methane and 86 to 105 times a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, offers no appreciable climate benefit over coal. The reason: leaks in its … Continue reading
Category Archives: Energy
A New Leader in Global Renewables
April 1, 2017 It’s only fitting that the largest emitter of greenhouse gases –China- should become the world’s leader in renewable energy. That is exactly what is happening, courtesy of the United States. On March 28, 2017, joined by his Environmental Protection Agency administrator and coal industry workers, President Trump … Continue reading
Farm in Desert Uses Saltwater and Sun Only
October 6, 2016 A farm in Australia is now using seawater and sun to grow vegetables, and it does not require pesticides or fossil fuels. Instead, it relies on a sun-powered desalination plant and a greenhouse to irrigate tomatoes. This is of course a great step forward along the lines … Continue reading
Solar Cell Triggered by Sun and Rain
April 11,2016 A study published in Angewandte Chemie has found that when combined with an electron-enriched graphene electrode, a dye-sensitized solar cell can be excited by incident light on sunny days and raindrops on rainy days. Its optimal solar-to-electric conversion efficiency is 6.53%.
Highly Efficient Solar Cells
March 27, 2016 A new study published on March 24, 2016 in the journal Science demonstrates that hybrid lead halide provskites, solar cells that can be produced cheaply with easily synthesized materials, have an astonishing ability: not only do they absorb energy from the sun to generate electricity as all … Continue reading
Biodegradable Hydrogen Catalyst 150 Times More Efficient
January 6, 2016 Scientists at Indiana University Bloomington have created a biodegradable, easy to mass-produce catalyst called P22-Hyd consisting of a modified enzyme (hydrogenase) protected within the protein shell of a bacterial virus. The material forms a nano-reactor that catalyzes hydrogen formation 150 times more efficiently than the enzyme would … Continue reading
Greek Debt
July 7, 2015 It is in no one’s interest, including the United States, to let Greece collapse. Greece’s creditors might lose most -if not all- of what they’re owed and the Greek people would suffer immensely for an indefinite period of time. The potential social, political, economic and even military … Continue reading
Swiss Water Splitter – 2014
December 8, 2014 The ongoing worldwide effort to improve the efficiency of using solar energy to split water to produce hydrogen -electrolysis- has added a new milestone. Scientists from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have achieved a solar energy to hydrogen conversion efficiency of 12.3 percent using … Continue reading
Australian Solar Panels 40% Efficient
December 7, 2014 Researchers at the University of New South Wales announced that they were able to convert more than 40% of sunlight hitting panels into electricity. The tests were replicated at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the United States. A similar breakthrough (44.7%) at the Fraunhofer Institute for … Continue reading
Better Than Grid Parity
Electricity in Hawaii costs $0.38 per kilowatt hour, almost treble the national average of around $0.13, which incidentally does not factor in the damage to the environment caused by using fossil fuels to generate electricity. Solar power, which can cost $0.30 per KWH, is now actually cheaper than grid electricity. … Continue reading