In early November, gale-force winds whipped a brush fire into an inferno that nearly consumed the town of Paradise, California, and killed at least 86 people. By the second morning, I could smell the fire from one foot outside my door in …Continue reading
A long-awaited battery that would cut electric-vehicle costs may finally be close
In 2010, a pair of MIT materials scientists helped launch 24M, promising to deliver cheaper, better batteries by stripping out inactive materials in the electrodes. Eight years later, you still can’t buy the startup’s products. But in an interview last week, chief …Continue reading
The record for high-temperature superconductivity has been smashed again
Superconductivity is the weird phenomenon of zero electrical resistance that occurs when some materials are cooled below a critical temperature. The best superconductors have to be cooled with liquid helium or nitrogen to get cold enough (often as low as -250 °C …Continue reading
California needs to reinvent its fire policies, or the death and destruction will go on
A week after flames first ripped through Paradise, California, nearly destroying the ridgeline community in the Sierra Nevada foothills, thousands of firefighters are still battling to contain the deadliest and most destructive fire in the state’s history. The Camp Fire, which has …Continue reading
A powerful new battery could give us electric planes that don’t pollute
Brightly colored molecular models line two walls of Yet-Ming Chiang’s office at MIT. Chiang, a materials science professor and serial battery entrepreneur, has spent much of his career studying how slightly different arrangements of those sticks and spheres add up to radically …Continue reading
A new way to make steel could cut 5% of CO2 emissions at a stroke
Alumpy disc of dark-gray steel covers a bench in the lab space of Boston Metal, an MIT spinout located a half-hour north of its namesake city. It’s the company’s first batch of the high-strength alloy, created using a novel approach to metal …Continue reading
Bill Gates has added a geothermal startup to his clean energy fund’s first bets
Bill Gates’s $1 billion clean energy fund just opened up its checkbook for the first time. Breakthrough Energy Ventures will announce today it’s investing in a host of startups developing technology that can confront the growing dangers of climate change. Among the …Continue reading
One secret to building affordable nuclear: stick with tried-and-true designs
Nuclear power could be the key to cleaning up the electricity sector, since it’s carbon free and delivers steady power around the clock. But hardly anyone wants to build reactors these days. “The fundamental problem is cost,” says a new report from …Continue reading
We still have no idea how to eliminate more than a quarter of energy emissions
Climate discussions typically center on the need to replace fossil-fuel power plants with technologies like wind turbines and solar panels. But a new paper in Science offers a stark reminder that there are still huge parts of the global energy system where …Continue reading
The daunting math of climate change means we’ll need carbon capture
At current rates of greenhouse-gas emissions, the world could lock in 1.5 ˚C of warming as soon as 2021, an analysis by the website Carbon Brief has found. We’re on track to blow the carbon budget for 2 ˚C by 2036. Amid …Continue reading