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
The scientist still fighting for the clean fuel the world forgot
In the closing weeks of 2008, the US Department of Energy invited politicians and press to a dedication ceremony for the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, California. The state-of-the-art lab, backed by $125 million in federal funding, filled the top floor of …Continue reading
How to prepare cities and citizens for more killer heat waves
Heat waves are among the world’s deadliest natural disasters, killing more Americans than hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes combined. And they’re only expected to get worse, as human-caused climate change ratchets up their frequency and intensity. So what can we do to prepare …Continue reading
How nuclear weapons research revealed new climate threats
After atmospheric scientist Ivana Cvijanovic began pushing a computerized climate simulation to its limits, she noticed a disturbing result: as Arctic sea ice nearly disappeared, massive high-pressure systems built up thousands of miles away, off the west coast of the United States. …Continue reading
Missing the Paris climate target by just a little means raising the odds of extreme weather by a lot
While the lofty goal of the landmark Paris climate agreement was to prevent global temperatures from rising 2 °C, it’s increasingly unlikely the world will pull that off (see “Global warming’s worst-case projections look increasingly likely”).
The race to invent the artificial leaf
Since the early 1970s, scientists have been on a quest to develop a technology that could create liquid fuels out of carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight far more efficiently than photosynthesis, the process by which plants harness sunlight to produce carbohydrates and …Continue reading