To end 2023 on a positive note, here are the outcomes of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, earlier this month. For the first time in nearly 30 years of conferences (the first was held in Berlin in 1995), the delegates at COP recognized the need to transition […]
The “share of renewables in the energy sector has doubled every 5.5 years since 2007. If this continues, fossil fuels will be a thing of the past well before 2050.” That’s according to the World Economic Forum in its 2017 video “Global warming can be beaten”. The message in that short film is also that […]
Countries in the European Union in 2020 produced more energy using renewable sources than using traditional fossil fuels, according to an annual report from Ember and Agora Energiewende. These two organizations started tracking the EU power sector in 2015, finding year-on-year gains from the start: renewables accounted for 38% of electricity delivered in 2020, while […]
Portland, Oregon, on the West Coast of the United States, is powering its electricity grid using … drinking water. Yes, you read that right. The city’s main energy company, Portland General Electric, is partnering with Lucid Energy to generate electricity from the water flowing under its streets and through its pipes. How so? By integrating […]
One goal, two pioneers, three remarkable world tours between them: the first in a balloon, the second in Solar Impulse, the renowned solar-powered aircraft, and the third, less widely known, in a solar boat called PlanetSolar. Less famous than Bertrand Piccard who accomplished the first two global tours, Swiss solar navigator and aviator Raphaël Domjan nevertheless has […]
Passed is the time when the economists and politicians told us renewable energy was too expensive to pursue. Renewables, such as wind, solar and hydroelectric systems that generate electricity with no associated air pollution emissions, now appear as a cheap, and clean, alternative to traditional fossil fuels. Even Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, is […]
Did you know it’s possible to grow plants in sand and gravel with nutrients but without soil? It’s called hydroponics, and it is one of the many important projects happening in Azraq refugee camp, located in Jordan on hot desert terrain, where over 53,000 displaced people of the Syrian civil war are sheltered. With funding from the World Food Programme, the […]
In Japan, the city of Fukuoka is using human sewage to fuel hydrogen-powered cars. It’s part of the Fukuoka Hydrogen Leader City Project to achieve a hydrogen society. And it’s the first project in the world to produce sewage-powered cars. Fukuoka sends the human sewage produced by its 1.55 million citizens to a sewage treatment plant, where biogas generated from […]
“There is surprising – even shocking – good news: Our ability to convert sunshine into usable energy has become much cheaper far more rapidly than anyone had predicted. The cost of electricity from photovoltaic, or PV, solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources powering electric grids […]
