Hydrogen-powered fuel cells hold enormous promise as a power source for future generations. Hydrogen is the simplest element known to humans. Each atom of hydrogen has only one proton. It is also the most abundant gas in the universe. Hydrogen has a unique property. It carries the highest energy content of any common fuel by [...]
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Insisting on the need to develop new forms of energy, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Monday chose as his energy secretary a Nobel physics laureate who is a major promoter of alternative fuels. Obama named Steven Chu, the winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics who was an early advocate [...]
For the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), the Renewable Energy Directive, agreed today, confirms Europe as the leader of the energy revolution the world needs. The target means that more than one third of EU electricity must come from renewables in 2020 and wind energy will be the biggest contributor. Moreover, the directive addresses existing [...]
The small, unassuming tropical paradise of Masagua in Guatemala’s coastal region of Escuintla seems an unlikely place for 21st century technology. But the town now boasts Guatemala’s newest biodiesel fuel production plant due to a U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded Food for Progress project led by Texas A&M University’s Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture. The [...]
Have you walked barefoot across a parking lot on a hot summer day? You don’t have to be a space scientist to know the fact that blacktop is remarkably good at soaking up the sun’s heat because you have felt the heat underneath your feet. Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) are trying to tap [...]
The secret to cheaper gas could lie in cow dung. The Vehicle Research Institute of Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., has been turning cow manure into fuel that can power a natural-gas car. Researchers are not shoveling manure straight into the gas tank but pumping the methane — a gas created by the manure [...]
Good as wind and solar energy can be to provide peak power, they are no substitute to coal fired or nuclear as base load power to provide electricity 24 hours a day. The increasing evidence is that planet earth needs a sharp reduction in carbon pollution, if the disastrous consequences of global warming are to [...]
