It’s almost as good as going to school in a treehouse. The recently opened Elleray Preparatory School in the Lake District National Park has three class pods standing on stilts connected by a center platform made from recycled materials, such as plastic milk bottles and wood shavings. Nestled amongst the trees, the complex is built [...]
The Sharp Corporation has developed a compound solar cell that has achieved a conversion efficiency of 35.8 percent. Developing a new base layer for its triple-junction compound solar cell has improved on Sharp’s previous conversion efficiency by almost four percent.
Plans for Britain’s first coal-fired power station equipped with carbon capture technology have been backed by the European Commission. The commission has recommended that a plant in Hatfield, near Doncaster, should receive £164m of EU funding.
Every child learns early on that moist sand is the key to building a sturdy sandcastle. Now researchers at Durham University have studied this principle so it can be better applied to an ancient eco-friendly building technique of using rammed earth.
Bullet trains are considered by many to be one of the greener forms of transport, so imagine how environmentally friendly they might be if the sun’s power was harnessed to power them. That’s precisely what Solar Bullet LLC hopes to do with its 220mph solar bullet train, which the company claims can travel from Tucson [...]
The climate change debate has focused our collective attention on the importance of understanding the complex workings of our planet’s weather system, but there is still much we don’t know. In this latest breakthrough, a UC San Diego-led team of atmospheric chemistry researchers has made the first-ever direct detection of biological particles within ice clouds. [...]
A meltdown of West Antarctica’s ice sheet would raise sea levels by half as much as previously expected, but the impact would still be catastrophic, especially for U.S. coastal cities, a study showed.
Airports are windy places and it seems logical to harness this power to reduce operating costs and boost green credentials. In line with this, the environmentally minded Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) has recently installed 10 wind-powered electricity generators and purchased an electric-powered utility vehicle for use at the airport.
A new study from the International Energy Agency estimates that, by 2030, consumer electronics will have sucked up 1,700 terawatt-hours of electricity. That’s over $200B of juice. The study, however, points out that, if electronics companies put more efficient standards into place for consumer electronics, these numbers could be decreased dramatically.
Economist Jeremy Rifkin galvanised the Research Connections 2009 conference in Prague with a roadmap to simultaneously solve the economic and energy crises. He proposed a pan-European strategy of small-scale energy generation and smart energy grids that make everyone a partner in energy.