Lifeboat Foundation

Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures co-led a $44 million funding round for a startup that aims to accelerate solar far construction.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate change solution-focused VC firm backed by the likes of Bill Gates, has joined a $44 million backing of solar startup Terabase Energy, a press statement reveals.

Continue reading “Bill Gates-backed startup is using robots to build enormous solar farms” »

The challenge: The building and construction sector is responsible for a big chunk of global carbon emissions. A lot of those emissions come from the production of cement, which is the second most consumed material on the planet behind water.

Cement produces emissions in two main ways. One is through the chemical reactions that occur while sintering limestone and other materials to make “clinker,” a key component of cement. The other comes from using fossil fuels to heat up kilns to very high temperatures.

Continue reading “Engineers create world’s first carbon-neutral cement out of algae” »

The electrification of heating systems could play a significant role in building decarbonization. Heat pumps are emerging as a solution.

Iranian scientists have demonstrated a multi-layer silicon nanoparticle (SNP) solar cell based on nanoparticles that are densely stacked inside a dielectric medium. They considered different SNP structures and configurations to tailor these particles as a p–n junction cell.

“This is because SNPs are assumed to be the main absorber in the cell. Thus, any distance between them reduces the absorption of incident photons,” the group said.

They considered different SNP structures and configurations to tailor these particles as a p–n junction cell. They said this kind of cell could achieve a theoretical efficiency of around 11%.

Companies specializing in cutting-edge construction techniques are aiming to make a difference by churning out high-quality homes at a lower cost than traditional industry standards. Among these are 3D printed homes, “foldable” homes, and homes that ship in kits then are assembled like Ikea furniture.

Now a new player is joining the list, and it just got a serious financial boost. Vantem Global has already helped construct a total of over three million square feet of living space in six different countries, and earlier this month closed a Series A funding round co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (Breakthrough was founded by Bill Gates in 2015 to invest in sustainable energy and emissions-reduction technologies).

Continue reading “This Gates-Backed Startup Builds Modular Homes Out of Energy-Efficient Panels” »

Tiny crystals, known as quantum dots, have enabled an international team to achieve a quantum efficiency exceeding 100 percent in the photocurrent generated in a hybrid inorganic-organic semiconductor.

Perovskites are exciting semiconductors for light-harvesting applications and have already shown some impressive performances in solar cells. But improvements in photo-conversion efficiency are necessary to take this technology to a broader market.

Light comes in packets of energy known as photons. When a semiconductor absorbs a photon, the electromagnetic energy is transferred to a negatively charged electron and its positively charged counterpart, known as a hole. An electric field can sweep these particles in opposite directions, thereby allowing a current to flow. This is the basic operation of a solar cell. It might sound simple, but optimizing the quantum efficiency, or getting as many electron-hole pairs from the incoming photons as possible, has been a long-standing goal.

State plans for the National EV Charging Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program were due to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation this week, and many states released a draft plan for feedback in the last couple of months. The NEVI Program is one of two programs in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that provide funding for publicly-accessible electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. Program funds can be used to plan for, install, operate, and maintain EV charging stations along travel corridors, with a focus on designated Alternative Fuel Corridors. Funding under the NEVI program totals $5 billion from 2022 through 2026. Funds will be allocated to states each year for implementation based on a pre-established formula, provided the departments of transportation in those states submit a satisfactory EV charging plan to the Joint Office, with updates to the plan required annually.

So what’s in the draft plans?

I pulled a few draft plans to look at as a starting point, aiming for a cross section of states in different regions, with different politics, with different economic stakes in the EV transition, at different places in EV adoption, with different weather. I couldn’t get quite the representative cross section I wanted because there are still big gaps in which states have released a draft plan. I decided to start with Alabama, California, Texas, and Wyoming.

Swiss researchers have done the (theoretically) impossible, creating not one but two silicon-based solar cells with efficiencies greater than 30% — breaking a world record and potentially illuminating the path to a future of cheaper clean energy.

The status quo: Solar cells absorb light and convert it into electricity. They’re the basis of most solar power tech, and about 95% of them are made from silicon because it’s abundant, long-lasting, and relatively cheap.

Most of the silicon solar cells sold today are about 22% efficient, meaning they convert 22% of the solar energy that hits them into electricity. We don’t have too much room for improvement with silicon solar cells, either, as they have a theoretical efficiency limit of about 29%.

The concrete industry is just one of many looking at new manufacturing methods to reduce its carbon footprint. These efforts are essential to fulfilling the Paris Agreement, which asks each of its signees to achieve a net-zero carbon economy by 2050. However, a new study from researchers in Japan and Belgium and focusing exclusively on Japan concludes that improved manufacturing technologies will only get the industry within 80% of its goal. Using a dynamic material flows analysis model, the study claim that the other 20% will have to come from changes in how concrete is consumed and managed, putting expectations on the buyer as well as the seller.

Electric cars, fluorescent lights, water-saving shower heads, these are all examples of efforts to lower our carbon footprint. However, the energy savings are made from the supply side, with companies developing new technologies that reduce the amount of energy consumed for the same amount of use. Notably, they put little demand on the user, who can use the product no differently than before.

The same holds true for concrete, the most consumed human-made material in the world. Many studies have shown the potential for making the concrete industry more energy efficient through esoteric efforts like “clinker-to-cement ratio reduction,” “cement substitution with alternative binders,” and “carbon capture and utilization.” The problem, explains Dr. Takuma Watari, a researcher at the Japan National Institute for Environmental Studies and lead of the new study, is that supply-side efforts are not enough if nations are serious about achieving net-zero carbon emissions.