Lifeboat Foundation

Now, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have demonstrated a tin-lead perovskite cell that overcomes problems with stability and improves efficiency.

To improve cell stability, NREL researchers used a hole-transporting material made of phenethylammonium iodide and guanidinium thiocyanate. Researchers noted that the formation of quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D) structures from additives based on mixed bulky organic cations phenethylammonium and guanidinium provides critical defect control to substantially improve the structural and optoelectronic properties of lead-perovskite thin films with a narrow-bandgap of 1.25 eV.

The new tandem solar cell design with two layers of perovskites measured a 25.5% efficiency. It retained 80% of its maximum efficiency after 1,500 hours of continuous operation or more than 62 days.

Around 300 secret polar bears have been secluded from other bear populations in Greenland for about 200 years, scientists said Thursday when they published a new study in the journal Science.

The bears live in sea-ice conditions that reserachers say mimic what other parts of the Arctic will look like as climate change progresses. Their territory lacks ice more than 100 days over the previous limit known to sustain polar bears because they have adapted to use freshwater glacial ice instead. The population is now the world’s 20th polar bear subpopulation.

“Polar bears are one of the most mentioned—and iconic—potential victims of climate change,” co-authors wrote in the study. “Most polar bears rely on sea ice to hunt. Discovery of this population suggests both that such environments might serve as refugia for polar bears and that conservation of this new population is essential.”

We’ll need thousands of these direct air capture plants or their equivalents from industry and nature to reduce atmospheric CO₂.

Direct Air Capture, also known as DAC, is one of a number of carbon capture technologies seen as a way to mitigate the worst impacts of global warming. The technology harvests carbon dioxide (CO₂) from ambient air. It is not an add-on to a coal-fired or natural-gas thermal power plant, but rather a standalone solution to removing CO₂ from the atmosphere for the purpose of permanently sequestering it underground.

A leader in this form of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is Carbon Engineering, a Canadian-based company whose demonstration plant sits in Squamish, British Columbia. Bill Gates is an investor. And now Occidental Petroleum through its subsidiary 1PointFive has entered into a partnership to build and deploy a minimum of 70 or as many as 135 DAC plants like the one seen in the picture above by 2035.

Continue reading “Carbon Engineering-Occidental Petroleum Partnership to Build 70 to 135 Direct Air Capture Plants by 2035” »

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Jackson, Michigan-based Sesame Solar is today unveiling what it claims is the world’s first fully renewable mobile nanogrid – that’s a small microgrid – that runs on solar and green hydrogen.

The nanogrid’s solar array is electronically unfolded, and it’s ready to start generating power within 15 minutes. The company claims it can be set up by a single person.

Continue reading “Check out this solar + green hydrogen mobile nanogrid with a level 2 EV charger” »

New Zealand is introducing a flatulence tax on livestock farmers in an effort to reduce methane emissions.

Livestock is the country’s largest source of methane emissions. As a result, the government is introducing a tax to change farm practices.

Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a new dual drone that can both fly through air and land on water to collect samples and monitor water quality. The researchers developed a drone to make monitoring drones faster and more versatile in aquatic environments.

The ‘dual robot’ drone, tested at Empa and the aquatic research institute Eawag in Switzerland, has successfully measured water in lakes for signs of microorganisms and algal blooms, which can pose hazards to human health, and could in the future be used to monitor climate clues like temperature changes in Arctic seas.

Continue reading “MEDUSA‘ dual robot’ drone flies and dives to collect aquatic data” »

Hong Kong, a densely populated city where agriculture space is limited, is almost totally dependent on the outside world for its food supply. More than 90% of the skyscraper-studded city’s food, especially fresh produce like vegetables, is imported, mostly from mainland China. “During the pandemic, we all noticed that the productivity of locally grown vegetables is very low,” says Gordon Tam, cofounder and CEO of vertical farming company Farm66 in Hong Kong. “The social impact was huge.”

Tam estimates that only about 1.5% of vegetables in the city are locally produced. But he believes vertical farms like Farm66, with the help of modern technologies, such as IoT sensors, LED lights and robots, can bolster Hong Kong’s local food production—and export its know-how to other cities. “Vertical farming is a good solution because vegetables can be planted in cities,” says Tam in an interview at the company’s vertical farm in an industrial estate. “We can grow vegetables ourselves so that we don’t have to rely on imports.”

Tam says he started Farm66 in 2013 with his cofounder Billy Lam, who is COO of the company, as a high-tech vertical farming pioneer in Hong Kong. “Our company was the first to use energy-saving LED lighting and wavelength technologies in a farm,” he says. “We found out that different colors on the light spectrum help plants grow in different ways. This was our technological breakthrough.” For example, red LED light will make the stems grow faster, while blue LED light encourages plants to grow larger leaves.

German industrial manufacturer Covestro aims to develop software with QC Ware that would use quantum computing to create more efficient chemical reactions and better materials.