Energy

Climate change mitigation could actually increase water shortage in some areas rather than reduce it, according to new research. The source of the problem is clear: greater demand for biofuels, intended to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, requires massive increases in irrigation in productive but relatively arid American farmland. The study, published in the journal PNAS, is alarming as it suggests one of the major strategies for dealing with global warming may lead to greater political strife. One of climate science’s most confident findings is that an increase in the average surface…

Random-access memory, or RAM, is where computers like to store the data they're working on because a processor can retrieve data from RAM tens of thousands of times faster than from the computer's disk drive. But RAM is precious in the world of Big Data. The data describing a single human genome takes up the RAM of 100 typical computers, which means data sets can't really use RAM, but flash memory used by most portable devices could provide an alternative to conventional RAM for big-data applications. It's about a tenth as expensive, and it consumes about a tenth as much power. It's…

Using biofuel is one way to decrease the United States' dependence on oil. And switchgrass is an excellent candidate for biofuel production. It is an adaptable plant that can grow on millions of acres of U.S. lands that cannot support crop or food production. It is also a renewable resource but growing it and making it profitable can be complicated.  It lacks qualities, such as high biomass yield, needed to maximize biofuel production. Alternative breeding methods may be the answer. "Many of these lands are currently in the Conservation Reserve Program," says Michael Casler, a research…

Researchers have developed a functioning organic solar cell consisting of a single component has been produced on the basis of metal-organic framework compounds (MOFs). The material is highly elastic and might also be used for the flexible coating of clothes and deformable components.  Metal-organic frameworks, briefly called MOFs, consist of two basic elements, metal node points and organic molecules, which are assembled to form microporous, crystalline materials. For about a decade, MOFs have been attracting considerable interest of researchers, because their functionality can be…

The aviation industry is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2011 aviation contributed around 3% of Australia’s emissions. Despite improvements in efficiency, global aviation emissions are expected to grow 70% by 2020 from 2005. While the industry is seeking new renewable fuel sources, growing biofuels takes up valuable land and water that could be otherwise used to grow food. But what if you could grow biofuels on land nobody wants, using just seawater and sunlight, and produce food at the same time? That’s just what a new project in Abu Dhabi is seeking to do. The Integrated…

Electric vehicles are all the rage for wealthy elites but they have a more practical future benefit - mass transit, assuming the electricity source is low-emission like nuclear or solar.  Right now, things like electric buses require more cost because of the maintenance and downtime. They take huge batteries, which means when those die off and they are placed into landfills we will replace global warming with acid rain. And to match gasoline's energy density would take a battery larger than could fit on a bus.  The solution instead has to be much faster charging times. …

The UK’s onshore wind power industry may have been dealt a huge blow by new government policies announced last week, but this apparent setback should instead be seen as an opportunity. Elsewhere in Europe local, cooperative wind power is flourishing – could your town be next? This wind turmoil comes at a point when politicians are widely struggling with the “energy trilemma” of balancing affordability and sustainability while also securing national supplies. The Queen’s Speech on behalf of the new Conservative government explicitly included a new Energy Bill designed to increase energy…

Nuclear power is sometimes described as being free of greenhouse gas emissions, and that’s true of the nuclear fission reactions themselves. But here is a list of all the stages of the nuclear power cycle at which greenhouse gases are emitted: uranium mining, uranium milling, conversion of uranium ore to uranium hexafluoride, uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor construction, reactor decommissioning, fuel reprocessing, nuclear waste disposal, mine site rehabilitation, and transport throughout all stages. During these stages, greenhouse gases are emitted directly (for instance, by…

Like with emissions-free, white-collar astronomy jobs, it seems strange that anyone would protest emissions-free alternative energy, but in the United States it faces an uphill battle. On one side environmental groups lobby for it, while on the other, different environmentalists wait to file lawsuits and if they aren't paid off quickly, it could take years to resolve in court. San Diego Gas&Electric learned that in 2006 when they tried to run power lines from a solar farm in the Mojave Desert and environmental lawyers prevented it - after the utility spent $125 million. In the case of the…

Existing popular alternative energy schemes have an ironic flaw - they make fossil fuels more profitable because they are not predictably consistent, which means expensive contracts for "instant on" traditional providers to prevent blackouts. The big obstacle in implementing wind energy on a massive scale is the unpredictability of its driving force. Wind comes and goes, frequently shifting speed and direction, and mountainous terrain makes it even more fickle. And yet, customers depending on wind power as their primary source of electricity demand a consistent flow -- not one that dies…