Energy

Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sectors of the energy industry, but not without environmental consequences. Nocturnally active birds and bats have become prey to turbines, yet little guidance could be found for assessing impacts of wind energy on this group until now. A new article published in the latest issue of The Journal of Wildlife Management gives guidance about the methods and metrics of this subject. Songbirds are by far the most abundant flying vertebrates in most terrestrial ecosystems and until recently have been the most frequently reported fatalities at utility-scale…

The scientific community is progressively experiencing a greater interest in environmentally friendly energy generation technologies, and their suitable applications, such is the case of hydrogen fuel cells applied to aeronautics. This contamination free technology has taken a crucial role in the development of modern aeronautics and the present objective is the realization of fully electrical planes. Hydrogen fuel cells are currently being tested as propulsion system in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles by companies like Boeing, where all the advantages it could offer are being taken into…

Leaking pipelines in Siberia, sabotage operations in Nigeria and the long-term consequences of accidents have one thing in common: they leave behind them huge lakes of oil which pollute the soil, contaminate the ground water and destroy the habitat of humans, animals and plants. Biotherm Technologie AG from Schaffhausen in Switzerland has devised a way to neutralize the environmental damage and create energy by producing heating oil, diesel fuel and bitumen from long-chain hydrocarbons. "Our process is based on fractionated depolymerisation and was originally developed for the…

In the future everyone who is connected to the electric grid will be able to upload and download 'packets' of electricity to and from the network, according to one scenario by Dutch researcher Jos Meeuwsen of the Technical University Eindhoven. He developed three scenarios for the Dutch electricity supply in the year 2050. The starting point is that in 2007, 50% of the consumption will originate from sustainable sources. Due to the security of supply and the connection with the European market, electricity networks will always be necessary, says Meeuwsen. Further, due to an increasing…

In the latest issue of Materials Today, Dr. Gilles Dennler of Konarka Austria GmbH and twenty other experts warn that a race to report organic solar cells (OSCs) with world record efficiencies is leading to a significant number of published papers claiming unrealistic and scientifically questionable results and performances. “World record efficiencies are popping up almost every month, leading the OSC community into an endless and dangerous tendency to outbid the last report,” stated Dennler et al. in the article. “The current outbidding phenomenon does a severe disservice to the whole…

Energy lost from hot engines could save billions of dollars if it could be captured and converted into electricity via thermoelectric devices, according to Clemson University physicist Terry Tritt. “Thermoelectric generators are currently used in NASA’s deep-space probes to convert the heat of radioactive elements to electrical energy, powering these systems for over 30 years,” Tritt said. “Thermoelectric energy conversion is a solid-state technology that is environmentally friendly. One of the more promising ‘down-to-earth’ applications lies in waste-heat recovery in cars.” Tritt said more…

Consumers are told that leaving electrical devices in standby mode wastes large amounts of energy and makes a significant contribution to carbon dioxide emissions. Should 'standby mode' be regulated by governments? Not according to results of a study published in the International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development. Sound counter-intuitive? Their reasoning is that as electrical devices get more efficient, the amount of energy saved through stricter regulation becomes ever smaller and effort should instead be spent improving the overall efficiency of devices in operation.…

A German-American research team of biologists and geochemists has discovered hitherto unknown anaerobic bacteria in marine sediments which need only propane or butane for growth. The hydrocarbons ethane, propane and butane – as well as the main component, methane – are the major constituents of natural gas. Biological processes may lead to the degradation of these hydrocarbons in underground petroleum reservoirs and other geological habitats. Heinz Wilkes, a leading biogeochemist at GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ), points out: „The bacteria isolated here for the first time from marine…

Biofuels are a wash environmentally and a negative economically because they requite subsidies to be competitive but there is one way they are a boon: the increase in world agriculture prices caused by the global boom in biofuels could benefit many of the world’s rural poor, according to a new book, Biofuels for Transport: Global Potential and Implications for Energy and Agriculture, written by the Worldwatch Institute. “Decades of declining agricultural prices have been reversed thanks to the growing use of biofuels,” says Christopher Flavin, president of the Institute. “Farmers in some of…

Approximately one third of the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the world come from energy production. It's possible to make CO2-free gas-powered plants but that relies on it being removed from the waste gases and deposited in the ground, an expensive and not environmentally friendly method since current techniques require the use of chemicals. A patent-pending membrane technology based on the human lung is going to change that. Researchers at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim say the new membrane uses nanotechnology and is made from a plastic…