Vegetable oil biofuels are increasingly being used as an alternative to fossil fuels despite the growing controversy regarding their sustainability.

A new method developed by a team of Waseda University scientists led by Professor Yasushi Sekine may contribute to reducing the use of fossil fuels and help prevent global warming in the long-run.

Since incidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, many countries have switched from nuclear power to electricity production fired by fossil fuels, despite the environmental consequences of burning fuels such as coal. 

Solar energy that reaches the Earth is about 125 million gigawatt (Gw).

While electric vehicles alone may not reduce carbon emissions, a new study reveals that when electric vehicles are powered with renewable energy and coupled with carbon policy strategies, they can help combat climate change without sacrificing economic growth.

A research group, consisting of doctoral student FUJIWARA Ryosuke, Associate Professor TANAKA Tsutomu (both of Kobe University’s Graduate School of Engineering) and Research Scientist NODA Shuhei (RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science), has succeeded in improving the yield of target chemical production from biomass.

Enough water will come from the ground as a byproduct of oil production from unconventional reservoirs during the coming decades to theoretically counter the need to use fresh water for hydraulic fracturing operations in many of the nation’s large oil-producing areas.

A world without phosphorous is a world without life. But phosphorous is a finite resource, so researchers are recovering it from sewage.

Climate change, with more and more storms and heat waves, also has consequences for our energy supply. 

Greater use of electric vehicles might be good for the environment, but further growth hinges on continued availability of critical battery components such as cobalt.