If we want to get rid of fossil fuels nationwide, there is a lot to do.

The Oxford University-based Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS) has today launched its first major cross-theme report, based on existing research, called 'Shifting the focus: energy demand in a net-zero carbon UK.

Beryllium, a hard, silvery metal long used in X-ray machines and spacecraft, is finding a new role in the quest to bring the power that drives the sun and stars to Earth.

In any conventional silicon-based solar cell, there is an absolute limit on overall efficiency, based partly on the fact that each photon of light can only knock loose a single electron, even if that photon carried twice the energy needed to do so.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7) aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030. 

Mixing microbes with carbon nanomaterials could help the transition to renewable energy. 

What’s good for one is not always best for all.

Solitary wind turbines produce the most power when pointing directly into the wind. But when tightly packed lines of turbines face the wind on wind farms, wakes from upstream generators can interfere with those downstream. Like a speedboat slowed by choppy water from a boat in front, the wake from a wind turbine reduces the output of those behind it.

Pointing turbines slightly away from oncoming wind – called wake-steering – can reduce that interference and improve both the quantity and quality of power from wind farms, and probably lower operating costs, a new Stanford study shows.

“To meet global targets for renewable energy generation, we need to find ways to generate a lot more energy from existing wind farms,” said John Dabiri, professor of civil and environmental engineering and of mechanical engineering and senior author of the paper. “The traditional focus has been on the performance of individual turbines in a wind farm, but we need to instead start thinking about the farm as a whole, and not just as the sum of its parts.”

Read more at Stanford University

Converting the entire U.S. power grid to 100 percent renewable energy in the next decade is technologically and logistically attainable, and would cost an estimated $4.5 trillion, according to a recent analysis by the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie.

A newly developed material that is so perfectly transparent you can barely see it could unlock many new uses for solar heat.

New research at The University of Texas at Austin shows that injecting air and carbon dioxide into methane ice deposits buried beneath the Gulf of Mexico could unlock vast natural gas energy resources while helping fight climate change by trapping the carbon dioxide underground.