From September 1 through November 30, 2016, Northwestern competed in the U.S. EPA ENERGY STAR's Battle of the Buildings, a national competition to reduce energy use in buildings. The top performer among the University’s competing buildings was the Tarry Research and Education Building. Over the course of the competition, the building saved more than 228,000 kWh of electricity. This is equivalent to the total annual energy usage of 17 average homes.

Northwestern entered five buildings in the competition: the Tarry Research and Education Building, Catalysis Center, 1801 Maple, the Technological Institute, and Cook Hall. These buildings all contain laboratory spaces, which tend to be extremely energy intensive. During the competition, sustainNU worked with building managers, lab managers and users, and the Office of Research Safety to conserve energy while maintaining safe lab procedures.

New air quality research is investigating a major, but often overlooked contributor to outdoor pollution and climate: burning of solid fuel for cooking and heating.

Cookstove studies typically evaluate how they contribute to indoor air quality issues in houses where solid fuel is frequently used for cooking and heating. A new paper from the University of Colorado Boulder appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has taken a different approach, going outside the home and evaluating how cookstoves impact ambient air pollution and climate.

President Trump comes into office determined to discard huge swathes of his predecessor's legacy on day one, writes Mark Barteau. But he will struggle to undo Obama's clean energy regulations. It's not just that they are legally robust, it's also that energy markets in the US and the wider world have shifted firmly, and irreversibly, towards efficiency and renewables. Sorry, Mr Trump.

A new research article, with lead authors from the University of Gothenburg, gives indications of the best places in Iceland to build thermal power stations.

In Iceland, heat is extracted for use in power plants directly from the ground in volcanic areas. Constructing a geothermal power station near a volcano can be beneficial, since Earth’s mantle is located relatively close to the crust in those areas, making the heat easily accessible. This means that the boreholes do not need to be very deep and the pipes to the power plant can be short.

New study finds more than half the loss occurs outside the blackout zone.

The daily U.S. economic cost from solar storm-induced electricity blackouts could be in the tens of billions of dollars, with more than half the loss from indirect costs outside the blackout zone, according to a new study.

The Netherlands, aka Windmill Country, is now operating 100 percent of its electric trains with wind energy.

As of Jan. 1, 600,000 daily train passengers have been traveling completely carbon neutral, according to an announcement from the Netherlands’ principal passenger railway operator, NS.

A special issue of the journal Energy Technology details the latest advances in pyrolysis technologies for converting biomass into fuels, chemicals and fertilizers.

Two pyrolysis experts are guest editors of the issue: Robert C. Brown, the director of Iowa State University’s Bioeconomy Institute, an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering and the Gary and Donna Hoover Chair in Mechanical Engineering; and George Huber, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Harvey D. Spangler Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

The Canadian oil sands are one of the world’s largest sources of climate pollution and America’s biggest source of imported oil. And they may be about to go bust.

Canada’s oil sands, also known as tar sands, are the world’s fourth-largest reserve of crude oil. Mining them unleashes massive volumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, easing the way for global warming to blow past 2°C (3.6°F) — levels considered “dangerous” under the Paris Climate Agreement.

Measurement shows potential for building better solar cells by imaging fundamental properties of the material

Solar cells made with films mimicking the structure of the mineral perovskite are the focus of worldwide research. But only now have researchers at Case Western Reserve University directly shown the films bear a key property allowing them to efficiently convert sunlight into electricity.

Identifying that attribute could lead to more efficient solar panels.

The team looked at the antler structure at the 'nano-level', which is incredibly small, almost one thousandth of the thickness of a hair strand, and were able to identify the mechanisms at work, using state-of-the-art computer modelling and x-ray techniques.

First author Paolino De Falco from QMUL's School of Engineering and Materials Science said: "The fibrils that make up the antler are staggered rather than in line with each other. This allows them to absorb the energy from the impact of a clash during a fight."