ARPA-E, the federal agency charged with propelling the U.S. into an alternative energy future, has just announced a new round of $150 million in funding for new energy projects that transform the way we generate, transport and store energy. As always with ARPA-E, the point is to connect the best … [continued]
The California biofuel company Cool Planet BioFuels has announced the successful test of a pilot biorefinery that can convert an acre of the giant grass miscanthus into gasoline at the rate of 4,000 gallons per acre. You read that right – the process yields straight, drop-in quality gasoline that … [continued]
Tobacco is about to take center stage as a renewable biofuel crop if new research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory pans out. That would be quite a turnaround for tobacco, which according to the Centers for Disease Control is responsible for one in every five deaths in the U.S. … [continued]
Window gazers of the future may soon find themselves looking right through an energy-producing transparent glass solar panel, if the folks at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are on the right track. Working with the company New Energy Technologies, Inc., the lab has produced a transparent photovoltaic module that … [continued]
The search for a cheap, simple one-pot process for making biofuel is taking researchers to some mighty strange places. In the latest development, scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been scouring the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park on the lookout for bacteria that could help break down … [continued]
Forget about turning your car into a rolling DJ booth, the ThyssenKrupp Americas Elevator company has just launched the vertical version of the MTV hit show from a while back, “Pimp my Ride.” The company is offering a new elevator retrofit package, which transforms an old clunker into a … [continued]
Scientists on the lookout for utility-scale, high efficiency batteries are developing new “flow”systems that that store energy more effectively than lead-acid or lithium-ion batteries, but there’s a catch. The flow batteries in operation now are about the size of a house and they cost more than the equivalent in lithium-ion … [continued]
Lockheed Martin, the company better known for airborne innovation, is developing a way to mine renewable energy that is literally just sitting there in the ocean, waiting for someone to reach out and grab it. The new system, a twist on ocean thermal energy conversion, is considered one of those … [continued]
Old and new technologies often bump into each other as we head into a new energy era, and a new liquid battery system under development at MIT provides an interesting example of that dynamic. The new battery was inspired by the process of aluminum smelting, which was developed in the early … [continued]
Clearly undeterred by the GOP’s ongoing effort to cut federal support for clean energy, the Obama Administration has just announced a new $150 million round of funding for cutting-edge research into solar, wind, geothermal, bio-based energy and ocean power along with dozens of other categories related to renewable energy and … [continued]
