Can Slime Help The Self-Driving Electric Car Industry?
These are times when you wish you could gather children over a bonfire to tell the story of how slime saved the day!
Biomimicry
Reinventing The Wheel, Resurrecting Faraday Future, & Japan’s H2 Play (Cleantech Talk #49)
Episode #49 of Cleantech Talk is here! In this episode, we talk about reinventing the wheel, a Faraday Future maybe-resurrection, and Japan’s logical hots for hydrogen.
Business Lessons From A Radical Industrialist (#CleanTechnica Occasional #Bookclub)
Instead of halfway measures and greenwashing, Ray Anderson oriented Interface to the singular goal of having no net negative impact on the environment, something it calls Mission Zero®. Interface hasn’t hit Mission Zero® yet, but that goal has been woven into the company’s DNA. He passed away years ago, but that vision remains integral to the company’s culture.
CleanTechnica Occasional Book Club: Cradle To Cradle
Cradle to Cradle made industrial ecology and the circular economy a lot more mainstream than they had previously been. They’re both still niche notions, but without Cradle to Cradle they’d be a lot more obscure. And if you’re interested in sustainability, the book (or at a minimum this summary!) is required reading.
Nanoholes Found In Butterfly Wings Could Boost Performance Of Thin-Film Photovoltaic Modules
After studying the wings of butterflies, researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology say that reproducing the pattern of nanoholes found in nature can increase the efficiency of thin film solar panels by up to 200 percent.
US Energy Dept. Goes Rogue On Biofuel, Celebrates Bio-Based Economy
So, this is weird. In one corner, you have US President* Donald J. Trump talking up the fossil fuel industry and denying climate change, and meanwhile his Department of Energy is touting a breakthrough in biofuel production and dropping another $40 million on new research aimed at ramping up the bio-based economy of the future.
Artificial Reefs Could Help Save Our Oceans
The goal is that these plastic mimics — as the artificial reefs are known — which look and move like the real thing, will shelter and host the tiny creatures who typically live on the algae, and also will become scaffolds for real coralline algae to grow.
Study Of Owl Wings Could Lead To Quieter Wind Turbines
A study of owl wings by scientists in Japan and China may offer important clues on how to lower noise from wind turbines.
What Thermoelectric Power Generators Must Overcome
Originally published on the ECOreport. A new National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study found that a “finely tuned carbon nanotube thin film has the potential to act as a thermoelectric power generator that captures and uses waste heat.” This is significant because “more than half of the energy consumed worldwide is … [continued]
SunPower’s Maxeon Solar Cell Technology: An Audit via Life’s Principles
By Paige Kuplic, Carol Gustafson, and Jeremy Frey Life’s Principles represent inspirational guidelines gleaned from a fundamental reconnection with nature, an ethos that celebrates sustainability and an emulation of nature’s genius. This collection of patterns, are representative of the survival strategies that have worked for over 3 billion years. There … [continued]
