Energy

an overhead shot of land split in three. the left side is dry and dusty. the middle has some vegetation, and the right side has a lot.

Desertification is destroying fertile land. Here’s how we’re fighting it.

a female presenting person in a lab coat holding a solar cell

New “tandem” solar cell breaks world record

A new tandem solar cell containing layers of silicon and perovskite has demonstrated an unprecedented efficiency of 33.7%.

Kristin Houser

Clean Energy

These 4 charts show the unstoppable growth of solar

Solar is growing fast enough to displace fossil fuels from the entire global economy before 2050, but infrastructure needs to keep up.

Andrew Blakers

“Phytomining” trees can extract metal from the Earth

Phytomining, a technique that uses trees to soak the metals out of contaminated soil, could offer new ways to mine for metals that are more sustainable than the existing, environmentally destructive methods.

Teresa Carey

A seaweed diet could eliminate most of cows’ greenhouse emissions

Researchers found that feeding dairy cows just a touch of seaweed dramatically lowered the amount of methane emissions they released.

Teresa Carey

Tech dump is finding a place for ex-offenders

Electronic waste is the fastest-growing garbage stream in the world. This nonprofit is counting on it to give formerly incarcerated people a head start.

Teresa Carey

Rare wild coffee species brews hope for coffee’s future

A rediscovered coffee plant that can flourish in warmer climates, according to scientists, may be the future of coffee production, helping future-proof the morning ritual against climate change.

Teresa Carey

Solar canals in CA could save 63 billion gallons of water a year

Researchers looked into what it would take to cover California’s canals with solar panels and found that the benefits of solar canals outweigh the costs.

Teresa Carey

We don’t have to eat insects. But feeding them to animals could save the planet

Edible insects could more than make up for the world's protein deficiency while cleaning up waste and using fewer resources. But we don't have to eat them. We can use them in animal feed instead.

Teresa Carey

Can seaweed save the planet?

A Maine startup is growing vast quantities of seaweed and then burying them at the bottom of the ocean to sequester carbon for carbon offsets.

Teresa Carey

How tech helped beat back locust swarms in East Africa

Billions of locusts descended on East Africa in 2020, where new technology helped stop their spread.

B. David Zarley

Autonomous trash-eating boats clean up water pollution

New designs in autonomous boats, and a trash wheel that intercepts drifting trash, act as on-the-water trash-eating machines.

Teresa Carey

The world's whitest paint can cool your house — and the Earth

The whitest white paint reflects up to 98.1% of sunlight, which could make it useful for cooling homes in place of energy-hogging air conditioners.

Kristin Houser

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