Recently in Energy policy and R&D Category

Guardian: General Electric (GE) Hitachi's plan to build a sodium-cooled, plutonium-burning fast reactor at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site has been rejected by the UK government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). Known as PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module), the new design was intended to convert the 82-ton plutonium stockpile at the site into power. The NDA concluded that PRISM's technology is neither mature nor commercially proven. There are also security risks inherent in the proposal, because it would require converting the existing plutonium stockpile from an oxide form to a metal form, which is easier to make into bombs. In addition, the conversion would create a substantial quantity of plutonium-contaminated salt as a byproduct, which would also need to be managed and stored.

BBC: An Australian company, SolarSailor, has been developing high-tech sails that will use both the Sun and the wind to reduce ships' dependence on fossil fuels. The giant sails are covered with solar panels, and the electricity generated is stored in a battery. The technology, which combines an electric motor and a combustion engine, is similar to that used in hybrid cars. Currently in use on several passenger ferries operating near Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Sydney, the solar-sail technology could be mounted on all types of vessels, including tankers, cruise liners, and private yachts. SolarSailor's founder, Robert Dane, estimates that the giant sails could cut a ship's annual fossil-fuel usage by almost 50%. Although the company has been operating for more than a decade and has yet to turn a profit, new fuel-efficiency regulations being introduced by the United Nations International Maritime Organization may increase demand for SolarSailor technology.

National Geographic: Over the past five years, shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing has increased; the gas now accounts for a quarter of all natural gas generated in the US. If production continues to expand, natural gas prices will stay low over the next several decades and natural gas will take over more of the US electricity market. That is partially advantageous for the US, but an economic study by MIT's Henry Jacoby and colleagues indicates that there are potential downsides. Although shale gas will almost certainly push coal out of the energy market—a good thing since coal produces about twice the emissions of natural gas—it's likely that it will slow the development of renewable energy technologies and of carbon capture and storage by about 20 years.

Science: A new kind of plastic that can remove large amounts of CO₂ from the air has been produced by a research team led by George Olah of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Olah and his team needed a CO₂ absorber for iron-based batteries they were working on; they tried using polyethylenimine (PEI), an inexpensive CO₂ absorbing polymer. PEI grabs CO₂ only on its surface, so to increase its surface area, Olah dissolved the polymer in a methanol solvent and spread it atop a batch of fumed silica, an industrially produced porous solid made from microscopic droplets of glass fused together. When the solvent evaporated, it left solid PEI with a high surface area. When the team tested the new material's ability to absorb CO₂, they found that in humid air each gram of the material absorbed an average of 1.72 nanomoles of CO₂. That's one of the highest levels of CO₂ absorption from air ever tested. The material also sheds CO₂ when it's heated to 85 °C, whereas other solid CO₂ absorbers have to be heated to over 800 °C to shed CO₂. The new polymer could be used to scrub CO₂ from the air, although it couldn't be used in industrial smokestacks or automobile tailpipes without additional tinkering to make it more heat-resistant.

New York Times: Two companies in California are working on trapping energy from the Sun when it’s shining for use later when it is not. Solar thermal power uses the Sun’s heat to boil water and generate electricity. The technologies being developed by SolarReserve and BrightSource will rely on molten salt to store the Sun’s energy because salt can store far more heat than water can, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. The stored power will be used primarily to complement solar panels, which produce electricity directly from sunlight. SolarReserve’s Nevada plant is scheduled to start up next year, and BrightSource’s three California plants should begin operating in 2016 and 2017. Together, the four plants could power tens of thousands of households. Unfortunately, solar power companies have been fighting an uphill battle since last year’s bankruptcy of Solyndra, which received $535 million in government loan guarantees.

New York Times: Yesterday the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) unanimously approved a radical new reactor design, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. To diminish the probability of an accident, the Westinghouse AP1000 relies more on gravity and natural heat convection and less on pumps, valves, and human operators than other models. In addition, even if there is a total loss of electric power, the AP1000 should shut down safely, and a combination of automatic systems and design features would keep the reactor safe for three days without human intervention. In an attempt to streamline construction and cut costs, the NRC waived the usual 30-day waiting period before its approval becomes official. It also plans to issue a combined construction and operating license, and it preapproved a standard reactor design that all utilities will use. However, only four reactors are expected to be built in the next decade—two in Georgia and two in South Carolina, with the first one scheduled to go online in 2016—because of concerns following the problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the low price of natural gas.

Daily Mail: The UK's Windsor Castle is going green: Yesterday two 40-ton turbines were lifted into the River Thames. Once installed, they are expected to churn out 300 kW of energy every hour—enough to provide about half the estate’s electricity needs. Resembling giant steel screws, the turbines are based on a 2000-year-old design by Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes. The project could help further the UK's goal of obtaining 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. As part of the installation a new fish pass is being installed, which will facilitate the migration of 12 species around the turbines and through that stretch of the river.

Science: Researchers at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have created a new type of solar cell that captures some of the excess solar energy normally lost as heat, writes Robert Service for Science. When high-energy photons from the Sun hit a semiconducting material in a solar cell, they excite the semiconductor’s electrons from a static position so they can conduct. But the photons carry more energy than is needed, and the rest gets lost as heat. Several years ago, it was found that the high-energy photons can excite more than one electron if the semiconductor consists of nanometer-sized particles called quantum dots. The NREL group used the process, known as multiple exciton generation (MEG), in their quantum dot solar cell to achieve a 5% overall efficiency at converting light to electricity. That efficiency is still well below conventional silicon solar cells, which make better use of the full solar spectrum. But the device is the first to collect more electrical charges than the number of photons that struck the quantum dots—a convincing demonstration of MEG. The group’s results were published 16 December.

New York Times: The Japanese government announced that it has regained control of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's reactors in what is called a "cold shutdown." The announcement has been met with some skepticism, partly due to the fact that a cold shutdown is normally used to describe healthy reactors, to indicate that they are safe enough that their containment vessels can be opened up and their fuel rods taken out. In this situation, however, a cold shutdown means that the reactors' temperatures can now be kept safely below the boiling point of water and that their melted cores are no longer at risk of resuming an atomic chain reaction that could allow them to heat up uncontrollably. Even that is in some dispute, as the restart of fission can't be absolutely ruled out until the reactors can be opened and the melted fuel inside examined. The biggest risk, however, is the possibility that a strong aftershock from the 11 March earthquake could knock out Tepco's cooling system, which was built hastily—and not to earthquake safety standards—after the accident.

BBC: Claims that high energy bills are the result of investment in low-carbon technologies are unfounded, says the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC). Instead, it found that increases in bills over the past few years have been mostly due to higher wholesale gas costs. Although the combined gas and electric bill for a typical UK household is expected to rise from £1060 ($1600) in 2010 to £1250 ($2000) by 2020, further energy efficiency measures, such as better insulation, could limit that increase to only about £150 ($100). And, says CCC chief executive David Kennedy, the costs of investing in green energy were “significantly” outweighed by the benefits—among them, a reduced reliance on imported fossil fuels. The investigation of rising fuel prices was prompted, in part, by the large number of people in the UK with energy debt. An independent report published in October found that some 2700 people die in that country each year from problems linked to fuel poverty.

New York Times: In a 1974 treaty with the US, South Korea agreed not to enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel. Those technologies can be used to make nuclear weapons, but they can also be used to create fuel for nuclear power plants. South Korea is asking that that agreement be revised, because it needs to reprocess the spent fuel that's accumulating from nuclear reactors. The country also wants to meet 60% of its electricity needs with nuclear power by 2030 and sees reprocessing and enrichment as a way of securing fuel supplies for its expanding nuclear industry. Although the US supports a revised agreement, preventing the spread of uranium enrichment has been a major emphasis of US policy since 2004, and the US has required countries interested in civilian nuclear cooperation to renounce any right to uranium enrichment that they have as signatories of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Daily Mail: Philips, a Dutch electronics company, is developing a bio-light that provides illumination using the same method as fireflies and glow worms, writes Gareth Finighan for the Daily Mail. The lamp consists of a series of glass chambers that contain bioluminescent bacteria, which glow green when fed methane gas pumped into the unit through a household-waste digester. Although most people would not necessarily want to introduce bacterial cultures into their homes, such a lighting method could have outside applications, such as illuminating walkways. The company is also working on an alternative method that uses fluorescent proteins that emit different frequencies of light. “Energy-saving light bulbs will only take us so far. We need to push ourselves to rethink domestic appliances entirely, to rethink how homes consume energy, and how entire communities can pool resources,” said Clive van Heerden of Philips Design.

NPR: SolarCity has begun a major project to install solar electricity systems on the roofs of houses on US military bases. Unlike solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, which declared bankruptcy in August after having received $528 million in federal loan guarantees, SolarCity is doing the installation without government help. The total project, which will cost around $1 billion and include 120 000 homes, will be the largest residential deployment of solar in the country to date, writes Elizabeth Shogren for NPR. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which is providing up to $350 million, is working with SolarCity to secure the necessary financing. Although solar still only provides a small portion of US electricity, the solar installation industry has doubled in each of the past two years. "The fact that SolarCity is now able to attract money, I think, really demonstrates how mainstream solar has become, how confident investors are in both the technology, its performance and its returns," said Rhone Resch, who heads the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Science: For solar power to be a viable alternative energy option, companies need to be able to store some solar energy to use when the Sun is not shining. Spain’s Andasol complex, one of the world’s largest solar power stations, has been so successful in doing just that that it has been classified as a “predictable” source of energy, writes Edwin Cartlidge for Science. Andasol produces electricity in two stages: The Sun heats a synthetic oil, some of which is used to generate steam that turns a turbine and some of which is used to heat up molten salt that stores the energy for later use. Now some companies are working to improve on that design. Instead of using one material to absorb the Sun’s heat and a second material to store it, they use one material to do both. Such a direct storage method would eliminate one of the two heat exchangers and make the electricity production more efficient. Although the current global capacity of solar thermal power plants is minuscule at just over 1 gigawatt, more solar technology projects are currently in development or under construction in the US, Spain, North Africa, China, India, and elsewhere that could increase that capacity to about 15 gigawatts.

New York Times: A private–public project to build a fossil-fuel power plant that generates electricity and hydrogen without emitting carbon dioxide is in jeopardy, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. Called FutureGen 2.0, the project entails retrofitting an old oil-fired power station with technology that captures CO₂. Ameren, the Midwestern power company that is donating the power station, has told its other FutureGen 2.0 partners that it can no longer participate in the project because of Ameren's unfavorable financial situation. The directors of FutureGen 2.0 will meet next week to decide what to do next. One possibility is for the other partners to buy the power station from Ameren, but they'll need to act fast. The US Department of Energy promised to cover 80% of the project's $1.25 billion pricetag, but only if the money is spent by the end of 2015.

Bloomberg: Last May, three weeks after undergoing a side-impact test at a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) facility in Wisconsin, a Chevrolet Volt caught fire in the facility's parking lot. The fire was so severe that vehicles next to the Volt were burned too. General Motors, which makes the electric-powered Volt, and the NHTSA tried but failed to replicate the fire a month later. Now NHTSA is undertaking an investigation of the safety of the lithium-ion batteries that power the Volt and other electric vehicles. Lithium-ion batteries are known to undergo a strongly exothermic reaction if their protective casings are pierced by an object made of steel or other ferrous metal.

BBC: Australian environmentalists won a victory with the Senate’s approval of the Clean Energy Act. The plan—part of a global policy to combat climate change—will force the country’s 500 worst-polluting companies to pay a tax on their carbon emissions. Hardest hit by the tax will be mining and energy companies, airlines, and steel makers. Consumers can also expect higher fuel bills as a result. Nevertheless, Australia’s government hopes that the legislation will force advances in renewable energy technologies and wean the country away from fossil fuels.

Nature: An alternative solar cell design could lead to cheap, printable solar cells that would massively increase the worldwide use of solar power. In 1991, electrochemist Michael Grätzel of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne devised the dye-sensitized nanocrystal cell (DSC); it uses organic dye molecules to absorb sunlight, the energy of which kicks electrons onto nanoparticles of ceramic titanium dioxide on which the dye sits. The electrons are then collected by electrodes to generate an electrical current. Grätzel and his colleagues have now developed methods to print DSC arrays onto glass panels and metal foils—a much less expensive material than the silicon in conventional photovoltaic cells. If DSC efficiency can be increased from 12.3% to about 15%, they may become cost-effective competitors to silicon photovoltaics.

New Scientist: Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas are working on a hydrogen fuel cell that uses aluminum as a catalyst. Although fuel cells are a potentially highly efficient power source for cars, their cost has proven prohibitive because they require expensive noble metals such as platinum for a catalyst. Now Irinder Chopra and coworkers have found that if aluminum is treated with a tiny bit of titanium and exposed to molecular hydrogen at 90 kelvin, the H₂ will break up and bind to the metal. When the metal is heated the hydrogen is released and forms H₂ again. The team’s results were published in Nature Materials.

Talking Points Memo: Tuesday Google published a new Google Earth map of the geothermal resources in the continental US. In keeping with the drive to make the US more energy efficient and energy independent, Google reports that the technical potential of geothermal in the US is nearly 3 million megawatts, or 10 times the capacity of all the installed coal power plants in the country today, writes Carl Franzen for TPM’s Idea Lab. “Our study assumes that we tap only a small fraction of the available stored heat in the Earth’s crust, and our capabilities to capture that heat are expected to grow substantially as we improve upon the energy conversion and exploitation factors through technological advances and improved techniques,” said David Blackwell of Southern Methodist University, whose geothermal laboratory collected the data for the new map. However, a viable geothermal demonstration project is estimated to be 10–15 years away.

New Scientist: Seven leading car manufacturers have agreed on an international standardized charging system for electric vehicles in Europe and the US. It will allow all electric vehicles manufactured by Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche, and Volkswagen to share the same charging stations. The standardization is expected to simplify the building of an electric charging infrastructure and reduce manufacturing costs. In addition, drivers won’t have to deal with multiple charging adaptors like the ones cellphone users have had to deal with for years. And existing electric cars will also be able to charge at the new stations. The seven manufacturers have agreed to use a universal protocol, HomePlug Green Phy, which will allow electric vehicles to integrate with smart grids in the future.

New York Times: Although the US has no offshore wind generating capacity to date, plans are progressing. Several projects in the works were presented at the annual American Wind Energy Association’s Offshore Windpower Conference held 11–13 October in Baltimore, Maryland. One of the most promising proposals came from Deepwater Wind of Providence, Rhode Island, which is buying five turbines from Siemens of Germany to build a wind farm near Block Island. Fishermen’s Energy of Cape May, New Jersey, hopes to become the first operating offshore wind venture by breaking ground off Atlantic City before the end of the year. And the Atlantic Wind Connection plans to install an undersea transmission cable that would run from southern Virginia to northern New Jersey. According to US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who spoke at the conference, the US is one of the largest producers of land-based wind energy capacity, and offshore wind holds even greater promise; turbines in the Atlantic Ocean could produce more electricity than the nation’s entire onshore wind-generating capacity.

BBC: The March tsunami that damaged Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant prompted numerous governments around the world to reexamine their own plants and policies. Under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UK sent its chief nuclear inspector, Mike Weightman, on a fact-finding mission to Japan. After examining Japan’s and the UK’s facilities, he recently issued a report in which he found no fundamental weaknesses in the UK’s current licensing regime or safety principles. He did emphasize, however, that there is always room for improvement. Critics, including Greenpeace, claim that the report was rushed and did not fully cover the potential safety, environmental, and financial costs that new nuclear power stations could generate.

SciDev.net: What "green economy" means to different countries was discussed by representatives from more than 40 countries at a meeting held 3–4 October in New Delhi, India. Developed countries tend to focus on a low-carbon growth model, even it if involves high-end, costly technologies, whereas developing countries are more likely to aim for a sustainable, natural-resource-based model. Other topics included integrating food and energy security with green economy strategies and barring developed countries from imposing "green protectionism," or trade barriers, on goods whose production is based on high-carbon-emission technologies. The event was one of several that will lead up to the major United Nations conference on sustainable development, Rio+20, set to take place in June 2012.

New York Times: Two new tools for calculating greenhouse gas emissions are being announced today. The World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development first established guidelines for greenhouse gases in 2004. Those guidelines covered emissions from direct operations such as running a factory and emissions from energy-related, indirect sources such as the coal or natural gas burned to make the electricity that powers the lights at headquarters. One new tool provides a way of calculating the amount of climate-warming gases released through a company's supply chain; the other offers a way of calculating, across a consumer product's life cycle, the emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and four other gases linked to climate change. Advocates claim that the mere act of measuring greenhouse gas emissions encourages companies to manage and reduce what they emit.

Science: The US Department of Energy (DOE) is reshaping how it makes investments in developing better energy technologies in order to have a more coherent and productive transportation program. The new regime, which will be unveiled in the 2013 budget presented to Congress in February, will also have more resources devoted to electric car development. The reevaluation comes from DOE's first-ever Quadrennial Technology Review, which calls the current R&D spending allocation "a bit unbalanced," said DOE undersecretary for science Steven Koonin at a briefing held at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC.

Nature: A diplomatic cable published last month by the WikiLeaks website reveals that most of the Clean Development Mechanism projects in India should not have been certified, writes Quirin Schiermeier for Nature. The CDM, established under the Kyoto Protocol, allows rich countries to offset some of their carbon emissions by investing in climate-friendly projects in developing countries; verified projects earn carbon credits that count toward meeting rich nations’ carbon-reduction targets. The cable, written in 2008 by the US consulate in Mumbai to the US secretary of state, summarizes a discussion among officials that many CDM projects in India may not have reduced emissions beyond those that would have been achieved without foreign investment. If true, the revelation could cast doubt on the principle of carbon trading. In defense of the program, Martin Hession, head of global carbon markets at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change and chairman of the CDM executive board, says that since 2008, the board has adopted more stringent guidelines. The European Union maintains that the carbon-trading system remains crucial in tackling climate change.

New York Times: A Georgia company, Renmatix, says it has found a method to convert cellulosic biomass—wood chips, switchgrass, and the nonedible parts of crops—into vehicle fuel by just adding water. If it works, the technology could reduce the US’s reliance on oil imports for gasoline in favor of a cleaner-burning and less expensive source of energy, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. Renmatix’s process involves putting hardwoods into a small chamber where they are mixed with compressed water at very high temperatures. When the water reaches its supercritical phase, its pH level can be adjusted to turn it into an acid, which is used to harvest the sugars locked up in the material. A small-scale prototype has been built, but the next challenge will be to step up the process to a large-scale commercial refinery.

BBC: Environmental engineers at the Pennsylvania State University are developing a process that involves a microbial fuel cell to treat wastewater and produce hydrogen gas without consuming electrical grid energy. In this method, bacteria break down wastewater by eating the organic material and releasing electrons as a byproduct. Bruce Logan and his coworkers' prototype attempts to collect those electrons, along with the hydrogen gas produced, in the fuel cell. The electrons are directed through a circuit that can power a small device, such as a fan or a light bulb. Additional hydrogen can be produced from the wastewater by applying extra voltage to the system, which leads to the electrons produced by the bacteria to bond with protons found in the water.

To avoid the need for external power, the team members are experimenting with a process called reverse electrodialysis, which generates electricity from the salinity difference between seawater and fresh water. "You're actually creating energy and desalinating the water and treating the wastewater. It's a triple play," Logan was quoted as saying in an NSF press release. Logan hopes that within the next 5–10 years microbial fuel cells will generate enough electricity to power a wastewater treatment plant with energy left over to share with the nearby community.

BBC: The Marcoule nuclear site in southern France experienced an explosion earlier today, in which one person was killed and four injured. Because it was caused by a fire near a furnace, the accident was deemed industrial rather than nuclear by the plant’s owner, national electricity provider EDF. According to Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet, there was no leak of radiation, either inside or outside the plant. And none of the injured workers was contaminated by radiation, said officials. All of France’s 58 nuclear reactors have been put through stress tests in recent months, following the March disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami.

Washington Post: A Washington DC–based technology company plans to build a 20-square-mile model of a typical American town. The $200 million "Center," the first of its kind in the US, will be built in New Mexico and will boast highways, houses, and commercial buildings, old and new, all designed to test everything from renewable energy innovations to intelligent traffic systems, next-generation wireless networks, and smart-grid cybersecurity systems. Pegasus Global Holdings CEO Bob Brumley said his company has been working with New Mexico state officials on the project for about 18 months. Governor Susana Martinez voiced her enthusiasm for the project and said that it could boost the state's economy and job market.

New Scientist: The energy of ocean waves is beginning to be tapped as a source of sustainable energy. Wave power, distinct from the daily flux of tidal power and the steady gyre of ocean currents, is generated by wind passing over the sea surface. As more than 100 companies develop wave energy converters to harvest energy from the ocean, New Scientist takes a look at six of the most promising technologies currently being deployed: a power buoy, an attenuator, an oscillating wave surge converter, a rotational wave energy device, an oscillating wave column, and an overtopping-wave-energy device.

Talking Points Memo: The US Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego, California, has earned the distinction of being the first ever green Marine Corps facility. It is showcasing a new landfill gas recovery project, whereby the natural gas released by a San Diego landfill is expected to generate about 25 million kilowatt-hours per year, or about half of Miramar’s electricity needs. Landfills release natural gas through decomposition, as microorganisms break down the organic materials in garbage. Miramar’s gas recovery project will serve an additional purpose as well: Landfills are the third largest source of methane emissions from human activity in the US, so the project will also reduce the amount of that greenhouse gas entering the atmosphere.

Nature: The UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has announced that it will close the Sellafield mixed-oxide facility because of reactor shutdowns in Japan. Sellafield was one of two plants in the world producing mixed oxide nuclear fuel (MOX), which is created by combining uranium with plutonium extracted from either spent reactor fuel or unused nuclear weapons. The plant was to have converted a large portion of the UK's nuclear stockpile, but MOX production halted several times due to technical failures. In 2010 ten Japanese electrical utilities agreed that they would buy MOX fuel produced from Japanese plutonium stored and processed at the plant. Chubu Electric Power in Nagoya had also agreed to pay for upgrades to Sellafield facilities. TEPCO was to take half of all the Japanese fuel produced. After the nuclear disaster at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi power plant, all but 17 of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors have shut down, and Sellafield has lost its customers. The plant closure leaves fate of the UK's plutonium stockpile yet to be determined, and the British government is considering building a new MOX plant, but the question is still a matter of intense debate.

New York Times: Wind power technology has improved greatly over the past three decades, as has knowledge of how the technology can be best put to use. The increase in blade size and tower height allows towers to reach faster, steadier winds, and larger turbines can reduce transportation and logistical costs (because fewer need to be shipped and assembled), but once they reach about 100 meters high, transportation becomes challenging. One potential solution is for blades and towers to be shipped in sections and assembled on site. Research and development on variations in blade angle, and monitoring wind speed and direction using lasers, has intensified. Innovation is driven partly by manufacturers attempting to differentiate themselves from an increasing field of competitors, and partly by the fact that most of the best wind sites have already been claimed; manufacturers need to take every opportunity to make themselves cost-effective.

Daily Mail: A research team at the University of Nottingham campus in Ningbo, China, has developed a material that, when applied to the walls of a room, allows them to absorb and store excess heat and release it later. Jo Darkwa and Oliver Su said the phase-change material, or PCM, will work as a spray, forming a microscopic film on surfaces. When the air in a PCM-treated room rises above a certain temperature, the particles in the spray absorb the excess heat and melt, but instead of dripping they are held in place by a special coating. When the room temperature decreases, the material becomes a solid, releasing the heat back into the room. Darkwa and Su believe the material could both save energy and reduce carbon emissions.

Chronicle of Higher Education: Across Tokyo, universities are trying to cut their electricity use by 15%. Tokyo's power comes from Tepco, operator of the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini nuclear plants, which have been inoperable since the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. Many other reactors are also offline in the wake of the disaster, and now that it's summer and a peak demand time, Tokyo faces a severe power crunch. The University of Tokyo is one of the 10 largest consumers of electricity in the city and is thus under pressure to take the lead in power conservation. Experiments that require supercomputer simulations, electromagnetic pulsars, and other power-intensive equipment now run during off-peak hours, on evenings and weekends. Classroom temperatures stay at 28 °C (about 82 °F), and professors who use too much electricity receive warnings via Twitter alert. Some other institutions have simply ended classes early to avoid the worst of the summer heat. The Tokyo Institute of Technology has reduced lighting in classrooms by 50%, and banned or curtailed the use of air conditioners, projectors, and other electrical equipment. Although some scholars fear their work will suffer, deep cuts in power use may be the best option to prevent blackouts—which could mean more severe consequences for their work than the current restrictions.

Los Angeles Times: Although switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is a laudable goal, building and maintaining solar and wind power projects can be hazardous, writes Tiffany Hsu for the Los Angeles Times. Workers perform tasks similar to those in the most dangerous professions: roofing, electrical work, and carpentry. And the industry’s rapid growth means more new and inexperienced people who often must work in small spaces, at great heights, with extremely heavy machinery, and surrounded by high-voltage electrical equipment. Even the public can be at risk, as fires atop wind towers have scattered burning debris, and hastily built installations have collapsed within months. In the wake of complaints from various watchdog groups, however, clean-energy companies are working to implement more uniform safety standards and more intensive training for workers.

National Geographic: India's plan to build the world's largest nuclear power plant at Jaitapur, a port city 250 miles south of Mumbai, faces vigorous, sometimes violent opposition from the city's inhabitants. And as National Geographic's Rebecca Byerly, the power plant serves as a focus for a wider debate within India about nuclear power. Most of India's households lack direct access to electricity. Meeting that need through nuclear power is, according to the Indian government, the cleanest, cheapest option. Whether nuclear power is also the safest option is the principal point of contention, especially in the wake of the meltdown at Japan's Fukushima Dai'ichi power plant in March.

New York Times: Yesterday the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission unanimously passed a new rule concerning the planning and financing of new power lines to help the nation’s electricity grid meet the demands of renewable energy and a competitive electricity market, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. The new rule is intended to encourage cooperation among the various organizations that manage the nation’s electrical grid in order to build power lines across multiple states and electrical jurisdictions. Such cross-jurisdictional transmission lines are becoming increasingly important as states seek to integrate large amounts of wind and solar power, generally available in remote areas, and transport the power to more populated areas. The rule addresses planning and cost allocation, two of the main impediments to new power line construction. Among its general guidelines is the idea that the costs should be covered by those who benefit, although critics charge that assessing who benefits from a new line is difficult.

Washington Post: Since the 11 March beginning of Japan’s nuclear crisis, Japanese publishers have been releasing books about nuclear power at the rate of more than one a day, writes Chico Harlan for the Washington Post. The author list includes academics, journalists, industry experts, former insiders, and renegade government officials. And not surprising in light of the problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the views expressed in the books are four to one against nuclear power—roughly the same ratio shown in recent opinion polls. “People are beginning to realize that nuclear power is dangerous. I think maybe now is the time when we can make a decision to make a significant turnaround in our society,” said Hiroaki Koide, a Japanese nuclear researcher at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. After decades of publishing policy that mirrored the pro-nuclear message of Japanese bureaucrats, the tide has turned, and Koide and others who oppose nuclear power are finding that demand for their expertise has swelled over the past months.

Science: As US lawmakers argued over long-term deficit reduction, the Republican-controlled House managed to pass a few energy measures on Friday. An amendment to bring proposed 2012 funding for the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy up to the current-year level of $180 million passed by a vote of 214–213. In addition, the House approved an amendment to add $10 million to the solar energy research program, increasing the appropriations committee draft amount from $163 million to $173 million. Although the funding is significantly lower than what the Obama administration had requested, it did show that “there is a small majority in the House that continues to support these programs,” said Nathan Facey, deputy chief of staff to Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), who sponsored the solar energy amendment. With the vote, the House has now passed 5 of the 12 federal spending bills for the upcoming fiscal year.

New York Times: The Brookings Institution has compiled what it describes as one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date analyses of the US’s enigmatic green economy. For its report “Sizing the Clean Economy,” the institution collected data from every county and major metropolitan area in the US from 2003 to 2010. One point the report makes, writes Joanna Foster for the New York Times, is that although green initiatives are driving growth and innovation, market and policy challenges—such as financing shortfalls, inadequate support for innovation, and policy gaps that undercut market demand—are preventing those initiatives from reaching their full potential.

New Scientist: Ships that harvest energy from the waves and store it in batteries could one day generate electricity from the world's oceans more cheaply than today's wave-power devices, writes Helen Knight for New Scientist. The ships would sail to a suitable location, drop anchor, and start generating electricity from wave energy. Once their batteries were fully charged, they would return to shore and feed the electricity into a grid. Unlike conventional wave-power devices, the ships would not need undersea cables to link to the electricity grid, which would cut a significant fraction of the overall cost.

National Geographic: Ethiopia announced that it will build a multibillion-dollar Nile River dam that is expected to be the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa. The dam, which will span a section of the Blue Nile River in the Benishangul-Gumuz region, could supply more than 5000 megawatts of electricity for Ethiopia and its neighbors, including South Sudan. The project is not without potential downsides; conservationists, as well as the governments of Egypt and South Sudan, are concerned that the dam might reduce the downstream water flow of the Nile. No environmental impact assessment reports have been made, nor has the Ethiopian government indicated that any studies are planned. This has made it difficult to find international funding for the project. The government has said that it plans to fund the dam without foreign aid by selling bonds to the public. Another potential difficulty is the fact that most Africans are not connected to the grid, and thus Ethiopia will be generating significantly more electricity than it or the surrounding countries need. The dam will be completed in 2015.

New York Times: The Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns following the 11 March earthquake and tsunami in Japan show that the time has come for "redefining the level of protection that is regarded as adequate" at American nuclear plants, a special task force of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has concluded. The task force reported that American plants need to plan for simultaneous accidents at adjacent reactors, ensure that the "hardened vents" added to reactors over the years to prevent hydrogen explosions would actually work in an emergency, inspect on a regular basis any improvements that have been made, and find a better way to add water to spent-fuel pools. The five-member commission is scheduled to meet next week to consider the task force's recommendations.

BBC: Researchers at the University of Bath and the University of the West of England are growing seven algae species in the UK's Roman Baths in Bath to find the best one for biodiesel production. Although studies to create biodiesel from algae have been carried out for the past 20 years, limitations currently prevent its use on a large scale. Because much of the world's arable land is being used for food production, an algae species that can grow in areas that don't already have other uses, such as the desert, is being sought. Also, algae cell walls are difficult to break, so extracting the oil inside is an energy-intensive process. As a result, researchers are also looking for a species with a weaker cell wall and a higher oil content. "The results of this study will help us identify whether there is a particular algae species among the seven identified in the Roman Baths that is well adapted to growing at higher temperatures and also suitable for producing sufficient amounts of biodiesel to make wide-scale production viable," said Rod Scott, one of the research team's members.

BBC: Senior officials at Japan's Kyushu Electric Company asked dozens of employees to send supportive messages to a televised debate about the reopening of one of its nuclear plants—without informing anyone that they were Kyushu employees. Last week, a whistleblower revealed that about 50 workers had sent emails to a televised debate backing a plan to restart Kyushu's Genkai plant, but an internal inquiry has found that more than 100 employees may have been involved. Two-thirds of Japan's nuclear reactors have been closed for inspection since the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The plant at Genkai, which is in the south, was one of the first plants scheduled to be reopened; the Japanese government announced last week that all plants would have to undergo more rigorous tests before being allowed to resume operation. The broadcasting company that televised the debate has reported that more than 30% of all messages sent in support of the Genkai plant being reopened were from Kyushu employees.

National Geographic: Japan is in the middle of one of the most severe electricity shortfalls in history, according to a report by the International Energy Agency. Before the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in March, nuclear energy provided a third of Japan's electricity. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has set a goal of 10 million solar-powered homes by the year 2020 and has abandoned prior plans for nuclear expansion. That realignment doesn't address the immediate problem, however; the government has asked residents of Tokyo to reduce electricity consumption by 25% and residents of the rest of Japan to reduce consumption by 15%—at a time of year when air conditioning usually places high demands on the grid. But Japan's electricity demand is already 20% below the world average, and 30% below that of the US, and it's unclear how much more small and medium-sized businesses will be willing to cut their demand. Individual citizens aren't resisting conservation, but their acceptance of it seems more resigned than enthusiastic, so far.

Washington Post: The Western Regional Air Partnership and other environmental groups have succeeded in getting the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce provisions of the Clean Air Act in the Western US. Provided a deal struck between the EPA and the groups passes a judicial review, coal-fired plants in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming will be required to install devices called scrubbers to reduce their emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxides—or be shut down. Besides being a source of atmospheric pollution, the emissions are responsible for reducing visibility at the Grand Canyon and other national parks.

Science: In four referendums held 12–13 June, Italians voted overwhelmingly to overturn key policies—including the reintroduction of nuclear power—of Italy’s controversial prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Despite Berlusconi’s various political maneuvers to try to stop the referendums, Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation ruled that they should go forward. The vote was significant because an estimated 57% of eligible voters showed up, surpassing the 50% needed for a quorum, and some 95% of them voted against Berlusconi’s policies. Italy now becomes the second Western country after Germany to reject nuclear energy following Japan's Fukushima disaster.

New York Times: A recent report by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that while the clean technology sector has been booming in Europe, Asia, and Latin America—because of direct government investment, tax breaks, loans, and laws and regulations that cap or tax emissions—its competitive position was “at risk” in the US because of “uncertainties surrounding key policies and incentives,” writes Elisabeth Rosenthal for the New York Times. The US Congress’s disagreement over whether climate change is real has allowed companies overseas to profit by exporting their goods and expertise to the US. “This is a $5 trillion business and if we fail to be serious players in the new energy economy, the costs will be staggering to this country,” said Hal Harvey, a Stanford engineer who was an adviser to both the Clinton and the first Bush administration and is now chief executive of the San Francisco–based energy and environment nonprofit organization Climate Works.

BBC: A report from Japan's nuclear emergency task force asserts that Japan was insufficiently prepared for a nuclear accident on the scale of the one at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, and states that poor oversight may have been a factor. Authorities have pledged to make NISA, the country's nuclear regulatory agency, independent of the industry ministry, which promotes nuclear power. The report will be submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency later this month. NISA has doubled its initial estimate of leaked radiation from the plant; the revised estimate of 770 000 terabecquerels is about 15% of the total amount of radiation released in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

NPR: The expense of building a nuclear power plant is daunting. "Modular" or "mini" reactors could be an answer, writes Christopher Joyce for NPR. The smallest of them could fit into a two-car garage instead of taking up a city block, and rather than duplicating the structure of large reactors, minireactors have a completely different design. Large-scale reactors circulate water to the reactor core via pipes, pumps, and valves; if the water stops moving for any reason—for example, due to power failure—there's a risk of a meltdown as fuel overheats. Jose Reyes, with NuScale Power, has designed a minireactor without pumps. Water circulates through the system as it heats and then cools off; the reactor is enclosed in a tank of water that is designed to flood the entire system in the event of an emergency. The reactors could be much less expensive and faster to build, given adequate production volume. NuScale and Babcock and Wilcox, another reactor builder, have asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve their minireactor designs for commercial use.

Nature News: The world's largest fusion experiment is finally beginning to take shape. Workers at a vast site in southern France have dug the 17-meter-deep pit that will house the ITER reactor, and will soon install 500 pillars of steel-reinforced concrete that should protect the machine during an earthquake. But even as they toil, a quake halfway around the world has struck a blow to the project.

The 11 March earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, one of seven partners in ITER, severely damaged key facilities for testing the reactor's components. Unless repairs can be made or work reassigned quickly, the damage could cause a delay of "perhaps several years," according to Osamu Motojima, ITER's director. Motojima says that he and his team are looking at ways to reduce the impact. "At present my target is less than one year's delay," he says.

Science: In a Q&A with Richard Stone of Science, the European Union's commissioner for research, innovation, and science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, recounts last week's official visit to China, her first. Some of the issues covered in the interview—such as intellectual property, nuclear power, and visas for Chinese researchers—pertain to US–China relations as well as to EU–China relations. Other issues, such as the challenge of reaching consensus in a 27-member federation, had a specifically EU flavor:

STONE: When China sets a goal, because of its top-down system of government, it can actually get things done. Are you jealous of China's ability to design and implement a science policy?

GEOGHEGAN-QUINN: I don't think we should be jealous of anyone. We have a standard of living that is widely envied. A collection of 27 individual member states brings a richness and diversity of culture. It's a testament to political innovation.

BBC: The International Energy Agency, an independent watchdog established by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, has estimated that the world's emissions of carbon dioxide from energy generation amounted to 30.6 gigatons in 2010. That annual total is the highest on record. The agency had detected a drop in emissions in 2008 and 2009 that it attributed to the global recession. According to Fatih Birol, the agency's chief economist, the renewed upward trend jeopardizes the goal of the most recent climate summit to limit the global rise in temperature to 2°C by 2020.

New York Times: Yesterday Governor Chris Christie announced that New Jersey would become the first state to withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a 10-state trading system, reports Mireya Navarro for the New York Times. Under RGGI, 10 Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states ranging from Maine to Maryland set a ceiling on carbon dioxide emissions and require power plants to purchase credits that allow them to emit specified amounts of carbon dioxide. According to Christie, the initiative “does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses, with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment.” Environmental advocates called the decision a serious blow to the state’s efforts to reduce emissions from power plants and foster a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Nevertheless, Christie says that New Jersey would continue to work to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by increasing the proportion of electricity generated by natural gas, the Sun, and the wind.

Daily Mail: Scientists are one step closer to creating power stations that generate electricity from humble bacteria, writes David Derbyshire for the Daily Mail. Yesterday Tom Clarke of the University of East Anglia and coworkers published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They have shown for the first time how microbes are able to discharge tiny electrical currents from their cells to get rid of unwanted electrons—the byproducts of converting food into energy. By tethering bacteria directly to electrodes, the researchers were able to tap into this potential source of electricity, although at present the currents generated are too weak to be useful. Nevertheless, because some bacteria feed off pollutants, microbial fuel cells or “bio-batteries” raise the possibility that in the future, bacteria could be used to convert industrial waste, sewage, and uranium waste into electricity.

New York Times: Yesterday the Toronto District School Board announced a plan to install solar panels on its schools as a way of paying for much-needed repairs to the schools’ roofs. Facing a $3 billion backlog in roofing repairs, the board plans to install the panels on about 450 of its 558 schools and sell electricity to Ontario’s government-owned utility. Ontario, which promotes the development of alternative energy by paying a substantial premium for solar-generated electricity, came up with the idea and gave the school board a grant to develop it.

Telegraph: The UK has committed to an ambitious plan to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. To meet the target, the country will have to move to nuclear and wind power, adopt strict energy efficiency measures to make businesses and homes less wasteful, and increase the number of electric cars. Critics warn that such measures could damage the competitiveness of British industry and limit economic growth. Energy secretary Chris Huhne, however, has “promised a support package for industry to help them move to renewable or low energy power,” writes Louise Gray for the Telegraph.

New York Times: A new LED is being developed for sale later this year that will be comparable to a 75-watt incandescent bulb in brightness, yet it will use less power and last longer. To date, LEDs have had limited appeal for consumers because of their limited brightness and high initial cost. According to Philips Lighting, its EnduraLED A21 will cost about $40, last 25 000 hours, produce 1100 lumens of light, and consume just 17 watts of electricity. Although 75-watt-equivalent LED lamps have been available in PAR sizes (for recessed ceiling fixtures), Philips says its EnduraLED is the first 75-watt equivalent in a standard “A” lamp shape, writes Eric Taub for the New York Times.

National Geographic: A study by Robert Jackson, of Duke University, and colleagues, has found evidence that methane has escaped into ground and drinking water in areas where shale gas drilling was under way. Shale gas is extracted via hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking"; water is pumped into rock deep underground until the resulting pressure causes the rock to crack, which in turn releases the natural gas within. The researchers found methane in the majority of water wells they sampled. They analyzed methane concentrations in 60 ground-water wells across Pennsylvania and New York and found explosive concentrations of the gas as far away as 3200 feet from an active drilling site. Average methane concentrations in wells near drilling sites were 17 times those in wells where shale gas drilling had not occurred. Methane isn't regulated in drinking water because it doesn't alter color, taste, or odor, nor does it affect water's potability. However, it is an asphyxiation and explosion hazard in confined spaces.

Guardian: Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's Commissioner for Climate Action, is seeking to extend the EU's renewable energy targets beyond 2020. The renewable energy industry is currently facing intense pressure from lobbyists from the gas industry, who have held a series of high-level meetings with senior members of the European parliament to promote gas as a cheaper green alternative to renewables. To support their claim, the lobbyists have circulated a report by the European Gas Advocacy Forum (EGAF) that appears to show that Europe could meet its 2050 greenhouse gas targets and save €900 billion by using gas instead of renewable energy sources. However, the report was adapted from a previous study that contradicts the claim, and the original study's coauthors, the European Climate Foundation, have disowned the EGAF report.

New York Times: New York Times energy and environment blogger Jim Witkin predicts over the next five years car-battery technology will see big breakthroughs, which will increase the range and reduce the costs of electric cars. Nothing can change the fact that any rechargeable battery will gradually lose its energy storage capacity after repeated charging and discharging. However, although the battery may no longer power a car, it can still have enough energy capacity for other purposes. Hence, multiple ventures are under way to explore second-life applications, such as using the batteries in the electric utility grid to help manage power flow. And because reuse may be the most viable option for the many batteries that will be required to run the electric cars of the future, new automobile financial and ownership models are being proposed. One possibility is the automaker's or finance company's retaining ownership of the battery and leasing it to the car's owner; then the owner would pay only for the portion of the battery used while it's in the car.

Daily Mail: The Green Microgym franchise in Portland, Oregon, is harnessing the energy created during its clients’ workouts and turning it back into electricity. At both of its gyms in Portland, custom-made exercise bicycles power a generator, which creates electricity. The electricity is then fed back into the building, to help power the lights, fans, stereo, and flat-screen TVs. Because gyms tend to use a lot of power, mostly for lights, heating, and cooling, the electricity-generating machines can’t power the entire gym, but they can reduce the gym’s draw from the electrical grid. Owner Adam Boesel says that the eco-machines have been garnering a lot of interest but that they're “just the shiny wrapper on a package, which is energy efficiency.” Besides the bikes, the gym uses solar panels, renewable-source flooring, and toilet paper made from recycled materials.

New York Times: In a study released today, scientists at MIT predict that the US’s spent-fuel management system will be reevaluated in the wake of Japan’s recent problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. One of the problems encountered at Fukushima was the loss of cooling water in at least one pool of spent radioactive fuel. The MIT report suggests that rather than maintaining such pools in order to reprocess the spent fuel for its plutonium, nuclear reactors should continue to use uranium because it is plentiful and instead store the spent fuel to preserve the option of reprocessing it at some later time. Nuclear waste burial has met with resistance in the past, as evidenced by the problems encountered trying to develop Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert, as a burial site.

BBC: For 150 years, spark plugs have ignited the mixture of gasoline and air that fuels car engines. Now, as Jason Palmer of the BBC reports, lasers could supplant the venerable spark plug. Despite their longevity and simplicity, spark plugs are not without problems. They degrade over time in the harsh environment of an engine cylinder and they ignite only a small, single volume of gas–air mixture; less localized ignition would be more efficient. By contrast, lasers can be focused to ignite the gas–air mixture at several sites throughout the cylinder. But to have any chance of being incorporated into a commercial engine, laser spark plugs must be compact and robust. To meet that challenge, a team from Romania and Japan has developed ceramic lasers that can fit inside a cylinder. Energy is delivered to the lasers via fiber optic cable from lasers that are positioned outside the engine.

New York Times: Solar panels that float on water are being manufactured and marketed by several startup companies. Sunengy of Australia, Solaris Synergy of Israel, and SPG Solar of Novato, California, are marketing their panels for use on agricultural and mining ponds, hydroelectric dams, and canals. Although floating solar arrays are a niche market, they could have global appeal—particularly in areas where land is too valuable to cover over with panels, such as vineyards in California’s Napa Valley, and in developing countries that have plenty of water and sunshine but shortages of electricity. In addition, solar panels floating on water could help control algae and reduce water loss to evaporation.

Los Angeles Times: The US nuclear industry has been turning up the power on old reactors—a little-publicized practice known as uprating—in order to avoid the financial risks, public anxiety, and political obstacles associated with the construction of new plants. The power boosts come from more potent fuel rods in the reactor core and, sometimes, more highly enriched uranium, writes Alan Zarembo and Ben Welsh for the Los Angeles Times. In the wake of the Japanese nuclear crisis, however, the practice is being scrutinized more closely by nuclear watchdogs and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s advisory panel. They warn that, in an uprated reactor, more neutrons bombard the core, increasing stress on its steel shell; core temperatures are higher, lengthening the time to cool it during a shutdown; and water and steam flow at higher pressures, increasing corrosion of pipes, valves, and other parts. Nevertheless, nuclear industry officials and regulators claim that safety calculations are conservative and that even the biggest uprates fall far short of the power loads the reactors could actually handle.

New Scientist: IBM is working on a hybrid solar panel that not only would generate power but could also make seawater drinkable. The photovoltaic cells in the panels use lenses to focus solar energy onto small sections of photovoltaic material. To keep the cells from overheating, IBM's prototype uses water-filled microchannels, which, researchers believe, can in turn be used to distill seawater. Because one method of desalination uses hot water to distill seawater—evaporating it to remove the salt—it is more energy-efficient to use the water already warmed from cooling the solar cells. In arid areas where power generation is difficult, the new PVCs can solve two problems at once, producing electricity and clean water, said Bruno Michel, head of advanced thermal packaging at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland.

New York Times: Despite Japan's nuclear troubles following the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck just weeks ago, South Africa's government is moving ahead with a new energy plan that includes nuclear power. Currently, South Africa depends heavily on coal, which provides 84% of its electricity. The newly ratified Integrated Resource Plan would wean the nation off coal by building half a dozen new nuclear power plants along South Africa's coastline and taking advantage of renewable energy sources such as the Sun and wind.

BBC: China remains the world’s leading investor in low-carbon energy technology, according to a global study by the US Pew Environment Group. In 2010 China invested $54.4 billion. Germany is in second place, having invested $41.2 billion, and the US slipped to third place, with $34 billion invested. Among the various technologies being funded, solar has experienced the strongest growth, according to Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which compiled the data for Pew’s report. According to the report, China was the world's leading producer of wind turbines and solar energy units in addition to attracting the most investment.

Science: A silicon wafer the approximate shape and size of a playing card turns sunlight and water into hydrogen and oxygen and may provide a source of hydrogen fuel that's both easy to tap and practically limitless. The new device isn't the first one capable of splitting water, writes Robert Service for Science, but it may be the most cost effective. Prior attempts used catalysts that were very expensive or unstable. Daniel Nocera of MIT has addressed these issues with a new catalyst compound of three metals, and he and his team have been using the device for a week with no drop in efficiency. According to Nocera, the device converts 5.5% of the energy it absorbs into hydrogen fuel. He has not revealed which metals make up the catalyst; his work is not yet published.

Various: It's still too dangerous for humans to look inside three reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Instead, robots and remote cameras will give operators details of the conditions. Other remote tools, such as unmanned fire engines, will help douse the reactors, writes David Hambling for New Scientist. This may be the start of a long robotic engagement. "I would anticipate that we are going to see a phenomenal enterprise of remote work systems that are brought to bear over the weeks, months, and years of recovering Fukushima," says Carnegie Mellon University robotics researcher Red Whittaker to NPR's Geoff Brumfiel.

New York Times: Even before last week's earthquake and tsunami-damaged nuclear reactors in Japan, antinuclear sentiment was running high in Germany. On Saturday, in an event planned before the earthquake struck, 50 000 protesters formed a human chain around the city of Stuttgart. Now, chancellor Angela Merkel has announced that Germany's seven oldest reactors, all built before 1980, will be shut down temporarily. As if to appease the opponents of nuclear power, Merkel said that Germany would accelerate its pursuit of renewable energy. The chance of earthquakes imperiling Germany's reactors is remote. However, as the New York Times's James Kanter and Judy Dempsey report, power stations, which tend to be situated next to rivers, lakes, and shores, are vulnerable to catastrophic flooding.

New York Times: As the price of oil continues to rise, one company, Gevo in Englewood, Colorado, is pursuing a greener alternative to the fossil fuel: It has just bought a plant that turns corn into ethanol—used as vehicle fuel—and plans to convert the plant to make a different chemical, isobutanol, which is a building block for many other chemicals. Isobutanol is easily converted to butanol, which can be used as fuel as well as in rubber and plastics. A green aspect of this process is that when making rubber and plastics, butanol not only replaces the oil but also becomes a “carbon sink,” a place where carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, can be stored after it is pulled out of the atmosphere.

New York Times: Gains in computer power have come from making circuits smaller. But as the wires, transistors, and other circuit components shrink, their electrical resistance—and therefore their power consumption and heat output—rises. The most powerful supercomputers already consume as much power as a small town. To curb that growth, researchers at Hewlett-Packard have proposed a radical reconfiguration of a computer's two basic elements: processor and memory. As the New York Times's John Markoff reports, HP's new configuration mitigates the energy cost of shuttling information between the processor and memory by placing the two elements on top of each other. Another innovation is the use of nanotech devices known as a memristors to serve as memory stores.

New Scientist: A UK company, Highview Power Storage, has been running a pilot plant designed to store potential energy in the form of liquid air. Solar- and wind-powered generators of electricity, which are growing in number, need some kind of reservoir to store the excess power generated for use when the Sun isn’t shining or the wind isn't blowing. The new process stores excess energy by using it to cool air to around -190 °C; the resulting liquid air, or cryogen, is then stored in a tank at ambient pressure. When electricity is needed, the cryogen is subjected to pressure and heat, which produces a high-pressure gas that drives a turbine. So far, the process recovers about 50% of the electricity that is fed in, and the company plans to build a 3.5-MW system by late 2012.

New York Times: The idea that net zero energy use is not only attainable but also affordable and even elegant is meant to inspire builders and architects of the future. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's new hyperefficient office building in Golden, Colorado, serves as an example. The $64 million research support building opened last year as a kind of physical assertion by the US Energy Department, the lab's parent agency, that office space can be driven down to zero net energy use through a combination of on-site energy production (rooftop solar) and fanatical attention to detail everywhere else, writes the New York Times's Kirk Johnson.

New York Times: Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar addressed the issue of offshore wind farms at a news conference yesterday in Norfolk, Virginia, announcing up to $50.5 million in federal spending over the next five years. Because about 78% of the nation’s electricity demand lies in 28 coastal states, harnessing the ocean breezes would be advantageous. However, the effort will require a lot of work, they say. Offshore wind generation is more expensive than conventional power generation from coal, gas, or even onshore wind due to such issues as reliability, parts manufacturing, and maintenance. Chu said the goal is to get the price of offshore wind down to levels where it could compete without subsidies.

New York Times: In 2009 Envia Systems of Newark, California, was among 37 companies that shared $151 million in government grants to pursue clean-energy ideas. Though promising, the ideas would require years, even decades, of R&D before becoming marketable products. Now, Envia, which is developing a new kind of cathode for batteries, has secured an order from General Motors. As Matthew Wald of the New York Times reports, six companies in Envia's class have attracted $108 million in private-sector financing, which amounts to about four private dollars for every one dollar of initial government investment. Known as ARPA–E, the program for financing the startups was modeled on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Physics Today: Rare-earth metals are key to global efforts to switch to cleaner energy—from batteries in hybrid cars to magnets in wind turbines. Ironically, mining and processing the metals causes environmental damage that China, the biggest producer, is no longer willing to bear, writes Stuart Biggs for Bloomberg. In a related story, two writers for the Daily Mail, Simon Parry and Ed Douglas, describe the environmental devastation in China resulting from rare-earth processing.

New York Times: Until very recently, the solar industry was mainly concerned with getting a toehold in the production of electricity at a utility-level scale. Now a New Jersey company is looking for its niche in a different field—how to handle a system that is saturated with solar energy, sometimes enough to destabilize the electric grid. The company, Petra Solar, has a highly visible product: It is under contract to supply 200 000 panels that Public Service Electric and Gas will attach to utility poles around New Jersey. Around 75 000 are already up. Matthew L. Wald, writing for the New York Times, describes the panels’ design and their “smart” functions.

New York Times: The Nissan Leaf, a mildly futuristic four-door hatchback, arrives as so much a pioneer that the systems necessary to keep it moving down the road are still being put in place, writes Jerry Garrett for the New York Times. He likens the process to the progression of the first transcontinental railroad: Tracks are being laid as a locomotive sits steaming impatiently behind. Garrett goes on to describe the fascinating experience of operating an all-electric vehicle.

New Scientist: An automatic driving system—where cars are linked together into a convoy, or “platoon,” and the lead driver has the control—has just been road-tested in Sweden, writes Duncan Graham-Rowe for New Scientist. To join a platoon, a car broadcasts its destination as it drives onto the freeway and a computer system tells the driver of any nearby platoons heading that way. Each car is fitted with a navigation and communication system, which measures the car's speed and direction, constantly adjusting them to keep the car within a set distance of the vehicle in front. Such a system would allow cars to travel more closely together, thus reducing road congestion, and would reduce fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.

Los Angeles Times: Fool's gold, or iron pyrite, may one day provide a cheap alternative to the rare, toxic, and expensive materials now used for making solar panels, according to a group of researchers at the University of California, Irvine. The UCI team believes the mineral can be processed into a thin film for use in photovoltaic cells, and could eventually convert sunlight into electricity at roughly the same rate as existing technology. Skeptics warn, however, that commercializing the process is difficult because, in order to be successful, hundreds of thousands of panels must be produced each year, at a cost that can compete with Chinese prices.

New York Times: Cape Wind, the wind farm proposed for a 24-square-mile tract of Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, got its final government permit on Friday, 10 years after work on the project began. The project’s sponsors hope to begin construction this year, although they have not yet lined up a market for all of the electricity. Although Cape Wind’s electricity price will be 20.7 cents per kilowatt-hour—almost double the national average retail rate—it is hoped that it would deliver electricity during peak demand periods, when all prices are high. Matthew L. Wald discusses the project for the New York Times’s Green blog.

New York Times: Joining California and New Mexico, Massachusetts announced last week the target of reducing the state's emission of greenhouse gases to 25% below 1990 levels. As the New York Times's Felicity Barringer reports, to meet the target Massachusetts will implement a set of broad measures aimed at boosting energy efficiency, using more renewable energy, and reducing the state's biggest source of greenhouse gases: automobile emissions. Among the specific policies being considered is tying the cost of auto insurance to mileage. People who drive less would see a reduction in insurance premiums.

NPR: For six years, workers processed nuclear waste at a plant outside Buffalo, New York. In its short life, the West Valley Demonstration Project polluted soil, air and water, and may have sickened employees. Four decades later, hundreds of cleanup workers are still at the site decontaminating buildings that will eventually be torn down. Now, workers are preparing to install a massive underground wall designed to stop the spread of a radioactive plume that threatens the region's groundwater. As the West Valley cleanup nears completion, reporter Daniel Robison looks at an environmental disaster that led to a new understanding of how to deal with nuclear waste.

New Scientist: A new breed of electronic solar cells is being developed that can work after dark. The key to the new devices is their ability to harvest IR radiation, says Steven Novack, one of the developers of the technology at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls. Nearly half of the available energy in the solar spectrum resides in the IR band, and IR is reemitted by Earth's surface after the Sun has gone down, meaning that the antennas can even capture some energy during the night, writes Duncan Graham-Rowe for New Scientist.

New York Times: The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration issues an Annual Energy Outlook every March. A summary released yesterday predicts the price of natural gas and electricity will be low over the next quarter century, and crude oil will become more expensive but not radically so. And American carbon dioxide emissions will not set new records—they will stay below the rate of 2005 for the next 15 years because of economic forces. The New York Times’s Matthew Wald, who cautions that the numbers should be treated only as informed guesses, discusses the possible impact on alternative energy options and biofuels.

Nature: Himadri Pakrasi of Washington University in St. Louis and his collaborators have discovered that the photosynthesizing bacterium Cyanothece 51142 makes hydrogen. The enzyme responsible, nitrogenase, is present in other bacteria, which, like Cyanothece 51142, use it to make ammonia and its byproduct, hydrogen. Because nitrogenase breaks down in the presence of oxygen, those other bacteria have to live in oxygen-poor environments. Cyanothece 51142, by contrast, consumes the oxygen within its cell walls during photosynthesis. The ability of Cyanothece 51142 to live in oxygen-rich environments could make it a useful source of hydrogen fuel for cars and other machines.

New York Times: Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has invested in the Yo, a small hybrid car that gets 67 miles to the gallon, has a top speed of 80 miles per hour, and a range of 680 miles. The car might not seem much of a hybrid at first glance. Its two generators run on gasoline and natural gas and power an electric motor that propels the car. Three factors account for the car's fuel-sipping performance. First, the car is light. Second, the generators use an efficient design based on the rotary vane pump. Third, thanks to batteries, the generators can run at a steady, efficient rate even when the car and its electric motor are stopping and starting. Andrew Kramer of the New York Times reports that the Yo is expected to go on sale in Russia in mid 2012 and cost about $14 500.

Los Angeles Times: At the conclusion of the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference on Saturday, delegates from 190 countries ended two weeks of diplomatic brinksmanship in a stalemate. Rich and poor countries failed to agree on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but they pledged to move forward on a set of broad technical measures, writes Margot Roosevelt for the Los Angeles Times. The new pacts envision eventual rules for measuring planet-heating pollution. They would also fund efforts in the most vulnerable countries to combat the effects of rising sea levels, longer droughts, and stronger hurricanes. Although US President Obama called Mexico President Felipe Calderón to congratulate him on "Mexico's excellent work chairing the Cancún conference to a successful conclusion," reaction from environmental groups was mixed. "The texts fall radically short on the crucial question—curbing climate pollution," said Nick Berning, US spokesman for Friends of the Earth.

Los Angeles Times: How do you gauge fuel economy when there's no gasoline? asks Tiffany Hsu, writing for the Los Angeles Times. In her article, Hsu details the difficulties encountered by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has had to come up with a way to rate the new hybrid cars. Traditionally, the fuel economy rating for vehicles with internal combustion engines has been calculated from emissions generated during a series of tests. Because the Nissan Leaf runs entirely on a battery, the EPA developed a miles-per-gallon-equivalent rating. Things got more complicated with the Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid plug-in that switches to gasoline when its electricity runs out; the EPA gave the Volt multiple ratings, depending on when it runs on just electricity, just gas, or both. In addition, the EPA's rating may end up sharing sticker space with those of other entities, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the automakers themselves, which may use different testing systems.

New Scientist: A joint initiative by universities in Japan and Algeria, the Sahara Solar Breeder Project, is working to build enough solar power stations by 2050 to supply 50% of the energy used by people. The idea is to begin by building a small number of silicon manufacturing plants in the Sahara, each turning the desert sand into the high-quality silicon needed to build solar panels. Once those panels are operating, some of the energy they generate will be used to build more silicon plants, each churning out more solar panels and generating more energy that can be used to build even more plants, and so on, writes Michael Fitzpatrick for New Scientist.

New York Times: Some of the most productive renewable energy fields in the world are located near El Centro, California, a little more than 100 miles east of San Diego. And because California requires utilities to meet quotas for shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, San Diego Gas and Electric has spent seven years and $100 million trying to start work on a 117-mile high-voltage line to transport that energy to consumers. Although the line won approval from the US Forest Service, the federal Bureau of Land Management, and the State of California, neighbors and wilderness advocates have filed lawsuits challenging those decisions because they believe that the transmission line may also be used to transport electricity from a plant in Mexico that burns natural gas and that it could ruin the fragile wilderness of the area, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times.

Daily Mail: At the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, scientists have been working since 1997 to build the world's first sustainable fusion reactor, due to be completed by 2012. On 2 November, a test yielded a world-record-breaking 1.3 million megajoules, with a peak radiation temperature at the core of approximately 6 million °F. The project has been likened to "creating a miniature star on Earth." "The results of all of these experiments are extremely encouraging," said NIF director Ed Moses. "They give us great confidence that we will be able to achieve ignition conditions in deuterium–tritium fusion targets."

New York Times: The new so-called smart electric meter that utility companies around the US have been installing on private homes is meeting with significant opposition. Designed to replace the old analog ones, the new meters use digital technology and computer networking to transmit real-time data. Ideally, power companies will be able to better allocate power during times of the day when demand is high, and customers will receive a much more detailed report of how much electricity they are using. However, many people have been complaining that the meters are inaccurate, overcharge, and are reminiscent of Big Brother, writes Tom Zeller Jr for the New York Times.

New York Times: Wind, solar, and other sources of renewable energy face one of the same financial challenges as nuclear energy. In a recession when state budgets are tight and fossil fuel prices are low, renewable energy appears significantly more costly than its climate-threatening alternatives. As Matthew Wald and Tom Zeller of the New York Times report, other countries, notably China and Germany, have made renewable energy a national priority and have been willing through regulations and subsidies to pay for it. The US, however, has no such national policy, leaving cash-strapped states to find the money needed to sustain a renewable energy industry.

"One of the problems in the United States is that we haven’t been willing to confront the tough questions,” said Paul Gipe, who sits on the steering committee of the Alliance for Renewable Energy, a group advocating energy policy reform.

“We have to ask ourselves, ‘Do we really want renewables?’ ” he said. “And if the answer to that is yes, then we’re going to have to pay for them.”

New York Times: Despite a federal loan guarantee, Solyndra, a manufacturer of advanced thin-film solar panels, plans to close one of its factories in California. The closure is intended to save money and reflects competition from manufacturers of crystalline solar panels, which, though less efficient than thin-film panels, have recently become considerably cheaper.

Washington Post: On his Facebook page, US Energy Secretary and Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Chu posted a picture of himself dressed as a zombie. His goal was to point out that computers, TVs, and other electrical appliances consume electricity even when turned off—as if, like zombies and vampires, they belong to the ranks of the living dead. Entitled "Slaying Energy Vampires," Chu's Facebook warning about power-sucking appliances begins:

Someone on my staff forwarded this photo from the website Make Me Zombie which shows what I'd look like as a member of the undead. As a lifelong geek, I've never had such a cool Halloween costume. To date, there is no scientific evidence about the existence of Zombies, but what about vampires?

Los Angeles Times: Iran has begun the weeks-long process to fuel its controversial Bushehr nuclear power plant, scheduled to start generating electricity sometime early next year. The 1000-megawatt plant has been under construction since 1979. Although Iran insists the reactor is to be used for civilian purposes only, officials from the US, Europe, and Israel worry that Iran will use it to produce atomic weapons by extracting plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel rods.

New York Times: In six Kansas towns recently, the Climate and Energy Project tried a new tactic, called the Take Charge Challenge, to get citizens to reduce their fossil-fuel emissions. Rather than focus on global warming and government attempts to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions—two topics that have met with a lot of resistance there—the yearlong challenge centered instead on such issues as thrift and patriotism. As part of the program, schoolchildren searched for “vampire” electric loads (appliances that draw energy even when they are nominally off), residents replaced the town’s Christmas tree lights with energy-efficient LEDs, and on Valentine’s Day restaurants served their meals by candlelight. The strategy seems to have worked because energy use in the towns declined as much as 5% relative to other areas, according to Leslie Kaufman of the New York Times.

IB Times: The National Ignition Facility has achieved fusion on a small scale: On 29 September, scientists fired 192 laser beams on a tiny frozen hydrogen pellet—encased in a tiny plastic pellet at the center of a 30-foot-diametral metal sphere—and produced the fusion of some tritium and deuterium atoms. The experiment was deliberately scaled back, with less-than-perfect fuel in the middle and the lasers at only 75% of their capacity, to avoid creating a situation the experimenters could not control. The team plans to make integrated shots about once a month, with a progressive increase of power, to successfully realize fusion within the next two years.

New York Times: A Massachusetts company, 1366 Technologies, has found a simpler and more economical way to produce solar panels. The current method of producing silicon wafers, the basic building block of solar cells, is to cast the silicon in huge ingots or grow it in giant crystals, then saw off thin pieces, which wastes about half the silicon. The new method developed by 1366 Technologies is to cast the wafers in their final form, six inches on one side and 200 microns thick, which could reduce the price of solar panels by 40%. The company, which had secured a Department of Energy grant to research the technique, has now raised $20 million to commercialize it. The name “1366 Technologies” is a reference to the amount of solar energy, measured in watts, that falls on a square meter of Earth’s surface.

BBC: In the UK, consumer products increasingly bear labels that display the amount of carbon used to make, market, and distribute them. As the BBC's Mark Kinver reports, the values, which are accredited by the Carbon Trust, were launched in 2007 and initially greeted with skepticism. However, carbon-labeled goods are selling at a rate of £2 billion ($3.2 billion) a year, which suggests that the labels are influencing consumers' behavior.

Nature: A diverse set of countries that includes Nigeria, Jamaica, and Syria have cold-war-era research reactors that run on highly enriched, bomb-grade uranium. Under a program run by America's National Nuclear Security Administration, many of those reactors are being converted to run on less dangerous, lower-enriched fuel. Nature's Geoff Brumfiel reports on the program's progress.

New York Times: The Atlantic coast is one of the most favorable places in the US for siting wind turbines. To exploit that potential, Google and the investment firm Good Energies have each taken a 37.5% stake in a $5 billion project to build an offshore transmission line from Northern New Jersey to Norfolk, Virginia. The project is being run by Trans-Elect Development Co, which is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. As the New York Times's Matthew Wald reports, once complete, the transmission line will carry electricity generated from wind turbines being built or planned along the Mid-Atlantic coast.

New York Times: As a practical necessity, the US military is going green. Military commanders are recognizing that an overdependence on fossil fuels is a liability for a number of reasons: Fuel-supply convoys are sitting ducks for enemy insurgents, fossil fuels often come from unstable regions, the fuels are cumbersome to transport, and guarding the fuel ties up manpower. Last week the first Marine company to take renewable technology into a battle zone set off with portable solar panels, energy-conserving lights, and solar chargers. Last year the US Navy introduced its first hybrid vessel, and the US Air Force will have its entire fleet certified to fly on biofuels by 2011. The military’s interest in those products "may make renewable energy more practical and affordable for everyday uses," writes the New York Times's Elisabeth Rosenthal.

New Scientist: “Carbon dioxide may be bad for the climate, but it's good for the roses,” writes New Scientist’s Phil McKenna. Dutch greenhouses have, according to McKenna, been successful in recycling captured CO₂. They have been piping it in from nearby industries, such as oil refineries; the CO₂ has helped the plants grow up to 30% faster than normal. Yet FutureGen, the US flagship effort at carbon capture and sequestration, has faced numerous challenges, most recently the Department of Energy’s decision not to finance construction of a new plant but to contribute $737 million to remake an old one instead.

Daily Mail: Volvo is developing an electric car whose rechargeable battery is to be integrated into the car’s body. The car’s doors, roof, and hood would be replaced by a composite blend of carbon fibers and polymer resin, which would store and charge more energy faster than conventional batteries and reduce the car's weight by as much as 15%. If successful, the technology could also be applied to other devices, such as mobile phones and laptops, to make them smaller, lighter, and more portable.

New Scientist: The Shweeb, one of five ideas that won prize money from Google in its Project 10¹⁰⁰ competition, is a cross between a monorail train and a recumbent bike. A person sits inside a pod hanging from a rail and pedals to propel himself or herself forward. The company, which plans to put its $1 million prize money toward creating a system for city commuters, claims the Shweeb could carry about 1200 people per hour at speeds up to 50 km per hour.

New York Times: World leaders gather this week in New York City to discuss progress toward meeting the United Nations' Millennium Goals for ending world poverty. As the New York Times's David Jolly reports, a newly released study from the International Energy Agency argues that improving energy access should be a key component in the Millennium campaign. Of the world's population of 6.9 billion people, 1.4 billion lack electricity and 2.7 billion burn biomass for cooking.

Washington Post: China faces an unenviable dilemma: whether to keep building factories that provide jobs for its citizens yet pollute the environment or whether to institute pollution controls that would mitigate environmental damage yet imperil industrial growth. As Juliet Eilperin reports, China is increasingly curbing its emissions, including greenhouse gases. She writes:

Nationwide, between 2006 and 2009 China replaced 7 percent of its electricity generation capacity with cleaner power plants, according to the Joint US–China Collaboration on Clean Energy.

In the past several months, Chinese officials have intensified their focus, announcing they will replace outdated equipment in 2000 power plants and spend $75 billion a year on clean energy technology, a figure triple the size of the [US] Energy Department's entire budget. And they are quietly being trained by American and European experts on how to trade emissions credits within a given industry to cut greenhouse gases.

Washington Post: In the Green Lantern, a weekly environmental column from Slate, Brian Palmer discusses whether telecommuting is greener than traveling to work. As Palmer points out, it’s complicated. Telecommuting rather than driving a car to work conserves fossil fuels and lessens carbon dioxide emissions. However, in staying home, one expends energy heating or cooling the house; running one’s own printer, fax machine, and other office equipment; and taking on extra tasks, such as going to the grocery store or running the dishwasher. Palmer tackles the question in an entertaining fashion and cites the statistics to back up his concluding statement: "Abandon your car first, then worry about whether you'd rather take the bus or stay home."

New York Times: The US is entering the 21st century in terms of uranium enrichment for its nuclear reactors. Until the 1990s, the federal government handled uranium enrichment. When the United States Enrichment Company (USEC) bought the enrichment plants from the government, the new owner continued to use their World War II–era systems. USEC is now operating a demonstration facility that uses more modern centrifuge technology. Meanwhile, two other companies have built, or are planning to build, full-scale centrifuge-based enrichment plants in the US: URENCO USA opened a plant in New Mexico in June; Areva plans to build one in Idaho. Centrifuges cut the amount of electricity required to enrich uranium by about 95%.

New Scientist: A team from Sweden is developing a photovoltaic device from the green fluorescent protein (GFP) found in jellyfish, and another team from the UK is developing biophotovoltaic devices based on algae and photosynthetic bacteria. Zackary Chiragwandi at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, believes his team’s jellyfish biophotovoltaic device could be used to power nanodevices embedded in living organisms, while Adrian Fisher and Paolo Bombelli at the University of Cambridge say their team’s algal cells could float out at sea, generating electricity from sunlight and seawater.

New York Times: For years, several US states have been proposing building high-speed-train networks on a par with those of Spain, Japan, and China. At long last those plans may come to fruition as the US government is finally putting some money toward supporting those regional projects. President Obama's new economic stimulus package that was announced over the weekend will provide $8 billion toward the development of high-speed rail. Two routes favored to receive the funds will be the high-traffic corridors of Orlando–Tampa Bay in Florida and San Francisco–Los Angeles in California. The federal funds will not pay for the entire cost of the projects; each state will have to provide some additional funding, which may be a challenge in the current economy.

New Scientist: Several groups of researchers have been working toward deriving energy from sunlight and water—much as plants do. A team at MIT found a revolutionary way to split a water molecule into oxygen gas and hydrogen ions, which required far less electricity than conventional electrolysis, by using a cheap cobalt–phosphate catalyst and titanium oxide electrodes. Another team, from the University of Washington in Seattle, used MIT’s photovoltaic technology to develop a more-energy-efficient photoelectrochemical electrode—although it cannot as yet generate enough power to run on its own. Both methods generate only hydrogen ions, which still need to be turned into hydrogen gas. Some of their results have been published in Energy and Environmental Science.

The Independent: Yesterday, four Greenpeace activists shut down an oil drilling operation in the Arctic. Using inflatable speedboats to evade authorities, the four, who are all expert climbers, then climbed 15 m up the Cairn Energy oil rig off Greenland, where they are occupying tents suspended from ropes. Sim McKenna, from the US, who is one of the climbers, said: "We've got to keep the energy companies out of the Arctic and kick our addiction to oil, that's why we're going to stop this rig from drilling for as long as we can.” The drilling was forced to stop when the climbers breached a 500-m cordon around the rig; they hope to delay drilling long enough to make the company pull out before winter sets in.

Indeed, Portugal’s engineers and companies are now global players. Portugal’s EDP Renováveis, first listed on stock exchanges in 2008, is the third largest company in the world in wind-generated electricity output. This year, its Portuguese chief executive, Ana Maria Fernandes, signed contracts to sell electricity from its wind farm in Iowa to the Tennessee Valley Authority.

China Hush: To combat its ever-increasing traffic woes, China may be adding a high-tech bus to its public transit system. The “straddling” bus, first exhibited at the 13th Beijing International High-Tech Expo in May, has 2 levels and is 15 feet tall. The upper story carries passengers, while the lower is essentially a tunnel that allows surface automobile traffic to pass through it. It is also environmentally friendly: It runs on a combination of electric and solar power. A prototype is scheduled to be put in use in Beijing’s Mentougou District in the near future.

New Scientist: To make recharging an electric car more convenient, a company has developed a plug-free system. Introduced last week at the Plug-In 2010 conference in San Jose, California, Evatran’s Plugless Power system can be fitted to a garage floor, and all the user has to do is park the car over the charging station and it will be recharged automatically—if it needs it. A drawback to the wireless system is that it is only 90% as efficient as plug-in recharging systems.

Washington Post: The still-unplugged oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has yet to affect Americans' energy-use habits, at least as far as pollsters can tell. David Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post report on what might be behind that disconnect, which is in contrast to the reactions that followed earlier environmental disasters, such as the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 and the ignition that same year of the Cuyahoga river in Cleveland.