No Such Device

At the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg, Germany, a test cell no larger than a postage stamp sits inside a solar simulator. A lamp tuned to replicate the spectral output of the sun switches on. Within microseconds, electrons inside the silicon wafer begin moving in a single direction, and a current flows…

Off the coast of Brittany, at the mouth of the Rance river estuary, a 750-metre concrete dam has been generating electricity since 1966. Twice a day, without fail, the Atlantic tide rises against its face. Twice a day it falls. For nearly six decades the structure has harvested that movement, producing around 540 gigawatt-hours of…

Off the northwest coast of Scotland, near a stretch of coastline called the Orkney Islands, sits one of the most wave-exposed environments in Europe. Researchers there have recorded average wave power densities of 70 kilowatts per metre of wave front. That number is not a theoretical maximum from a computer model. It is a measured…

In 2013, engineers working on the Voyager 1 power system ran calculations they already knew the answer to. The probe was 19 billion kilometers from the Sun. Solar panels were useless that far out. The only reason Voyager was still transmitting was a small device bolted to its chassis that had been converting heat into…

Inside a biogas plant in Rajasthan, India, workers feed tens of tonnes of sugarcane bagasse into sealed concrete tanks every morning. The material is not burned. It is not processed with chemicals. It simply sits in the dark, submerged in water, and within three weeks it begins to produce a combustible gas that powers a…

At the port of Yokohama, a vessel the length of two football fields sits at a demonstration berth. This is the Suiso Frontier, the world’s first purpose-built liquid hydrogen carrier, developed as part of Japan’s Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain project. A technician connects a hose from a cryogenic tank, liquid hydrogen flows into the ship’s…

The Gansu Wind Farm in northwestern China stretches across more than 100 kilometers of desert plateau. On a clear afternoon, the wind comes off the Gobi at a steady 9 to 11 meters per second, and several thousand turbines turn in near-perfect unison. The combined output of this single installation can exceed 20,000 megawatts under…

What if the key to a sustainable future lies beneath our feet? Geothermal energy uses the Earth’s natural heat. It’s a great alternative to fossil fuels and a key renewable energy source. By using this energy, we can cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and meet our energy needs. In this article, we’ll dive into…

Somewhere off the coast of Denmark, a bright orange buoy bobs in the North Sea. It looks unremarkable – a navigation marker, maybe, or a weather float. But inside its sealed housing, a laser is firing invisible pulses of infrared light straight up into the sky, 10,000 times per second. Each pulse travels upward, scatters…

Imagine a floor tile that generates electricity with every footstep. Not through solar panels. Not through heat. Just through the simple, ordinary pressure of a shoe sole hitting the ground. The tile contains no moving parts, no fuel, no wires running to a power station. It contains a crystal. And that crystal, when squeezed, does…

Stand in sunlight for a moment and you can feel energy arriving on your skin. That same energy, when it strikes a thin slice of specially prepared silicon, can push electrons out of their resting positions and send them through a wire. The result is electricity generated from light with no moving parts, no combustion,…