I’ve been living with solar panels for almost 5 years now here in Massachusetts, and I thought it was time to take a look at how it’s been going. There’s been some twists and turns with solar production and how it’s fared going through the cold
The solar industry has a potentially fatal flaw: its reliance on silver. As a precious metal, silver is costly and difficult to come by, yet critical to pretty much every kind of solar panel.1 Worldwide solar capacity has officially crossed into terawatt territory and silver is putting that continued
Carbon offsets are everywhere these days. You might see them in little disclaimers on your favorite sneaker brand’s site, or you can buy them to help offset your next cross-country flight. They may be ubiquitous, but what really are carbon offsets and what should you know before buying into
Who doesn’t want a smartphone, laptop, or EV that can charge in minutes? Or a device that holds its charge just as well when it’s 5 years old as the day you plugged it in for the first time? Faster-charging, longer-lasting, and cheaper energy storage options are something
Concrete, the literal foundation of our built environment, is the most commonly used man-made material in the world. But its key ingredient – cement – has a carbon footprint that rivals the world’s biggest emitters. Under pressure to reduce emissions, the global construction industry is reckoning with an array of innovative,
One of the benefits of a factory built home is that the insulated wall panels are assembled in a climate controlled facility. However, they still need to get assembled on site … and that’s when mother nature can take her revenge. My factory built house started getting raised on site
And now for a hopeful environmental story about climate policy that worked… new U.N. data shows that the ozone layer is recovering, a major development for health, food security, and the planet. This is all thanks to humans around the world coming together to solve an environmental crisis. (Yes, you
We recently covered a bunch of novel approaches to bring nuclear fusion to the market sooner than you may think. One form of fusion research we didn’t touch on in depth was Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) using lasers… and shortly after publishing that video some major news broke about
Grid-scale lithium-ion batteries are our current go-to chemical energy storage solution, but they present their own challenges in safety, sustainability, cost, and longevity. However, the competition is … heating up. New forms of thermal energy storage systems built using abundant, cheap materials are on the rise. One company is aiming to
Here are four trends that we can expect in climate tech in 2023...
The American supply chain is built on our trucking industry—but an unfortunate byproduct that comes from trucks is the oversized impact they have on our air quality. Because of their size, weight, and around the clock usage, they’re one of the largest contributors to emissions in the transportation
Where there’s tech, there’s magnets. The strong magnets that generate their own magnetic field, AKA permanent magnets, aren’t only on your fridge. They’re in multiple places inside your fridge, and in your cell phone, headphones, and hard disk drive, too. Permanent magnets are also a critical
