Inside these walls, scientists have been trying for decades to create an unlimited source of energy, nuclear fusion. Welcome to JET, the world’s biggest nuclear fusion experiment.
Scientists argue that fusion could replace coal gas and nuclear fission in the energy mix alongside renewable energy, which can prove to be unreliable. If we can learn to control it, nuclear fusion could change life as we know it. But that’s a big if.
This video was produced as part of Digital Society, a publishing partnership between WIRED and Vontobel where all content is editorially independent. Visit Vontobel Impact for more stories on how technology is shaping the future of society: https://www.vontobel.com/en-int/about-vontobel/impact/
BEIJING – In a future driven by electric vehicles, China is poised to dominate if the U.S. does not transform its automobile industry in coming years.
While California-based Tesla captured popular attention for electric cars, national policy in Beijing encouraged the launch of several rivals in China, the world’s largest auto market. Already, sales of electric cars and other new energy vehicles hit a record in September in China. Even Tesla launched a factory there last year, and is planning to sell made-in-China cars to Europe.
Powering it all are electric batteries – of which two Chinese companies, Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) and BYD, account for about a third of the global market, according to UBS. All six of the major battery manufacturers identified by UBS are Asian.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a new family of cathodes with the potential to replace the costly cobalt-based cathodes typically found in today’s lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and consumer electronics.
The new class called NFA, which stands for nickel-, iron-and aluminum-based cathode, is a derivative of lithium nickelate and can be used to make the positive electrode of a lithium-ion battery. These novel cathodes are designed to be fast charging, energy dense, cost effective, and longer lasting.
With the rise in the production of portable electronics and electric vehicles throughout the world, lithium-ion batteries are in high demand. According to Ilias Belharouak, ORNL’s scientist leading the NFA research and development, more than 100 million electric vehicles are anticipated to be on the road by 2030. Cobalt is a metal currently needed for the cathode which makes up the significant portion of a lithium-ion battery’s cost.
India just laid the foundations for what officials are claiming will be the world’s largest renewable energy park. The gigantic project, in the Kutch region of western Gujarat, will cover an area of 180, 000 acres — an area roughly the size of Singapore, as Agence France-Presse reports.
Once finished, the park will produce 30 gigawatts of electricity from both wind turbines and solar arrays, thereby cutting carbon dioxide emissions by up to 50 million tons per year. For perspective, the protagonists in the 1985 film “Back to the Future” needed to generate a staggering 1.21 gigawatts of power to activate their time machine — and this new facility will produce more than 24 times that figure.
“The hybrid renewable energy park will be largest in the world and generate 30, 000 megawatts of power,” prime minister Narendra Modi said during the park’s official inauguration, according to AFP.
Google will use large batteries to replace the diesel generators at one of its data centers in Belgium, describing the project as a first step towards using cleaner technologies to provide backup power for its millions of servers around the world.
“Our project in Belgium is a first step that we hope will lay the groundwork for a big vision: a world in which backup systems at data centers go from climate change problems to critical components in carbon-free energy systems,” said Joe Kava, Vice President for Data Centers at Google. “We’re aiming to demonstrate that a better, cleaner solution has advanced far enough to keep the internet up and running.”
Google becomes the second major hyperscale cloud operator to pursue a strategy to move beyond diesel generators. In July, Microsoft said it will eliminate its reliance on diesel fuel by the year 2030 and has begun testing hydrogen fuel cells as an alternative. These announcements have implications beyond company-built facilities, as Google and Microsoft are major tenants in third-party data centers, most of which use diesel generators for backup power.
Tests showed that the material was able to store energy for more than four months.
“Free” Energy
“The material functions a bit like phase change materials, which are used to supply heat in hand warmers,” Lancaster University senior lecturer John Griffin, co-author of a paper about the research published in the journal Chemistry of Materials, said in a statement.
However, a breakthrough by researchers at UVA’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, the California Institute of Technology and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory could eliminate a critical obstacle from the process, a discovery that represents a giant stride toward a clean-energy future.
One way to harness solar energy is by using solar electricity to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen produced by the process is stored as fuel, in a form that can be transferred from one place to another and used to generate power upon demand. To split water molecules into their component parts, a catalyst is necessary, but the catalytic materials currently used in the process, also known as the oxygen evolution reaction, are not efficient enough to make the process practical.
Have you ever dreamed of building an actual house using your very own grown-up, sustainable version of LEGO? Meet Brikawood, the company making that dream a reality and transforming the modular home business.
Brikawood creates wooden bricks that interlock to create walls. This allows builders to assemble and disassemble an entire home without the use of glue, nails or screws. The wood-brick walls then get filled with wood shavings left over from the manufacturing of Brikawood bricks. These insulate both temperature and sound, which improve energy efficiency and peace of mind.
The company’s bricks are made out of wood harvested from quick-growing Douglas fir trees. The trees are sourced from sustainable forests and certified as eco-friendly. Since the wood shavings produced by the manufacturing of the bricks are used as insulation, the entire Brikawood production results in nearly zero waste.
Around five years ago, US companies MycoWorks and Ecovative invented and patented fungus-derived leather technologies. These technologies use the mushroom’s root-like structure, known as mycelium. When mycelium is grown on agricultural waste or sawdust, they produce a thick mat that can be treated to look like leather.
This natural biological process can be conducted anywhere since the roots are used and not the mushrooms. The process doesn’t need light; it turns waste into something useful and stores carbon by collecting it in the growing fungus.
Making fungi leather (or mycelium leather) is an overall significantly quicker process than traditional leather. It takes years to raise a cow to maturity, while going from a single spore to a finished fungi leather takes weeks.
The new ERV from Retreat Caravans travels to the most distant corners of Australia and beyond, using only electric power to keep equipment running. That would be a nice feat for an RV as simple as a tiny teardrop trailer, but the ERV is more a dual-axle luxury condo. Its lithium battery and solar roof power the all-season climate control, indoor/outdoor entertainment system, electrified kitchen and even washing machine. Leave the LPG tanks and electrical grid behind, explore Outback-style remoteness and live like a kingly nomad in a high-tech hideaway.
Electric motorhomes and pickup campers have stolen the spotlight throughout 2019, but all-electric caravans have been quietly creeping forward in the backdrop. In the US, Thor Industries, the world’s largest RV manufacturer, worked up a more rigid definition of “off grid” with the Sonic X caravan concept back in March. Later in the year, another brand under the Thor umbrella, Germany’s LMC, followed suit with its own electrified trailer at the Düsseldorf Caravan Salon. The two models were quite distinct, but both shared the same goal: leaving behind every last trace of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) and tying together all onboard equipment with a single electrical architecture.
Australia’s Retreat Caravans goes beyond concepts, breaking free from LPG with what it calls the world’s first fully electric caravan, the ERV. It relies on a Centralized Energy Management System (CEMS) supplied by Australian caravan tech startup OzXcorp. Co-founded by Andrew Huett, a businessman who spent nearly two decades living completely off the grid and has racked up some 43,000 miles (70,000 km) traveling around Australia, OzXcorp was formed to bring caravan tech and design into the smart age. With the CEMS, OzXcorp hangs an automotive-grade 14.3-kWh lithium battery pack inside a galvanized steel chassis and distributes power through a 48-volt electrical architecture.
