Alternative Energy Technology

Behind thick glass in a laboratory nestled in French woodland, a silvery molten metal swirls like a liquid mirror.

We long ago lost the skill of paying for the things we need: I won’t bore you with the statistics of how far we are behind in our infrastructure investments.

Despite all the metals and raw materials that go into making solar cells and wind turbines, these sources of low-carbon renewable electrify will have a low climate and environmental impact through 2050

Don't want to lease or buy outright solar panels? SolarCity will now loan you the money to do so

Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura won the 2014 physics prize for the invention of the blue light–emitting diode

On October 2, the Boundary Dam power plant in Saskatchewan became the first full-sized coal-fired boiler to capture the copious carbon dioxide that had previously billowed from its smokestack, preventing the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere.

Can economic incentives evolve to combat climate change?

Historian of science Naomi Oreskes, now at Harvard, first came to my attention 20 years ago, when she and two co-authors argued in Science that “verification and validation of numerical models of natural systems is impossible.” In The End of Science, I cited the Oreskes et al.

A more heat- and alcohol-tolerant yeast could transform fermentation and biofuels

The U.S. is on track to become the world’s leading liquid petroleum producer. According to IEA, domestic production of oil was about 11.5m barrels a day in August, and the Financial Times reports that we are likely to surpass Saudi Arabia’s production for the first time in 23 years.

At the U.N. summit last week, climate economists tackled the role of innovation in fixing the world’s climate

Half of Japan's electric utilities have blocked additional solar for fear of destabilizing the grid