Today's Alternative Energy

With waning subsidies and other attractive markets, can Spain maintain its lead in solar tech?

How to build a solar refrigerator: The brighter the sun, the better it works

Scientific American editor Steven Ashley test drives a car that may be the future of automotive transportation--if cost, technology and infrastructure problems can be resolved

Iceland goes green by tapping the power of the planet

Chemist Paul Alivisatos explains how to generate electricity from sunlight

Not only are offshore winds stronger but landlubbers have fewer objections to turbines almost invisible from the coast

Several companies are in the midst of tests to determine whether their technology for harvesting renewable energy will sink or swim

Solyndra hopes to capture the wasted sunlight falling on roofs by making solar cells into cylinders rather than panels

From drilling for oil to climate change, the answers may surprise you

Former CIA director, R. James Woolsey, says America's oil dependence is a grave threat

It is the pressure change--not the blades--that wipe out thousands of bats annually at wind farms

More than 2,000 times the entire annual energy consumption of the U.S. is available deep underground

China is now the world's workshop for wind and solar power. But can they reach their own ambitious goals for renewable energy?

A trip down the Yangtze River—home of the world's largest hydroelectric dam—offers a glimpse into China's past and future

A New Jersey resident generates and stores all the power he needs with solar panels and hydrogen

Cheap, durable, efficient devices are needed to generate a significant amount of electricity from the sun. So-called thin-film photovoltaic cells may be just the ticket

By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions

New Jersey-based NRG Energy applies to build the first new nuclear power plant in the U.S. in more than 30 years

Large amounts of solar-thermal electric supply may become a reality if steam storage technology works—and new transmission infrastructure is built

If controlling global warming is a priority, then industries—from banking to cement manufacturing—will have to become efficient energy users, which will require a transformation of their basic operations

Cryogenic, superconducting conduits could be connected into a "SuperGrid" that would simultaneously deliver electrical power and hydrogen fuel