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Category: sustainability – Page 3

Solar windows could harvest indoor light and sunlight while staying semi-transparent

Semi-transparent solar cells that could be added to windows to efficiently harvest energy from indoor light as well as the sun have been developed by an international team led by UCL researchers.

The technology, described in a paper in Advanced Energy Materials, could help turn buildings into power generators at night and on cloudy days, as well as in sunshine.

The researchers engineered solar windows that let in 30% of sunlight—ordinary glass might let in 80% or 90%—while generating a record amount of energy from indoor light and efficiently harvesting energy from sunshine.

Top environmental fund sees Japan key to AI energy challenge

Asia’s best-performing environmental fund has increased exposure to Japan as it expects the nation’s technology sector to prove increasingly pivotal in solving the artificial intelligence industry’s surging power demands.

The BNP Paribas Green Tigers Fund has returned 34% year-to-date, fueled by bets on Japanese equities that sit at the core of its stock-selection strategy, said Oscar Yang, senior portfolio manager at Impax Asset Management. The $208 million portfolio was the top-performing “dark green” strategy, the EU’s highest sustainability classification, in Asia through June 30, Bloomberg-compiled data show.

“A lot of the Japanese companies are so unique and they’re to some extent almost at a monopoly position,” Yang said. “If you cut Japanese companies’ products out of your supply chain, you just basically can’t operate, especially for leading-edge capacity.”

Chemists develop a molecular platform for the selective control of oxygen reaction pathways

Controlling how oxygen reacts is important for improving technologies such as batteries, fuel cells and environmentally sustainable chemical processes. A research team led by professor Seung Jun Hwang from KAIST’s Department of Chemistry has developed a molecular system capable of directing oxygen activation along a selected electron-transfer pathway.

By combining germanium with a molecular framework that can store and transfer electrons, the team established a design principle for selectively switching oxygen activation between two-and four-electron pathways. The results were published in Chem.

Updates on nature, land and biodiversity

Nature is humanity’s lifeline. Human health, food, economies and well-being depend on nature. Yet nature is in crisis. One million of the world’s estimated 8 million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction. Meanwhile, ecosystem degradation is affecting the well-being of 40 per cent of the global population.

The spotlight on nature and biodiversity highlights updates from around the UN System, from partners and others, helping to call attention to the need for a just, prosperous and sustainable future for all.

New study defines conditions for successful long-term biodiversity net gain

A new study identifying the ecological conditions needed for biodiversity offsetting to achieve conservation goals could provide important guidance for governments and industries as they expand biodiversity net gain (BNG) and nature restoration policies. The research is published in the journal Conservation Biology.

Biodiversity offsetting is increasingly used to compensate for environmental damage caused by development. It sees habitat loss in one location compensated through habitat restoration or protection elsewhere, with the aim of achieving no net loss of biodiversity.

The latest research, led by Swansea University in collaboration with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and Forest Research, shows that biodiversity offsets are far more likely to succeed when restoration areas are larger than impacted habitats, are protected over long timescales and are designed around how ecosystems recover over time.

Beyond lithium: how sodiumion batteries could change the world

The lithium-ion battery is the beating heart of the modern world. It powers eight billion mobile phones, hundreds of millions of laptops and rapidly growing fleets of electric cars and energy-storage banks. But there’s a new contender breaking into the battery market.

Batteries based on sodium promise to be cheaper, safer and much more environmentally friendly than lithium-ion cells. And this year could mark the start of the sodium era.

In April, Chinese firm CATL — the world’s largest battery producer — announced that it will start mass-producing sodium-ion batteries before the end of 2026. CATL, which is headquartered in Ningde, added that it had signed deals to sell the batteries both to a car manufacturer and to a provider of energy-storage stations for electricity grids.

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