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Category: sustainability – Page 356

Are Tesla’s Record 2021 Profits Enough to Keep It in the Lead?

The company sold roughly one million cars in 2021.

The electric vehicle manufacturer announced yesterday that it made $5.5 billion in profits last year after selling nearly one million cars. That’s six times more than it did in 2020. But even those numbers weren’t enough to reassure investors that Tesla’s future success is a sure thing.

Surprisinglyfell sharply after the announcement because it also disclosed that supply chain problems have been forcing Tesla factories to run below capacity for months. Its 2022 outlook was also short on details about when new factories will come online, according to several analysts. Meanwhile, rival EV manufacturers are on the rise as the might of U.S. and global auto manufacturing shifts momentum into sustainable, electric vehicles.

When And Where To See Elon Musk’s Out Of Control SpaceX Rocket That Will Crash Into The Moon At 5,700 Mph

“This is not ‘SpaceX did something bad’—it’s perfectly standard practice to abandon stuff in deep orbit,” writes McDowell. “This is ‘none of the space agencies care about leaving stuff out beyond the Moon’.”

However, with the age of commercial space industry there’s going to be a lot more junk like this. Something needs to be done. “It’s time for the world to get more serious about regulating and cataloging deep space activity,” writes McDowell. ## Why we need to launch rockets and satellites.

There seems to be a swell of doubt around whether the carbon footprints of rocket launches can be justified in this age of rampant climate change. Attaching the term “space junk” and Elon Musk’s name instantly make it a big and negative story.

Full Story:

When is the SpaceX rocket going to crash into the Moon?

On February 11, 2015 a Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched from Cape Canaveral. After sending the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite into an orbit where there’s an unhindered view of the Sun the rocket’s spent upper stage went into a chaotic elliptical orbit of Earth.

Continue reading “When And Where To See Elon Musk’s Out Of Control SpaceX Rocket That Will Crash Into The Moon At 5,700 Mph” | >

Solar-plus-storage autonomous power generator from Spain

Developed in Spain, the Arca system integrates solar panels, power electronics, and energy storage. Arca Lite has a rated power of 490 Wp, and Arca Plus of 980 Wp.

From pv magazine Latam

The Spanish companies Solartia and IED — experts in energy and electronics, respectively — have launched Arca, an autonomous solar power generator described as a robust and low-maintenance system that aims to alleviate energy poverty.

The system integrates solar panels, power electronics, energy storage and prepayment in a compact, robust and simple way, which allows it to be able to supply energy permanently anywhere in the world, according to the manufacturer. The solution is also designed to be installed in any location without qualified personnel.

New biodegradable straws are made by bacteria

New biodegradable straws developed in China are as cheap as plastic, stronger than paper, and made from edible materials — but can they make a difference in the global plastic waste problem?

Plastic everywhere: People produce 330 million tons of plastic every year. Less than 9% of it is recycled, and about 12% is incinerated — the rest ends up polluting our natural environment or languishing in landfills.

About half of this plastic is in disposable products — bags, straws, etc. Because these products are disposable, they’re also cheap, so any equally disposable but more sustainable alternatives are going to need to be cheap, too — and similar quality.

Illuminating how solvent additives improve efficiency in polymer solar cells

All-polymer blend solar cells are expected to play an important role in the transition to clean energy technologies because they can be easily produced in large-scale flexible sheets. However, their performance has lagged behind that of more traditional silicon alternatives, as well as other organic solar cells.

All-polymer blend are formed by combining two polymer solutions that solidify into a film on an electrode with in the form of interpenetrating networks, a kind of “phase-separation.” The introduction of solvent additives to the polymer solution has been shown to increase the efficiency of all-polymer blend solar . However, the exact process underlying this improvement has not been fully understood. Now, in a study recently published in ACS Applied Polymer Materials, researchers from Nara Institute of Science and Technology have investigated the performance enhancement mechanism using photoconductive atomic force microscopy (PC-AFM). Their findings are expected to help accelerate the widespread application of polymer-based solar cells.

“The empirical nature of solvent additive-mediated efficiency enhancement has hindered the optimization of all-polymer blend solar cell performance, so there has been an urgent need for a greater understanding of the process,” explains senior author Hiroaki Benten. “To that end, we used PC-AFM to interrogate the nanoarchitecture that underpins the performance enhancement.”

Astronomers Discover Mysterious Object in Our “Galactic Backyard” — Unlike Anything Seen Before

A team mapping radio waves in the Universe has discovered something unusual that releases a giant burst of energy three times an hour, and it’s unlike anything astronomers have seen before. The team who discovered it think it could be a neutron star or a white dwarf—collapsed cores of stars—wi…

Electric bicycle sales have been on a skyward trajectory since early in the pandemic, and new numbers show they are selling more units than electric cars and plug-in hybrids combined. Those figures recently released by the Light Electric Vehicle Association trade group help bolster the case for personal electric vehicles as alternatives to larger cars […].

Electric bicycles are now outselling electric cars and plug-in hybrids combined in the US

Electric bicycle sales have been on a skyward trajectory since early in the pandemic, and new numbers show they are selling more units than electric cars and plug-in hybrids combined.

Those figures recently released by the Light Electric Vehicle Association trade group help bolster the case for personal electric vehicles as alternatives to larger cars and trucks.

According to data released by the LEVA, the US saw nearly 790,000 electric bike imports in 2021. That marks a 70% increase from the 463,000 imports in 2020.

German town goes self-sufficient with wind and green hydrogen

The innovative project Green H2-Hub Haren in the Emsland region in northern Germany uses H-Tec Systems electrolysers for sector integration.

The Green H2-Hub Haren project in Haren in Lower Saxony, northern Germany uses two electrolysers from H-Tec Systems. This was announced by project leader CEC Haren GmbH & Co. KG and electrolyser manufacturer H-Tec Systems. The order was placed with H-Tec Systems by the electricity and gas distribution network operator Westnetz. This research and development project is intended to enable the establishment of a decentralized hydrogen facility. At the site, green hydrogen will be produced from wind energy and stored in connection with specific regional applications, primarily for the mobility sector. The H2-Hub targets various hydrogen applications in rural areas – in particular in the field of agriculture – based on the production and use of sustainably generated hydrogen. In addition, the project is intended to significantly increase the city of Haren’s rate of self-sufficiently produced renewable energy. The goal is to implement a model that will also develop and prepare a comprehensive integration of other rural locations and regions in Lower Saxony into the H2 supply infrastructure.

The town of Haren aims to be completely self-sufficient with green energy. New storage systems as part of the H2 Hub enable a significant use of excess electricity from times of peak generation. The 16 wind turbines of the community wind farm Fehndorf-Lindloh are connected to a PEM electrolysis system, as well as an additional battery storage system in combination with a superordinate energy management system. In addition, a hydrogen filling station and a gas network feed-in point will be built. In this way, the project allows the transfer of surplus electricity to other sectors, such as heating or transport.

A key approach of sector integration in connection with renewable energies is to stabilize wind energy through PEM electrolysis with connected storage. The production of hydrogen will be realized with the help of two electrolysis systems from H-Tec Systems. This will enable new potential for the utilization of this energy in the form of power-to-gas or power-to-fuel.

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