Lifeboat Foundation

Clean Tech News & Views: Solar Energy News. Wind Energy News. EV News. & More.

New roll-to-roll production method could enable lightweight, flexible solar devices and a new generation of display screens.

A new way of making large sheets of high-quality, atomically thin graphene could lead to ultra-lightweight, flexible solar cells, and to new classes of light-emitting devices and other thin-film electronics.

The new manufacturing process, which was developed at MIT and should be relatively easy to scale up for industrial production, involves an intermediate “buffer” layer of material that is key to the technique’s success. The buffer allows the ultrathin graphene sheet, less than a nanometer (billionth of a meter) thick, to be easily lifted off from its substrate, allowing for rapid roll-to-roll manufacturing.

Billionaire investor Ron Baron believes there’s still plenty of room for growth for Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX companies.

Baron said Tuesday morning on “Squawk Box” that he believes “there’s 10 times more to go” with Tesla. He also said SpaceX, a privately held company, will grow by a multiple of 20 in the next 10 years. He previously predicted similar growth for Tesla.

Over the years I have been covering electric vehicles, I’ve seen several companies attempt to add value to EVs by using swappable battery packs.

The idea is that if charging takes longer than refueling a tank of gas, we could just swap a battery pack for a fully charged one.

Continue reading “Nio might have figured out battery swap for electric cars as it completes 500,000 swaps” »

A new way of making large sheets of high-quality, atomically thin graphene could lead to ultra-lightweight, flexible solar cells, and to new classes of light-emitting devices and other thin-film electronics.

It sounds like something from a sci-fi movie, but the newly revealed Shadow-Effect Energy Generator (SEG) is a real prototype device. The fascinating concept could help us to transform the way renewable energy is generated indoors.

The SEG uses the contrast between darkness and light to produce electricity. It’s made up of a series of thin strips of gold film on a silicon wafer, placed on top of a flexible plastic base.

Whereas shadows are usually a problem for renewable solar energy production, here they’re actually harnessed to keep on generating power. The technology — which is cheaper to produce than a typical solar cell, according to its developers — produces small amounts of power and could be used in mobile gadgets, for example.

Russian President Vladimir Putin of Russia declared a state of emergency in a region of northern Siberia after a huge oil spill last week turned a river crimson. It is threatening significant damage to the Arctic region. [ 317 more words ].

Norilsk Nickel is the world’s largest producer of platinum and nickel.

The company, along with the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, dispatched hundreds of personnel to clean up the spill. So far, Norilsk Nickel said they had managed to gather up only around 340 tons of the oil.

Continue reading “Russia declares state of emergency after Arctic oil spill” »

In this new installment of our series on the highest-mileage Tesla Model X (and one of the highest mileage EVs in the world), we look into battery degradation and replacement on a Tesla with over 400,000 miles.

Earlier this year, I bought one of the cheapest and most high-mileage Tesla Model X vehicles ever.

Continue reading “A look at Tesla battery degradation and replacement after 400,000 miles” »

The number of startup companies and the amount of investment dollars going into the field of cultivated meat has exceeded—and will likely continue to exceed—annual exponential growth.

As we race to find sustainable ways to feed the world’s insatiable appetite for meat, the field of cultivated meat has exceeded annual exponential growth— more than doubling every year in terms of the number of startup companies and investment dollars. In late 2015, one startup raised a few hundred thousand dollars. In 2020, there are dozens of cultivated meat companies around the world pursuing everything from shrimp and bluefin tuna to steak and kangaroo.

This year, the sector took another significant step forward when cultivated meat first-mover Memphis Meats closed a $161 million Series B funding round from lead investors Softbank, Norwest, and Temasek. This amount is greater than all other publicly disclosed investments in cultivated meat companies combined and brings total investment in the startup to $181 million.

Continue reading “Huge $161 Million Investment Means Meat Without the Animal Is Here” »