Alaska’s capital orders evacuations as record glacial flooding threatens homes.
Juneau braces for record Mendenhall Glacier flooding as climate change drives faster glacial melt and billions of gallons surge toward homes.
Category: sustainability – Page 5
Building energy model offers cities decarbonization roadmap
A new software tool developed by Cornell researchers can model a small city’s building energy use within minutes on a standard laptop, then run simulations to help policymakers prioritize the most cost-effective approaches to decarbonization.
Using the City of Ithaca, New York, as a case study, the urban building energy model quickly mapped more than 5,000 residential and commercial buildings and their baseline energy use. Simulated investments in weatherization, electric heat pumps and rooftop solar panels, while also factoring in financial incentives, generated insights that are informing city efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.
The tool’s automated workflow, accessibility and accuracy—without advanced computing power—could be particularly valuable for smaller cities that lack resources and expertise dedicated to decarbonization, the researchers said. But they said the new model—now also supporting the county that surrounds Ithaca—could be further scaled up to serve big cities or an entire state.
Quasi-solid electrolyte developed for safer and greener lithium-ion batteries
3D-SLISE is a quasi-solid electrolyte developed at the Institute of Science Tokyo, which enables safe, fast-charging/discharging of 2.35 V lithium-ion batteries to be fabricated under ambient conditions. With energy-efficient manufacturing using raw materials free from flammable organic solvents, the technique eliminates the need for dry rooms or high-temperature processing. Moreover, it also allows direct recovery of active materials through water dispersal—ensuring a sustainable, recyclable approach to battery production.
In today’s era of portable power and clean energy, lithium-ion batteries form the backbone of modern technology—powering everything from smartphones to electric vehicles. While demand for lithium-ion batteries continues to grow, so do concerns about their safety, environmental impact, and recyclability. Most lithium-ion batteries that rely on flammable organic solvents are energy-intensive to manufacture, and require complicated recycling processes. These issues not only drive up costs but also pose serious safety and environmental risks —highlighting the need for safer and cleaner alternatives.
To address this challenge, a research team from Institute of Science Tokyo (Science Tokyo), Japan, led by Specially Appointed Professor Yosuke Shiratori and Associate Professor Shintaro Yasui from the Zero-Carbon Energy Research Institute, Science Tokyo, developed a new quasi-solid electrolyte called 3D-Slime Interface Quasi-Solid Electrolyte (3D-SLISE), which can transform battery manufacturing. With a simple borate-water matrix, the electrolyte supports the production of 2.35 V lithium-ion batteries under standard air conditions. The detailed findings of the study were made available in the journal Advanced Materials on July 9, 2025.
Black metal could give a heavy boost to solar power generation
In the quest for energy independence, researchers have studied solar thermoelectric generators (STEGs) as a promising source of solar electricity generation. Unlike the photovoltaics currently used in most solar panels, STEGs can harness all kinds of thermal energy in addition to sunlight. The simple devices have hot and cold sides with semiconductor materials in between, and the difference in temperature between the sides generates electricity through a physical phenomenon known as the Seebeck effect.
But current STEGs have major efficiency limitations preventing them from being more widely adopted as a practical form of energy production. Right now, most solar thermoelectric generators convert less than 1% of sunlight into electricity, compared to roughly 20% for residential solar panel systems.
That gap in efficiency has been dramatically reduced through new techniques developed by researchers at the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics.
Scientists Invent Plastic That Nature Eats 2,800 Feet Underwater
Scientists have unveiled a new biodegradable plastic that vanishes in one of the harshest environments on Earth—the deep sea.
In an experiment nearly 3,000 feet underwater, a bioengineered material called LAHB broke down while conventional plastics stayed intact. Deep-sea microbes not only colonized the plastic’s surface, but actively digested it using specialized enzymes, turning it into harmless byproducts. This breakthrough suggests a promising solution to the global plastic crisis, especially in oceans where most waste lingers for decades or centuries.
Global plastic waste problem still looms.
US turns former nuclear plant into low-energy polysilicon facility
US turns old nuclear site into polysilicon hub to produce 11 GW of solar cells yearly.
Former US nuclear plant site to be transformed into a polysilicon hub with energy-efficient production and renewable infrastructure.
Next-generation solar cells could soon harvest indoor light for battery-free devices
An international team led by UCL researchers has developed durable new solar cells capable of efficiently harvesting energy from indoor light, meaning that devices such as keyboards, remote controls, alarms and sensors could soon be battery-free.
The team used a material called perovskite, which is increasingly used in outdoor solar panels, and unlike traditional silicon-based solar panels, has the potential to be used indoors as well as its composition can be adjusted to better absorb the specific wavelengths of indoor light.
A major drawback of perovskite, however, is that it contains tiny defects in its crystal structure —known as traps—that can cause electrons to get stuck before their energy can be harnessed. These defects not only interrupt the flow of electricity but also contribute to the material’s degradation over time.