Lightweight, flexible materials can be used to make health-monitoring wearable devices, but powering the devices is a challenge. Using fuel cells instead of batteries could make the difference.
The capacity of woody biomass to provide the energy requirements for sub-Saharan Africa is declining. Papyrus wetlands are a sustainable source of biomass that holds potential to substitute for wood.
Millions of tonnes of food go into landfill each year.
Food waste image from www.shutterstock.com
Microbes have the ability to survive in extremely hot and cold conditions. This makes them invaluable tools for research: they can teach us how life has evolved and how we survive.
Current clean diesel technology is more than capable of meeting tough air quality rules while still delivering excellent fuel performance. Biofuels could make it even cleaner.
An ancient form of energy: a wood pellet manufacturing facility in upstate New York.
thewildcenter/flickr
Tim Baye, University of Wisconsin Colleges and the University of Wisconsin-Extension
The future of two key energy policies – the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and Renewable Fuel Standard – will decide whether bioenergy will continue to grow in US or not.
The vivid pink pools of Western Australia’s Hutt Lagoon are the world’s largest algae farm.
Steve Back (used with permission)
We have the technology to make oil from algae, rather than digging up crude oil from organisms that lived billions of years ago. But bringing it to market will take a force of economic and political will.
What if jet fuel could be grown sustainably?
Fe Ilya/Flickr
What if you could grow biofuels on land nobody wants, using just seawater and sunlight, and produce food at the same time?
The Western Treatment Plant in Werribee, Victoria, largely powers itself using biogas – a by-product of sewage treatment.
Jason Patrick Ross/Shutterstock
Could what we flush down the toilet be used to power our homes? Thanks to biogas technology, Australia’s relationship with organic waste – human and animal excreta, plant scraps and food-processing waste…