Investment in Taiwan’s fledgling offshore wind sector could hit NT$2.5bn ($74.3m) in 2016, with annual installations set to eventually reach 300MW in the years ahead, the government said this week.
Ben AdlerWhen was the last presidential race in which the two leading candidates for a major party’s nomination aggressively competed over who has the best plan to address climate change? Oh, right, never. But 2016 is a new era. This week, the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns talked smack to each other on social media, fighting for the hearts of climate hawks. It started on Wednesday, when Sanders — who last month released a very ambitious, but legislatively focused, climate plan — challenged Clinton to detail her own plans. Over the last few months, Clinton has reacted to the candidacies of Sanders and fellow climate hawk Martin O’Malley, as well as grassroots activist pressure, by moving left on a couple of key climate issues. After years of avoiding…
adminTo limit climate change, experts say that we need to reach carbon neutrality by the end of this century at the latest. To achieve that goal, our dependence on fossil fuels must be reversed. But what energy source will take its place? Researchers report that they just might have the answer: blue-green algae.
adminHigh-performance lithium ion batteries face a major problem: Lithium will eventually start to run out as batteries are deployed in electric cars and stationary storage units. Researchers have now discovered an alternative: the “fool’s gold battery”. It consists of iron, sulfur, sodium and magnesium – all elements that are in plentiful supply. This means that giant storage batteries could be built on the cheap and used stationary in buildings or next to power plants, for instance.
adminDecember flooding has wreaked havoc on two community hydroelectric projects in Lancashire, England. In Halton, on Dec. 6, the River Lune floodwaters shut down the 100-kW Halton Lune Hydro facility at Forge Weir. Twenty days later on Dec. 26, about 40 miles southeast of Halton in Whalley, floodwaters from the River Calder knocked the 100-kW Whalley Community Hydro project offline.
adminScientists demonstrate an unconventional means to achieve more efficient and robust conversion of solar energy into electricity.
Suzanne JacobsYou know what they say — when life gives you e-waste, start a band and make sick tunes with it. Together with his band Open Reel Ensemble, Japanese programmer and musician Ei Wada uses old projectors, cathode ray television sets, tape recorders, ventilation fans, discarded computers, and any other vintage tech with bizarre noise potential to make the kind of electronic music that would make a cyberpunk swoon. According to Motherboard, Wada’s interest in music began when he was four years old and attended a gamelan concert with his family. (The influence of gamelan, a traditional form of music from Indonesia, on electronica has been well-documented.) Here’s more from Motherboard: The memory stuck, and several years later, when Wada started tinkering with…
