Lifeboat Foundation

A WISE driver keeps an eye on the fuel gauge, to make timely stops at filling stations. For drivers of electric cars, though, those stations are few and far between. The infrastructure needed for refilling batteries has yet to be developed, and the technology which that infrastructure will use is still up for grabs. Most electric cars are fitted with plugs. But plugs and their associated cables and charging points bring problems. The cables are trip hazards. The charging points add to street clutter. And the copper wire involved is an invitation to thieves. Many engineers would therefore like to develop a second way of charging electric vehicles—one that is wireless and can thus be buried underground.

Electrical induction, the underlying principle behind wireless charging, was discovered by Michael Faraday in 1831, and is widely used in things such as electric motors and generators. Faraday observed that moving a conductor through a magnetic field induced a current in that conductor. Subsequent investigations showed that this also works if the conductor is stationary and the magnetic field is moving. Since electric currents generate magnetic fields, and if the current alternates so does the field, an alternating current creates a field that is continuously moving. This means that running such a current through a conductor will induce a similar current in another, nearby, conductor. That induced current can then be used for whatever purpose an engineer chooses.

Imagine printing off a wristband that charges your smartphone or electric car with cheap supplies from a local hardware store.

That’s the direction materials research is heading at Brunel University London where scientists have become the first to simply and affordably 3D print a flexible, wearable ‘battery’.

The technique opens the way for novel designs for super-efficient, wearable power for phones, electric cars, medical implants like pacemakers and more.

Tesla is bringing life-saving solar power to Puerto Rico.

Toshiba’s next-generation SCiB lithium-ion battery could give electric cars a 200-mile range after recharging for just six minutes.

Should definitely be worked on. Eventually the same stuff could be used to reverse engineer/terraform Venus.

When politicians talk about the Paris Climate Agreement, it’s usually framed in terms of restrictions on emissions for states and businesses. But the Paris Agreement wasn’t just an agreement to regulate — it was also an agreement to innovate. That’s because most experts agree that the world won’t be able to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, unless there’s a way to physically remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.

A Swiss startup called Climeworks has made that their goal, developing the most advanced carbon-capture technology to date. VICE News went to Switzerland to see how the technology works and hear how the business plans to tackle climate change. Problem is, what Climeworks is doing isn’t cheap.

Continue reading “Sucking CO2 from the atmosphere could save the planet — but it isn’t cheap” »

China is leading the world in solar power installations by a long run. ASECEA is predicting that 50GW of solar power is well within reach of being installed this year. In June and July of 2017, China installed 25GW of solar power – and they’ll push the globe past 100GW total for the year.

At China’s ‘State of the Union address’ equivalent, just yesterday, president Xi Jinping said, “Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us… this is a reality we have to face.”

“Taking a driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change, China has become an important participant, contributor, and torchbearer in the global endeavor for ecological civilization,” said President Xi Jinping, and that China must “develop a new model of modernization with humans developing in harmony with nature.”

Continue reading “China breaking all solar power records, aiming for 50GW in 2017” »

You could drive past and never see the only farm in San Carlos, California. The tiny city of 30,000 that sits between San Francisco and Silicon Valley has all the charms of suburbia—sprawling office parks and single-story homes—but doesn’t seem a likely suspect for agriculture.

The farm, run by startup Iron Ox, is nestled between three stonemasons and a plumber in a nondescript office park building; there’s no greenhouse, no rows of freshly-tilled soil, or tractor parked outside. Only peeking in the large bay door reveals the building’s tenants: a few hundred plants and two brightly-colored robot farmers.

Iron Ox looks a lot like a tech company. One of its co-founder is an ex-Google engineer and it raised $1.5 million in pre-seed venture capital from Y Combinator, Pathbreaker, and Cherubic Ventures in April 2016. Instead of fake food, or plant-based meat meals, or even a food delivery service tethered to an app, Iron Ox is reinventing farming, raising real, not faux, food. Think hydroponically raised lettuce and basil, like what you’d get at an ordinary farmers market.

NASA’s OCO-2 satellite has detected a dramatic spike in global atmospheric carbon dioxide, and overheated tropical forests are partly to blame.

With the EV market about to explode and the European Union planning a battery-making consortium to bring the continent onto the global EV battery scene, Stanford researchers released a paper claiming their sodium battery could compete with the lithium-ion market leader.

New battery development has been fairly slow against the backdrop of the projected electric car market size, and so far no innovation has proved to be as economical as lithium-ion. The Stanford battery uses sodium—a cheaper, more abundant material than lithium—and is still in the development stages.

Sodium makes up the Stanford battery’s cathode, and the anode is made from phosphorus, with the addition of a compound called myo-inositol, which can be derived from rice bran or corn. According to the researchers, this chemical combination yields efficiency rates comparable to that of lithium-ion batteries at a lower cost—a much lower cost.

Continue reading “There’s a new challenger to lithium batteries” »