Greener Materials & Processes

‘It keeps on going’: driving the world’s first production-ready solar car

The Guardian: Winding past the ochre-coloured plateaux of the Bardenas Reales natural park in northern Spain, Roel Grooten nudged me to take my foot off the accelerator. The car continued…

Flexible perosvkite solar cell sets efficiency record

C&EN: Aperovskite solar cell has set a new efficiency record for flexible thin-film photovoltaics, with an independently-verified power conversion efficiency of 24.4%, (Nat. Energy 2022, DOI: 10.1038/s41560-022-01045-2). The device is a tandem cell, and beats the previous flexible thin-film champ…

Nuclear waste energy could power the US for a century, scientist says

E&T Magazine: There is enough energy in the nuclear waste in the United States to power the entire country for 100 years with clean energy, according to Jess C. Gehin from the Idaho National Laboratory. Scientists have long known the potential…

How Fashion Giants Recast Plastic as Good for the Planet

New York Times: It’s soft. It’s vegan. It looks just like leather. It’s also made from fossil fuels. An explosion in the use of inexpensive, petroleum-based materials has transformed the fashion industry, aided by the successful rebranding of synthetic materials like plastic…