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Can Germany Wean Itself Off Russian Gas?
Experts are divided on how quickly Germany could cut imports of Russian energy and stop funding President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. How vulnerable would such a move leave Europe’s largest economy?
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The Ukrainian Economy: Where Now for the Future?
An expert has warned that the impact of the war will be disastrous for the Ukrainian economy, regardless of the outcome. “War will always have a catastrophic impact. As you’d expect, production is collapsing, and the economy has given up percentages of GDP growth,” says a Cambridge University professor who is an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Zelensky.
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Pivotal Battery Discovery Could Benefit Transportation, the Grid
Researchers uncover new avenue for overcoming the performance decline that occurs with repeated charge-discharge cycling in the cathodes of next generation batteries.
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Coastal Home Buyers Are Ignoring Rising Flood Risks, Despite Clear Warnings and Rising Insurance Premiums
Homebuyers along the U.S. coasts can check each property’s flood risk as easily as they check the size of the bedrooms – most coastal real estate listings now include future flood risk details that take climate change into account. In Apollo Beach, for example, many of the properties are at least 9 out of 10 on the flood risk scale. That knowledge isn’t stopping homebuyers, though.
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Predicting, Managing EV Charging Growth to Keep Electricity Grids Reliable, Affordable
With a growing fleet of EVs on the road, grid planners depend on accurate estimates of charging patterns to calculate electricity demand. A team of researchers at Stanford University assembled a scalable probabilistic model for charging demand that can be applied to a flexible array of populations and account for a wide range of factors.
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Targeted demand response reduces price volatility of electric grid
To reduce the energy load during supply constraints on the Texas power grid, it is not necessary to reduce the energy load in high population centers such as Houston and Dallas. Instead, when supply is strained, focusing on a few strategic locations across the state outside of those high-population areas is much more cost-effective and can have a greater impact on the price volatility of the grid.
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Groundwater Levels Fall Across Western and Central Kansas
Average groundwater levels across western and central Kansas fell by more than a foot in 2021, with the greatest declines in the southwest portion of the state. “The entire state is currently in some stage of drought and even with recent snowfalls, I bet it remains that way,” one expert said.
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Green Rare-Earth Recycling Goes Commercial
Rare earths are essential ingredients in the magnets that power many technologies people rely on today, such as cell phones, computers, electric vehicles, and wind turbines. Researchers have developed a novel way to extract rare earth elements (rare earths) from the high-powered magnets in electronic waste (e-waste).
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Ultrafast Devices to Protecting the Grid from EMPs
Scientists from Sandia National Laboratories have announced a tiny, electronic device that can shunt excess electricity within a few billionths of a second while operating at a record-breaking 6,400 volts — a significant step towards protecting the nation’s electric grid from an electromagnetic pulse.
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Could Nuclear Power Cut Europe’s Dependence on Russian Energy?
The war in Ukraine has set off a rush in Europe to find alternatives to Russian oil and gas. Some are calling for an expansion of nuclear power.
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Texas Cold Snap Highlights Need for Improved Power Systems
The greatest demand for electricity in Texas is traditionally during the hottest days of the year, when air conditioners turn on full blast to beat the heat. But in February 2021, an unusually long spell of cold weather took the region by surprise. With extreme weather events rising in frequency, the need for a prepared modern energy grid grows.
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Texas Warns Firms They Could Lose State Contracts for Divesting from Fossil Fuels
A new law prohibits the state from contracting with or investing in companies that divest from oil, natural gas and coal companies.
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As Sea Levels Rise, Coastal Megacities Will Need More Than Flood Barriers
Sea level rise is expected to worsen in the next few decades, especially for many of the world’s largest cities in lower and middle income countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. These cities are already improving their infrastructure. But most of the focus remains on big engineering solutions (like flood walls and embankments) rather than a more holistic plans.
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Electric Truck Hydropower: Flexible Solution to Hydropower in Mountainous Regions
Mountain regions have a large potential for hydropower that cannot be harnessed effectively by conventional technologies. Researchers developed an innovative hydropower technology based on electric trucks that could provide a flexible and clean solution for electricity generation in mountainous regions.
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Armored Transformer Barrier Protects Electric Power Grid
A 2013 sniper attack on an electric power substation in Northern California, which caused more than $15 million in damages and destroyed 17 transformers, led researchers to develop a novel protective solution: the Armored Transformer Barrier system.
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The long view
Preparing National Security Officials for the Challenges of AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of several rapidly emerging technologies that promise to disrupt not only multiple sectors of the U.S. economy but also the manner in which the U.S. government carries out its foundational responsibility to protect national security consistent with the rule of law and constitutional values. Steve Bunnell writes that “The United States’ national security apparatus is not known for nimbleness, nor is the law that governs it. When it comes to AI, the risk is not just that our generals will fight tomorrow’s war with yesterday’s strategy but also that the United States will lack the legal and policy guardrails that are essential to a lawful, accountable, and ethical protection of the nation’s security.”
Food Production Vulnerable to Cyberattacks
Wide-ranging use of smart technologies is raising global agricultural production but cyber experts warn this digital-age phenomenon could reap a crop of another kind – cybersecurity attacks.
Emerging Hydrogen Storage Technology to Increase Energy Resilience
With the rise in renewable energy as well as increasing uncertainty associated with outages due to power surges and extreme weather events, energy storage plays a key role in ensuring reliable power supply to critical infrastructure such as healthcare facilities, data centers, and telecommunications. New study assesses cost competitiveness of metal-organic framework materials to store hydrogen for large-scale backup power applications.
The "Rock-to-Metal Ratio" of Critical Minerals
A new metric to quantify the amount of waste rock generated by mining for minerals essential to 21st century society has been created by the U.S. Geological Survey and Apple.
Diminishing Snowmelt to Make Colorado, Utah, Wyoming Resemble the Arid Southwest
New research predicts that changes in mountain snowmelt will shift peak stream flows to much earlier in the year for the vast Colorado River Basin, altering reservoir management and irrigation across the entire region. As a result, upper basin in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming may more closely resemble the arid Southwest.
Challenges to Tidal Flats Pose Risks to 41M Americans Living in Coastal Counties
About 29 percent of the United States’ population live in coastline counties – more than 41 million are in Atlantic counties. This high population density poses a critical challenge to sustainable developments in coastal areas.