Advancements in a fuel cell technology powered by solid carbon could make electricity generation from resources such as coal and biomass cleaner and more efficient, according to a new paper published by Idaho National Laboratory researchers.
The fuel cell design incorporates innovations in three components: the anode, the electrolyte and the fuel. Together, these advancements allow the fuel cell to utilize about three times as much carbon as earlier direct carbon fuel cell (DCFC) designs.
A potential breakthrough technology is being tested in Houston—a new kind of natural-gas power plant that captures and reuses what normally goes up the smokestack: carbon dioxide, heat, and water.
If it works, NET Power’s natural-gas plant promises no carbon emissions and no water use—it produces water instead—and this is the clincher: it promises to produce electricity at a cost competitive with existing power plants.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany will have to spend more than 1 trillion euros ($1.2 trillion) to meet even the lower end of the European Union’s 2050 target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, according to a draft of a study commissioned by the BDI German industry group.
THE WIND INDUSTRY is finally seeing a phase-out of the federal subsidies that have kept it alive over the past several decades. Ending that corporate cronyism is long overdue.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump proposed new subsidies for coal and nuclear plants, it seemed like an obvious way to deliver on campaign promises to boost the nation’s energy industry.
While CO2 concentrations are now higher than they have been in at least 800,000 years, the gas still only accounts for a tiny 0.04% of our atmosphere.
However, extracting carbon dioxide from well mixed air is not just technically difficult, it's expensive as well.
Global investment in low-carbon energy reached USD 850 billion in 2016, with USD 297 billion of that flowing to renewable energy technologies and USD 231 billion to energy efficiency. Much of this investment has been underpinned by government policies and regulation targeted at supporting the shift to a low-carbon energy sector. Yet investment in the deployment of another critical climate technology – carbon capture and storage (CCS)1 – is falling well behind, with only around USD 1.2 billion invested in 2016.
