Nanoscale engineering achieves record solar efficiency

Improving solar cells nanostructure with lithium and kesterite.

Researchers develop a resilient electric-hydrogen charging station for EVs.

How can heat from mushrooming data centres can be used in ways other than wasting water.

Weighing up Building-Integrated Photovoltaics in Northern Europe.

Photovoltaics is smashing through efficiency levels

Nanowires for energy storage

Sustainability: Doing it for ourselves

Balancing hydropower ecology

When vast swathes of plastic debris wash up on beaches, the world takes notice. Less visible, but no less serious, are the millions of plastic pellets — tiny raw-material beads used to manufacture everyday products — that spill into the ocean during transport. A recent study from Heerlen in Limburg takes a deep dive into this overlooked pollutant, mapping how spills happen and why they persist.

Adding Zinc compounds to plastic makes sunlight break it down

Revaluing afforestation

Most renewable energy stories focus on wind and solar, but the oceans are an immense, underused source of power. Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a technology that captures the natural temperature difference between warm surface water and cold deep water to generate electricity. It’s a renewable supply that is predictable and constant — unlike wind and sun. The challenge? Designing OTEC systems that are efficient, economical, and practical enough to compete with other clean energy sources.

Controlling solar panels' preferred light frequencies.

Generating hydrogen from water in the air

Lithium-ion batteries may dominate today’s clean energy storage, but they come with problems: they rely on scarce lithium and cobalt, and their costs are tied to volatile supply chains. That is why researchers have long looked to sodium — far more abundant and geographically widespread — as a promising alternative. Until now, however, sodium metal batteries have struggled with stability and short lifetimes.

Hydrogen is often hailed as the clean fuel of the future, but making it sustainably is a puzzle that researchers worldwide are racing to solve. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen with daylight (photocatalysis) has long been seen as one of the most elegant answers. Yet, practical challenges have kept this vision out of reach: the reactions are slow, electrons and protons don’t always go where they should, and much of the captured light goes to waste.

Perovskite cells last longer when replacing an additive.

E Coli makes PET alternative

A lighter metal burden for offshore wind

Microplastics — tiny fragments of plastic less than a millimeter across — are now firmly embedded in one of the least disturbed ecosystems in Europe: forests. A new study by researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt finds that forest soils in central Germany are accumulating significant amounts of these particles, largely through the simple act of filtering the air.

Germans organise hydrolysis for better hydrogen production

Plastic waste is one of the world’s most persistent environmental headaches. Billions of tonnes of it clog landfills and oceans, with recycling systems struggling to keep pace. But a new study points to an unexpected future for discarded plastics: transforming them into single-atom catalysts — powerful materials used in clean energy and environmental technologies. What’s New Here The researchers developed a…

Reimagining the North Sea for offshore wind power.

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