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Imagine a future with nearly silent air taxis flying above traffic jams and navigating between skyscrapers and suburban droneports. Transportation arrives at the touch of your smartphone and with minimal environmental impact. This isn’t just science fiction. United Airlines has plans for these futuristic electric air taxis in Chicago and New York. The U.S. military is already experimenting with them. And one company has a contract to launch an air taxi service in Dubai as early as 2025. Another company hopes to defy expectations and fly participants at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Backed by billions of dollars in venture capital and estab...... Read Full article on HadNews

Meet Mini-Grids — the Clean Energy Solution Bringing Power to Millions | Tombo Banda | TED In the TED Talk titled "Meet Mini-Grids — the Clean Energy Solution Bringing Power to Millions," Tombo Banda shares a personal story about the impact of electricity coming to his mother's childhood village in Zomba, Malawi. He reflects on the transformative effect it had on his family and community, from enabling longer business hours and job opportunities to providing more time for education and personal pursuits. Banda emphasizes the importance of expanding access to electricity, especially in rural areas where the traditional grid may not reach for...... Read Full article on HadNews

Panasonic’s new US$4 billion battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, is designed to be a model of sustainability – it’s an all-electric factory with no need for a smokestack. When finished, it will cover the size of 48 football fields, employ 4,000 people and produce enough advanced batteries to supply half a million electric cars per year. But there’s a catch, and it’s a big one. While the factory will run on wind and solar power much of the time, renewables supplied only 34% of the local utility Evergy’s electricity in 2023. In much of the U.S., fossil fuels still play a key role in meeting power demand. In fact, Evergy has asked permi...... Read Full article on HadNews

Small-scale solar power, also known as rooftop or distributed solar, has grown considerably in the U.S. over the past decade. It provides electricity without emitting air pollutants or climate-warming greenhouse gases, and it meets local energy demand without requiring costly investments in transmission and distribution systems. However, its expansion is making it harder for electric utilities and power grid managers to design fair and efficient retail electricity rates – the prices that households pay. Under traditional electricity pricing, customers pay one charge per kilowatt-hour of electricity consumption that covers both the en...... Read Full article on HadNews

Rechargeable batteries are great for storing energy and powering electronics from smartphones to electric vehicles. In cold environments, however, they can be more difficult to charge and may even catch on fire. I’m a mechanical engineering professor who’s been interested in batteries since college. I now lead a battery research group at Drexel University. In just this past decade, I have watched the price of lithium-ion batteries drop as the production market has grown much larger. Future projections predict the market could reach thousands of GWh per year by 2030, a significant increase. But, lithium-ion batteries aren’t perfect...... Read Full article on HadNews

Can a Simple Brick Be the Next Great Battery? | John O'Donnell | TED In the TED talk "Can a Simple Brick Be the Next Great Battery?" John O'Donnell presents an inspiring perspective on the potential of using bricks as a revolutionary solution for cutting down carbon emissions. He starts by addressing the significance of fire in our lives, particularly in industrial production, which is known to be a major contributor to fossil fuel use and carbon emissions globally. O'Donnell emphasizes the need to decarbonize our industries without deindustrializing, and introduces the concept of electrified industrial heat as a solution to this challe...... Read Full article on HadNews