Explore the Energy section of The Pulse for in-depth coverage of clean power, storage solutions and emerging technologies.
A silver eel slides into a spinning metal runner about the size of a trash can lid. It does not get chopped. It comes out the…
Four in the morning in a peach block, air temperature at the freezing mark, buds already swollen. A steel tower starts up and a 15 foot…
A pallet of retired solar panels tips sideways at a rural transfer station. Glass cracks before it even lands. Nobody on the loading dock stops it.…
Pre-construction activity and site preparation for Heritage Wind commenced in western New York in January 2026, ahead of the civil construction scheduled for later in the…
Wildfires create so much smoke that it covers mountainsides and doesn’t stop at highways, towns, or park borders. Under smoky skies, animals keep eating or migrating…
A concrete channel 98 feet long and 5 feet wide, filled with fresh water to a depth of 5 feet. Three paddles at one end, a…
Sections of white shell lying in a harvested field, stacked and settling into the dirt. Rain had run down them in long stains and corn stubble…
A small turbine sat at the mouth of Sequim Bay, Washington. Underwater cameras watched every fish, bird and seal that came near it. Again and again,…
A trap waits at the end of a pipe on a small stream in Maine. Water rushes through it toward a spinning wheel of metal. Somewhere…
The pipe comes off a geothermal well hot enough to scald, carrying water thick with dissolved rock. Within weeks a crust starts to form on the…
Many solar farms express themselves through the electricity they produce. However, there is a different kind of narrative that exists across the surface of the Görlsdorf…
The eel came out of the metal tube still moving, long and silver, like nothing had happened to it at all. It had just been pushed…
Seabirds and offshore wind farms share the same airspace. For years, that has raised concerns about collisions with turbine blades. An operating turbine off the coast…
The nest sits on an island in a shallow lake, and this spring it held two restless chicks. Beyond the water stands a line of wind…
A section of wind turbine blade sits on a stand as a trade fair exhibit. It is a demonstrator, not a working blade. Along its front…
Wind power companies in Scotland modified the design of the Beinn an Tuirc wind farm project to ensure protection of the golden eagle territory around the…
A bird radar sits in wet farmland on Germany’s North Sea coast, sweeping the dark. A few hundred yards away, five tall turbines turn. Cameras on…
Drawing a fence onto a building plan is measured in minutes. Deer paths often take years to develop. This contrast shaped the development of the solar…
A boat crossing that stretch of open water would have seen almost nothing at all. Just under the surface, a chunk of broken fiberglass was riding…
A pair of yellow spikes caught the afternoon light above a Maine highway. Below them, a wooden crossarm carried electricity to more than 5,000 homes. Fifty…
Very few people would expect a wind turbine to become part of an amphibian habitat. Wind turbines produce electricity high above the ground. Amphibians require shallow…
A council truck idled at a crossroads, waiting its turn. Ahead, something impossibly long was easing through the intersection. It had already traveled most of a…
No one watches a wind turbine after sunset. The turbines continue to spin. The bats continue to fly. What occurs when both meet in the air…
A thin red line creeps across the back of a cracked solar panel on a lab bench. No chemical bath waits nearby. No furnace hums in…
A neighbor in Plymouth, Massachusetts felt his house shake just before two in the afternoon. He later described the rumble as something like a mini earthquake.…
Land that had once been used for farming sat untouched, surrounded by miles of unbroken fields, northeast of Berlin. This changed dramatically when a large-scale solar…
Pipe turning in a pool of lamplight, mud flinging off the joint in a thin fan. Pine forest beyond the derrick legs, and under the decking…
Off the Dutch coast, a wind farm built around birds and bats has started generating electricity. Although generating electricity is an important part of the wind…
A flatbed pulls off the hill track with a sawn length of blade strapped across it, white and hollow and lighter than it looks. Behind it,…
A drill bit spins into rock hot enough to melt lead. It does not stop. Forest covers the slopes above it, and pipe racks stand in…
Not all solar parks include spaces for wildlife. The wildlife aspect of the Aller Langport Solar Park was included when the project was designed. The site…
The torch moves along the plate at walking speed and the slag comes off in a bright spray. Under it is a wall of mill steel…
Most discussions about offshore wind farms focus on the electricity they generate. At Denmark’s Anholt Offshore Wind Farm, the focus shifted from the turbines above to…
A blade nearly as long as a football field lies on its side in an English port, waiting for a boat. It looks like any other…
Solar energy projects based in Devon have proposed the development of a 50-megawatt solar energy project using land that has been reserved solely for the nesting…
It is about as long as a forearm and it is clamped to a bench. The outer skin is split reed, woven by hand into the…
Researchers from Switzerland used state-of-the-art bird radar systems in the Gotthard Pass wind farm for monitoring large groups of birds moving along the Alpine migratory corridors.…
The water in the channel runs hard enough to push a loaded fishing boat sideways. About 125 miles up the same bay, a five story steel…
The buoy looks almost comic bobbing in the long channel, a stubby yellow cylinder rolling and dipping as a man made wave rushes toward it. Thin…
Material scientists in China have developed a slow-curing epoxy that gets applied to perovskite ink material. Solvent-based solar cells usually form pinholes and feature uneven grain…
The sea off Orkney runs fast enough to turn two underwater rotors 66 feet across. A technician on a small workboat watches two steel arms swing…
There’s an overarching challenge to all low-wind turbines. The goal is to capture more energy from available wind resources. Low-wind areas were previously uneconomic because turbines…
A net comes up heavy in a tidal creek on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Something close to eight feet long thrashes inside the mesh. It takes four…
Black smoke was already standing over the building when the first crews pulled in. Customers and staff were out in the parking lot. Nobody was hurt.…
Ten miles off the coast of Leucate, three floating platforms sit in the open Mediterranean, each carrying a turbine whose rotor spans more than 500 feet.…
Northwestern University scientists created a two-molecule fluid solution capable of fixing structural faults in perovskite solar cells without leading to chemical aggregation. By adding bulky molecular…
The rocks along Water Street in Brunswick, Maine went silver over one weekend this fall. Small river herring lay scattered along the shore. A local advocate…
In New York, construction crews are building a vast solar canopy system rated at 784 kilowatts DC (with a 480-kilowatt AC output) located above an uncovered…
The Northwestern University engineers have developed an innovative new wearable platform. Eyeglasses are another common item that millions of people use every day. They can now…
A pump hums on the Atlantic coast, pulling seawater in to cool a nuclear reactor. One ordinary Friday, it just stopped. Nothing broke. No alarm needed…
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