Explore the Energy section of The Pulse for in-depth coverage of clean power, storage solutions and emerging technologies.
Electricity floating on water sounds like science fiction, right? But this is the reality on a calm reservoir in Albania, and it’s not your standard solar…
A Tibetan Plateau-based solar plant is altering the environment. Its position at 11,000 feet above sea level means the thousands of panels overlook fragile alpine ecosystems.…
Every autumn, billions of birds pour south across the United States, following rivers, coastlines and the glint of open water far below. For millions of years,…
Solar panels love the direct midday sun, but they’re not fans of angles. It’s a flaw that energy engineers have been trying to work around since…
Far out in the German North Sea, the Global Tech I wind farm towers above the water. There are 80 turbines whose only job is to…
Stand in the middle of Abu Dhabi’s western desert on a July afternoon and the ground temperature can climb past 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Nothing lingers in the…
For more than a century, a wind turbine had one job, to turn moving air into electricity. Engineers now want the same towers to do a…
Every month, the power bill arrives and the same question follows it. Solar panels help, and big wind farms help more, but for a family with…
Rain almost never reaches the deep Sahara. Some corners of it go years between storms, and the sand simply waits. It is the emptiest large place…
Farmers are combining green energy and agriculture, and it looks like a win-win for all stakeholders. But the sprawling solar panels being installed over crops have…
In the dry heart of California’s Central Valley lives a fox so small it could sit in a shoebox. The San Joaquin kit fox once ranged…
It has no brain, no bones, no heart and no blood. It is about 95 percent water, a drifting bag of jelly that cannot swim against a…
Solar panels are not known for their aesthetic appeal. They are dark, unattractive, uniform blocks that clash with modern and historic architecture. There have been many…
The local weather report northwest of Beijing is being rewritten by a green energy installation. Scientists tracked the progress of the Shangyi Wind Farm in Zhangjiakou…
Picture every interstate you have ever driven in America: the long flat stretches through Nevada, the elevated ribbons over Houston, the foggy corridors of the Appalachians.…
In the summer of 1887, the grandest street in Cleveland watched a strange tower rise behind one of its mansions. Neighbors traded rumors all season, some…
Traditional solar panels have always had a weakness. And it means they miss out on hours of prime sunlight every day. But a fresh technology has…
Solar panels look as innocuous as can be, quietly going about their business under the sun. But on the steep slopes of Pennsylvania, it was a…
You would think that dropping huge wind turbines into the ocean would scare away all the wildlife. That’s not what happened in the North Sea. It…
Wind turbines are at the top of the renewable energy industry. But is their footprint as light as we think? An important new study has explained an…
Picture a plain wooden fence running along the edge of a yard in Newburgh, Indiana. Nothing about it looks special until you realize every slat is…
Picture a backyard in rural Ohio, the grass still wet from the night before, and a white tower rising about sixty feet above the garden beds.…
Wind turbines are a vital cog in the green energy machine. But they have a flip side. The blades kill thousands of birds all over the…
High in the Swiss Alps, on a concrete dam wall more than 8,000 feet above the sea, someone bolted thousands of solar panels to a place…
A site in Georgia looked like the perfect place for a solar farm. But the rain came and undid the developers’ plans. Stewart County was looking…
The “Top of the World” sounds like the perfect spot to build a wind farm. This was the plan in Wyoming, where the wind howls with…
Offshore wind farm engineers know what to expect from the North Sea floor. After doing so much installation work there, they’re familiar with the sand and…
Picture the smallest power plant you have ever seen: two solar panels clipped to a balcony railing, humming away in the afternoon sun, feeding electricity straight…
Picture it: a compact spiral of blades spinning on your rooftop, working through the night while your solar panels sleep, shaving hundreds of dollars off your…
Futuristic wind turbines are spinning high on a Welsh mountain, looming over centuries of history. But there’s something hidden beneath the access roads, an ancient feature…
An active construction site in Italy had to suddenly halt operations. Land in Vasto was being prepped for a solar plant when shovels struck something massive…
Just outside London, on a huge reservoir of drinking water, something unusual floats on the surface. Thousands of dark solar panels sit on the water, tethered…
Wind turbines have become one of the great symbols of a clean future, tall, white and turning slowly on the horizon. We were told they were clean,…
Green energy projects are all about the future. But a new wind farm in Germany headed in the opposite direction. Workers excavating in the area between…
On September 28, 2022, one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the United States came ashore in southwest Florida. Hurricane Ian was a Category…
The point was green energy for Oregon. The result was a road hazard. A new 58-acre solar farm went online on a steep hill, and the…
Drive past a wind farm on an open stretch of American highway and the turbines look like the cleanest thing in the world. Each blade cuts…
On millions of American roofs, a solar panel is steadily doing exactly what it was sold to do. It turns sunlight into power, asks for almost…
The Mojave Desert is known for its size and heat levels. It’s not surprising that it was picked as a spot to generate clean energy. In…
A new Cambridgeshire project was about to get underway. The planning stage was over, and heavy machinery rolled in to start working a 76-acre site. The…
Picture a solar farm stretching to the horizon over old American ranchland. Rows of dark panels, baking in the afternoon sun, silent and still. You expect…
The sky was perfect, with 84 neat turbines lined up on the horizon ready to harness the wind. The engineering was flawless. The wind was moving…
County Durham in England needed a major solar energy project, so a quiet field was set aside. Engineers went to work, and the site was well…
Dodge County has 36 massive wind turbines in Dodge County to boost the region’s clean energy supply. But they were built less than 20 miles from…
The buzz of modern machinery ground to a halt at a solar construction site in Germany. The earth revealed a chamber that had been hidden since…
Pilots flying over the North Sea expect the calm waters they’ve become accustomed to. But these days, the view from the cockpit is changing. Denmark’s Horns…
There is probably a fence running along the edge of your yard right now. It keeps the dog in, the neighbors out, and does absolutely nothing…
The ice desert of Antarctica is as brutal as it gets. Survival is a constant battle against the elements. A group of birds turned researchers’ expectations…
More than 43 miles off the coast of southern China, the South China Sea does something the coastline cannot: it never stops blowing. Out there, the…
The wilderness of Patagonia is as rugged as it gets. But the previously untouched, semi-arid steppe land now hosts 636-foot energy giants. Engineers expected that wildlife…
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