Explore the Energy section of The Pulse for in-depth coverage of clean power, storage solutions and emerging technologies.
The cubes were already stacked in a Colorado lab, waiting for the reactor. They had been part of a wind turbine blade not long before. Six…
In 2026, Seattle City Light signed a groundbreaking agreement regarding the relicensing of its three-dam Skagit River Hydroelectric Project, located in the North Cascades of Washington.…
The mast does not spin. It sways, slowly and steadily, like a lamppost in a gust, while the base stays bolted to the ground. No blades…
Springtime brings hundreds of thousands of fish to a place that was meant for no such thing. The Holyoke Dam spans the Connecticut River (and generates…
The recorders went on just after sundown, aimed at the sky above rows of solar panels on flat farmland. No one had to stand out in…
A pale grey wall holds back a parking lot near downtown Des Moines, and most people who walk past it never give it a second look.…
The China Three Gorges Corporation successfully installed the biggest single-unit floating wind energy generation platform in the world on the coast of Guangdong Province. Located 40…
There is a major problem for every wind farm developed in northern Europe. The wind often continues to blow throughout winter. The turbines do not always…
The retired panel weighs about 40 pounds and carries silver, copper and silicon that nobody wants to bury. For most of its working life it sat…
In Jobos, Puerto Rico, the clean energy firm AES installed 1,396 prefabricated 5B Maverick solar arrays that generate 69 megawatts of peak renewable energy when commercial operations…
Lay the panel flat on a bench and it looks like every other solar module made in the last two decades. The iridescent surface, the thin…
A researcher observed fish gathering beneath the floating solar panels as the water warmed. The study took place on a pond in Ontario, Canada. The team…
The bog in northern Germany looked like a farm field, because that is what it had been for decades. Drained and flattened, the peat had dried…
The water around the turbine leg looked empty. It always does, from the surface of the North Sea in winter. But a bottle dipped into the…
PPC Group has constructed an enormous 550-megawatt solar array covering the abandoned opencast lignite mines of Ptolemaida in Northern Greece. The power station utilizes about 950,000…
A vessel picks its way between rotating blades, deckhands hauling dripping nets over the gunwale. The fronds are dark green and heavy, cold, smelling of open…
Hydroelectric power reservoirs have imposed a new challenge on rivers; one that they would have faced alone if left untouched. Evolution has allowed young salmon migrating…
Engineers in northern Idaho are designing a unique upstream fish passage facility for the Albeni Falls Dam on the Pend Oreille River. Built in 1955, the…
The hail came through in three separate storms inside twelve hours. One large solar farm in Fort Bend County, Texas lost thousands of panels. Other large…
At the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a huge solar power plant was commissioned for full commercial operation. In collaboration with CrossBoundary…
Dams are constantly forced to choose between two things. Hydroelectric dams create electricity by using flowing water to turn turbines. Flowing water is essential for the…
The panel lying on the bench looks almost ordinary. But the seal at its edge was never melted shut. No heat gun, no solvent drum, no…
The size of a turbine dictates how easy or difficult it will be to build and deploy. At the Janneby-Süderzollhaus wind farm in Germany, the newest…
A bat crosses the sweep of a turbine blade somewhere over North America on an autumn night. For years the assumption was simple: heading south for…
At their core, many solar farms rely on a straightforward concept. Generate electricity during the day. Transfer that electricity into the grid. Do all that again…
The field was running normally on a Tuesday morning in late winter. No storm front was moving through Kay County. Weather records showed no significant wind…
Photovoltaic developers typically make an early call when deciding on the type of mounting system for a field of solar panels. Some projects move the entire…
A sheet of glass from a solar panel that had reached the end of its working life went into a recycler’s process and came back out…
The first federal courthouse was constructed more than a century ago in the middle of Butte, Montana. Historic but still standing today as the Mike Mansfield…
Afrotropical raptors were the focus of a wind farm study in Kenya. A five-year study at a 100-megawatt facility showed that different species exhibit different turbine…
A new agrivoltaics pilot is bringing solar panels to 16 working farms across New Jersey. Rutgers had already tested agrivoltaics at research farms in the state…
Floating offshore wind farms are progressing into deeper ocean areas. Operators will need to detach entire multi-megawatt turbines and tow them back to land for more…
The grass on Altamont Pass is already gold by midsummer, and the wind through the Diablo Range has been strong enough for turbines since the 1980s.…
Joshua Tree National Park relocated one of its busiest entrances deep into the desert. The new West Entrance Station was moved roughly half a mile further…
There were high hopes for the Chinook salmon season in Idaho. But then unseasonably high water temperatures disrupted the expected migrations along the Columbia and Snake…
The Brazilian city of Petrolina is home to a unique solar-energy project. Unlike conventional solar facilities, it is designed to produce both electricity and thermal energy…
The night of March 15 started like any other spring evening near the small town of Guy, southwest of Houston. Then the hail arrived. By morning,…
The U.K.’s latest tidal-power effort faces a challenge that only appears after the turbines start running. Eventually, something breaks down. Then the ocean starts getting costly…
Expanding wind energy infrastructure across Asian dryland ecosystems reshapes wildlife habitats in subtle ways. Across China’s desert steppe, ecological researchers monitoring small mammals encountered an unexpected…
In Germany’s most recent solar park, wildlife cameras are quietly observing wildlife, and it appears the animals are not bothered by this new solar park development.…
A blade comes off a turbine after two decades of work, and the assumption is that it gets recycled. In practice, most retired blades are landfilled…
China’s solar capacity overtook coal — but the energy transition is only beginning For the first time, China has more installed solar capacity than coal. At…
It’s been more than 20 years since wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone. They’re back to hunting bison again. Much of the area still looks like one…
The tank was small enough to sit on a laboratory bench. Inside it, a grey slurry of ground up retired solar panels was already swirling. Air…
Expanding renewable energy infrastructure to supply island communities in the South Pacific is complicated. The main reason is a shortage of land. Lagoons sheltered from rough…
In North Queensland, Australia, an old gold mine is being transformed into a giant water battery. Two former gold-mine pits near Charters Towers are being transformed…
A wind turbine blade is commonly about 170 feet long, roughly the length of an Olympic swimming pool. Most retired ones end up in a landfill,…
Beginning in late 2022, lava flows from Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano cut off access to one of the world’s most important climate observation sites. The eruption…
Changing land use from agriculture to solar energy generation is often slammed as the reason why greenfield sites become industrial deserts. However, 15 Netherlands solar installations…
The panels come from rooftops and fields across the country, most of them past their rated life. They arrive by the truckload at a 255,000 square…
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