The vast majority of the world’s plastic isn’t recycled … and when it is, we spend more money to achieve less quality. It’s currently cheaper to keep producing newer plastics — at the much higher cost of human and environmental health. But nature has evolved in response. Several species
As our needs for energy and food continue to rise, we’re revisiting the sunny topic of Agrivoltaics – or using land to grow food and host solar panels at the same time. Experiments in this hot space have had some really promising results over the last year, like using new
Last November I published a video about Hotel Marcel and how they went with DC wiring and power instead of the traditional AC wiring we’re all familiar with. When a building has solar and battery storage it can make a lot of sense to go DC instead of AC
To live, people need food to eat and water to drink. That’s a simple fact. But with growing water scarcity around the world and an ever increasing population, we have to find better ways to produce the food we all need to survive. The solution could lie in one
Gas stoves have been quite the “hot button issue” lately. But a range of data from decades’ worth of research has already reached a consensus: Cooking with gas is dangerous to human health and a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Electrification has been ongoing, with Europe leading the way
Everyone is worried about outdoor air pollution, right? Yet, a poor indoor air quality (IAQ) can be an invisible yet ruthless killer. Even worse than Freddy Krueger. At least, you could see him in your dreams, I mean nightmares. Seriously, pollutants like volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM), and
Heat pumps are versatile, efficient, and great for both heating and cooling … or are they? Whenever heat pumps are mentioned, critics bring up their ineffectiveness in the cold, so is that still true? Or do more modern heat pumps continue to work effectively in cold climates? I’m currently building
I’ve been living with solar panels for almost 5 years now here in Massachusetts, and I thought it was time to take a look at how it’s been going. There’s been some twists and turns with solar production and how it’s fared going through the cold
The solar industry has a potentially fatal flaw: its reliance on silver. As a precious metal, silver is costly and difficult to come by, yet critical to pretty much every kind of solar panel.1 Worldwide solar capacity has officially crossed into terawatt territory and silver is putting that continued
Who doesn’t want a smartphone, laptop, or EV that can charge in minutes? Or a device that holds its charge just as well when it’s 5 years old as the day you plugged it in for the first time? Faster-charging, longer-lasting, and cheaper energy storage options are something
One of the benefits of a factory built home is that the insulated wall panels are assembled in a climate controlled facility. However, they still need to get assembled on site … and that’s when mother nature can take her revenge. My factory built house started getting raised on site
We recently covered a bunch of novel approaches to bring nuclear fusion to the market sooner than you may think. One form of fusion research we didn’t touch on in depth was Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) using lasers… and shortly after publishing that video some major news broke about