Exploring Energy, Explaining Science

Every time we calculate the environmental impacts of an electric vehicle, we use data from the lithium carbonate production at the Salar de Atacama in Chile. To meet soaring lithium demand, other, more polluting mining pathways are emerging. However, poor data availability is preventing proper accounting, leading to underestimated environmental damages. What we need are more transparent supply chains for a low-carbon…

Massive investment in low-carbon infrastructure is required to put Europe on a path to net zero by 2050. While this is no big surprise, it is astonishing that investments are still growing rather slowly, even for market-ready technologies such as onshore wind or solar PV. This blogpost quantifies current investment gaps in Europe’s energy infrastructure and discusses the hurdles that must be…

Through different scales and spaces in the city of Zurich, this article analyzes the potential for UIPV (Urban Integrated Photovoltaics). Based on interviews with stakeholders such as architects, engineers, and the city of Zurich, the article suggests various PV implementations and their benefits at 4 different scales: Bus shelters, Parking lots, Plazas and Bridges.