Battery used Battery charging
Browse by Theme

Energy Efficiency

Communal Luxury: The Public Bathhouse

Throughout history, people have bathed in public rather than in private. Should we bring back the public bathhouse for the sake of sustainability?

How Sustainable is High-tech Health Care?

Can we make modern health care carbon-neutral and maintain the levels of care, pain relief, and longevity that we have come to take for granted?

How to Make Wind Power Sustainable Again

If we build them out of wood, large wind turbines could become a textbook example of the circular economy.

How Much Energy Do We Need?

Researchers have calculated minimum levels of energy use needed to live a decent life, but what about maximum levels?

Bedazzled by Energy Efficiency

To focus on energy efficiency is to make present ways of life non-negotiable.

Slow Electricity: The Return of DC Power?

Directly coupling DC power sources with DC loads can result in a significantly cheaper and more sustainable solar system.

Well-Tended Fires Outperform Modern Cooking Stoves

Despite technological advancements since the Industrial Revolution, cooking remains a spectacularly inefficient process.

Piston-powered aircraft from the 1950s were as fuel-efficient as the current average jet

Estimates about the fuel efficiency of aircraft ignore the record of the pre-jet era.

The Status Quo of Electric Cars: Better Batteries, Same Range

We don’t need better batteries, we need better cars.

How (Not) To Resolve the Energy Crisis

Increasing the share of renewable energy will not make us any less dependent on fossil fuels as long as total energy consumption keeps rising.

The Monster Footprint of Digital Technology

The embodied energy of the memory chip alone exceeds the energy consumption of a laptop during its life expectancy of 3 years.

Viva Las Vegas: LEDs and the energy efficiency paradox

LEDs introduce lighting in places and situations where there was no lighting before.