Google has announced that it has signed a global commercial partnership with Milan-based startup Energy Dome and has also invested in its long duration energy storage (LDES) tech for renewable energy. The deal, its first investment in LDES tech, entails using Energy Dome's carbon dioxide battery for the grids that power Google’s operations around the world. Batteries are used to keep excess energy generated by renewable sources, such as solar and wind, during peak production and when demand is low. But lithium-ion batteries can only store and dispatch energy for fours hours or less.
Energy Dome explained that its CO2 battery can store and continuously dispatch energy for 8 to 24 hours, so Google can rely on renewable power more even when there's no wind or sun. Its technology uses carbon dioxide held inside dome-shaped batteries, which you can see in the image above. When there's excess renewable energy being generated, the batteries use that power to compress the carbon dioxide gas inside them into liquid. And when that energy is needed, the liquid carbon dioxide expands back into a hot gas under pressure. That gas spins a turbine and generates energy that's fed back into the grid for a period lasting up to a whole day.
Google said that Energy Dome's technology has the potential to "commercialize much faster" than some of its other clean tech investments, and it aims to "bring this technology to scale faster and at lower costs." It also said that it believes the partnership and its investment in Energy Dome can help it achieve its goal of operating on renewable energy 24/7 by 2030.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-invests-in-carbon-dioxide-battery-for-renewable-energy-storage-140045660.html?src=rss
Amazon’s decarbonization goals are being undermined by its push to be a leader in generative AI. Its most recent sustainability report concedes its overall carbon emissions grew for the first time since 2022. It reported a six percent increase in its carbon footprint across 2024, laying much of the blame at the feet of its data center rollout.
The reported increase is significant given Amazon’s method of reporting its own environmental impact. Critics have suggested the mega-retailer “dramatically undercounts” its impact by excluding common metrics. In 2022, Amazon revised its climate reporting methodology which also led to the company’s figures falling dramatically.
In addition, the company reported an increase in emissions tied to the purchase of power from outside sources. “The increased energy demand is from AI chips,” says the report, which “require more electricity and cooling than traditional chips.” As well as the power to run and cool those chips, Amazon is building big to increase its server capacity. Data center construction, as well as fuel use by logistics contractors, led indirect emissions to increase by six percent. That said, the company’s own fossil fuel emissions increased by seven percent in 2024, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.
Amazon is a co-founder of The Climate Pledge, an initiative to reach net zero emissions by 2040. The initiative now has 549 signatories, including MasterCard, Sony and Snap.inc.
In February, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy pledged to invest $100 billion across 2025, with CNBC reporting the bulk of that cash would be spent on Amazon Web Services (the company’s data center and web hosting arm). Given the increase in construction, it’s likely Amazon’s report for 2025 will follow this same upward trend.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/amazons-ai-push-is-undermining-its-sustainability-goals-160156136.html?src=rss
Palo Alto, CA, USA - Feb 18, 2020: The Amazon logo seen at Amazon campus in Palo Alto, California. The Palo Alto location hosts A9 Search, Amazon Web Services, and Amazon Game Studios teams.
Stellantis, the automotive giant behind Chrysler, Citroen, Fiat, Jeep and Peugeot, is pulling out of hydrogen. The company said it’s killing its fuel cell development program in the face of “limited availability of hydrogen refueling infrastructure, high capital requirements and the need for stronger consumer purchasing incentives.” To put that another way, it’s realized hydrogen EVs are facing the same set of challenges it’s not been able to overcome in the last two or three decades.
It’s a stark shift in tone from January 2024, when the company promised to roll out a fleet of commercial fuel cell vehicles. Stellantis sells many of Europe’s most popular panel vans including the Citroen Jumper, Fiat Ducato, Opel Movano and Peugeot Boxer. Back then, it said we’d see hydrogen versions of all those vehicles (as well as its smaller siblings) with maximum ranges of 500km (310 miles).
The decision to pull the plug came relatively late, with the company saying it was due to begin production at its plants in France and Poland “this summer.” It added the decision to kill the range will not impact staffing in production or R&D, with employees transferred to other projects. It will, however, have to delicately negotiate its exit with Symbio, the fuel cell maker it bought a one-third share of back in 2023.
Stellantis isn’t the first company that pledged to put its weight behind fuel cells only to pull back. Toyota has thrown a lot of time, effort and money behind hydrogen, believing fuel cells would be preferable to battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Sadly, as time progressed, the company has had to cede more and more of the market to batteries, and only advertises its third-generation fuel cell as a power unit for heavy industrial vehicles.
Hydrogen was, and has been for some time, an article of faith for fossil fuel companies, the car industry and even some countries that lack their own energy reserves. After all, the promise of being able to pull (theoretically limitless), emission-free energy out of water is the stuff of dreams. Not to mention, it requires much of the same knowledge and infrastructure used by the traditional oil and gas industry, and refueling can only take place at a commercial site.
Had hydrogen made more of an impact, it would have likely preserved the status quo or something much like it, for those industries long into the future. But while the hope was that hydrogen could be a cleaner, greener substitute for oil and gas, its inherent flaws always made that a non-starter.
For instance, hydrogen is far less energy dense than oil and gas, and far less physically dense — it’s so prone to leaking that you have to go above and beyond to seal it in. It’s difficult to mass produce cleanly, especially if you want to power every car in the world, unless you use a dirty process like the steam reformation of methane. So, rather than moving away from fossil fuels and emissions, you’d be further entrenching them into the system and adding to the problem.
And if you did want to just use renewable energy to pull hydrogen from water, then you’d require an unprecedented amount of investment. Back in 2021, I asked Tim Lord, who had previously been in charge of the UK’s decarbonization strategy, about that sort of industrial-scale hydrogen generation. He said that you’d essentially need to double your whole electricity generation output to get close.
That’s before you get to the other factors, like hydrogen’s efficiency as a store of energy or the investment necessary to equip every gas station on the planet with a hydrogen tank. Which is not likely going to pay off given that Toyota’s Mirai, arguably the flagship hydrogen fuel cell EV, has only sold 28,000 models since its launch in 2014. In the US market, there's only the Mirai, the Hyundai Nexo and the Honda CR-V e-FCEV knocking around, nothing compared to how many BEVs are on sale. I think it’s time for everyone to admit that we’re done with hydrogen fuel cell EVs and focus their attention elsewhere.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/another-big-car-company-gives-up-on-hydrogen-133011978.html?src=rss
A lineup of Stellantis-owned vans from different marques that would have promised fuel cell EV versions but for the project's late-in-the-day axing. There are four fans in a line parked outside a factory, with the sun just pushing out from behind the clouds.
Meta is building several gigawatt-sized data centers to power AI, as reported by Bloomberg. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company will spend "hundreds of billions of dollars" to accomplish this feat, with an aim of creating "superintelligence."
The first center is called Prometheus and it comes online next year. It's being built in Ohio. Next up, there's a data center called Hyperion that's almost the size of Manhattan. This one should "be able to scale up to 5GW over several years." Some of these campuses will be among the largest in the world, as most data centers can only generate hundreds of megawatts of capacity.
Meta has also been staffing up its Superintelligence Labs team, recruiting folks from OpenAI, Google's DeepMind and others. Scale AI's co-founder Alexandr Wang is heading up this effort.
However, these giant data centers do not exist in a vacuum. The complexes typically brush up against local communities. The centers are not only power hogs, but also water hogs. The New York Timesjust published a report on how Meta data centers impact local water supplies.
There's a data center east of Atlanta that has damaged local wells and caused municipal water prices to soar, which could lead to a shortage and rationing by 2030. The price of water in the region is set to increase by 33 percent in the next two years.
Typical data centers guzzle around 500,000 gallons of water each day, but these forthcoming AI-centric complexes will likely be even thirstier. The new centers could require millions of gallons per day, according to water permit applications reviewed by The New York Times. Mike Hopkins, the executive director of the Newton County Water and Sewerage Authority, says that applications are coming in with requests for up to six millions of water per day, which is more than the county's entire daily usage.
“What the data centers don’t understand is that they’re taking up the community wealth,” he said. “We just don’t have the water.”
We're going to have to decide soon how to regulate the growing data center industry which pose several issues for desert communities. "They consume large amounts of electricity and water 24 hours per day, seven days a week." https://t.co/sTq97kFADL
— Arizona Green Party 🌻 (@AZGreenParty) July 10, 2025
This same worrying story is playing out across the country. Data center hot spots in Texas, Arizona, Louisiana and Colorado are also taxing local water reserves. For instance, some Phoenix homebuilders have been forced to pause new constructions due to droughts exacerbated by these data centers.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-announces-huge-new-data-centers-but-they-could-gobble-up-millions-of-gallons-of-water-per-day-174000478.html?src=rss
NASA's Parker Solar Probe made history with the closest-ever approach to the sun last December, and we're finally getting a look at some of the images it captured. The space agency released a timelapse of observations made using Parker's Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR) while it passed through the sun's corona (the outer atmosphere) on December 25, 2024, revealing up close how solar wind acts soon after it's released. The probe captured these images at just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface. To put that into perspective, a NASA video explains, "If Earth and the sun were one foot apart, Parker Solar Probe was about half an inch from the sun."
The probe got an unprecedented view of solar wind and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) during the approach, which could be invaluable for our understanding of space weather. "We are witnessing where space weather threats to Earth begin, with our eyes, not just with models," said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. After completing its December flyby, the Parker Solar Probe matched its record distance from the surface in subsequent approaches in March and June. It'll make its next pass on September 15.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/these-are-the-closest-ever-images-of-the-sun-from-parker-solar-probes-historic-flyby-215549723.html?src=rss
The so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” will, if passed, make sweeping changes to the US’ clean energy market. While some of the worst provisions affecting the industry were stripped out during Senate proceedings earlier this week, it’s still pretty bad. In fact, the current language of the bill might as well be a middle figure to the domestic solar manufacturing industry.
As it stands, the bill guts many of the clean energy programs of Joe Biden's signature 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. That includes killing off incentives for domestic and utility-scale solar power as well as the Clean Electricity Production Credit. Even worse, the bill axes the Domestic Content bonus that incentivized the use of US-made gear.
There were a number of provisions that did not survive its journey through the Senate, like the excise tax on renewable energy. As CBS News reported, the levy would have imposed an additional charge on projects that used materials from foreign countries. As CNN explained, this would have cut renewable energy projects in favor of extending the life of coal and gas turbine plants.
Rob Gardner is Vice President of Congressional and Regulatory Affairs for SEMA, the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America coalition. He walked me through the bill, explaining the effects of the changes for the US solar industry. “A positive is that it maintains production tax credits for manufacturers of clean energy components,” he said.
One tweak from an earlier version of the bill was the speed at which the existing tax credits would be withdrawn. As it stands, projects that are already approved will qualify for the present regime, as will any project beginning construction before June 2026. “Basically, a year after enactment [companies have] to begin construction on utility-scale solar projects to receive the full amount of the credit,” said Gardner. And, according to § 70512 (4)(a) those plants will need to be “placed in service” no later than December 31, 2027.
The bigger issue, however, is that the bill creates “uncertainty for long-term demand for US products,” according to Gardner. Put simply, American-made solar panels are more expensive than their Chinese counterparts due to higher manufacturing costs. By removing the incentives, including the Domestic Content bonus, the US is opening the door for Chinese-made alternatives. Gardner added “after the tax credits that incentivize domestic production and consumption expire, you will see a flood of Chinese product [in the market.]”
The US's Environmental Information Administration projects that the US’ total domestic energy consumption will grow by almost two percent in the next year. A slowdown in new energy additions is the last thing the US needs, especially as renewables made up almost 90 percent of all new power generation capacity in 2024. But it’s likely that even with all of the changes in the bill, solar will remain the biggest technology used to implement new power generation capacity.
Abigail Ross Hopper, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association pulls no punches in her statement. She said the bill “undermines the very foundation of America’s manufacturing comeback.” Hopper added that “families will face higher electric bills, factories will shut down, Americans will lose their jobs and our electric grid will grow weaker.”
Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association described the bill as a “step backward” for American energy policy and an “intentional effort” to undermine “one of the fastest-growing sources of electric power.”
Environmental groups also believe the bill’s passing marks a dark day in the world’s fight against climate change. Greenpeace USA Deputy Climate Program Director John Noël, said in a statement that “this is a vote that will live in infamy” for its role in “doling out fossil fuel industry handouts.”
Environmental Defense Fund’s Vice President for Political and Government Affairs Joanna Slaney agreed. She said that the bill is “effectively cutting off supply of cheap energy right when the US needs it most.” In contrast, the bill offers a “10-year reprieve from paying a fee on wasteful methane pollution,” a gas significantly more harmful than carbon dioxide to the environment.
Research by clean energy company Cleanview suggests the bill may jeopardize up to 600GW of new renewable energy capacity. This is because of the tight deadlines the bill imposes to qualify for the existing credits, which again, need to begin construction before June 2026. That 600GW figure includes solar farms and battery storage projects in California and Texas that would need to be rushed to get working.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/trumps-big-beautiful-bill-is-a-middle-finger-to-us-solar-energy-152042835.html?src=rss
Prime Day is almost a wrap, but you can still save on a bunch of our favorite tech — and yes, much of it is still in stock even this late in the game. One of the best deals we're tracking is on the Levoit Core 400S air purifier. At $183, the device is $37 off. It's not quite the lowest price we've seen for this model. However, it's not too far off that mark of $176.
The Levoit Core 400S is our current pick for the best air purifier overall. Sure, it might not have the prettiest design of all the options we have tested and the companion app might have a little too much going on. But the Core 400S does its job and does it well.
This smart air purifier is slated to clean the atmosphere in spaces of up to 1,733 square feet in as little as one hour. The Core 400S has a cylindrical shape with vents at the top and a touch display that shows air quality readings. You'll be able to get a sense of the current air quality in your space at a glance with a color-changing ring that will light up in blue, green, orange or red. The 360-degree filtration system is said to be capable of capturing over 99.9 percent of pollutants as small as 0.3 microns, such as dust, pet dander and pollen.
There is an auto mode that should suffice for maintaining air quality, but the Core 400S is compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant voice controls too. The fan isn't too loud, even when it's operating at maximum speed — the volume topped out at 62dB in our testing.
Meanwhile, at $50 each, the air filter replacements aren't too expensive compared with those from many of Levoit's competitors. You can also find other Levoit Prime Day deals on Amazon right now that include more air purifiers, cordless vacuums and more.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/our-favorite-smart-air-purifier-is-still-available-for-37-off-in-this-prime-day-deal-143224074.html?src=rss
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