Energy news, articles and features | New Ů��С��Ƶ

How to unlock unlimited geothermal energy, anywhere we want

Katharine Sanderson — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:00:45 +0000

Earth contains more than enough heat to power humanity many times over, but so far only a few lucky places have been able to exploit it. Now we may have a way to tap this vast clean energy source almost anywhere

Is geothermal energy on the cusp of a worldwide renaissance?

Alec Luhn — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 10:00:02 +0000

The UK's first geothermal plant in Cornwall is part of a wave of projects aiming to meet growing electricity demand, some of them enabled by technology from oil and gas fracturing

It’s your perception of sleep that’s making you feel tired all day

Helen Thomson — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 16:00:53 +0000

How we feel about a night’s sleep can have a bigger impact on mood and grogginess than actual hours of rest. Here’s how to change your mindset to feel more energised

Old EV batteries could meet most of China’s energy storage needs

Alec Luhn — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:00:43 +0000

Electric vehicle batteries are typically retired once they reach about 80 per cent of their original capacity, but they could be repurposed in electricity grids to balance out slumps in renewable generation

Low on energy? A new understanding of rest could help revitalise you

Caroline Williams — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 16:00:36 +0000

There is a state of relaxation that few of us spend much time in, but which comes with profound well-being benefits. With healthier ageing, reduced risk of disease and feeling more energised all on offer, here's how to get there

How green hydrogen could power industries from steel-making to farming

Alec Luhn — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 11:00:06 +0000

Many industries are eyeing up hydrogen as a source of clean energy, but with supplies of green hydrogen limited, we should prioritise the areas where it could have the most positive impact on carbon emissions, say researchers

There’s a simple way we could drastically cut AI energy use

Chris Stokel-Walker — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 16:00:27 +0000

If users chose the most efficient model each time they performed a task with AI, researchers calculate it would slash energy consumption by more than a quarter

Why solar power is the only viable power source in the long run

Michael Le Page — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 19:19:01 +0000

Not only is solar more than capable of supplying all the world’s energy, in the long term it is the only power source that won’t fry the planet

We can repurpose retired coal plants to produce green energy

Jeremy Hsu — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 20:00:10 +0000

Piles of dirt can cheaply store renewable energy as heat – and that stored energy can reactivate the machinery of retired coal power plants, letting them provide backup power for the electricity grid

Rust-based battery connects to an electricity grid for the first time

Jeremy Hsu — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 07:00:14 +0000

A rust-based battery system is stored in standard 12-metre shipping containers

Ore Energy

An iron-air battery that stores and releases energy through a reversible rusting process has become the first of its kind to connect with a public electricity grid. On 30 July, the Dutch start-up Ore Energy announced its batteries had connected to the grid at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Batteries can help deliver a consistent supply of electricity by storing renewable energy from solar or wind farms, releasing it when necessary to ensure that a sudden change in sunlight or wind doesn’t mean an immediate drop in available electricity.

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Quantum batteries charge faster the larger they are

“You need to be able to store that excess energy when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, to be able to deploy it when you need to during critical demand periods during the day,” says at The Faraday Institution, a battery research body in the UK. “Essentially, batteries can help to smooth out that power output to make it usable on the grid.”

Many grid-connected batteries are now lithium iron phosphate ones manufactured in China. But they typically hold power for just 4 to 6 hours and are prohibitively expensive, says Marie. In contrast, the iron-air batteries developed by Ore Energy can store power for 100 hours or longer and are made from cheap and widely available materials.

“Iron is the most mined metal in the world, it’s incredibly cheap,” says Marie. “And when you combine that with air, which is literally all around us and basically free, those are almost the two cheapest components that you could find.”

The system charges and stores energy by using electricity to convert iron oxides – a form of rust – into metallic iron. The iron can then discharge or release its stored energy by chemically reacting with oxygen from the air to form rust again.

“When the battery is discharging, we are actually taking the iron and turning it into a special type of rust,” says , CEO of Ore Energy. “And when we are charging the battery, we are taking the rust back into iron, and we do this over and over again [while] the battery is breathing in and out the oxygen from atmospheric air.”

The batteries are stored in standard 12-metre shipping containers and can store multiple megawatt-hours of energy – with 1 megawatt-hour being enough to supply more than a month of electricity to a typical US home.

Separately, the Massachusetts-based company Form Energy has several iron-air battery projects in the works in the US. They are slated for installation in New England and the Midwest.

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Fire at world’s largest battery facility is a clean energy setback

In addition to iron and air, such batteries incorporate water-based electrolytes that are also cheap and abundant – not to mention greatly reducing the risk of battery fires. “I wouldn’t want to be the one to say never, but you can’t set fire to water,” says Marie.

But the main goal of the battery technology is to help renewable power sources replace fossil fuels in electricity grids.

“Energy companies still rely a lot on gas-fired [power] generation to provide the flexibility needed when wind and solar are not sufficient,” says , business development manager at Ore Energy. “But in the long term we will need a different type of flexibility, and that is where our battery really excels – to provide this multi-day flexibility.”

Energy news, articles and features | New Ů��С��Ƶ

How to unlock unlimited geothermal energy, anywhere we want

Is geothermal energy on the cusp of a worldwide renaissance?

It’s your perception of sleep that’s making you feel tired all day

Old EV batteries could meet most of China’s energy storage needs

Low on energy? A new understanding of rest could help revitalise you

How green hydrogen could power industries from steel-making to farming

There’s a simple way we could drastically cut AI energy use

Why solar power is the only viable power source in the long run

We can repurpose retired coal plants to produce green energy

Rust-based battery connects to an electricity grid for the first time

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