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The era of personalized energy systems — in which individual homes and small businesses produce their own energy for heating, cooling, and powering cars — took another step toward forward as MIT scientists have discovered a powerful new catalyst that is a key element in such a system.
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A team of researchers at MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory have developed Seaswarm, a robot that autonomously navigates the water’s surface and uses nanofibers to absorb 20 times its weight in oil, which could be made into a viable solution for cleaning up the Gulf oil spill.
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Innovative paving slabs that are coated in titanium dioxide nanoparticles can reduce the amount of nitrogen oxide in the air. Titanium dioxide is a photocatalyst; it uses sunlight to accelerate a naturally occurring chemical reaction, the speed of which changes with exposure to light.
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Starting in 2011, energy suppliers in Germany will be required to offer electricity at variable rates under the German Energy Act. A new energy management software platform will enable customers to opt for flexible electricity rates, so that they can purchase power at times when it is available more cheaply. Another advantage is better utilization of the power grid.
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Stanford engineers have discovered a process called photon enhanced thermionic emission (PETE) that simultaneously combines the light and heat of solar radiation to generate electricity, and could offer over double the efficiency of existing solar cell technology. The process could reduce the costs of solar energy production enough for it to compete with oil.
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MicroStrain, Inc. (Williston, VT) introduces EH-Link™, a new hybrid energy harvesting wireless sensor node that collects energy from multiple sources including strain, vibration, thermal gradients, ambient light, and thermal and electromagnetic fields.
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In just the last few years, innovation in alternative-energy technologies have gained significant footholds in product development lifecycles and are rapidly changing our individual roles as energy consumers and producers. Out of the box thinking and breakthrough discoveries are on the rise in solar, wind, biofuel, and other alternative-energy technologies. 
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