Öko-Kraftstoff und Öko-Fahrzeuge

Electric vehicles offer huge potential for the decarbonisation of transport, as an important part of the energy transition. The international trade in hybrid (both plug-in and non-plug-in) and electrical cars is on the rise, according to the latest statistics published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. The updated data shows the dynamics of imports and exports as well as the EU's main trading partners in...

Organic photochemistry is a scientific area encompassing processes which play an important role in enabling life on our planet. These processes have recently been afforded renewed scientific interest as it enables scientists to cheaply and effectively create new molecules. Gaining greater insights into already known processes can sometimes lead to incredible results and help design better materials than such that can be created by...

Scientists have always been looking for ways to improve our daily lives. One of their focus areas undoubtedly is materials engineering, where they are trying, among other tasks, to improve or develop new devices which can be used for harvesting energy. Superconductors are one group of such devices, which have zero electrical resistance and thus allow electrons to flow unimpeded. It also means that they do not lose energy or create...

Eurostat presented statistics on passenger cars in the EU Member States, providing information on the numbers of vehicles, their age, type of engine fuel etc. Overall, over the past five years, the passenger car fleet has grown in all EU member states, reaching a total of 250 million cars in 2020, 32 million more than in 2015, an increase of 9.7 %. Germany with 48 million of new cars registered the highest number in the EU, ahead...

Ethane and particularly CO2 are gases which have long been recognised for their potential value as sustainable sources of energy. However, the processes to convert them into the desired products can be quite challenging to control. This is mainly due to the potentially unpredictable course of the reaction. Therefore, a suitable catalyst is of utmost importance for the correct progress of the reaction. However, so far scientists have...

Carbon fibre is a very versatile material which can be used for many different applications. The material is light, but compact at the same time making it a very suitable material for passenger cars and even racing cars. Its only drawback is that it is very expensive, energy intensive to produce and also releases a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. Moreover, until recently no sustainable processes existed to recycle carbon fibre. Now...

TESLA is a fully electric vehicles and energy generation company, which offers services related to sustainable energy products. Tesla operates in two segments: automotive and energy generation and storage. The automotive segment includes the design, development, manufacturing, sales and leasing of electric vehicles. The energy generation and storage segment include the design, manufacture, installation, sales and leasing of solar...

Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide is one of the possibilities to produce fuels or other chemicals by converting CO2 into organic feedstocks, including formic acid, carbon monoxide, methane or ethanol. To do so, various catalysts are used depending on the desired resulting product. Some of the more effective metallic catalysts for this process are made of tin, silver or copper. The process was first applied in the 19th...

Challenges associated with climate change stimulate the development of environmentally-friendly means of transport. The obvious importance of this development is underlined by the huge amount of direct CO2 emissions caused by fuel combustion in car engines which, according to IEA, account for almost 25%, with passenger cars in particular being the main culprits. In December, Eurostat published statistics on International...

With ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, concerned scientists are looking for ways to mitigate the negative impacts of this development for our planet. One of the easiest and also most sustainable methods would be to simply collect the greenhouse gas and turn it into fuel. Now (2021), scientists at Brookhaven Laboratory have found a means to create an almost zero-net-carbon technology which is able to...