Jan 31 2025

Three questions about the future of US climate tech under Trump

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Donald Trump has officially been in office for just over a week, and the new administration has hit the ground running with a blizzard of executive orders and memos.

Some of the moves could have major effects for climate change and climate technologies—for example, one of the first orders Trump signed signaled his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the major international climate treaty.

The road map for withdrawing from the Paris agreement is clear, but not all the effects of these orders are quite so obvious. There’s a whole lot of speculation about how far these actions reach, which ones might get overturned, and generally what comes next. Here are some of the crucial threads that I’m going to be following.

Will states be able to set their own rules on electric vehicles?

It’s clear that Donald Trump isn’t a fan of electric vehicles. One of the executive orders issued on his first day in office promised to eliminate the “electric vehicle (EV) mandate.”

The federal government under Biden didn’t actually have an EV mandate in place—rather, Trump is targeting national support programs, including subsidies that lower the cost of EVs for drivers and support building public chargers. But that’s just the beginning, because the executive order will go after states that have set their own rules on EVs.

While the US Environmental Protection Agency does set some rules around EVs through what are called tailpipe standards, last year California was granted a waiver that allows the state to set its own, stricter rules. The state now requires that all vehicles sold there must be zero-emissions by 2035. More than a dozen states quickly followed suit, setting a target to transition to zero-emissions vehicles within the next decade. That commitment was a major signal to automakers that there will be demand for EVs, and a lot of it, soon.

Trump appears to be coming after that waiver, and with it California’s right to set its own targets on EVs. We’ll likely see court battles over this, and experts aren’t sure how it’s going to shake out.

What will happen to wind projects?

Wind energy was one of the most explicit targets for Trump on the campaign trail and during his first few days in office. In one memo, the new administration paused all federal permits, leases, and loans for all offshore and onshore wind projects.

This doesn’t just affect projects on federal lands or waters—nearly all wind projects typically require federal permits, so this could have a wide effect.

Even if the order is temporary or doesn’t hold up in court, it could be enough to chill investment in a sector that’s already been on shaky ground. As I reported last year, rising costs and slow timelines were already throwing offshore wind projects off track in the US. Investment has slowed since I published that story, and now, with growing political opposition, things could get even rockier.

One major question is how much this will slow down existing projects, like the Lava Ridge Wind Project in Idaho, which got the green light from the Biden administration before he left office. As one source told the Washington Post, the new administration may try to go after leases and permits that have already been issued, but “there may be insufficient authority to do so.”

What about the money?

In an executive order last week, the Trump administration called for a pause on handing out the funds that are legally set aside under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. That includes hundreds of billions of dollars for climate research and infrastructure.

This week, a memo from the White House called for a wider pause on federal grants and loans. This goes way beyond climate spending and could affect programs like Medicaid. There’s been chaos since that was first reported; nobody seems to agree on what exactly will be affected or how long the pause was supposed to last, and as of Tuesday evening, a federal judge had blocked that order.

In any case, all these efforts to pause, slow, or stop federal spending will be a major source of fighting going forward. As for effects on climate technology, I think the biggest question is how far the new administration can and will go to block spending that’s already been designated by Congress. There could be political consequences—most funds from the Inflation Reduction Act have gone to conservative-leaning states.

As I wrote just after the election in November, Donald Trump’s return to office means a sharp turn for the US on climate policy, and we’re seeing that start to play out very quickly. I’ll be following it all, but I’d love to hear from you. What do you most want to know more about? What questions do you have? If you work in the climate sector, how are you seeing your job affected? You can email me at casey.crownhart@technologyreview.com, message me on Bluesky, or reach me on Signal: @casey.131.

Now read the rest of The Spark

Another thing

DeepSeek has stormed onto the AI scene. The company released a new reasoning model, called DeepSeek R1, which it claims can surpass the performance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT o1. The model appears to be incredibly efficient, which upends the idea that huge amounts of computing power, and energy, are needed to drive the AI revolution.

For more, check out this story on the company and its model from my colleague Caiwei Chen, and this look at what it means for the AI industry and its energy claims from James O’Donnell.

Keeping up with climate

A huge surge in clean energy caused China’s carbon emissions to level off in 2024. Whether the country’s emissions peak and begin to fall for good depends on what wins in a race between clean-energy additions and growth in energy demand. (Carbon Brief)

In a bit of good news, heat pumps just keep getting hotter. The appliances outsold gas furnaces in the US last year by a bigger margin than ever. (Canary Media)
→ Here’s everything you need to know about heat pumps and how they work. (MIT Technology Review)

People are seeking refuge from floods in Kentucky’s old mountaintop mines. Decades ago, the mines were a cheap source of resources but devastated local ecosystems. Now people are moving in. (New York Times)

An Australian company just raised $20 million to use AI to search for key minerals. Earth AI has already discovered significant deposits of palladium, gold, and molybdenum. (Heatmap News)

Some research suggests a key ocean current system is slowing down, but a new study adds to the case that there’s no cause to panic … yet. The new work suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, hasn’t shown long-term weakening over the past 60 years. (Washington Post)
→ Efforts to observe and understand the currents have shown they’re weirder and more unpredictable than expected. (MIT Technology Review)

Floating solar panels could be a major resource in US energy. A new report finds that federal reservoirs could hold enough floating solar to produce nearly 1,500 terawatt-hours of electricity, enough to power 100 million homes each year. (Canary Media)

What sparked the LA wildfires is still a mystery, but AI is hunting for clues. Better understanding of what causes fires could be key in efforts to stop future blazes. (Grist)

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Jan 24 2025

Why the next energy race is for underground hydrogen

It might sound like something straight out of the 19th century, but one of the most cutting-edge areas in energy today involves drilling deep underground to hunt for materials that can be burned for energy. The difference is that this time, instead of looking for fossil fuels, the race is on to find natural deposits of hydrogen.

Hydrogen is already a key ingredient in the chemical industry and could be used as a greener fuel in industries from aviation and transoceanic shipping to steelmaking. Today, the gas needs to be manufactured, but there’s some evidence that there are vast deposits underground.

I’ve been thinking about underground resources a lot this week, since I’ve been reporting a story about a new startup, Addis Energy. The company is looking to use subsurface rocks, and the conditions down there, to produce another useful chemical: ammonia. In an age of lab-produced breakthroughs, it feels like something of a regression to go digging for resources, but looking underground could help meet energy demand while also addressing climate change.

It’s rare that hydrogen turns up in oil and gas operations, and for decades, the conventional wisdom has been that there aren’t large deposits of the gas underground. Hydrogen molecules are tiny, after all, so even if the gas was forming there, the assumption was that it would just leak out.

However, there have been somewhat accidental discoveries of hydrogen over the decades, in abandoned mines or new well sites. There are reports of wells that spewed colorless gas, or flames that burned gold. And as people have looked more intentionally for hydrogen, they’ve started to find it.

As it turns out, hydrogen tends to build up in very different rocks from those that host oil and gas deposits. While fossil-fuel prospecting tends to focus on softer rocks, like organic-rich shale, hydrogen seems most plentiful in iron-rich rocks like olivine. The gas forms when chemical reactions at elevated temperature and pressure underground pull water apart. (There’s also likely another mechanism that forms hydrogen underground, called radiolysis, where radioactive elements emit radiation that can split water.)

Some research has put the potential amount of hydrogen available at around a trillion tons—plenty to feed our demand for centuries, even if we ramp up use of the gas.

The past few years have seen companies spring up around the world to try to locate and tap these resources. There’s an influx in Australia, especially the southern part of the country, which seems to have conditions that are good for making hydrogen. One startup, Koloma, has raised over $350 million to aid its geologic hydrogen exploration.

There are so many open questions for this industry, including how much hydrogen is actually going to be accessible and economical to extract. It’s not even clear how best to look for the gas today; researchers and companies are borrowing techniques and tools from the oil and gas industry, but there could be better ways.

It’s also unknown how this could affect climate change. Hydrogen itself may not warm the planet, but it can contribute indirectly to global warming by extending the lifetime of other greenhouse gases. It’s also often found with methane, a super-powerful greenhouse gas that could do major harm if it leaks out of operations at a significant level.

There’s also the issue of transportation: Hydrogen isn’t very dense, and it can be difficult to store and move around. Deposits that are far away from the final customers could face high costs that might make the whole endeavor uneconomical.

But this whole area is incredibly exciting, and researchers are working to better understand it. Some are looking to expand the potential pool of resources by pumping water underground to stimulate hydrogen production from rocks that wouldn’t naturally produce the gas.

There’s something fascinating to me about using the playbook of the oil and gas industry to develop an energy source that could actually help humanity combat climate change. It could be a strategic move to address energy demand, since a lot of expertise has accumulated over the roughly 150 years that we’ve been digging up fossil fuels.

After all, it’s not digging that’s the problem—it’s emissions.

Now read the rest of The Spark

Another thing

Donald Trump officially took office on Monday and signed a flurry of executive orders. Here are a few of the most significant ones for climate:

Trump announced his intention to once again withdraw from the Paris agreement. After a one-year waiting period, the world’s largest economy will officially leave the major international climate treaty. (New York Times)

The president also signed an order that pauses lease sales for offshore wind power projects in federal waters. It’s not clear how much the office will be able to slow projects that already have their federal permits. (Associated Press)

Another executive order, titled “Unleashing American Energy,” broadly signals a wide range of climate and energy moves.
→ One section ends the “EV mandate.” The US government doesn’t have any mandates around EVs, but this bit is a signal of the administration’s intent to roll back policies and funding that support adoption of these vehicles. There will almost certainly be court battles. (Wired)
→ Another section pauses the disbursement of tens of billions of dollars for climate and energy. The spending was designated by Congress in two of the landmark laws from the Biden administration, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Again, experts say we can likely expect legal fights. (Canary Media)

Keeping up with climate

The Chinese automaker BYD built more electric vehicles in 2024 than Tesla did. The data signals a global shift to cheaper EVs and the continued dominance of China in the EV market. (Washington Post)

A pair of nuclear reactors in South Carolina could get a second chance at life. Construction halted at the VC Summer plant in 2017, $9 billion into the project. Now the site’s owner wants to sell. (Wall Street Journal)

→ Existing reactors are more in-demand than ever, as I covered in this story about what’s next for nuclear power. (MIT Technology Review)

In California, charging depots for electric trucks are increasingly choosing to cobble together their own power rather than waiting years to connect to the grid. These solar- and wind-powered microgrids could help handle broader electricity demand. (Canary Media)

Wildfires in Southern California are challenging even wildlife that have adapted to frequent blazes. As fires become more frequent and intense, biologists worry about animals like mountain lions. (Inside Climate News)

Experts warn that ash from the California wildfires could be toxic, containing materials like lead and arsenic. (Associated Press)

Burning wood for power isn’t necessary to help the UK meet its decarbonization goals, according to a new analysis. Biomass is a controversial green power source that critics say contributes to air pollution and harms forests. (The Guardian)

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Jan 22 2025

A new company plans to use Earth as a chemical reactor

Forget massive steel tanks—some scientists want to make chemicals with the help of rocks deep beneath Earth’s surface.

New research shows that ammonia, a chemical crucial for fertilizer, can be produced from rocks at temperatures and pressures that are common in the subsurface. The research was published today in Joule, and MIT Technology Review can exclusively report that a new company, called Addis Energy, was founded to commercialize the process.

Ammonia is used in most fertilizers and is a vital part of our modern food system. It’s also being considered for use as a green fuel in industries like transoceanic shipping. The problem is that current processes used to make ammonia require a lot of energy and produce huge amounts of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change—over 1% of the global total. The new study finds that the planet’s internal conditions can be used to produce ammonia in a much cleaner process.

“Earth can be a factory for chemical production,” says Iwnetim Abate, an MIT professor and author of the new study.

This idea could be a major change for the chemical industry, which today relies on huge facilities running reactions at extremely high temperatures and pressures to make ammonia.

The key ingredients for ammonia production are sources of nitrogen and hydrogen. Much of the focus on cleaner production methods currently lies in finding new ways to make hydrogen, since that chemical makes up the bulk of ammonia’s climate footprint, says Patrick Molloy, a principal at the nonprofit research agency Rocky Mountain Institute.

Recently, researchers and companies have located naturally occurring deposits of hydrogen underground. Iron-rich rocks tend to drive reactions that produce the gas, and these natural deposits could provide a source of low-cost, low-emissions hydrogen.

While geologic hydrogen is still in its infancy as an industry, some researchers are hoping to help the process along by stimulating production of hydrogen underground. With the right rocks, heat, and a catalyst, you can produce hydrogen cheaply and without emitting large amounts of climate pollution.

Hydrogen can be difficult to transport, though, so Abate was interested in going one step further by letting the conditions underground do the hard work in powering chemical reactions that transform hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia. “As you dig, you get heat and pressure for free,” he says.

To test out how this might work, Abate and his team crushed up iron-rich minerals and added nitrates (a nitrogen source), water (a hydrogen source), and a catalyst to help reactions along in a small reactor in the lab. They found that even at relatively low temperatures and pressures, they could make ammonia in a matter of hours. If the process were scaled up, the researchers estimate, one well could produce 40,000 kilograms of ammonia per day.

While the reactions tend to go faster at high temperature and pressure, the researchers found that ammonia production could be an economically viable process even at 130 °C (266 °F) and a little over two atmospheres of pressure, conditions that would be accessible at depths reachable with existing drilling technology.

While the reactions work in the lab, there’s a lot of work to do to determine whether, and how, the process might actually work in the field. One thing the team will need to figure out is how to keep reactions going, because in the reaction that forms ammonia, the surface of the iron-rich rocks will be oxidized, leaving them in a state where they can’t keep reacting. But Abate says the team is working on controlling how thick the unusable layer of rock is, and its composition, so the chemical reactions can continue.

To commercialize this work, Abate is cofounding a company called Addis Energy with $4.25 million in pre-seed funds from investors including Engine Ventures. His cofounders include Michael Alexander and Charlie Mitchell (who have both spent time in the oil and gas industry) and Yet-Ming Chiang, an MIT professor and serial entrepreneur. The company will work on scaling up the research, including finding potential sites with the geological conditions to produce ammonia underground.

The good news for scale-up efforts is that much of the necessary technology already exists in oil and gas operations, says Alexander, Addis’s CEO. A field-deployed system will involve drilling, pumping fluid down into the ground, and extracting other fluids from beneath the surface, all very common operations in that industry. “There’s novel chemistry that’s wrapped in an oil and gas package,” he says.

The team will also work on refining cost estimates for the process and gaining a better understanding of safety and sustainability, Abate says. Ammonia is a toxic industrial chemical, but it’s common enough for there to be established procedures for handling, storing, and transporting it, says RMI’s Molloy.

Judging from the researchers’ early estimates, ammonia produced with this method could cost up to $0.55 per kilogram. That’s more than ammonia produced with fossil fuels today ($0.40/kg), but the technique would likely be less expensive than other low-emissions methods of producing the chemical. Tweaks to the process, including using nitrogen from the air instead of nitrates, could help cut costs further, even as low as $0.20/kg.

New approaches to making ammonia could be crucial for climate efforts. “It’s a chemical that’s essential to our way of life,” says Karthish Manthiram, a professor at Caltech who studies electrochemistry, including alternative ammonia production methods.

The team’s research appears to be designed with scalability in mind from the outset, and using Earth itself as a reactor is the kind of thinking needed to accelerate the long-term journey to sustainable chemical production, Manthiram adds.

While the company focuses on scale-up efforts, there’s plenty of fundamental work left for Abate and other labs to do to understand what’s going on during the reactions at the atomic level, particularly at the interface between the rocks and the reacting fluid.

Research in the lab is exciting, but it’s only the first step, Abate says. The next one is seeing if this actually works in the field.

Correction: Due to a unit typo in the journal article, a previous version of this story misstated the amount of ammonia each well could theoretically produce. The estimate is 40,000 kilograms of ammonia per day, not 40,000 tons.

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Jan 18 2025

Interest in nuclear power is surging. Is it enough to build new reactors?

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Lately, the vibes have been good for nuclear power. Public support is building, and public and private funding have made the technology more economical in key markets. There’s also a swell of interest from major companies looking to power their data centers.

These shifts have been great for existing nuclear plants. We’re seeing efforts to boost their power output, extend the lifetime of old reactors, and even reopen facilities that have shut down. That’s good news for climate action, because nuclear power plants produce consistent electricity with very low greenhouse-gas emissions.

I covered all these trends in my latest story, which digs into what’s next for nuclear power in 2025 and beyond. But as I spoke with experts, one central question kept coming up for me: Will all of this be enough to actually get new reactors built?

To zoom in on some of these trends, let’s take a look at the US, which has the largest fleet of nuclear reactors in the world (and the oldest, with an average age of over 42 years).

In recent years we’ve seen a steady improvement in public support for nuclear power in the US. Today, around 56% of Americans support more nuclear power, up from 43% in 2020, according to a Pew R esearch poll.

The economic landscape has also shifted in favor of the technology. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 includes tax credits specifically for operating nuclear plants, aimed at keeping them online. Qualifying plants can receive up to $15 per megawatt-hour, provided they meet certain labor requirements. (For context, in 2021, its last full year of operation, Palisades in Michigan generated over 7 million megawatt-hours.)

Big Tech has also provided an economic boost for the industry—tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon are all making deals to get in on nuclear.

These developments have made existing (or recently closed) nuclear power plants a hot commodity. Plants that might have been candidates for decommissioning just a few years ago are now candidates for license extension. Plants that have already shut down are seeing a potential second chance at life.

There’s also the potential to milk more power out of existing facilities through changes called uprates, which basically allow existing facilities to produce more energy by tweaking existing instruments and power generation systems. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved uprates totaling six gigawatts over the past two decades. That’s a small but certainly significant fraction of the roughly 97 gigawatts of nuclear on the grid today.

Any reactors kept online, reopened, or ramped up spell good news for emissions. But expanding the nuclear fleet in the US will require not just making the most of existing assets, but building new reactors.

We’ll probably also need new reactors just to maintain the current fleet, since so many reactors are scheduled to be retired in the next couple of decades. Will the enthusiasm for keeping old plants running also translate into building new ones?

In much of the world (China being a notable exception), building new nuclear capacity has historically been expensive and slow. It’s easy to point at Plant Vogtle in the US: The third and fourth reactors at that facility began construction in 2009. They were originally scheduled to start up in 2016 and 2017, at a cost of around $14 billion. They actually came online in 2023 and 2024, and the total cost of the project was north of $30 billion.

Some advanced technology has promised to fix the problems in nuclear power. Small modular reactors could help cut cost and construction times, and next-generation reactors promise safety and efficiency improvements that could translate to cheaper, quicker construction. Realistically, though, getting these first-of-their-kind projects off the ground will still require a lot of money and a sustained commitment to making them happen. “The next four years are make or break for advanced nuclear,” says Jessica Lovering, cofounder at the Good Energy Collective, a policy research organization that advocates for the use of nuclear energy.

There are a few factors that could help the progress we’ve seen recently in nuclear extend to new builds. For one, public support from the US Department of Energy includes not only tax credits but public loans and grants for demonstration projects, which can be a key stepping stone to commercial plants that generate electricity for the grid.

Changes to the regulatory process could also help. The Advance Act, passed in 2024, aims at sprucing up the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the hopes of making the approval process more efficient (currently, it can take up to five years to complete).

“If you can see the NRC really start to modernize toward a more efficient, effective, and predictable regulator, it really helps the case for a lot of these commercial projects, because the NRC will no longer be seen as this barrier to innovation,” says Patrick White, research director at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit think tank. We should start to see changes from that legislation this year, though what happens could depend on the Trump administration.

The next few years are crucial for next-generation nuclear technology, and how the industry fares between now and the end of the decade could be very telling when it comes to how big a role this technology plays in our longer-term efforts to decarbonize energy.

Now read the rest of The Spark

Another thing

Devastating wildfires have been ravaging Southern California. Here’s a roundup of some key stories about the blazes.

→ Strong winds have continued this week, bringing with them the threat of new fires. Here’s a page with live updates on the latest. (Washington Post)

→ Officials are scouring the spot where the deadly Palisades fire started to better understand how it was sparked. (New York Times)

→ Climate change didn’t directly start the fires, but global warming did contribute to how intensely they burned and how quickly they spread. (Axios)

→The LA fires show that controlled burns aren’t a cure-all when it comes to preventing wildfires. (Heatmap News)

→ Seawater is a last resort when it comes to fighting fires, since it’s corrosive and can harm the environment when dumped on a blaze. (Wall Street Journal)

Keeping up with climate

US emissions cuts stalled last year, despite strong growth in renewables. The cause: After staying flat or falling for two decades, electricity demand is rising. (New York Times)

With Donald Trump set to take office in the US next week, many are looking to state governments as a potential seat of climate action. Here’s what to look for in states including Texas, California, and Massachusetts. (Inside Climate News)

The US could see as many as 80 new gas-fired power plants built by 2030. The surge comes as demand for power from data centers, including those powering AI, is ballooning. (Financial Times)

Global sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids were up 25% in 2024 from the year before. China, the world’s largest EV market, is a major engine behind the growth. (Reuters)

A massive plant to produce low-emissions steel could be in trouble. Steelmaker SSAB has pulled out of talks on federal funding for a plant in Mississippi. (Canary Media)

Some solar panel companies have turned to door-to-door sales. Things aren’t always so sunny for those involved. (Wired)

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App Climate change and energy What's Next in Tech

Jan 15 2025

What’s next for nuclear power

MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.

While nuclear reactors have been generating power around the world for over 70 years, the current moment is one of potentially radical transformation for the technology.

As electricity demand rises around the world for everything from electric vehicles to data centers, there’s renewed interest in building new nuclear capacity, as well as extending the lifetime of existing plants and even reopening facilities that have been shut down. Efforts are also growing to rethink reactor designs, and 2025 marks a major test for so-called advanced reactors as they begin to move from ideas on paper into the construction phase.

That’s significant because nuclear power promises a steady source of electricity as climate change pushes global temperatures to new heights and energy demand surges around the world. Here’s what to expect next for the industry.

A global patchwork

The past two years have seen a new commitment to nuclear power around the globe, including an agreement at the UN climate talks that 31 countries pledged to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. However, the prospects for the nuclear industry differ depending on where you look.

The US is currently home to the highest number of operational nuclear reactors in the world. If its specific capacity were to triple, that would mean adding a somewhat staggering 200 gigawatts of new nuclear energy capacity to the current total of roughly 100 gigawatts. And that’s in addition to replacing any expected retirements from a relatively old fleet. But the country has come to something of a stall. A new reactor at the Vogtle plant in Georgia came online last year (following significant delays and cost overruns), but there are no major conventional reactors under construction or in review by regulators in the US now.

This year also brings an uncertain atmosphere for nuclear power in the US as the incoming Trump administration takes office. While the technology tends to have wide political support, it’s possible that policies like tariffs could affect the industry by increasing the cost of building materials like steel, says Jessica Lovering, cofounder at the Good Energy Collective, a policy research organization that advocates for the use of nuclear energy.

Globally, most reactors under construction or in planning phases are in Asia, and growth in China is particularly impressive. The country’s first nuclear power plant connected to the grid in 1991, and in just a few decades it has built the third-largest fleet in the world, after only France and the US. China has four large reactors likely to come online this year, and another handful are scheduled for commissioning in 2026.

This year will see both Bangladesh and Turkey start up their first nuclear reactors. Egypt also has its first nuclear plant under construction, though it’s not expected to undergo commissioning for several years.

Advancing along

Commercial nuclear reactors on the grid today, and most of those currently under construction, generally follow a similar blueprint: The fuel that powers the reactor is low-enriched uranium, and water is used as a coolant to control the temperature inside.

But newer, advanced reactors are inching closer to commercial use. A wide range of these so-called Generation IV reactors are in development around the world, all deviating from the current blueprint in one way or another in an attempt to improve safety, efficiency, or both. Some use molten salt or a metal like lead as a coolant, while others use a more enriched version of uranium as a fuel. Often, there’s a mix-and-match approach with variations on the fuel type and cooling methods.

The next couple of years will be crucial for advanced nuclear technology as proposals and designs move toward the building process. “We’re watching paper reactors turn into real reactors,” says Patrick White, research director at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit think tank.

Much of the funding and industrial activity in advanced reactors is centered in the US, where several companies are close to demonstrating their technology.

Kairos Power is building reactors cooled by molten salt, specifically a fluorine-containing material called Flibe. The company received a construction permit from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for its first demonstration reactor in late 2023, and a second permit for another plant in late 2024. Construction will take place on both facilities over the next few years, and the plan is to complete the first demonstration facility in 2027.

TerraPower is another US-based company working on Gen IV reactors, though the design for its Natrium reactor uses liquid sodium as a coolant. The company is taking a slightly different approach to construction, too: by separating the nuclear and non-nuclear portions of the facility, it was able to break ground on part of its site in June of 2024. It’s still waiting for construction approval from the NRC to begin work on the nuclear side, which the company expects to do by 2026.

A US Department of Defense project could be the first in-progress Gen IV reactor to generate electricity, though it’ll be at a very small scale. Project Pele is a transportable microreactor being manufactured by BWXT Advanced Technologies. Assembly is set to begin early this year, with transportation to the final site at Idaho National Lab expected in 2026.

Advanced reactors certainly aren’t limited to the US. Even as China is quickly building conventional reactors, the country is starting to make waves in a range of advanced technologies as well. Much of the focus is on high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, says Lorenzo Vergari, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. These reactors use helium gas as a coolant and reach temperatures over 1,500 °C, much higher than other designs.

China’s first commercial demonstration reactor of this type came online in late 2023, and a handful of larger reactors that employ the technology are currently in planning phases or under construction.

Squeezing capacity

It will take years, or even decades, for even the farthest-along advanced reactor projects to truly pay off with large amounts of electricity on the grid. So amid growing global electricity demand around the world, there’s renewed interest in getting as much power out of existing nuclear plants as possible.

One trend that’s taken off in countries with relatively old nuclear fleets is license extension. While many plants built in the 20th century were originally licensed to run for 40 years, there’s no reason many of them can’t run for longer if they’re properly maintained and some equipment is replaced.

Regulators in the US have granted 20-year extensions to much of the fleet, bringing the expected lifetime of many to 60 years. A handful of reactors have seen their licenses extended even beyond that, to 80 years. Countries including France and Spain have also recently extended licenses of operating reactors beyond their 40-year initial lifetimes. Such extensions are likely to continue, and the next few years could see more reactors in the US relicensed for up to 80-year lifetimes.

In addition, there’s interest in reopening shuttered plants, particularly those that have shut down recently for economic reasons. Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan is the target of one such effort, and the project secured a $1.52 billion loan from the US Department of Energy to help with the costs of reviving it. Holtec, the plant’s owner and operator, is aiming to have the facility back online in 2025.

However, the NRC has reported possible damage to some of the equipment at the plant, specifically the steam generators. Depending on the extent of the repairs needed, the additional cost could potentially make reopening uneconomical, White says.

A reactor at the former Three Mile Island Nuclear Facility is another target. The site’s owner says the reactor could be running again by 2028, though battles over connecting the plant to the grid could play out in the coming year or so. Finally, the owners of the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa are reportedly considering reopening the nuclear plant, which shut down in 2020.

Big Tech’s big appetite

One of the factors driving the rising appetite for nuclear power is the stunning growth of AI, which relies on data centers requiring a huge amount of energy. Last year brought new interest from tech giants looking to nuclear as a potential solution to the AI power crunch.

Microsoft had a major hand in plans to reopen the reactor at Three Mile Island—the company signed a deal in 2024 to purchase power from the facility if it’s able to reopen. And that’s just the beginning.

Google signed a deal with Kairos Power in October 2024 that would see the startup build up to 500 megawatts’ worth of power plants by 2035, with Google purchasing the energy. Amazon went one step further than these deals, investing directly in X-energy, a company building small modular reactors. The money will directly fund the development, licensing, and construction of a project in Washington.

Funding from big tech companies could be a major help in keeping existing reactors running and getting advanced projects off the ground, but many of these commitments so far are vague, says Good Energy Collective’s Lovering. Major milestones to watch for include big financial commitments, contracts signed, and applications submitted to regulators, she says.

“Nuclear had an incredible 2024, probably the most exciting year for nuclear in many decades,” says Staffan Qvist, a nuclear engineer and CEO of Quantified Carbon, an international consultancy focused on decarbonizing energy and industry. Deploying it at the scale required will be a big challenge, but interest is ratcheting up. As he puts it, “There’s a big world out there hungry for power.”

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Jan 12 2025

2025 is a critical year for climate tech

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

I love the fresh start that comes with a new year. And one thing adding a boost to my January is our newest list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies.

In case you haven’t browsed this year’s list or a previous version, it features tech that’s either breaking into prominence or changing society. We typically recognize a range of items running from early-stage research to consumer technologies that folks are getting their hands on now.

As I was looking over the finished list this week, I was struck by something: While there are some entries from other fields that are three or even five years away, all the climate items are either newly commercially available or just about to be. It’s certainly apt, because this year in particular seems to be bringing a new urgency to the fight against climate change. We’re facing global political shifts and entering the second half of the decade. It’s time for these climate technologies to grow up and get out there.

Green steel

Steel is a crucial material for buildings and vehicles, and making it accounts for around 8% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. New manufacturing methods could be a huge part of cleaning up heavy industry, and they’re just on the cusp of breaking into the commercial market.

One company, called Stegra, is close to starting up the world’s first commercial green steel plant, which will make the metal using hydrogen from renewable sources. (You might know this company by its former name, H2 Green Steel, as we included it on our 2023 list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch.)

When I first started following Stegra a few years ago, its plans for a massive green steel plant felt incredibly far away. Now the company says it’s on track to produce steel at the factory by next year.

The biggest challenge in this space is money. Building new steel plants is expensive—Stegra has raised almost $7 billion. And the company’s product will be more expensive than conventional material, so it’ll need to find customers willing to pay up (so far, it has).

There are other efforts to clean up steel that will all face similar challenges around money, including another play in Sweden called Hybrit and startups like Boston Metal and Electra, which use different processes. Read more about green steel, and the potential obstacles it faces as we enter a new phase of commercialization, in this short blurb and in this longer feature about Stegra.

Cow burp remedies

Humans love burgers and steaks and milk and cheese, so we raise a whole bunch of cows. The problem is, these animals are among a group with a funky digestion process that produces a whole lot of methane (a powerful greenhouse gas). A growing number of companies are trying to develop remedies that help cut down on their methane emissions.

This is one of my favorite items on the list this year (and definitely my favorite illustration—at the very least, check out this blurb to enjoy the art).

There’s already a commercially available option right now: a feed additive called Bovaer from DSM-Firmenich that the company says can cut methane emissions by 30% in dairy cattle, and more in beef cattle. Startups are right behind with their own products, some of which could prove even better.

A key challenge all these companies face moving forward is acceptance: from regulatory agencies, farmers, and consumers. Some companies still need to go through lengthy and often expensive tests to show that their products are safe and effective. They’ll also need to persuade farmers to get on board. Some might also face misinformation that’s causing some consumers to protest these new additives.

Cleaner jet fuel

While planes crisscrossing the world are largely powered by fossil fuels, some alternatives are starting to make their appearance in aircraft.

New fuels, today mostly made from waste products like used cooking oil, can cut down emissions from air travel. In 2024, they made up about 0.5% of the fuel supply. But new policies could help these fuels break into new prominence, and new options are helping to widen their supply.

The key challenge here is scale. Global demand for jet fuel was about 100 billion gallons last year, so we’ll need a whole lot of volume from new producers to make a dent in aviation’s emissions.

To illustrate the scope, take LanzaJet’s new plant, opened in 2024. It’s the first commercial-scale facility that can make jet fuel with ethanol, and it has a capacity of about 9 million gallons annually. So we would need about 10,000 of those plants to meet global demand—a somewhat intimidating prospect. Read more in my write-up here.

From cow burps to jet fuel to green steel, there’s a huge range of tech that’s entering a new stage of deployment and will need to face new challenges in the next few years. We’ll be watching it all—thanks for coming along.

Now read the rest of The Spark

Another thing

EVs are (mostly) set for solid growth in 2025, as my colleague James Temple covers in his newest story. Check it out for more about what’s next for electric vehicles, including what we might expect from a new administration in the US and how China is blowing everyone else out of the water.

Keeping up with climate

Winter used to be the one time of year that California didn’t have to worry about wildfires. A rapidly spreading fire in the southern part of the state is showing that’s not the case anymore. (Bloomberg)

Tesla’s annual sales decline for the first time in over a decade. Deliveries were lower than expected for the final quarter of the year. (Associated Press)

Meanwhile, in China, EVs are set to overtake traditional cars in sales years ahead of schedule. Forecasts suggest that EVs could account for 50% of car sales this year. (Financial Times)

KoBold metals raised $537 million in funding to use AI to mine copper. The funding pushes the startup’s valuation to $2.96 billion. (TechCrunch)
→ Read this profile of the company from 2021 for more. (MIT Technology Review)

We finally have the final rules for a tax credit designed to boost hydrogen in the US. The details matter here. (Heatmap)

China just approved the world’s most expensive infrastructure project. The hydroelectric dam could produce enough power for 300 million people, triple the capacity of the current biggest dam. (Economist)

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter installed 32 solar panels on the White House’s roof. Although they came down just a few years later, the panels lived multiple lives afterward. I really enjoyed reading about this small piece of Carter’s legacy in the wake of his passing. (New York Times)

An open pit mine in California is the only one in the US mining and extracting rare earth metals including neodymium and praseodymium. This is a fascinating look at the site. (IEEE Spectrum)
→ I wrote about efforts to recycle rare earth metals, and what it means for the long-term future of metal supply, in a feature story last year. (MIT Technology Review)

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Jan 4 2025

Cattle burping remedies: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2025

WHO

Blue Ocean Barns, DSM-Firmenich, Rumin8, Symbrosia

WHEN

Now

Companies are finally making real progress on one of the trickiest problems for climate change: cow burps.

The world’s herds of cattle belch out methane as a by-product of digestion, as do sheep and goats. That powerful greenhouse gas makes up the single biggest source of livestock emissions, which together contribute 11% to 20% of the world’s total climate pollution, depending on the analysis.

It’s hard to meaningfully cut those emissions by reducing demand, simply because hamburgers, steaks, butter, and milk taste good—and a global population that’s growing larger and wealthier is only set to consume more of these foods.

Explore the full 2025 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies.

Enter the cattle burping supplement. DSM-Firmenich, a Netherlands-based conglomerate that produces fragrances, pharmaceuticals, and other products, has developed a feed supplement, Bovaer, that it says can cut methane emissions by 30% in dairy cattle and even more in beef cattle. It works by inhibiting an enzyme in the animals’ guts, which ordinarily helps convert hydrogen and carbon dioxide produced during digestion into the methane that they burp up.

In May 2024, the Food and Drug Administration cleared the way for its use in the US. DSM says the additive is now available in more than 55 countries, including Australia, Brazil, and members of the European Union.

Meanwhile, startups like Blue Ocean Barns, Rumin8, and Symbrosia are developing, testing, or seeking approval for products derived from a type of red seaweed, which could reduce methane levels even further. Still other organizations are trying to tackle the problem in longer-lasting ways, by developing vaccines or altering the microbes in the guts of cattle.

It remains to be seen how many cattle farmers will pay for such products. But in the case of Bovaer, farmers who use it can earn greenhouse-gas credits that some companies will buy on voluntary carbon markets as a way to reduce their corporate climate footprints, according to Elanco, which is marketing the additive in the US. Meanwhile, Rumin8 says cattle taking its supplements could deliver more meat and milk.

The additives certainly don’t solve the whole problem. The cattle industry needs to take other major steps to cut its climate emissions, including halting its encroachment into carbon-absorbing forests. And to make any real dent in demand, food companies will have to develop better, cheaper, cleaner alternative products, like plant-based burgers and dairy substitutes.

But methane-cutting supplements increasingly look like a promising way to solve a big chunk of a very big problem.

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App Climate change Climate change and energy TR10 2025

Jan 4 2025

Cleaner jet fuel: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2025

WHO

Gevo, LanzaJet, Montana Renewables, Neste, World Energy

WHEN

Now

All the world’s planes consumed roughly 100 billion gallons of jet fuel as they crisscrossed the planet in 2024. Only about 0.5% of it was something other than fossil fuel. That could soon change.

Alternative jet fuels could slash aviation emissions—which have caused about 4% of global warming to date. These new fuels can be made with materials like used cooking oils, crop residue, industrial waste, and carbon dioxide captured from the air. Depending on the source, they can reduce emissions by half or nearly eliminate them. And they can generally be used in existing planes, which could enable quick climate progress.

Explore the full 2025 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies.

More governments are now setting targets or passing legislation requiring airlines to begin using these alternative fuels (sometimes called sustainable aviation fuels, or SAFs). Starting this year, alternative fuels must make up at least 2% of the fuel used at airports in the European Union and UK. That mandate will ramp up in the coming decades, reaching 70% in the EU by 2050.

Today, nearly all commercially available alternative fuel is made with waste fats, oils, and greases. Montana Renewables recently got a $1.44 billion loan commitment from the US Department of Energy to expand one facility for such production. Still, these materials remain in limited supply.

Companies using other technologies and inputs are making progress scaling up. LanzaJet opened the first commercial-scale facility to make jet fuel from ethanol in early 2024, with a capacity of 9 million gallons annually. Synthetic fuels made with carbon dioxide could further expand options for airlines, though those fuels aren’t being produced at commercial scale yet.

One crucial factor for alternative jet fuels moving forward will be cost—on average, SAFs on the market today tend to be nearly three times more expensive than conventional jet fuel. Having more companies producing more fuel should help bring down the price, though newer fuels could be even more costly.

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Jan 3 2025

Why EVs are (mostly) set for solid growth in 2025

MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.

It looks as though 2025 will be a solid year for electric vehicles—at least outside the United States, where sales will depend on the incoming administration’s policy choices.

Globally, these cleaner cars and trucks will continue to eat into the market share of gas-guzzlers as costs decline, consumer options expand, and charging stations proliferate.

Despite all the hubbub about an EV slowdown last year, worldwide sales of battery EVs and plug-in hybrids likely hit a record high of nearly 17 million vehicles in 2024 and are expected to rise about 20% this year, according to the market research firm BloombergNEF.

In addition, numerous automakers are preparing to deliver a variety of cheaper models to auto showrooms around the world. In turn, both the oil demand and the greenhouse-gas emissions stemming from vehicles on the roads are likely to peak over the next few years.

To be sure, the growth rate of EV sales has cooled, as consumers in many regions continue to wait for more affordable options and more convenient charging solutions.

It also hasn’t helped that a handful of nations, like China, Germany, and New Zealand, have eased back the subsidies that were accelerating the rollout of low-emissions vehicles. And it certainly won’t do the sector any favors if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his campaign pledges to eliminate government support for EVs and erect trade barriers that would raise the cost of producing or purchasing them.

Industry experts and climate scientists argue that the opposite should be happening right now. A critical piece of any realistic strategy to keep climate change in check is to fully supplant internal-combustion vehicles by around 2050. Without stricter mandates or more generous support for EVs, the world will not be on track to meet that goal, BloombergNEF finds and others confirm.

“We have to push the car companies—and we also have to help them with incentives, R&D, and infrastructure,” says Gil Tal, director of the EV Research Center at the University of California, Davis.

But ultimately, the fate of EV sales will depend on the particular dynamics within specific regions. Here’s a closer look at what’s likely to steer the sector in the world’s three largest markets: the US, the EU, and China.

United States

The US EV market will be a mess of contradictions.

On the one hand, companies are spending tens of billions of dollars to build or expand battery, EV, and charger manufacturing plants across America. Within the next few years, Honda intends to begin running assembly lines retooled to produce EVs in Ohio, Toyota plans to begin producing electric SUVs at its flagship plant in Kentucky, and GM expects to begin cranking out its revived Bolts in Kansas, among dozens of other facilities in planning or under construction.

All that promises to drive down the cost of cleaner vehicles, boost consumer options, create tens of thousands of jobs, and help US auto manufacturers catch up with overseas rivals that are speeding ahead in EV design, production, and innovation.

But it’s not clear that will necessarily translate into lower consumer prices, and thus greater demand, because Trump has pledged to unravel the key policies currently propelling the sector.

His plans are reported to include rolling back the consumer tax credits of up to $7,500 included in President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act. He has also threatened to impose stiff tariffs on goods imported from Mexico, China, Canada, and other nations where many vehicles or parts are manufactured.

Tal says those policy shifts could more than wipe out any cost reductions brought about as companies scale up production of EV components and vehicles domestically. Tighter trade restrictions could also make it that much harder for foreign companies producing cheaper models to break into the US market.

That matters because the single biggest holdup for American consumers is the lofty expense of EVs. The most affordable models still start at around $30,000 in the US, and many electric cars, trucks, and SUVs top $40,000.

“There’s nothing available in the more affordable options,” says Bhuvan Atluri, associate director of research at the MIT Mobility Initiative. “And models that were promised are nowhere to be seen.” (MIT owns MIT Technology Review.)

Indeed, Elon Musk still has yet to deliver on his 18-year-old “master plan” to produce a mass-market-priced Tesla EV, most recently calling a $25,000 model “pointless.”

As noted, there is a revamped Chevy Bolt on the way for US consumers, as well as a $25,000 Jeep. But the actual price tags won’t be clear until these vehicles hit dealerships and the Trump administration translates its campaign rhetoric into policies.

European Union

The EV story across the Europe Union is likely to be considerably more upbeat in the year to come. That’s because carbon dioxide emissions standards for passenger vehicles are set to tighten, requiring automakers in member countries to reduce climate pollution across their fleet by 15% from 2021 levels. Under the EU’s climate plan, these targets become stricter every five years, with the goal of eliminating emissions from cars and trucks by 2035.

Automakers intend to introduce a number of affordable EV models in the coming months, timed deliberately to help the companies meet the new mandates, says Felipe Rodríguez, Europe deputy managing director at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).

Those lower-priced models include Volkwagen’s ID.2all hatchback ($26,000) and the Fiat Panda EV ($28,500), among others.

On average, manufacturers will need to boost the share of battery-electric vehicles from 16% of total sales in 2023 to around 28% in order to meet the goal, according to the ICCT. Some European car companies are raising their prices for combustion vehicles and cutting the price tag on existing EVs to help hit the targets. And predictably, some are also arguing for the European Commission to loosen the rules.

Sales trends in any given country will still depend on local conditions and policy decisions. One big question is whether a new set of tax incentives or additional policy changes will help Germany, Europe’s largest auto market, revive the growth of its EV sector. Sales tanked there last year, after the nation cut off subsidies at the end of 2023.

EVs now make up about 25% of new sales across the EU. The ICCT estimates that they’ll surpass combustion vehicles EU-wide around 2030, when the emissions rules are set to significantly tighten again.

China

After decades of strategic investments and targeted policies, China is now the dominant manufacturer of EVs as well as the world’s largest market. That’s not likely to change for the foreseeable future, no matter what trade barriers the US or other countries impose.

In October, the European Commission enacted sharply higher tariffs on China-built EVs, arguing that the country has provided unfair market advantages to its domestic companies. That followed the Biden administration’s decision last May to impose a 100% tariff on Chinese vehicles, citing unfair trade practices and intellectual-property theft.

Chinese officials, for their part, argue that their domestic companies have earned market advantages by producing affordable, high-quality electric vehicles. More than 60% of Chinese EVs are already cheaper than their combustion-engine counterparts, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates.

“The reality—and what makes this a difficult challenge—is that there is some truth in both perspectives,” writes Scott Kennedy, trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

These trade barriers have created significant risks for China’s EV makers, particularly coupled with the country’s sluggish economy, its glut of automotive production capacity, and the fact that most companies in the sector aren’t profitable. China also cut back subsidies for EVs at the end of 2022, replacing them with a policy that requires manufacturers to achieve fuel economy targets.

But the country has been intentionally diversifying its export markets for years and is well positioned to continue increasing its sales of electric cars and buses in countries across Southeast Asia, Latin America and Europe, says Hui He, China regional director at the ICCT. There are also some indications that China and the EU could soon reach a compromise in their trade dispute.

Domestically, China is now looking to rural markets to boost growth for the industry. Officials have created purchase subsidies for residents in the countryside and called for the construction of more charging facilities.

By most estimates, China will continue to see solid growth in EV sales, putting nearly 50 million battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the country’s roads by the end of this year.

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Jan 3 2025

How wind tech could help decarbonize cargo shipping

Inhabitants of the Marshall Islands—a chain of coral atolls in the center of the Pacific Ocean—rely on sea transportation for almost everything: moving people from one island to another, importing daily necessities from faraway nations, and exporting their local produce. For millennia they sailed largely in canoes, but much of their seafaring movement today involves big, bulky, diesel-fueled cargo ships that are heavy polluters.

They’re not alone, of course. Cargo shipping is responsible for about 3% of the world’s annual greenhouse-gas emissions, and at the current rate of growth, the global industry could account for 10% of emissions by 2050.

Marshallese shipping represents just a drop in the ocean of global greenhouse-gas pollution; larger, more industrially developed countries are responsible for far more. But the islands have been disproportionately experiencing the consequences of human-made climate change: warming waters, more frequent extreme weather, and rising sea levels.

All this has created a sense of urgency for people like Alson Kelen, who lives and works in Majuro, the islands’ capital. He’s the founder of Waan Aelõñ, a Marshallese canoeing organization that is focused on keeping the region’s ancient and more environmentally sustainable maritime traditions alive. In doing so, he hopes to help his nation fully decarbonize its fleets. Efforts include training local youths to build traditional Marshallese canoes (to replace small, motor-powered speedboats) and larger sailboats fitted with solar panels (to replace medium-size cargo ships). He was also an advisor on construction of the Juren Ae, a cargo sailboat (shown at right) inspired by traditional Marshallese vessels, which made its maiden voyage in 2024 and can carry 300 metric tons of cargo. The Marshall Islands Shipping Corporation hopes it offers a blueprint for cleaner cargo transportation across the Pacific; relative to a fuel-powered cargo ship, the vessel could decrease emissions by up to 80%. It’s “a beautiful big sister of our little canoes,” says Kelen.

Though hyperlocal, Kelen’s work is part of a global project from the International Maritime Organization to reduce emissions associated with cargo shipping to net zero by 2050. Beyond these tiny islands, much of the effort to meet the IMO’s goals focuses on replacing gasoline with alternatives such as ammonia, methane, nuclear power, and hydrogen. And there’s also what the Marshallese people have long relied on: wind power. It’s just one option on the table, but the industry cannot decarbonize quickly enough to meet the IMO’s goals without a role for wind propulsion, says Christiaan De Beukelaer, a political anthropologist and author of Trade Winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping. “If you take time into consideration, wind is indispensable,” he says. Studies show that deploying wind power on vessels could lower the shipping industry’s carbon dioxide emissions by 20%.

“What wind does is it effectively cuts out a few uncertainties,” says De Beukelaer—variables such as the fluctuation of fuel prices and the costs from any carbon pricing scheme the industry may adopt. The IMO is technology agnostic, meaning it sets the goals and safety standards but lets the market find the best ways to attain them. A spokesperson from the organization says wind propulsion is one of many avenues being explored.

Sails can be used either to fully power a vessel or to supplement the motors as a way of reducing fuel consumption for large bulk carriers, oil tankers, and the roll-on/roll-off vessels used to transport airplanes and cars worldwide. Modern cargo sails come in several shapes, sizes, and styles, including wings, rotors, suction sails, and kites.

“If we’ve got five and a half thousand years of experience, isn’t this just a no-brainer?” says Gavin Allwright, secretary-general of the International Windship Association.

Older cargo boats with new sails can use propulsive energy from the wind for up to 30% of their power, while cargo vessels designed specifically for wind could rely on it for up to 80% of their needs, says Allwright, who is still working on standardized measurement criteria to figure out which combination of ship and sail model is most efficient.

“There are so many variables involved,” he says—from the size of the ship to the captain steering it. The 50th large vessel fitted with wind-harnessing tech set sail in October 2024, and he predicts that maritime wind power is set to boom by the beginning of 2026.

drone view over a ship at sea with vertical metal sails

Hard wings

One of the more popular designs for cargo ships is a rigid sail—a hard, winglike structure that is placed vertically on top of the vessel.

“It’s very much like an airplane wing,” says Niclas Dahl, managing director of Oceanbird, a Swedish company that develops these sails. Each one has a main and a flap, which creates a chamber where the wind speed is faster on the outside than the inside. In an aircraft, that discrepancy generates lift force, but in this case, says Dahl, it propels the ship forward. The wings are rigid, but they can be swiveled around and adjusted to capture the wind depending on where it’s coming from, and they can be folded and retracted close to the deck of the ship when it is nearing a dock.

One of Oceanbird’s sails—the 40-meter-high, 14-meter-wide Wing 560, made of high-strength steel, glass fiber, and recycled polyethylene terephthalate—could help cargo ships reduce fuel use by up to 10% per trip, according to the company’s calculations. Oceanbird is installing its first set of wings on a cargo vessel that transports cars, which was scheduled to be ready by the end of 2024.

Oceanbird, though, is just one manufacturer; by late 2024, eight cargo vessels propelled by hard wings were cruising around the world, most of them generalized bulk carriers and oil tankers.

Kites

Other engineers and scientists are working to power cargo vessels with kites like those that propel paragliders. These kites are made from mixtures of UV-resistant polyester, and they are tethered to the ship’s bow and fly up to 200 to 300 meters above the ship, where they can make the best use of the constant winds at that altitude to basically tug the boat forward. To maximize lift, the kites are controlled by computers to operate in the sweet spot where wind is most constant. Studies show that a 400-square-meter kite can produce fuel savings of 9% to 15%.

“The main reason for us believing in kites is high-altitude winds,” says Tim Linnenweber, cofounder of CargoKite, which designs micro cargo ships that can be powered this way. “You basically have an increasing wind speed the higher you go, and so more consistent, more reliable, more steady winds.”

Suction sails

Initially used for airplanes in the 1930s, suction sails were designed and tested on boats in the 1980s by the oceanographer and diving pioneer Jacques Cousteau.

Suction sails are chubby metal sails that look something like rotors but more oval, with a pointed side. And instead of making the whole sail spin around, the motor turns on a fan on the inside of the sail that sucks in wind from the outside. Cristina Aleixendri, cofounder of Bound4Blue, a Spanish company building suction sails, explains that the vent pulls air in through lots of little holes in the shell of the sail and creates what physicists call a boundary layer—a thin layer of air blanketing the sail and thrusting it forward. Bound4Blue’s modern model generates 20% more thrust per square meter of sail than Cousteau’s original design, says Aleixendri, and up to seven times more thrust than a conventional sail.

Twelve ships fitted with a total of 26 suction sails are currently operating, ranging from fishing boats and oil tankers to roll-on/roll-off vessels. Bound4Blue is working on fitting six ships and has fitted four already—including one with the largest suction sail ever installed, at 22 meters tall.

Rotor sails

In the 1920s, the German engineer Anton Flettner had a vision for a wind-powered ship that used vertical, revolving metal cylinders in place of traditional sails. In 1926, a vessel using his novel design, known as the Flettner rotor, crossed the Atlantic for the first time.

Flettner rotors work thanks to the Magnus effect, a phenomenon that occurs when a spinning object moves through a fluid, causing a lift force that can deflect the object’s path. With Flettner’s design, motors spin the cylinders around, and the pressure difference between the sides of the spinning object generates thrust forward, much like a soccer player bending the trajectory of a ball.

In a modern upgrade of the rotor sail, designed by the Finnish company Norsepower, the cylinders can spin up to 300 times per minute. This produces 10 times more thrust power than a conventional sail. Norsepower has fitted 27 rotor sails on 14 ships out at sea so far, and six more ships equipped with rotor sails from other companies set sail in 2024.

“According to our calculations, the rotor sail is, at the moment, the most efficient wind-assistive power when you look at eurocent per kilowatt-hour,” says Heikki Pöntynen, Norsepower’s CEO. Results from their vessels currently out at sea suggest that fuel savings are “anywhere between 5% to 30% on the whole voyage.”

Sofia Quaglia is a freelance science journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, and New Scientist.

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Will states be able to set their own rules on electric vehicles?

What will happen to wind projects?

What about the money?

Now read the rest of The Spark

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Another thing

Keeping up with climate

Now read the rest of The Spark

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Now read the rest of The Spark

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Another thing

Keeping up with climate

A global patchwork

Advancing along

Squeezing capacity

Big Tech’s big appetite

Green steel

Cow burp remedies

Cleaner jet fuel

Now read the rest of The Spark

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Another thing

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WHO

WHEN

WHO

WHEN

United States

European Union

China

Hard wings

Kites

Suction sails

Rotor sails