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Climate change has been at the forefront of our attention in recent years, with attitudes towards the change differing dramatically. There have been spiralling changes in weather which are having catastrophic impacts to different parts of our planet. That, alongside other damaging effects of human action, including plastic in our oceans seeping into the food chain, and the world has decided nearly unanimously that enough is enough.

What is the Paris Agreement and its accompanying 2020 targets?

Governments across the globe have been joining forces to try to find an answer to our problems. Nearly 200 countries within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came to a consensus in 2015 to cut greenhouse emissions and have committed to limit temperature rises worldwide by no more than 2C above pre-industrial times. In fact, the aim is to limit this further, to 1.5C if possible. Progress will be reviewed every five years and financial funding from donor nations will go to less developed countries.

However, we still must commit to huge efforts in a bid to achieve a positive end result. A recent UN report suggests that the world actually needs to triple its current efforts to meet the 2C target.

Nevada is one of the nation's renewable energy leaders. In 2017, Nevada ranked second in the nation in electricity generation from geothermal energy and fourth in utility-scale generation from solar energy according to the official EIA report. These two renewable energy sources supplied 19% of Nevada’s utility-scale net electricity generation.

Nevada is making further steps to add more renewable energy to its portfolio.  A few days ago it was reported that The Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (PUCN) approved NV Energy's Integrated Resource Plan, which will bring 1,001 megawatts of new renewable energy projects to Nevada, including the 100 megawatts of battery storage capacity.

Three of these renewable energy projects will be located in northern Nevada and three will be located in southern Nevada. All projects are expected to be completed and working by the end of 2021.

Norway is by far the largest producer of hydroelectricity in Europe, and also the sixth largest producer in the world.  This rich Scandinavian country is blessed with plentiful hydro resources and is certainly making the most of it. 

Norway has very long history of using hydropower resources, for instance Hammeren power station in Maridalen outside Oslo that become operational in 1900 is still delivering electricity, after more than a century.

According to the most recent reports 98% of country's electricity production is based on hydropower. At the end of 2016, Norway’s hydropower resources combined for over 31 GW installed capacity.

Many energy experts believe that hydrogen is one of future's top fuels. There are many ongoing researches with the purpose of finding the cleanest and the most efficient way to produce hydrogen. One of the most interesting techniques is water splitting by using the sunlight.

Water splitting by using sunlight is really a form of artificial photosynthesis where sunlight is used to produce hydrogen from water. How does this process work?

First we have water splitting devices that are made of light-absorbing materials. These materials are capable to absorb different parts of the solar spectrum ranging from infrared to ultraviolet light. Once the light is absorbed by these materials it builds an electrical voltage.

Wind power use is rapidly growing all over the world. In many corners of the world you can see wind turbines with gigantic rolling blades harnessing the clean power of the wind and converting it into electricity.

How to improve productivity of these wind farms? Many would likely say by adding more wind turbines but this isn't always the case, in fact it can even lead to decreased production. Just getting the numbers up, doesn't always result in getting the more power.

Why is that? We have to start with the premise that each wind turbine has been designed for use by themselves and in wind farm it is almost never used by themselves anymore. Wind turbines are now used in groups of hundreds and even thousands and in large installation with the group of thousand turbines each one may not fulfill its full potential.