Energy
| Emerging technology | Status | Potentially marginalized technologies | Potential applications | Related articles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vortex engine | Chimney Cooling tower Solar updraft tower | Power generation. | ||
| Airborne wind turbine | Research | Fossil fuels | Producing electricity | KiteGen |
| Artificial photosynthesis | Research, experiments | replicate the natural process of photosynthesis, converting sunlight, water, carbon dioxide into carbohydrates and oxygen | AlgaePARC | |
| Biofuels | Diffusion | Fossil fuels | Energy storage, more so for transport | Issues relating to biofuels |
| Concentrated solar power | Growing markets in California, Spain, Northern Africa | Fossil fuels, photovoltaics | Producing electricity | DESERTEC, BrightSource Energy, Solar Millennium |
| Electric double-layer capacitor | Diffusion, continued development | Chemical batteries | Regenerative braking; energy storage: generally faster charging, longer lasting, more flexible, greener | |
| Flywheel energy storage | Some commercial examples | |||
| Fusion power | Theory, experiments; for 60+ years | Fossil fuels, renewable energy, nuclear fission power | Producing electricity, heat, fusion torch recycling with waste heat | ITER, NIF, Polywell, Dense plasma focus, Muon-catalyzed fusion |
| Generation IV reactor | Research, Experiments | Traditional nuclear power reactors, fossil fuels | Producing electricity, heat, transmutation of nuclear waste stockpiles from traditional reactors | |
| Grid energy storage | Increasing use | |||
| Home fuel cell | Research, commercialisation | Electrical grid | Off-the-grid, producing electricity | Autonomous building, Bloom Energy Server |
| Hydrogen economy | Diffusion of hydrogen fuel cells; theory, experiments for lower cost hydrogen production | Other energy storage methods: chemical batteries, fossil fuels | Energy storage | |
| Lithium-air battery | Research, experiments | Other energy storage methods: hydrogen, chemical batteries, some uses of fossil fuels | Laptops, mobile phones, long-range electric cars; storing energy for electric grid | |
| Lithium iron phosphate battery | Commercialization | |||
| Molten salt battery | Applications and continuing research | |||
| Molten salt reactor | Research, Experiments | Traditional nuclear power reactors, fossil fuels | Producing electricity, heat | |
| Nanowire battery | Experiments, prototypes | Other energy storage methods: hydrogen, chemical batteries, some uses of fossil fuels | Laptops, mobile phones, long-range electric cars; storing energy for electric grid | |
| Nantenna | Research | Fossil fuels | Producing electricity | |
| Silicon–air battery | Experiments | |||
| Smart grid | Research, diffusion | Smart meter, SuperSmart Grid | ||
| Solar roadway | Research | Fossil fuels | Producing electricity | |
| Space-based solar power | Theory | |||
| Thorium fuel cycle | Research started in the 1960s, still ongoing | Uranium based nuclear power, fossil fuels | Producing electricity, heat | |
| Wireless energy transfer | Prototypes, diffusion, short range consumer products | Power cords, plugs, batteries | Wirelessly powered equipment: laptop, cell phones, electric cars, etc. | WiTricity, resonant inductive coupling |
Read more about this topic: List Of Emerging Technologies
Famous quotes containing the word energy:
“While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter, without mutual relationships, tumble over one another like so many liquid molecules, encountering no central energy to retain, fix and organize them.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)
“In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)