As the United States shifts away from fossil-fuel-burning cars and trucks, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge and Argonne national laboratories are exploring options for another form of transportation: trains. The research focuses on zero-carbon hydrogen and other low-carbon fuels as viable alternatives to diesel for the rail industry.
Laboratory Director Thomas Zacharia presented five Director’s Awards during Saturday night's annual Awards Night event hosted by UT-Battelle, which manages ORNL for the Department of Energy.
Researchers at ORNL recently demonstrated a new technology to better control how power flows to and from commercial buildings equipped with solar, wind or other renewable energy generation.
Two years after ORNL provided a model of nearly every building in America, commercial partners are using the tool for tasks ranging from designing energy-efficient buildings and cities to linking energy efficiency to real estate value and risk.
When Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in 2017, winds snapped trees and destroyed homes, while heavy rains transformed streets into rivers. But after the storm passed, the human toll continued to grow as residents struggled without electricity for months. Five years later, power outages remain long and frequent.
As climate change leads to larger and more frequent wildfires, researchers at ORNL are using sensors, drones and machine learning to both prevent fires and reduce their damage to the electric grid.
ORNL and the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, are joining forces to advance decarbonization technologies from discovery through deployment through a new memorandum of understanding, or MOU.
More than 50 current employees and recent retirees from ORNL received Department of Energy Secretary’s Honor Awards from Secretary Jennifer Granholm in January as part of project teams spanning the national laboratory system. The annual awards recognized 21 teams and three individuals for service and contributions to DOE’s mission and to the benefit of the nation.
Three ORNL scientists have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals.
Nearly a billion acres of land in the United States is dedicated to agriculture, producing more than a trillion dollars of food products to feed the country and the world. Those same agricultural processes, however, also produced an estimated 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.