With enormous kites that pull shipping vessels across oceans using wind power, floating devices attached to jetties that generate electricity from the motion of waves hitting the shore, and other new technologies, companies are looking to diversify options for harnessing familiar sources of renewable energy in innovative ways. Many of these innovations aim to overcome cost and maintenance issues associated with existing technologies.
As world leaders endorse climate goals like reaching net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions within the next 30 years, these companies are pushing to move their projects from research and development to commercial phases. The net-zero objective—balancing emissions produced and emissions removed from the atmosphere — has spurred growth in the business of sustainable energy, which generates fewer emissions than fossil fuels. Some of these possibilities, like satellites that can wirelessly beam down solar energy from orbit, remain experimental, while others, like underwater turbines that harness tidal movements, have progressed from prototypes to commercial demonstrations. Here are some of the newest developments in generating power from the air, sun, water, and Earth.
