Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

Technology · Agriculture

Ecozen Ecofrost: the battery-free solar cold room built for India's smallholders

Three IIT Kharagpur graduates asked why a farmer should sell tomatoes cheap just because there is nowhere cool to keep them. Their answer, Ecofrost, is a farm-gate cold room that runs on sunlight and stores cold rather than electricity, so it needs neither a grid connection nor a battery. Twelve years on, the Pune company behind it has grown into a profitable climate-tech business with revenue above Rs 1,000 crore.

6 min read

Technology · Agriculture

FarmDroid FD20: the Danish solar robot that remembers every seed it sows

Weeds hit hardest in the first weeks after sowing, when sugar beet and onion seedlings are tiny. Conventional farms answer with herbicide, organic farms with crews of hand weeders. FarmDroid, from Vejen in Denmark, built a slow, light, solar-powered robot that records the GPS position of every seed it plants and then comes back to hoe around each one. More than 500 now work in 26 countries, and a bigger sibling arrives in January 2027.

6 min read

Technology · Food

S4S Technologies Solar Conduction Dryer: turning India's unsold harvest into income for women

When tomato prices crash, Indian farmers often leave crops to rot because harvesting costs more than the market pays.

6 min read

Technology · Nuclear

Commonwealth Fusion Systems' SPARC magnet: the 20-tesla coil that shrank the tokamak

In September 2021 a nine-tonne magnet in a Massachusetts lab reached 20 tesla and changed the economics of fusion.

6 min read

Technology · Nuclear

Tokamak Energy Demo4: the first complete superconducting magnet set for a spherical tokamak

Fusion needs a magnetic cage strong enough to hold a plasma hotter than the core of the Sun.

6 min read

Technology · Ocean

CorPower Ocean C4: the Swedish wave buoy that rode out an 18.5 m storm

Waves carry enormous energy along Europe's Atlantic coast, yet decades of wave machines have been wrecked by the very storms that make the resource so rich.

6 min read

Technology · Ocean

Minesto Dragon 12: an underwater kite that flies figure-eights to harvest the tide

Tidal currents are as predictable as a calendar, but most of them are too slow for conventional turbines to pay off.

6 min read

Technology · Space

Planet Tanager-1: the hyperspectral satellite that pins methane leaks to a single well pad or landfill

Methane is invisible, odourless in its raw form and, over 20 years, about 80 times more powerful than CO2 at warming the planet.

6 min read

Technology · Water

Boreal Light WaterKiosk: the Berlin-built solar desalination container that sells safe water for cents

Along Kenya's coast and in its dry north, the only groundwater is often salty, and bottled water is far beyond many family budgets.

5 min read

Technology · Water

Desolenator: the Dutch solar-thermal desalination unit that turns seawater into pure water without membranes or toxic brine

Most of the world's desalinated water is made by forcing seawater through membranes with fossil-fuelled pumps, then dumping concentrated brine back into the sea.

5 min read

Energy · CleanTech

Greenway Smart Stove: the Indian cookstove that cuts smoke and firewood for more than three million rural kitchens

In much of rural India, dinner is still cooked on a mud chulha fed with wood, crop waste and dung cakes, filling the kitchen with smoke.

5 min read

Energy · CleanTech

Heaten HeatBooster: the piston-driven heat pump that turns factory waste heat into 200°C process heat

Factories that make sugar, food, chemicals and paper burn gas in boilers to raise steam, while warm wastewater and vapour go straight down the drain or up the chimney.

6 min read

Energy · CleanTech

Sistema.bio biodigester: the prefabricated biogas plant turning cow dung into cooking gas and fertiliser for small farms

Hundreds of millions of rural families cook on smoky wood or dung fires, while manure from their cattle releases methane into the air.

6 min read

Energy · CleanTech

Sunfire HyLink Alkaline: the Dresden-built electrolyser that is scaling green hydrogen from megawatts to 50 MW blocks

Refineries, fertiliser plants and steelworks use millions of tonnes of hydrogen made from natural gas, and that hydrogen carries a heavy carbon footprint.

6 min read

Energy · CleanTech

Vaillant aroTHERM plus: the propane heat pump built to replace gas boilers in ordinary European homes

Heating buildings is one of Europe's largest sources of carbon emissions, and most homes still burn gas or oil to do it.

6 min read

Energy · Decarbonization

Vedanta Restora: India's first low-carbon aluminium brand, and the coal-heavy system it has to escape

India is the world's second-largest aluminium producer, and almost all of its smelters run on captive coal power, giving its metal one of the highest carbon footprints anywhere.

6 min read

Energy · Energy storage

Exponent Energy e^pack and e^pump: the Bengaluru battery that charges an electric auto in 15 minutes

In Indian cities, an auto-rickshaw or cargo three-wheeler earns money only while it is moving. Waiting four hours to recharge, or queuing at a battery swap station, eats directly into a driver's income.

6 min read

Energy · Energy storage

Invinity Endurium: the Scottish-built vanadium flow battery chasing Europe's long-duration storage gap

Lithium-ion batteries have become the default way to shift solar power into the evening, but they wear out with heavy cycling and are usually built for two to four hours of output.

5 min read

Energy · Energy storage

Ore Energy iron-air battery: the Delft start-up storing wind power for days by rusting iron

Europe is wasting a growing share of its renewable electricity because there is nowhere to put it when the wind blows hardest. Lithium-ion batteries empty in a few hours, which is not enough for a calm, grey week in winter.

6 min read

Energy · Energy storage

Polar Night Energy Sand Battery: the Finnish silo of hot soapstone that heats a town on cheap wind power

Finland now has so much wind power that electricity is sometimes almost free, and sometimes very expensive. District heating networks still burn wood chips, gas and oil to keep homes warm through the winter.

6 min read

Energy · Energy storage

Sunamp Thermino: the Scottish heat battery that replaces a hot water cylinder in a quarter of the space

Millions of European homes keep a large cylinder of hot water in a cupboard, slowly losing heat all day. Switching such homes to heat pumps often means fitting an even bigger tank, and many flats simply have no room.

5 min read

Energy · Geothermal energy

Eavor-Loop at Geretsried: the closed-loop geothermal radiator that sent its first power into Germany's grid

Conventional geothermal power needs hot rock, natural water and permeable ground in the same place, which is why it is concentrated in volcanic regions such as Iceland, Kenya and Indonesia.

6 min read

Energy · Geothermal energy

Fervo Energy Cape Station: the Utah plant that made enhanced geothermal a commercial power source

For decades, enhanced geothermal systems were the energy technology that was always ten years away: engineer a reservoir in hot, dry rock anywhere, and you could have clean power around the clock.

5 min read

Energy · Geothermal energy

NIBE S1256: the Swedish ground-source heat pump that turns one unit of electricity into six units of heat

Most people picture geothermal energy as steaming volcanic power stations. In Sweden, it is a 200-metre hole in the garden and a fridge-sized box in the utility room.

6 min read

Energy · Geothermal energy

Ormat Energy Converter: the binary geothermal plant behind half of Turkey's geothermal power

Turkey has become one of the world's fastest-growing geothermal markets in the past fifteen years, and most of its plants rely on equipment designed by a single company that started in a small workshop in Israel in 1965.

5 min read

Energy · Geothermal energy

Turboden geothermal ORC: the Brescia-built turbines turning lukewarm rock heat into firm electricity

Most of the world's untapped geothermal heat is not hot enough to make steam. Below about 180°C, the water that comes out of a well cannot efficiently spin a conventional steam turbine.

5 min read

Energy · Nuclear energy

GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300: the G7's first grid-scale small modular reactor is rising at Darlington

Small modular reactors have been promised for two decades, but very few have moved from paper to concrete.

6 min read

Energy · Nuclear energyAbout Nuclear Power Corporation of India

NPCIL 700 MWe PHWR: India's home-grown reactor moves into fleet production

India has built heavy water reactors since the 1970s, but for decades its standard unit was a modest 220 MW.

5 min read

Energy · Nuclear energy

Posiva ONKALO: the world's first deep repository for spent nuclear fuel is almost ready

Since the 1950s, critics of nuclear power have asked one question: where does the waste go?

6 min read

Energy · Nuclear energy

Rolls-Royce SMR: a factory-built 470 MW nuclear power station, with first orders in Wales and Czechia

Large nuclear projects in Europe have become famous for delays and overruns.

6 min read

Energy · Nuclear energyAbout Teollisuuden Voima

TVO Olkiluoto 3 EPR: Europe's biggest reactor finally delivers, after 18 years and €11 billion

Olkiluoto 3 was meant to open in 2009 and became a byword for nuclear delays and cost overruns.

5 min read

Energy · Solar energy

3SUN B60: Europe's biggest solar factory makes heterojunction panels in Sicily

Europe installs tens of gigawatts of solar every year but makes only a tiny share of the panels itself.

5 min read

Energy · Solar energy

First Solar Series 7: thin-film solar without Chinese silicon, made in the US and India

Almost every solar panel in the world is made from crystalline silicon, and most of that silicon supply chain runs through China.

5 min read

Energy · Solar energy

Heliatek HeliaSol: a stick-on organic solar film from Dresden

Most of the surface area of our buildings cannot carry heavy glass solar panels: weak roofs, curved surfaces and tall concrete facades.

5 min read

Energy · Solar energy

Oxford PV tandem module: perovskite on silicon, made in Brandenburg

Silicon solar panels are close to their practical efficiency limit, so the industry is looking for a second layer that can harvest more of the sun's spectrum.

6 min read

Energy · Solar energy

Waaree ELITE R: India's biggest panel maker scales up n-type bifacial modules

India wants to install hundreds of gigawatts of solar and to make the equipment itself rather than import it from China.

6 min read

Energy · Wind energy

Aeromine: a bladeless rooftop wind unit built to work alongside solar

Warehouses and factories have huge flat roofs, and solar panels cover many of them, but solar goes quiet in the evenings and in winter.

5 min read

Energy · Wind energy

Kitepower Hawk: a Dutch kite that charges batteries on off-grid building sites

Construction sites, farms and islands still burn diesel because the grid is full, far away or not there at all.

6 min read

Energy · Wind energy

Siemens Gamesa RecyclableBlade: offshore wind blades designed to come apart at end of life

Wind turbines are mostly steel, copper and concrete that can already be recycled, but their giant composite blades have usually been cut up and buried or burned.

6 min read

Energy · Wind energy

Suzlon S144: India's flagship low-wind turbine passes 10 GW of orders

Much of India's remaining wind potential sits at sites with only moderate wind, where older turbines struggled to pay their way.

6 min read

Energy · Wind energy

Vestas V236-15.0 MW: Europe's flagship offshore turbine reaches commercial scale

Offshore wind is Europe's biggest bet for clean, home-grown power, and fewer, larger turbines make it cheaper to build and run.

6 min read

Materials science · Low carbon industry

Coolbrook RotoDynamic Heater: the Finnish turbomachine that makes 1,000°C industrial heat from electricity

Most of heavy industry's emissions come from burning coal, gas and oil to make high-temperature heat, a job that ordinary electric heaters cannot do.

6 min read

Materials science · Low carbon industry

European Energy Kassø e-methanol: the Danish plant turning sunshine and biogas CO2 into a chemical for LEGO, Maersk and refineries

More than 100 million tonnes of methanol are made every year, almost all of it from natural gas and coal, and it ends up in plastics, paints, fuels and ships' tanks.

5 min read

Green architecture · Green buildings

VELUX vacuum glazing: a roof window with triple-glazing insulation in an 11.5 mm pane

VELUX has squeezed the insulation of a triple-glazed window into a pane less than half as thick, by replacing the gas between two sheets of glass with a vacuum.

5 min read

Green architecture · Green buildings

Viessmann Vitocal 250-A: the propane heat pump built for old radiators, in Germany's new heating rules era

Viessmann's Vitocal 250-A is designed to replace a gas or oil boiler in an existing house without changing the radiators, using propane as a natural refrigerant.

6 min read

Green architecture · Micro climate systemsAbout Ant Studio

CoolAnt Beehive: a Delhi architect's terracotta wall that cools hot air without refrigerants

Indian households have cooled drinking water in clay pots for centuries. Ant Studio turned the idea inside out, cooling air by blowing it through wet terracotta cones.

5 min read

Transportation and logistics · Biofuels

EnviTec Bio-LNG: liquefied biogas for long-haul trucks

Lorries that run on liquefied natural gas are already common on German motorways. EnviTec makes the renewable version: biogas from farm residues, cleaned into biomethane and chilled to around minus 160 °C until it becomes a liquid that fills the same tanks.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · Biofuels

LanzaJet Freedom Pines: the first commercial plant turning ethanol into jet fuel

Most sustainable aviation fuel today is made from used cooking oil and animal fats, and there is not enough of either to fly the world. LanzaJet starts from ethanol instead, a liquid that can be made from crops, farm waste, municipal rubbish or even captured industrial gases.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · Biofuels

Neste MY Renewable Diesel: waste fats turned into a drop-in diesel

Old frying oil and slaughterhouse fat are not obvious truck fuels. Neste hydrotreats them into a diesel that is chemically almost the same as the fossil kind, so a bus, lorry or generator can switch over at the pump with no changes.

5 min read

Transportation and logistics · Biofuels

Praj enfinity: India's bet on ethanol from burning rice straw

Every October and November, farmers in Punjab and Haryana set fire to the stubble left after the rice harvest, and smoke drifts over Delhi. Praj Industries' enfinity process is meant to turn that straw into fuel ethanol instead.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · Biofuels

UPM BioVerno: diesel from a pulp mill's leftover tall oil

When pine and spruce are cooked into pulp, a dark, sticky oil separates out. For decades it was burned for heat or sold to chemical makers. At Lappeenranta in south-east Finland, UPM turns it into a diesel and a naphtha that drop straight into today's tanks and crackers.

5 min read

Transportation and logistics · Clean mobility

Ather Rizta: the family e-scooter that took a Bengaluru start-up national

India runs on scooters. More than any car, the 110 cc petrol scooter is how families get to work, school and the market, and it is a large source of urban air pollution and oil imports.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · EVs

Kempower Satellite: Finland's modular fast chargers that share power where it is needed

A fast-charging site is expensive, and most of the time its chargers are either idle or waiting for a car that can only take part of their power.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · EVs

Renault 5 E-Tech electric: Europe's retro city car that made small EVs sell

For years Europe's electric car market was split between expensive premium models and cheap imports. Affordable, European-made small EVs were rare, which kept many city drivers in petrol hatchbacks.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · EVs

SUN Mobility battery swapping: India's swap network that sells energy, not batteries

For India's e-rickshaw drivers and delivery riders, the battery is the most expensive part of an electric vehicle, and hours spent charging are hours without income.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · EVs

Tata Nexon EV: the made-in-India electric SUV that opened the mass market

When the Nexon EV arrived in January 2020, electric cars in India were rare, expensive or impractical for long trips.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · EVs

Volvo FH Aero Electric: the 700 km battery truck that takes on long-haul diesel

Heavy trucks are a small share of vehicles but a large share of road emissions, and long-haul routes were long thought too far for batteries.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · Hydrogen aviation

Beyond Aero BYA-1: a hydrogen-electric business jet built around its fuel

Business aviation is the most carbon-intensive way to fly per passenger, and its customers are the ones most able to pay for something cleaner.

7 min read

Transportation and logistics · Hydrogen aviation

Doosan Mobility Innovation DS30W: the mass-produced hydrogen drone that flies for two hours

Battery drones are useful for short jobs, but they rarely stay up for more than half an hour, which limits how far they can inspect a power line or carry medicine.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · Hydrogen aviation

H2FLY HY4: the Stuttgart demonstrator that first flew a piloted aircraft on liquid hydrogen

Gaseous hydrogen tanks are heavy and bulky, which limits how far a hydrogen aircraft can fly. Liquid hydrogen, chilled to cryogenic temperatures, stores far more energy in a lighter tank, but nobody had flown a piloted fuel cell aircraft on it.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · Hydrogen aviation

Intelligent Energy IE-SOAR and IE-FLIGHT: British fuel cells that already fly drones and are scaling up to aircraft

Battery drones usually stay in the air for 20 to 30 minutes, which rules out long pipeline patrols, search and rescue over mountains or deliveries to islands.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · Hydrogen aviation

ZeroAvia ZA600: the hydrogen-electric engine trying to be the first certified

Small regional aircraft link islands, remote towns and cargo hubs, and almost all of them still burn kerosene or aviation gasoline. Batteries are too heavy for most of these routes.

6 min read

Transportation and logistics · Supply chain

Tan90 Thermal: the Chennai cold boxes that keep food cool without a fridge on wheels

Much of India's fruit, vegetables, milk and medicine travels without proper cooling, because refrigerated trucks are expensive, scarce and useless during a power cut. A lot of it spoils on the way.

6 min read

Eco-restoration · Climate resilience software

Mitiga Solutions EarthScan: Barcelona supercomputing science that tells companies what floods, heat and wildfire will cost their assets

A solar farm in Andalusia, a warehouse near Valencia and a hotel on a Greek island face very different futures as the climate warms, but most companies still judge their sites with weather records from the past.

6 min read

Eco-restoration · Eco-acoustics

Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter: the field recorders behind a generation of bird, frog and bat surveys

Before 2007, ecologists who wanted to leave a recorder in the forest had to build their own from parts, waterproof it and hope it worked.

5 min read

Eco-restoration · Sustainable forestry

Logset 12H GTE Hybrid: the Finnish hybrid harvester that stores energy in supercapacitors

An eight-wheeled timber harvester from Ostrobothnia that pairs a diesel engine with an electric motor and supercapacitors, so it can cut big trees with less fuel per cubic metre.

6 min read

Planetary engineering · Geological interventions

Carbfix: the Icelandic method that turns CO2 into stone in two years

Carbfix dissolves CO2 in water like a soda machine, pumps it into volcanic basalt and lets chemistry do the rest. More than 120,000 tonnes of CO2 have been locked into Icelandic rock this way.

6 min read

Planetary engineering · Solar radiation management

i2Cool: the Hong Kong coating inspired by Saharan silver ants that keeps roofs cool without electricity

A white, paint-like coating that reflects more than 95% of sunlight and sends heat out through the sky. Born in a City University of Hong Kong lab, it has been used on more than 500 projects in about 30 countries, from Hong Kong towers to grain silos and shipping containers.

6 min read

Planetary engineering · Solar radiation management

SPACECOOL: the Japanese film that sends heat to space, now selling in Europe from Munich

A thin film and fabric that reflect almost all sunlight and radiate heat out through the sky, staying cooler than the surrounding air even at noon. It wrapped an entire pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka and is now marketed in Europe by a Munich subsidiary.

6 min read

Planetary engineering · Solar radiation management

Thermacool: the IIT Bombay cool roof coating that India's heat policies are making mainstream

A roof coating developed at IIT Bombay and sold by a small New Delhi company, designed to bounce back the near-infrared part of sunlight that heats concrete and tin roofs. As Indian states start to require cool roofs, products like this are moving from pilot projects to building permits.

6 min read

Advanced technology · NanoTech

Sila Titan Silicon: a nanostructured silicon anode that aims to replace graphite in lithium-ion batteries

Almost every lithium-ion battery stores its lithium in graphite, and most of that graphite is processed in China. Sila, a Californian company founded in 2011, has spent more than a decade engineering a porous silicon material that holds far more lithium without breaking itself apart. In September 2025 it began operating an automotive-scale plant in Moses Lake, Washington, powered by hydropower.

6 min read

Advanced technology · NanoTech

TriNANO: an Indian nano-coating that helps solar panels make more power with less cleaning water

India is building solar farms at record pace, often in dry, dusty places where panels must be washed again and again. TriNANO Technologies, a start-up from Navi Mumbai incubated at IIT Bombay, applies a transparent coating 0.4 microns thick to the glass of new or old panels. It says the coating raises output by about 4% and cuts cleaning water by 55%.

5 min read

Tagged with Goal 7