News and Feature Stories
The following news stories take an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at how NREL is advancing energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.
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May 2019
May 8, 2019
Ready, Set, STEM! Racing Through the 29th Annual Middle School Car Competitions
Middle school students from 19 schools across Colorado race their solar and lithium-ion powered vehicles at NREL's 29th Annual Middle School Car Competitions.
May 8, 2019
ExxonMobil Partnership Will Support National Lab Research for Future Energy Solutions at Scale
A new $100 million agreement between ExxonMobil, NREL, and other DOE national laboratories will focus on developing transformative advanced energy technologies with a focus on reducing emissions.
May 7, 2019
NREL's Matthew Beard Honored by Royal Society of Chemistry
The society singled Beard out specifically for his "outstanding contributions to controlling ultra-fast carrier dynamics in nanostructures and perovskite semiconductors."
May 2, 2019
NREL Research Fellow Testifies on Plastic Recycling Before House Subcommittee
Plastics are essential to modern life--but it's hard to turn on the TV or browse the web without seeing poignant examples of the plastic life cycle extending far beyond usefulness. NREL Senior Research Fellow Gregg Beckham testified before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee about one possible solution to the plastic pollution problem: chemical recycling.
April 2019
April 29, 2019
NREL Partnership Successes Help Transform National Energy Landscape
NREL, which already has some 850 active partnership agreements with more than 500 partners in industry, government, and academia, is helping change the clean energy landscape along with its partners.
April 25, 2019
Q&A with Adarsh Nagarajan: Energy Storage as an Entity and Asset
Adarsh Nagarajan is the group manager for Power System Design and Planning at NREL. One of his specializations includes finding solutions and understanding grid integration challenges of various emerging technologies, such as solar, wind, and energy storage systems. We sat down with Nagarajan to learn more about the exciting new collaborations he's part of at NREL.
April 24, 2019
Early-Stage Companies and Investors Agree: IGF is the Place to Be in Cleantech Startup Ecosystem
NREL's Industry Growth Forum helps move technology to market through increased funding opportunities, mentorship, networking, and investor-entrepreneur interaction.
April 22, 2019
Your Renewable Energy Technology is Growing Old--What's Next?
While hundreds of millions of tons of trash continue to be dumped into American landfills annually, a growing percentage has been diverted to recycling centers since the first Earth Day in 1970. But these centers aren't set up for renewable energy technologies.
April 18, 2019
Perovskite Breakthrough Shows Importance of Added Chemical Compound in Boosting Efficiency
Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory report making a significant breakthrough by producing a tandem perovskite solar cell that pushes the technology closer to its maximum efficiency.
April 17, 2019
I-JEDI Website Helps Countries Transitioning to Clean Energy
With support from USAID, NREL's International Jobs and Economic Development Impacts (I-JEDI) Model is a free, online tool for analyzing the economic impacts of renewable energy development in a specific country.
April 17, 2019
NREL Celebrates Bat Appreciation Day
As a founding member of the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative, NREL has spent 15 years working to protect bats by developing innovative technological solutions to monitor and minimize wind energy's impacts to bats.
April 16, 2019
New NREL and Georgia Tech Collaborative Appointment Program
NREL and Georgia Institute of Technology announce a new joint appointment program as part of an effort to enhance research collaboration between the lab and universities.
April 9, 2019
Catalyst Cost Estimating Tool Significantly Improves Research Efficiency
More than 85% of chemical processes rely on catalysts, but limited information on their cost can lead to roadblocks during early-stage research and development and along the path to commercialization. To address this challenge, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory developed a catalyst cost estimation tool that incorporates industry-standard estimation methods into an intuitive, user-friendly suite of tools.
April 2, 2019
NREL Supports New Strategies to Accelerate PSH Development
NREL is supporting a new water prize to fund innovators who are working to address the non-regulatory challenges pumped-storage hydropower developers face when deploying new projects. The team aims to shorten commissioning times and reduce both risk and required up-front investments.
April 1, 2019
Beneath Solar Panels, the Seeds of Opportunity Sprout
Low-impact development of solar installations can shelter vegetation and boost energy production, creating a win-win-win for food, water, and renewable energy.
March 2019
March 27, 2019
Patent Protection Awarded to NREL's EcoSnap-AC Technology
The patented device eliminates leaking air that comes with a window-mounted unit, reduces noise, and operates with more efficiency.
March 25, 2019
NREL Analysts Help Student Teams Battle Real-Time Cyberattacks, Gain Skills
When a series of cyberattacks surged through the Denver Tech Center, NREL Cybersecurity Analysts Joshua Rivera, Adarsh Hasandka, and Anuj Sanghvi could just watch--and wait. That's because they were volunteers at the eighth Rocky Mountain Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.
March 21, 2019
NREL Federal Energy Management Program Team Directly Supports $13.7B of Federal Facility Energy Efficiency Improvements
A special NREL Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) procurement team is responsible for directly supporting almost $14 billion worth of upgrades to federal energy infrastructure projects using unique contracting and financing mechanisms, ensuring federal facilities received the energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades they needed.
March 20, 2019
Building Community Through Competition: The 29th Annual Colorado High School Science Bowl
Since its inception, the Colorado High School Science Bowl has given students the opportunity to engage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) enrichment beyond the classroom.
March 19, 2019
New Materials Could Lead to Recyclable Wind Blades
Advancements in wind energy have allowed the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere to drop considerably, and all without raising the levelized cost of energy. However, disposing of the materials used to create these energy-efficient machines can be complicated and have unintended consequences. Thanks to researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), this could soon be a thing of the past.
March 16, 2019
News Release: Fort Collins High School Reigns Supreme at the 29th Colorado High School Science Bowl
This marks the third consecutive year students from Fort Collins High School won the Colorado competition.
March 15, 2019
NREL Unveils Look at Most Efficient Solar Modules
The initial Champion Module Efficiencies chart contains 73 data points, dating to 1988, and broken out into 19 different technologies.
March 13, 2019
News Release: NREL's Economic Impact Tops $1 Billion
The new study estimates NREL's impact on Colorado's economy at nearly $748 million.
March 11, 2019
News Release: Tenth Edition of Data Book Reveals Trends in U.S. and Global Renewable Energy Growth
This year's edition is the first to include data and trends for electric vehicles and energy storage technologies, in addition to data-centric charts for wind, solar, hydropower, and alternative fuels.
March 6, 2019
News Release: NREL Announces New Projects to Advance Medium- and Heavy-Duty Natural Gas Vehicle Technologies
The selected projects will focus on reducing the total cost of ownership of NGVs, increasing vehicle efficiency, decreasing local air pollution, and advancing technology development to increase the use of more affordable medium- and heavy-duty natural gas engines and vehicles.
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