China’s greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to grow at an alarming rate. In 2010, emissions were 20% higher than the United States’ but by 2015, emissions could top 50% higher, according to Ye Qi, the director of the Climate Policy Initiative and professor of environmental policy at  Tsinghua University.

Despite China aggressively reducing energy intensity and building renewable energy capacity, total energy use has grown dramatically. ”There is no question now China is the largest emitter, and the gap between Number 1 and Number 2 is enlarging,” Qi said as part of a Brookings Institution panel discussion on China’s low-carbon development.

Source: Climatewire

Source: World Bank Photo Collection

The Nilgiri Hills consists of a heart-shaped region rising almost vertically from the lowlands of the Southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka in Southern India. In order to protect its unique population of plants and animals, it was one of the earliest places in the world to be registered as a World Biosphere Reserve Home. The Nilgiris are also home to indigenous populations of India, including tribes such as the Toda, the Badaga and Kota, among others. Today, more than 60% of the grassland has disappeared. These grasslands served as a tank, taking water from the mists and rains and releasing it slowly through the roots of the ancient shola tree throughout the year. Much of this grassland has now been covered with destructive forests of eucalyptus, as well as tea plantations. “The Nilgiris is like the heart of south India,” Founder and Director of Earth Trust, Vanya Orr says during an interview in Ooty, India. “It [the Nilgiris] is the shape of a heart and supplies water and energy to South India, it has a real function.”

Vanya Orr, founder of Earth Trust

Vanya Orr, now 77 years-old, came to India with her mother when she was 60. But her connection to India goes back many years before. Her grandfather was a collector in Thane, Pune and Bombay from 1889-1920. Her great, great, great grandmother came to the Nilgiris at age 7 in 1824, very soon after the first Europeans arrived. Though she never intended to come to India at all, the trip with her mother became a turning point for Orr, and she has been living in India, for the most part, since 1994.

About 20 years ago, a little earlier than Orr arrived in India for the first time, the village people of Cinchona, walked the 540 kilometers (or 335 miles) from the Nilgiri Hills to the state government in Chennai, Tamil Nadu to ask state leaders to intervene on their behalf. As Orr recalls, there was a bitter impasse following the closing of the Government Cinchona Department, and it’s adoption by the Forest Department. The people were required to leave their homes, but they were determined not to. As Orr recalls, “Nobody could move. It just needed one person to step in and shift the pieces.”

“There was a kind of war going on,” Orr says. “Everyone was very cross with everyone else.” The people were suffering, “they kept saying to me, ‘Your grandfather was Superintendent here. You have photos of your grandparents and our grandparents… we are all part of the same story, you have got to help us.’” Orr says she didn’t know anything about anything in India, including how the hierarchy and bureaucracy works, not to mention the language and couldn’t see how she would be able to assist the situation.

The Nilgiri Hills

Orr asked the local people to write down the names of the people in the village, what their skills were and what they wanted to do together, “they brought this list to me a couple days later and they hadn’t got anything in the ‘what they wanted to do’ column, so I said ‘that’s useless,’ I can’t tell you what to do. You have to tell me what you want.” And they said, “No, it’s not possible, all we have done is lost. Our children have no food. We are right on the cliff’s edge… How can we dream? There is nothing and no future for us.”

She went to see the local Collector and the Forest Officer, as she remembers, “You know in England you just chat to people. I wasn’t bothered by their seniority. I suppose now I would be more circumspect!” Unsure of what to do next, Orr spent three days in the house her grandmother lived in, trying to think about her next plan of action. She remembers, “If I came here, thinking I was going to solve everyone’s problems, if this was just an ego trip, what a complete waste of time this would be. I had to know it was more than that.”

After being unable to decide exactly what to do, she went back to England. Things fell into place when she was given 500 pounds to see if going back to India was really something she had to do.

Early on, she was told “You haven’t got any credibility as a foreigner, and even less as a woman.” But it was suggested that she set up an NGO with the women of the village in order to act as a facilitator between the village and the forest department. “In the end, with this group of women, I set up the first Medicinal Plant Development Area in South India.” Today, the women’s group has, more than enough to start their own new projects.

Orr continued to act as a facilitator to re-establish the aromatic herbal fields and nurseries under the auspices of the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT) and the Forest Department. Over the past several years, she has helped set up distillation units for essential oils, making linkages with the Spice Board and other outlets. After this, she left India for a year, but she continued to recall the story of a woman who poured kerosene over herself and burned to death from being desperately unhappy. A year later, the woman’s husband was run-over trying to stop a truck from stealing timber, “You don’t walk away from something like that when it happens, without it having some kind of impact.”After thinking about the people, the soil and the land, she returned from England.

This time, her aim was to give people tools for survival, for women who were in situations of inescapable stress and farmer training, in order to mitigate the destruction of the soil. With health programs, stress management, and organic biodynamic farming and gardening, Earth Trust has a variety of tools at their disposal. “People don’t drink, or become violent for no reason, do they?” she says, “It is a symptom, not a cause. A symptom of woundedness or where we find our companionship. This was the idea, that by introducing these nurturing techniques, it could help people feel as if they were worth something.”

Orr believes that, for Nilgiris, this is a critical time in history, “The whole system of everyday living is built on dependency, it’s so important for people to start taking charge of their own lives.” She adds, “It seems to me, this time, is about trying to enable people in rural areas to survive within compassionate communities.” She also wants to play a role in giving children a feeling that they are able to help build a future, and allow people to be able to return to “working with their hearts.”

When I ask her about her vision for the future, she says, “that there will be clear water flowing from the streams of Nilgiris without poison… that everyone will have their place; animals will have their place, and people will have their place.” I smile and tell her it sounds good. She says, “It is possible, you see, it’s possible.”

I hope so.

The Bainbridge Island electricity dashboard

Bainbridge Island, a short ferry ride from Seattle, was recently given a choice by Puget Sound Energy. Either cut electricity consumption or pay for a new electrical substation for the island to meet rising electricity demand. It turns out that the average Bainbridge household was using 60% more electricity than the regional average, meaning there was a lot of potential energy efficiency gains to be had.

With a grant from the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, the city created an online information network to monitor island-wide electricity use and notify residents when peak demand was reaching the maximum allowed level. When this occurs (typically during a morning or evening hour in the winter), residents are able to view the island’s current electricity consumption with an online dashboard, and adjust their individual use accordingly. The first winter of the program, these efforts led to a 10 MW decrease in peak electricity consumption.

The program also offers free home energy audits (RePower Bainbridge has so far completed 41% of the island’s homes) which, along with energy efficiency upgrades, lower energy costs for residents. Check out the video from Climate Solutions below:

RePower Bainbridge from Climate Solutions on Vimeo.

Half of the world’s population now lives in cities. By 2050, it is estimated that this ratio will grow to over 75%. Put another way, 3.5 billion people live in cities now. Global population is project to reach 9 billion by 2050. That means that cities will need to the housing and infrastructure to absorb upwards of 2.5 billion people within the next 30 years. It is a staggering thought, and one of the great challenges of our time.

An excellent new film on this topic is Urbanized, a documentary by Gary Hustwit. Tackling such a broad subject of urban design in 90 minutes is an ambitious endeavor, but Hustwit largely succeeds.

Viewers are transported around the world, from the slums of Mumbai to the deserted streets of Detroit, where solutions of all scales are presented. From bus rapid transit and bikeways in Bogota to a guerilla art project in New Orleans, the key message from Hustwit is that people and the social fabric are what make cities great, and some of the best solutions to urban sustainability come from deep community involvement.

The film features interviews with some of the heavy hitters of urban planning and architecture, such as Rem Koolhaas and Sir Norman Foster. Many of the cities highlighted are familiar – for example the bike networks of Copenhagen or the High Line in New York. But the film also presents unfamiliar urban solutions, such as novel concepts for subsidized housing in Santiago, Chile and participatory community design of walkways in the townships on the edge of Cape Town.

With cities responsible for upwards of 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions, they have a major role to play in climate change solutions. Luckily, urban residents generally have a smaller carbon footprint than suburban and rural residents. By implementing greater building and energy efficiency improvements, cities could become a model for solving climate change. And guess what, all of that urban fabric will have to be planned and designed.

Plainly speaking, mixed-use developmentis the practice of having more than one form of “use” or activity (e.g., residential, commercial, office, recreational, industry) in a building or building complex. “Mixed use,” in city planning terms then, is a combination of these activities in one space. Some of the most common forms of mixed-use activity include residential/commercial (imagine multi-story buildings where commercial activity takes place on the first store, and residential units exist in the upper floors) or commercial/office space (commercial on first floor, office units on upper levels).

Mixed-use structures house multiple different activities in one building and typically make a great use of space within cities.

While it is important to separate certain types of uses (for example, residential activity from industrial activities such as sewage treatment or heavy manufacturing), in general, the combination of uses, when planned according to people’s needs, can create a more walkable, people-oriented space. They are also useful when it comes to overall city development — mixed use, when used at an appropriately large scale, can help cities avoid “urban sprawl” and make sure people’s needs, jobs and recreational activities, etc. are located close to where they need them and can easily access them via transportation.

The photos below depict forms of mixed-use buildings in Accra, primarily focused in the Kaneshie Market and Abossey Okai areas. These areas have seen a substantial amount of development with the growth of commercial activity, and they attract a large amount of human and vehicular traffic, so space in these two areas has become very much a commodity. What is also interesting to note is that much of these areas were initially mostly residential some two decades ago. A few months ago, I met with the city director of Town & Country Planning in Accra, and we had a conversation about how Kaneshie has developed and changed over time. Turns out the area was mostly residential, so most of the commercial activity that we see there today wasn’t present. Instead, it was mostly single housing units and multi-dwelling residential units. When the Kaneshie Market was built, it served as a magnet to draw more and more commercial activity, and the area became a bustling commercial center.

Dated multi-unit dwellings turned mixed-use structures, near Kaneshie Market

As commercial activity became increasingly profitable, residence owners opted to rent out their units — to business owners, instead of to apartment tenants. Space for activity would be limited mostly to what’s already available (due to the fact that it’s easier to change the activity in the space to accommodate for new needs, rather than to build an entirely new building or an annex to an existing one). That said, new development has occurred over time, some buildings have been demolished and new ones constructed, etc. But overall, it seems the net result has been not only the increase of commercial activity over time, but also the metamorphosis of the use of the buildings.

So, the conversion to mixed-use in many cases was a conversion from residential-only buildings (multi-story houses and apartment dwellings) to residential with the introduction of commercial, office and other activities. The photo at above of a multi-dwelling unit demonstrates how commercial activity has taken root in much of the building.

And I’m sure that once this mixed-use trend was started, new development was made in mind with the need for mixed-use development. Check out the photo below — we can tell it’s a newer building, and it’s built in mind with smaller individual units in the ground and second-floor levels to economize space for commercial activity. The top floor is probably residential, and may be one dwelling for the entire floor.

Three-story mixed use development, Abossey Okai: Bottom two floors consist of auto parts sales units (and possibly other activities, too), top floor is likely either residential or office space.

In many cases, as in the two photos below from Abossey Okai (the name for the large spare parts market sales area), commercial sales take place on the bottom level, while on the upper levels people live in the residential units. Abossey Okai is an extensive zone in Kaneshie where vehicle spare parts are sold – you could buy anything you need there, from a dashboard, to headlights, to an engine. The area has become the key center for secondhand vehicle parts sales in Accra. This photo below is another example of a house that was built before the major commercial conversion in the area. So the houses existing structure was used and new commercial activity replaced residential.

The interesting part of this phenomenon is that much of this mixed-use development appears to have taken place naturally (it has developed as a result of the sum of individual actions and behaviors over time), rather than in some locales where certain parcels of space are zoned as mixed-use and such development follows accordingly. This mixed-use development is common throughout almost all parts of central Accra, and it highlights an interesting overlap between two very different environments — African cities like Accra and cities in the United States (for example).

An older house turned mixed-use structure in Abossey Okai.

But, there are some key things that mixed-used development do have in common: First, this form of development makes work, shopping, play, etc very accessible to the average resident. These areas are more walkable (unless of course you are carrying heavy items) so it makes sense that mixed-use development are also often supported by public transit, that encourages walking around, instead of driving. Walking and bicycling also promote more social interaction, so as you can guess, these spaces are often accompanied by centralized parks or other public spaces (which, unfortunately, are not so common in Accra — at least not yet).

This form of development also helps to keep the city condensed thereby avoiding urban sprawl. Looking at the pictures again, you could just imagine how much space would be required if this development took on a “strip mall” fashion with individual buildings for each shop. So much space is saved by adopting a mixed-use strategy, and overall, this helps to prevent extensions of the city’s boundaries over time.

Victoria lives in Accra, Ghana, where she works as a communications and urban/community development consultant. Her musings on urban design, planning, and the built environment can be found at African Urbanism. Follow her @vickivictoriaO.

I have a love/hate relationship with the many contrasts in India: the bright green paddy fields next to red tile roofs, the smell of jasmine and fresh food mixed in with the scent of putrid sewage, and the polluted cities juxtaposed with the expansive sky from mountain tops.

The narrative of dams (and dams in India especially) is one stark contrast in development. It goes something like this: let’s drown fertile land and forests with a reservoir that will provide drinking water to a city far away. In the process, let’s displace a whole community of subsistence farmers in the mountains. The same story seems to play out again and again.

About 300 km north of Delhi in the Sirmaur District of Himachal Pradesh, a controversy is brewing over plans to construct the Renuka dam in order to supply drinking water to Delhi at a cost of 3900 crore ($860 million). The project will displace 750 families in 37 villages, and about 1600 hectares of fertile land and forests (including part of a wildlife sanctuary) will be submerged. Sirmour has relatively poor infrastructure and health facilities with nearly 23% of households residing below the poverty line. A report on the project says, as a result of submerging land, there is little doubt that the dam will “directly affect the food security and sovereignty of the families.”

Paying for Delhi’s water: Tara Devi, a dalit farmer, looks gloomily at her land. Thousands like her are left wondering why they must give up their land and livelihood in favour of an unjust act. (Photo by Neeraj Doshi)

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Neeraj Doshi’s, a photographer who created a photo exhibit that tells the story of the Renuka Dam site and the people it will displace, alongside Delhi’s water waste and rationale for the dam (click the link above for more photos). In addition to the photo exhibit, which will travel to other colleges and universities in Delhi, a short film by Tarini Manchanda called A Dam Old Story was screened, followed by a discussion at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi India on September 30, 2011.

Neeraj Doshi tells me that the photos are part of a broader education project to create awareness, “It will not change in a drastic way, there are many more Renuka [type dams],” Doshi says. This statement is sadly too true, as from 1947 to 2000, the number of dams has grown from 300 to 4000. He also explains how this dam is unique because it is “a very clear-cut thing: Delhi needs water, it is damming Renuka. Delhi wastes its water.”

The politics and controversy around the Renuka Dam Project are typical of many large dam projects throughout the world, consisting of three main issues: 1) land acquisition and project related displacement, 2) environmental concerns and 3) technical feasibility of the project itself. All three of these issues are controversial in Renuka’s case, questioning why the dam should be built in the first place.

In an open letter to Delhi Chief Minister on Renuka Dam citizens and groups in Delhi make the case against the dam, citing avoidable losses as well as the possibility for rainwater harvesting within Delhi, among many other things. The letter mentions the displacement and environmental destruction that past projects have created are “fresh in people’s minds and the number of sufferers keeps going up,” finally it asks, what right does Delhi have to demand more of such displacement and destruction?

Dehli Water Waste: Yet again, but this time it’s from the pipelines carrying potable water from Sonia Vihar Water Treatment Plant to South Delhi. Many more such ruptures leaking precious liquid can be spotted throughout the long stretch. (Photo by Neeraj Doshi)

The dam clearly threatens the livelihoods of the people living in Giri river valley according to a report published by People’s Action for People in Need called Dispossessing Mountain Communities: Who will pay for Delhi’s water? A Study of the socioeconomic and environmental implications of the Renuka Dam Project found that the most affected people will be dalits (members of the lowest caste in India), women, and children. As the study says, “decades of experience with large dams has shown that the costs outweigh the benefits… even if the environmental and social costs are excluded – the proposed benefits are almost always over-estimated to justify the projects.” The study mentions the cases of the Tehri and Bakhra Dam. The report also questions if this is the least cost effective option for Delhi’s water supply. Delhi’s per capita water consumption is 240 liters as day, but there is still a need to optimize supply and distribution losses, which have been cited as high as 40%.

The film, along with the report, seem to narrate a continued story of deceit and misinformation on the side of Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (HPPCL) detailing how at a public hearing, people were brought in buses by the project authorities and treated to a feast, but not informed of the process.

The Renuka Dam project is also based on 20 years of rainfall data until the year 1988-89. In a memorandum submitted  to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit by Renuka Bandh Sangarsh Samiti (RBSS), an organization of project affected communities and Himalaya Niti Abhiyan, a coalition of community activists and organizations in the state, they state that “It will take years for a dam of 148 m to be filled… If after displacing 37 villages, destroying hundreds of hectares of forests and spending thousands of crores of rupees, the project is unable to fill its objective… who will be held accountable?” Chief Minister Dixit has shifted the blame to the Himachal government, arguing that Delhi is merely a “buyer” and thus the responsibility remains with the seller.

Delhi Water Waste: What would Tara Devi think when she finds out that both, her life and water have been snatched away for such careless wastage in Delhi. (Photo by Neeraj Doshi)

The report details a host of recommendations regarding the Ministry of Environment, the government of Himachal Pradesh, land acquisition and details of the Forest Rights Act but the final point may be most salient: “Delhi government should take responsibility for its water woes by looking at the consumption and demand issues as well as adopting an integrated water management approach for the city.”

As it stands now, there is a stay on construction, as the project must receive forest clearance before continuing to move forward. However, according to Nidhi Agarwal, one of the report authors, HPPCL has not stopped acquiring land and continues to go forward with preparations.

As Doshi says, “If this dam gets scrapped, which I think it will be, there will be precedence… Taking away people’s self-sufficiency isn’t survival.”

With the photo exhibit heading next to the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Delhi residents will have additional opportunity to see the exhibit and film, consider the contrasts and if they so choose, get involved.

Former president Bill Clinton, speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, called out climate deniers and their champions in the GOP.

He said, “If you’re an American, the best thing you could do is to make it politically unacceptable to engage in denial. We look like a joke. You can’t win the nomination of one of the major parties in our country if you admit that the scientists are right … It’s really tragic. We need the debate in America, and every country, between people who are a little bit to the right and a little bit to the left about what the best way is to reduce our greenhouse-gas emissions … and we can’t have this conversation because we’ve got to deny it?”

See the video below:

This past weekend, large excavators began deconstructing two dams along the Elwha river in Olympic National Park. The project is the largest dam removal project to date and one of the largest ecosystem restoration projects in U.S. history.

The Elwha river (photo by S. Neil Larsen 2011

Economic development in the Pacific Northwest has often relied on the abundant natural resources of the area, with timber and salmon being two of the most iconic. In early 1900s along the Elwha river, timber production was prioritized over abundant salmon resources. In 1913, Thomas Aldwell built the Elwha dam 5 miles upstream from the mouth of the Elwha river in order to provide power to a lumber mill and the local community. Despite laws at the time requiring fish ladders, none were installed. In 1926, a second dam was built another 8 miles upstream. These two dams cut off 70 miles of pristine migratory fish habitat, reducing historical salmon runs from over 400,000 fish to less that 4,000 today.

After years of legislation and planning, the dams are finally coming down. Wanting to witness historic occasion, my friend Jesse and I headed up to the Elwha in order to catch a glimpse of the dams and check out the dam removal ceremony happening in Port Angeles. Jesse wrote his thesis on the economic effects of the Edwards dam removal on Maine’s Kennebec River. I was interested in seeing the beginning of a large scale ecosystem restoration project.

Demolition of the Glines Canyon Dam. The excavator is on a barge in the reservoir behind the dam. As you can see, the lake has been lowered about 20 feet (S. Neil Larsen 2011)

Hopping a ferry from downtown Seattle on Friday afternoon, I met up with Jesse on Bainbridge Island and we headed up towards the peninsula. By nightfall we had entered Olympic National Park, and had set up camp a stones throw away from the rushing Elwha river.

The next morning, after a restless night of sleep due to Jesse’s intermittent loud snoring, we hiked up a service road to the Glines Canyon dam. Upon reaching the dam site, we were greeted by an imposing fence preventing us from getting close to the dam. We were able to hike a bit farther up and saw that they had already lowered the water level in the lake and that demolition had already begun on the dam itself.

After snapping a few pics, we headed back down towards the Elwha Dam, where a ceremony was due to start in the late morning. At the entrance, we were halted by a slew of state troopers and local police. At the gate a kind but uninformative trooper told us the event was invite only, and sent us on our way. We later learned that security was tight due to the various dignitaries in attendance including U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salzar, Washington Governor Gregoire, Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murrary, and other officials.

So we headed into Port Angeles, where a mini festival was happening down at the town pier, featuring a live feed from the ceremony along with a number of information booths from various environmental organizations. After talking with a number of foresters, scientists, and environmentalists, we sat down to watch the ceremony. It was touching to hear an Elwha tribal leader give an emotional speech about the significance of the occasion. After his tribe having been marginalized in their traditional homeland and having their salmon resources choked off for the last 100 years, his feelings were well warranted.

With the removal of the dams over the next 3-5 years and the opening up of the upper Elwha, many people hope that the salmon will recolonize the watershed. Within 20 years, some predict that salmon and steelhead runs will return to a semblance of their historic levels. The Elwha tribe, situated at the mouth of the river, has agreed to halt all fishing in the river for 5 years in order to speed up the recovery.

The project is not without controversy. The tribe has lobbied for a new $16 million fish hatchery in order to “jumpstart” fish production. Many environmentalists are appalled. Kurt Beardslee of the Wild Fish Conservancy said that “the wild salmon deserve a chance to come back to the Elwha without having to compete with millions of hatchery fish.”

Lake Mills, behind Glines Canyon Dam (photo by S. Neil Larsen 2011)

Members of the Elwha tribe see a different side of the story. Larry Ward, hatchery manager for the tribe said, “there is this whole philosophy of the Elwha being a living laboratory, when in reality, it is the home of the Elwha tribe. After waiting 100 years for the dams to come out, they are not willing to wait another 100 years for the fish to recover.”

Either way, the river restoration and dam removal is a huge win for the local environment. It will also be a test case for dam removal and restoration for other parts of the Pacific Northwest as well as the country.

After hearing a number of speeches by dignitaries, we decided to head back into a the park up in order to make the most of our time. We drove up to Hurricane ridge, affording us awesome views of the Olympic wilderness. It was heartwarming to know that at least in one corner of the planet, the environmentalists are winning.

Check out these links:

Seattle Times video on the dam removal, part of a special section on the project 

A poor-quality video of ceremony (jump to 1:15:00 to see footage of the dam and the start of demolition)

Animation of how the Glines Canyon dam will be taken down

Animation of how the Elwha Dam will be taken down

On top of Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park

The Elwha river valley

As part of a public campaign against the upcoming Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill, the largest baigan ka bharta (eggplant curry) was made just a few days ago in Delhi.

Chefs from Hotel Le Meridien, New Delhi and the Indian Culinary Forum lead the cooking of about 342.5kgs (about 750lbs) of baingan ka bharta, which has been certified as a world record by the Limca Book of Records.

“People have a right to say ‘no’ to GM food and that’s exactly what they have done today,” said Kapil Mishra, Sustainable Agriculture campaigner with Greenpeace India. “Brinjal has thus become a national symbol when it comes to the opposition to GM crops and this event only resonates that cause.”

The bill, according to Greenpeace, would create a centralized non-transparent body to be the sole approver of genetically modified (GM) crops in India. After public opposition to stop genetically modified eggplant (Bt Brinjal), last year succeeded, Greenpeace is now encouraging the public to speak out against the proposed bill. The last known draft of the BRAI bill contained a clause which allowed for it not to be covered by the Right to Information act.

This would essentially negate any oversight.

How cool is this? A group of engineers at the University of Minnesota (yeah gophers!) has created a multiferroic alloy, Ni₄₅Co₅Mn₄₀Sn₁₀ to be exact, that “achieves multiferroism by undergoing a highly reversible phase transformation where one solid turns into another solid. During this phase transformation the alloy undergoes changes in its magnetic properties that are exploited in the energy conversion device.”

Got it? Well, think about all the incredible energy applications this material could be used for. A lot of things in our modern civilization produce waste heat that we have no use for. Think heat from car exhaust, or waste heat from power plants, or heat from data centers… the list goes on and on.

The real trick will be turning this breakthrough into a marketable product.