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It's no small matter. In fact, Chu says that turning all the world's roofs white would eliminate as much greenhouse gas emissions in 20 years as the whole world produces in a year. But some critics point out that in northern cities, the gain in summer could be outweighed by the loss in winter. The ideal situation, then, would be to get the advantage of white roofs when it's hot and black roofs when it's cold.Now, there may be a way to have both. A team of recent MIT graduates has developed roof tiles that change color based on the temperature. The tiles become white when it's hot, allowing them to reflect away most of the sun's heat. When it's cold they turn black and absorb heat just when it's needed.

A single 25-meter sphere at a depth of 400 meters could store up to 6 megawatt-hours of power, so a large offshore wind farm with hundreds or even thousands of those could become a giant on-demand battery, potentially producing as much power as large power plants (it all depends on how far you scale up the idea). These anchor/storage spheres could be built on land and then brought out to sea. No need for too much super-expensive deep sea construction.Preliminary estimates indicate that one such sphere could be built and deployed at a cost of about $12 million, Hodder says, with costs gradually coming down with experience. This could yield an estimated storage cost of about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour — a level considered viable by the utility industry.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) have announced a new solar thermal fuel that could store up to 10,000 times more energy than previous systems. 

Aaron Franklin, a researcher at IBM’s Watson Research Center says that the update Rice study probably doesn’t reveal “the golden ticket for achieving high volumes of metallic-only tubes,” reports MIT Technology Review. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The remote Alaskan village of Igiugig—home to about 50 people—will be the first to demonstrate a new approach to wind power that could boost power output and, its inventors say, just might make it more affordable.