The uncontrolled use of fossil fuels in the last two centuries has profoundly altered the Earth carbon cycle, releasing a huge amount of green-house gases into the atmosphere. To possibly revert this process, the virtuous energy cycle must have as a first step the energy harvesting from renewable sources such as wind, hydro, tidal, and solar energy. But also the other steps of the cycle, that is the transformation into usable energy vectors (electricity, hydrogen) and their storage for transportation and their final use must occur minimizing the green-house emissions and avoiding dispersion and waste.
At NANO we study different solutions, materials, and devices to optimize each of the steps of these cycles, in some cases combining them for better efficiency.