Google wants to see the world deliver so-called moon shots, or breakthrough technology that can solve the planet’s most pressing and difficult problems. Naturally, at the top of the list are technologies that can fight climate change, and solve global resource constraints, from energy to food to water.
For Google’s new “Solve for X” initiative, the search engine giant is celebrating these risk-taking entrepreneurs and researchers, and is highlighting these environmental technologies. Here’s 15 moonshots from the Solve for X site that are looking to solve resource constraints and fight climate change:
Danielle Fong: Lightsail, Compressed air energy storage
Damian Palin: Seawater reverse osmosis, or mining minerals from seawater
Doris Kim Sung: Metal that breathes
Michèle Ohayon: Solar roadways.
Joshua Wray: Using waste water to grow algae for biofuel
Jeff Surma: Municipal waste to energy
Joyce Poon: Low power data center communications with optics
Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie: Nuclear power that dissolves waste into molten salt.
Markus Kayser: A solar sinter
Mike Cheiky: Negative carbon liquid fuels
Harald Haas: Wireless data from every light bulb
Fengnian Gia: Replacing silicon with graphene for power electronics.
Aaron Fyke: Energy Cache, and grid energy storage:
Andras Forgacs: Sustainable, scalable meat
Daphne Preuss: Agricultural productivity
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