5 technologies to Watch: Technology and the Environment

Over the course of the last century, the focus of the electronic industry has been to improve speed of technology, as well as making the gadgets smaller and less expensive. Currently, the industry has been focusing on the effects of improvements on the environment. The goal is to reduce society’s dependence on fossil fuels for generating electric power, thus reducing CO2 emissions. The following technologies are playing a large role in this transition. 1. The Transistor 3-D Intel announced in May that they planned to commercialize its three-dimensional “trigate’ transistor in a 22-nm microprocessor. It consumes less than half than half the power while maintaining the same performance level as a two-dimensional planar transistor chip. Overall it is more power efficient while also being faster and cheaper. 2. Solid-State Lighting: Energy Saving via LEDs The U.S. Department of Energy foresees that by 2025, businesses will replace about 80 percent of their incandescent and halogen lamps with LED appliances as organic LEDs have penetrated the majority of lighting markets. By switching to LEDs the DOE estimates that the U.S. will save between 10.5 and 16.0 quads of energy. 3. Smart Grid Cable Facilitator Transporting renewable energy sources from outskirt areas to major cities are a current imperative concern. Currently power grids rely on aboveground copper cables to convey power over extensive distances to a user, emitting much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Superconducting cables, the next generation, carry out electricity with almost no electrical loss and transmit up to 10 times more power. 4. Silicon Carbide Energy-saving silicon carbide is the best in boosting performance of power components. By switching standard silicon components for silicon-carbide components, it can reduced the amount of power that would be otherwise lost for a more efficient use of energy. $600 million in electricity bills have already been saved worldwide. 5. CoolChip Heat Sink This technology won the Clean Energy Prize at MIT this year with 47 universities across the U.S. competing. This device is a CPU air-based cooler that rejects heat better than other devices. This technology could decrease the energy use in data cooling by 50%.