Can we do a open source version

https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1qzccz9/chinas_airborne_megawatt_class_wind_power_system/

Potentially needing something like this in the future is a bit dystopic, but a more refined version could be quite useful in very hot areas as a method of climate adaption.

The recording of the talk should be available soon.

Great post, IMO: In a world of 'planned obsolescence' where devices are frequently bricked by non-replaceable, unmanaged Li-ion pouches that over-discharge and die, the universal AA(A) standard is bliss.

Link

Happy 2026! The Eco-Libre project published our 2025 Annual Report for last year.

Eco-Libre is a volunteer-run project that designs libre technology for sustainable communities.

Eco-Libre's mission is to research, develop, document, teach, build, and distribute open-source technology that sustainably enfranchises communities' human rights.

We aim to provide clear documentation to build low-cost machines, tools, and infrastructure for people all over the world who wish to live in sustainable communities with others.

Executive Summary

• Continuing search for land in Ecuador
• New Eco-Libre Logo
• First Release of Life-Line Project
• Two Prototypes of Life-Line Project

Read the full report here.

Contribute to Eco-Libre

If you'd like to help Eco-Libre reach our mission to enfranchise sustainable communities' human rights with libre tech, please contact us to get involved :)

Join Us
eco-libre.org/join

Cheers,
The Eco-Libre Team
https://www.eco-libre.org/

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/31895167

A new biodegradable bamboo plastic could replace conventional plastics, offering a fully biodegradable alternative that is durable, recyclable, and easy to manufacture at scale.

Chinese researchers have developed a biodegradable bamboo plastic that not only rivals but surpasses traditional petroleum-based plastics in strength and thermal stability while decomposing naturally within 50 days. The breakthrough, published in Nature Communications in October 2025, could revolutionize manufacturing by offering a renewable, recyclable, and high-performance alternative for industries such as automotive and infrastructure.

More info on this at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelamis_Wave_Energy_Converter .

The company was bought by E.ON and the project was killed. At that time, there were working 450 Kilowatt prototypes (see the video). 450 Kilowatt is a power volume that took wind power plants over three decades (about from 1970 to 2000) to achieve.

The technology was then apparently copied by a Chinese company.

Mycelium skins function as sustainable substrates for high-performance electronic devices and batteries for a green future.

Electronic devices are irrevocably integrated into our lives. Yet, their limited lifetime and often improvident disposal demands sustainable concepts to realize a green electronic future. Research must shift its focus on substituting nondegradable and difficult-to-recycle materials to allow either biodegradation or facile recycling of electronic devices. Here, we demonstrate a concept for growth and processing of fungal mycelium skins as biodegradable substrate material for sustainable electronics. The skins allow common electronic processing techniques including physical vapor deposition and laser patterning for electronic traces with conductivities as high as 9.75 ± 1.44 × 104 S cm−1. The conformal and flexible electronic mycelium skins withstand more than 2000 bending cycles and can be folded several times with only moderate resistance increase. We demonstrate mycelium batteries with capacities as high as ~3.8 mAh cm−2 used to power autonomous sensing devices including a Bluetooth module and humidity and proximity sensor.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6164123

Archived version

A security doctrine published by the European Commission has identified solar inverters from Chinese suppliers as a high-risk dependency.

The document, on how to strengthen EU economic security [opens pdf], outlines how the bloc plans to react to growing external economic threats. It says the commission’s immediate focus will be on six priority high-risk areas, identified as reducing strategic dependencies for goods and services; attracting safe investment into the EU; supporting Europe’s defence, space and critical industrial industries; securing EU leadership across critical technologies; protecting sensitive data and shielding Europe's critical infrastructure.

The communication goes on to specifically highlight reliance on solar inverters as an example of a security risk due to supplier concentration, cyber-manipulation risks, access to grid-relevant operational data and the possibility of actors infiltrating supply chains. Today, around 80% of Europe’s PV systems rely on Chinese inverters.

...

Mainstream semiconductors, battery electric vehicles, key components for drones and detection equipment at EU borders are listed as other high-risk dependency areas in the communication.

The European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC) has released a statement saying it strongly supports the strategic shift outlined in the document.

...

The council says it particularly welcomes the council’s intention to “support the development of trusted suppliers of critical subcomponents in the EU and in trusted third countries so that there are viable alternatives” and reiterated that European and other Western manufacturers remain on the technological forefront, with the manufacturing capacity to meet all of European demand.

ESMC is calling for a series of actions, including the establishment of an EU-level whitelist of trustworthy inverter vendors based on cybersecurity and jurisdictional risk criteria that is integrated into NIS2, the ICT supply‑chain toolbox, NZIA Articles and all relevant EU network codes. It also says EU member states should be permitted to deny grid connection to inverter hardware from high-risk vendors.

...

The council has established an Inverter, Storage and Energy Management Systems Forum, open to ESMC members and eligible Western non-members, that it says will work with grid operators, energy-security agencies, standardization bodies and other stakeholders to advance Europe’s digital and energy resilience.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6163809

Archived version

• Italy completes first solar auction excluding Chinese gear
• Average price 17% above ordinary renewable auction
• Auction backs EU push to cut reliance on Chinese components

Italy awarded more than 1.1 gigawatts of capacity to 88 projects in its first auction exclusively for solar projects built without equipment manufactured in China, setting an average price of 66.38 euros per megawatt hour.

The tariff is 17% higher than the average price for a renewable auction earlier this year that had no restrictions on equipment origin, according to data from Italy's electricity services agency (GSE).

...

The auction is among the first in Europe to apply non-price criteria linked to the European Union's Net-Zero Industry Act, a package of measures that aims to curb reliance on low-cost renewable components from China.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6143475

European producers of inverters, crucial components for connecting solar panels to the grid, are teaming up outside established European industry lobbying structures in a new challenge to China’s tightening grip on the supply chain.

Archived version

...

Solar panels, essentially a collection of wires and refined polysilicium, are generally considered too “dumb” to be vulnerable to cyberattacks. Not so the inverters, which are often vulnerable to easy access by ill-intentioned actors.

China dominates the solar panel supply chain, including the production of inverters, with 78% of the devices shipped to the EU coming from the world’s second-largest economy in 2023. This accounts for nine out of the 12 firms that dominate the EU market, potentially putting Beijing in a position to “significantly” affect the grid, according to a report by lobby group SolarPower Europe.

Now, Europe’s remaining inverter producers, including Austria’s Fronius, which recently quit SolarPower Europe over Huawei’s continued membership, have banded together in a bid to shore up their market – and, they say, the cybersecurity of Europe’s electricity grid.

...

The Austrian firm is joined by Germany’s SMA, Spain’s Ingeteam and others to create a “resilient, competitive, and cyber-secure ecosystem of Western inverter, storage, and EMS [energy management system] manufacturers,” according to a statement shared with Euractiv. The initiative was facilitated by the Made-in-EU solar lobby group ESMC.

Inverters are a highly sensitive topic because their vulnerability to attack poses a credible risk to Europe’s electricity security.

...

SolarPower Europe estimates that remote access to just 5 GW of solar panels through internet-connected inverters could, if abused, allow an actor or firm to “significantly” affect the grid. There are currently 13 manufacturers that could, in principle, commit such sabotage, the group suggests.

But the decision by inverter manufacturers to split from the main solar PV lobby has widened a divide with Europe’s solar sector.

On the one hand, SolarPower Europe represents Chinese manufacturers and developers who rely on their low-cost products. On the other, ESMC and the inverter producers argue for EU-based production and say the security benefits justify higher prices.

“Non-technical risk factors – such as governance structures, ownership, external influence, and the overall trustworthiness of entities – are as decisive for security as technical safeguards,” the new alliance says.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6075818

Archived link

The Canadian International Trade Tribunal has initiated an interim review of its order concerning the dumping and subsidizing of solar modules and laminates originating in or exported from China.

The review concerns order RR-2020-001, issued on Mar. 25, 2021, which encompasses Chinese solar modules and laminates composed of crystalline silicon cells and thin-film photovoltaic products made of amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride or copper indium gallium selenide.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6034089

Archived version

Solar panels used widely across Ireland, including in large solar farms, at airports, and on government buildings, were sourced from companies linked to forced labour and environmental devastation in the Xinjiang region of China, RTÉ Investigates has found.

Two Chinese solar panel manufacturers, JA Solar and Jinko Solar, were sourcing a raw material called polysilicon – one of the essential ingredients in the manufacture of panels – from Xinjiang, where China has built a regime of forced labour and repression targeting the region's ethnic minorities, particularly Uyghurs, a system some critics, including the US government, describe as a genocide.

In a landmark 2022 report, the United Nations concluded that human rights abuses in [Xinjiang] were widespread and could constitute crimes against humanity.

...

JA Solar and Jinko Solar panels can be found on sites across Ireland, including at a new solar farm at Shannon Airport, opened by Minister for Climate Energy Darragh O’Brien on 28 November, in Wicklow County Council’s car park, and in Ireland’s largest solar farm developments, including at sites owned by ESB.

...

The investigation also found that** enormous volumes of coal**, the dirtiest fossil fuel, were being mined and burned in order to process and purify the polysilicon.

This lead to extremely high levels of air pollution in an industrial zone called Zhundong Development Park, one of the most important areas for polysilicon production in China, where polysilicon companies are co-located with vast open-pit coal mines. Three of the world’s top ten polysilicon manufacturers are based in the park.

China's subsidisation of its solar industry has driven down prices and made solar power the most affordable energy source in the world, but critics say this has been done at a human and environmental cost that is too great to ignore.

...

China's production of panels ... has vastly overshot demand. It produces twice as many as is needed by the global economy, and the environmental cost has primarily been borne by Xinjiang.

"There are crimes against humanity being perpetrated in the Uyghur region, so we don't see this as a trade issue or even a national security issue," said Patricia Carrier, a human rights lawyer with the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region.

"The Chinese government has purposefully invested heavily in several sectors to ensure that they are concentrated in or reliant on Uyghur forced labour and also very lax environmental standards...so not only is there forced labour being used, but it is also very environmentally damaging."

...

Industry bodies say that China's dominance comes at the cost of social and human rights, and has "jeopardised" and "undermined" Europe's commitment to a "fair and resilient energy transition."

"The nexus between forced labour and the unsustainably low prices of Chinese-made solar PV modules and inverters poses a serious threat," said the European Solar Manufacturing Council in a letter addressed to the then taoiseach Leo Varadkar and energy minister Eamon Ryan in January 2024.

"Without EU regulations scrutinizing goods throughout the value chain for forced labour, European PV manufacturers, adhering to higher social and environmental standards, are jeopardised."

...

Though allegations of forced labour and environmental issues in China’s solar industry have been known since at least 2020, Ireland continued to import and deploy panels from JA Solar and Jinko Solar.

...

OSE Germany have created a search engine for open hardware designs that publish an OKH manifest. Some info about the site is here https://stack.opensourceecology.de/