The U.S. government does more to drive the supply of energy innovation than anyone else. It’s the biggest funder and performer of energy research and development, with 12 different federal agencies involved in research…

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get to its counterpart, nuclear fusion, in the next section.) The United States gets around 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants; France has the highest share in the world, getting 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear. Remember that by comparison solar and wind together provide about 7 percent worldwide.

In Zimbabwe, for example, farmers in drought-stricken areas who used drought-tolerant maize were able to harvest up to 600 more kilograms of maize per hectare than farmers who used conventional varieties. (That’s 500 more pounds per acre, producing enough to feed a family of six for nine months.) For farming families who chose to sell their harvest

happening in Germany, which through its ambitious Energiewende program set a goal of 60 percent renewables by 2050. The country has spent billions of dollars over the past decade expanding

most locations, your overall costs will go down if you get rid of an electric air conditioner and gas (or oil) furnace and replace both with an electric heat pump. The idea of a heat pump can seem odd the first time

Nuclear plants are also number one when it comes to efficiently using materials like cement, steel, and glass. This chart shows you how much material it takes to generate a unit of electricity from various sources: How much stuff does it take to build and run a power plant? That depends on the type of plant. Nuclear is the most efficient, using muc

enough pieces come together, plastics could one day become a carbon sink—a way to remove carbon rather than emit it.

In addition, one company has developed genetically modified microbes that fix nitrogen; in effect, instead of adding nitrogen via fertilizer, you add bacteria to the soil that always produce nitrogen even when it’s already present. If these approaches work, they’ll dramatically…

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People pay the costs of adaptation up front, but its economic benefits may not come for years down the road. For example, you can flood-proof…

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