Scientists aim to create a sustainable future for the Strickbau building technique , typical of the Swiss Appenzell region. The challenge is to use modern features respecting historic architecture to bring them back from the verge of extinction.

In the European funded project FIBLYS (or FIB anaLYSis) three industry and four research partners from Czech Republic, France, Germany and Switzerland have created a multi-nano tool named FIBLYS .

Photovoltaic cells have been known for a long time. In semiconductors such as silicon crystals sunlight creates an electric current, which can directly be fed into the power grid.

Within the EU-funded research project N2P (Nano To Production) researchers work on nanostructured surfaces of solar cells.

The sun has enough power to supply the whole earth with energy. But as long as renewable energy is more expensive than energy produced by coal or nuclear plants, solar energy won’t be first choice.

What is a digital twin? A virtual clone of a real system, such as a factory, a building or a city, which uses data to mirror its current state and behaviour .

Batteries are unanimously seen as key drivers of the energy transition .

In the summer 2019 Britain was the first G7 member to incorporate a new commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 into law. Since then the country has maintained ambitious green targets for the coming years.

In the late 1980s, the German-born chemist Michael Grätzel literally tied his name to an invention that is hailed as a  revolution in renewable energy .

Efforts to make buildings environmentally sustainable often focus on the technical side, such as energy efficiency. But there is more to sustainability than just energy efficiency.

Traditionally our electricity grids were designed to move power from large nuclear and fossil fuel power plants to consumers, but renewable energy will see changes to allow smaller power generation from wind and solar to be hooked up to the grid.

Sustainable buildings partly depend on control strategies to be energy efficient.

Niklaus Ledergerber, president of the cultural heritage preservation commission of the Swiss canton of Appenzell, is an expert in local building history. He tells youris.