Green Daily

Today’s newsletter looks at the high-powered solar cells that are poised to replace batteries. It’s one of the many innovative clean tech solutions we’re featuring this week, along with coverage of the winners of BloombergNEF’s annual Pioneers competition and the Musk Foundation-backed XPRIZE for carbon removal. Read the full version of today's story and catch up on everything else on Bloomberg.com.

Bye bye, batteries?

By Brian Kahn

As a child of the 80s, covering the small solar cell on my calculator and watching the display slowly fade, then holding it under a bright light and watching it reappear was one of my favorite everyday magic tricks. (Nerdy? Yes, guilty.)

“In the future,” my elementary school-aged self thought, “solar power will be everywhere.”

Clearly my calling was covering climate tech and not consumer tech: Large solar panels are the posterchild of the energy transition, but nearly all electronics use batteries because the thin, flexible cells never advanced.

A breakthrough tiny solar technology, though, may make my childhood dreams come true just yet, and I recently visited the factory where the cells are made.

The Ambient Photonics factory in Scotts Valley, California. Photographer: Rachel Bujalski/Bloomberg

Ambient Photonics creates cells for electronics that rely on a different type of process. While those 1980s calculators used cells made of amorphous silicon, Ambient’s cells are powered by a specialty sensitized dye that can harvest three times as much energy from the sun and indoor light sources.

The company’s cells are in a new keyboard from Lenovo, and Chief Executive Officer Bates Marshall showed me prototypes of devices like mice, TV remotes and digital store shelf displays that all incorporated Ambient Photonics’s cells. These are meant to inspire companies’ imaginations of what’s possible for their devices and Marshall told me his startup is in talks with other big electronics makers to ditch batteries and go solar, though he declined to name them.

These cells won’t power everything as young me hoped. Your iPhone or laptop will still need batteries because those devices simply require too much power. But Marshall said that in addition to the personal tech products he showed off, the dye-sensitized solar cells can power devices that work behind the scenes. Think electronic hotel room door locks or sensors in factories that can improve operational efficiency and only lightly sip on power.

Getting batteries out of those devices will reduce maintenance time, which can help free up human resources and lower the emissions needed to ship and install fresh batteries. The cells also have a lifetime carbon footprint that’s 90% lower than batteries, according to an independent analysis Ambient Photonics commissioned (though outside experts told me some of the added hardware to run dye-sensitized solar cells can negate some of those carbon cuts).

Ambient’s factory produces the cells on a line that’s soon to be completely automated. When that happens, the company projects the facility will be able to spit out hundreds of thousands of cells a month later this year, ramping up to millions in 2026.

An employee holds a solar cell at Ambient Photonics in Scotts Valley, California. Photographer: Rachel Bujalski/Bloomberg

Alas, there are potential complications. Ambient’s factory is in Scotts Valley, California, and many of its current and would-be customers are producing goods largely in Asia. The recent trade war initiated by President Donald Trump has created both tension over products moving between the US and China and extremely high tariffs on both sides of the Pacific.

(Separately, the US this week set new duties as high as 3,521% on solar imports from manufacturers in Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand.)

Trump promised to be “very nice” to China on Tuesday and that tariffs would come down but not zero out. But what that means, a timeline for when it could happen and what happens at the end of the 90 day reprieve that lowered tariffs to 10% on other countries is creating significant uncertainty.

“It's hard to plan when things are changing so rapidly,” Marshall said.

To find out how Ambient Photonics is working in this uncertain environment and learn more about the factory, I hope you’ll read the whole story.

Big battery-sized problem

137 billion

The number of pounds of e-waste the world generated in 2022, the last year with data. While Ambient Photonics's cells won't end that problem alone, they have a 10-year working life, according to Marshall, and they emit less carbon than batteries.

Certain about uncertainty

"We’ve seen a lot of these cycles."

Brook Porter

Founding partner, G2 Ventures

While Trump and the threat of a less cooperative world are real challenges for climate tech, this isn't the first time investors and companies have dealt with destabilization.

More from Green

China’s President Xi Jinping committed the world’s top polluter to more stringent curbs on greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade in global climate talks that took place without the US.

The nation, which accounted for about 30% of total emissions in 2023, will set out new goals for cuts by 2035 “covering the entire scope of the economy, including all greenhouse gases,” ahead of the COP30 summit in November, Xi said Wednesday at a virtual meeting of global leaders organized by the United Nations and Brazil, according to state-run CCTV.

Addressing polluting gases beyond carbon dioxide is regarded as crucial to a latest round of national plans being submitted to the UN under the Paris Agreement. Non-CO2 pollution accounts for about 17% of China’s emissions, and is more than the total climate footprint of most countries.

Coral reefs are in a deeper crisis. Heat stress has impacted 84% of the world’s coral reefs as surging ocean temperatures continue to fuel the most severe global bleaching event on record. The current bleaching event which began in early 2023 has affected 82 countries and territories.

US green steelmaker raises $129 million in a new funding round. Colorado-based Electra is developing technology that can produce iron needed for steel at temperatures below boiling water and without emissions. The latest round comes at a time when President Donald Trump is upending the clean-tech landscape.

Spain signals openness to keeping nuclear online. The government for the first time said it’s open to reconsidering the shutdown of nuclear plants over the next decade. Bloomberg Green earlier reported the country was increasingly looking like an outlier amid a worldwide revival for atomic energy.

Worth a listen

Global investment in clean energy hit a record $2 trillion last year, according to BloombergNEF. But developing countries see only a sliver of that funding. Private investors are wary of unfamiliar markets, currency risks and perceived instability. So how do we change that? Avinash Persaud, special adviser on climate risks to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, joins Zero to explore how we can de-risk investments, unlock private capital, and supercharge the global clean energy transition. From carbon markets to sustainability-linked bonds, where should the focus be to make the biggest impact?

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

Avinash Persaud. Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg

Weather watch

By Lauren Rosenthal and Mary Hui

A forest fire in New Jersey threatened to become the state’s largest in nearly two decades as dry conditions gripped the region and crews from surrounding areas joined in to fight the blaze.

The fire grew to 12,000 acres (4,856 hectares) in Ocean County, about 90 miles south of New York City, by Wednesday afternoon, according to state officials. The blaze was 35% contained along its perimeter, which officials said is expected to expand over the next few days.

Though one commercial structure has been destroyed, officials said at a press conference Wednesday morning that fire crews have prevented any homes from burning. There have also been no reports of injuries or deaths. New York City officials warned that residents there may see or smell smoke late Wednesday as a result of the blaze, and that the air quality index on Thursday could reach levels unhealthy for sensitive groups.

New Jersey typically experiences increased fire risk in the spring, with the danger peaking in late April. But the state has also seen below-average rain and snowfall stretching back months, leaving the landscape especially dry and primed to burn.

Firefighters battle part of a wildfire in Lacey Township, New Jersey, on April 23. Photographer: Matt Slocum/AP Photo

The UK is also on alert for fire risks. The country is experiencing its driest start to the year in four decades, with only 20.5 cm of precipitation in the first quarter, threatening grain crops and increasing the risk of wildfires.