Energy and Environment
Committed to develop nano-enabled solutions for a healthier, more sustainable planet. The scarcity of clean water, the depletion of raw materials, and the reliance on non-renewable energy sources are key drivers of our research.
The global challenges of today inspire our daily research towards cleaner solutions for our environment, aiming towards a circular economy and enablers for renewable sources of energy.
These challenges motivate INL every day to develop programs towards meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6: ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’, 13: ‘Climate Action’ and 14: ‘Life Below Water’ and 7: Affordable and Clean Energy.
We create AI-enabled digital platforms powered by nanotechnology to eliminate environmental risks such as water pollution, air contamination, and biodiversity loss caused by invasive species. At the same time, we are advancing new materials and technologies that support the urgent global transition to renewable energy, ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come.
Less than 1% of the water on Earth is non-saline and available for human consumption. The United Nations report that about 6 billion people will suffer from water scarcity by 2050. On the other hand, human activities are increasing pollution of our air and waters, accounting for the most important causes of worldwide mortalities during the year.
We are working on the implementation of a circular economy and an improved land use, both facilitated by digitalisation, and the reduced impact in climate change. An overall driver for INL is ensuring human safety by reducing the risks associated with environmental contamination, including the potential risks generated with the developed nanosolutions.
We aim at improving the performance of energy applications while at the same time reducing their cost to address the energy challenge, which has an indirect impact on the developments addressing all other societal challenges. At INL, this is done by:
- Advanced fundamental understanding of micro- and nano-structured energy materials
- Developing and designing novel materials for energy applications,
- Designing and prototyping new energy devices.
