Waterloo engineers believe it's possible to harvest energy from the sunlight beating down on the province's roads. Photovoltaic panes embedded in the asphalt could be either hooked into the electricity grid or used to directly power streetlights and signs.…

Waterloo researchers Michael Collins and John Straube are changing the face of home heating and cooling in Canada, thanks to new, inexpensive heat pump technology.

Heat pumps operate on the same basic principle as a refrigerator. They move thermal energy from one area to another by using a refrigerant that absorbs heat as it vaporises and release it when it condenses. This allows you to extract energy from outside air - even when that air is quite cold - to warm a house in winter, or reverse…

There is enormous untapped potential in the fact the soil stays roughly the same temperature year round. Horizontal ground loop heat exchangers (GLHEs) have been taking advantage of this for decades to heat and cool homes. In winter, pipes that run in a horizontal loop through the ground absorb heat and transfer it to a heat pump inside the house. In the summer, the system works in reverse. The challenge is to make them both cost effective and space-efficient.

Because we currently don't know…