The Biden administration is calling for action to stem climate change for a wide range of sectors, including buildings and transport, as major emitters. It’s going to require the rapid implementation of innovative new ideas and products.

Enter ready-to-roll – literally – “organic energy company” GO-OPV, which manufactures a thin film called ORENgE that can capture any light and convert it to clean energy in a more efficient way than traditional solar panels. The panels are thin, flexible, ultra-lightweight, and can be used both vertically and horizontally.
GO-OPV, a Florida-based company, launched ORENgE in November. GO-OPV claims ORENgE is “is the only commercial organic technology available in the US that is transparent, non-toxic, flexible, thin, durable, recyclable, sustainable, and cost-competitive.”

“The new electric economy requires energy producers to generate power in the most efficient combination of suitability and sustainability possible, which has always meant harnessing the power of light - indoor and outdoor. Organic energy, as built around the ORENgE technology solution, is pure power technology in a lightweight, flexible, and zero carbon footprint that can be applied to places like windows and transportation equipment, where organic energy transforms the power of light into energy,” says Felipe Travesso, COO of GO-OPV.

Organic energy relies on any form of light to produce power, whether it’s indoor, low, or diffused – unlike solar power, which is dependent on sunlight. ORENgE is a recyclable product that provides power through an earth-abundant, low CO2, and sustainable energy solution. ORENgE is an energy source that is printed from organic ink. It is the most sustainable organic energy alternative because it uses recyclable materials abundant in nature. It has the lowest carbon footprint and the lowest energy payback among organic technologies. 

ORENgE’s use of organic materials is another major differentiator to silicon solar panels that rely on chemicals like cadmium telluride, silicon tetrachloride, and hydrofluoric acid, among others. ORENgE is semi-transparent and integrates to any surface, like building facades, home siding, tractor-trailers, park benches, and more, for applications in vertical or horizontal installation – something else solar can’t do. While ORENgE can be hung vertically, on the sides of buildings, solar panels must be placed on roofs, directly facing the sun. Thanks to its flexibility, ORENgE can also be applied to tractor-trailers and semis, unlike fragile silicon panels.

ORENgE is the greenest option among all alternative, renewable power sources due to its printing production process and the organic materials used. To make ORENgE, GO-OPV uses a rollable film made up of eco-friendly materials (fullerene and non-fullerene-based inks) and recyclable earth-abundant materials. The printing production process has the lowest energy demand in manufacturing, resulting in the lowest carbon footprint among renewables.

ORENgE allows for the installation of the ultimate zero-carbon power solution within the building-integrated photovoltaics, trucking, and outdoor sustainability markets. For example:

As building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) continues to be integrated into more buildings as a principal or ancillary power source, ORENgE offers a solution that can be applied to glass surfaces and façade applications to power lights in conference rooms 24/7, entire office floors across multiple real estate applications, and UL 924 backup at a zero-carbon footprint.

The transportation industry is in desperate need of solutions addressing zero-carbon power generation. Because ORENgE is lightweight, flexible, and durable, it can be applied to semi-trucks and tractor-trailers to power on-board electronics (printers, credit card machines, lighting, tracking systems, electronic locks, etc.), semi-trailers (wagons that often remain detached from the tractor for long periods), and reefer (the refrigeration system of tractor-trailers). With ORENgE, trucks have a longer lifespan, resulting in more income per truck. ORENgE increases battery lifetime and reduces unscheduled maintenance and its direct cost. 

ORENgE on a picnic table can provide light and tech-charging capabilities.

ORENgE brings its zero-carbon power source to outdoor furniture, so you can charge your phone on park benches and ensure safety at public bus stops with 24/7 light. Because of its sleek design and flexibility, the application possibilities are endless. From beach umbrellas to carports, ORENgE can provide 24/7 outdoor power for daytime and added battery storage for nighttime.
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ORENgE is cost-competitive with all renewable energy sources since organic energy power is delivered onsite of the required power load demand and, in many cases, the lowest form of energy. ORENgE benefits from the lower cost since the onsite delivery of ORENgE power removes the cost of transmission lines, distribution lines, and higher cost of AC systems.

Editor’s note: In late February, Microsoft President Brad Smith testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on emerging technologies and their impact on national security. Later, he also testified at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the SolarWinds hack.

Read Brad Smith’s written testimony from the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing here and watch the testimony here.

Read Brad Smith’s written testimony from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing here and watch the testimony here.

The following is a Microsoft blog post from Brad Smith.
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For two centuries, technology has changed the nature of what it takes to defend a nation. In early 1940, improved tanks rendered worthless two decades of French investment along the fortified Maginot Line, as the German army simply plowed around it. And in late 1941, the United States learned that advances in naval aviation meant that battleships could no longer defend Pearl Harbor. Today, foreign cyberweapons pose a similar threat for the future.

Congress this week will explore the role digital technology’s influence on American power and security. While committees in both the House and Senate will rightly focus on the threats cyberweapons pose, the broader topic of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s hearing focus on the higher stakes represented: digital technologies across the board are rapidly redefining the way we secure the peace, maintain our defense and, when necessary, fight wars.

But today one would be hard-pressed to say that the country has a comprehensive strategy to harness these technologies for the country’s defense. A more cohesive approach is needed, in terms of infrastructure defense, military expertise and global engagement.

The recent SolarWinds cyberattack on the tech sector’s supply chain was a wake-up call. And just last week in Texas, nature demonstrated the vulnerability of our power grid. Yet, since 2014, Russian agencies have intruded into the U.S. electrical grid, and we shouldn’t assume they were alone or had benign intent.

This means we must prepare for more sophisticated foreign attacks. We need to strengthen our software and hardware supply chains and modernize IT infrastructure. We must also promote broader sharing of threat intelligence, including for real-time responses during cyber incidents.

Let’s start with the need for more open sharing of information. Today, too many cyberattack victims keep information to themselves. We will not solve this problem through silence. It’s imperative that we encourage and sometimes even require better information sharing, including by tech companies.

But cybersecurity is just the start. Emerging technologies such as cloud and edge services, AI and 5G will redefine the requirements for military operations at mission speed, based on their ability to harness massive amounts of data and computational power.

The Pentagon needs to move more quickly to use, secure and adapt commercial advances for military applications. This will require more agile procurement, more digital skills in personnel training, and a closer partnership between the government and the tech sector.

The development of digital technology often starts with commercial technology and then moves to military and intelligence adaptations, rather than the other way round. This is the opposite of the Cold War, and it changes almost everything.

It means that military supremacy in digital technology is dependent on broader national leadership in the field. And, while the computer revolution took root on American soil, it is now a worldwide endeavor with global powers, including China, competing in and sometimes leading the race.

This requires a holistic approach to government-sponsored basic research and technology trade policy. The United States has unmatched capability for basic research through our research universities. Yet government research spending has declined, and within the next few years China is expected to surpass us.

We also need to strengthen ties with our allies, building on the global nature of technology innovation. Microsoft’s quantum computing efforts illustrate this well, with labs in Indiana, California and Washington, as well as Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia.

Finally, global technology leadership requires successful work to promote standards and technology protocols that reflect American inventions. The U.S. has excelled in these fields through decades of international outreach. This can’t stop now.

A lot is at stake, including the nation’s unique role in providing global leadership. When we think about the role of technology for the country’s defense, our ability to establish and defend the most important connective tissue of the international order – in areas such as finance, cybersecurity, healthcare and transportation – marks one stronghold of American power and security.

We will need to lead with moral authority and not the strength of technology alone. As in the past, there is no substitute for technology the world can trust.

For the last 70 years, the United States has provided what we might think of as the global public operating system. The next 70 years will witness this not just as a metaphor, but as real software power. Our national security strategy therefore must continue to offer the best options for countries around the world as they transition every part of their national lives to a digital age.

2020 was a disruptive year for the tech industry – accelerating developments that may have taken 3 to 5 years to implement to everyday use almost overnight.

Given these developments, here are five tech industry trends we’ll see within the next 11 months:
1 Work from Home (WFH) culture sets off a renewed focus on smart collaboration and office set-up of the future. As companies examine the functionality of the workplace, we’ll start to see more traditional office workspaces become periodic collaboration hubs, while home offices become the day-to-day workplace.

The office will likely transform from many desks, conference rooms, and shared amenities to a cooperative business center supporting specific project-based priorities on an ongoing basis.
As a result, employers will need to equip their full workforce with the right tech tools, deployment, and IT support to maximize productivity and collaboration – for both working from home and in the shared workplace.

2 5G and Connectivity Will Be in the Spotlight. 5G became a reality in 2020, but the global pandemic overshadowed its launch. In 2021 this will begin to change.

5G has infinite possibilities, many of which are yet to be explored. It is more than just ‘very fast internet,’ as it can enable many more products and services. It will also enhance augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences, which in themselves have unexplored possibilities.

5G will continue to transform personal computing as more PCs – joining tablets and smartphones – embrace always-on and always-connected capabilities, offering freedom from reliance on Wi-Fi alone. This is especially critical now as multiple household members stretch home Wi-Fi networks at peak hours while working and learning from home.

3 New Form Factors for New Generations. 2020 saw the introduction of foldable technology in PCs and smartphones that reshaped the potential of portability and productivity. These devices will move to the mainstream in the coming years as more panel suppliers offer more incredible options at lower price points.
Further out, we may even see foldable tech extended to external monitors that can be folded and unfolded, rolled and unrolled, to expand and contract based on the number of viewers watching.

These displays may one day also be embedded into our smartwatches, textiles, or even toys that extend like a scroll. Enterprise-grade, AR-enabled smart glasses for more versatility in remote maintenance and training, for example, will also come to the fore.

4 Heightened Cybersecurity and Transparency. Security of sensitive information will be a top priority in 2021 because of the proliferation of data, the ever-growing number of entry points, and hackers becoming more resourceful.

With the traditional network suddenly moving away from the corporate environment, the perimeter has now expanded to all devices connected remotely to the cloud or other work devices – where even smart home devices may add risk to corporate networks as employees log in from home.

Below-the-OS attacks, where hackers dive deeper into the computing stack for vulnerabilities, are also a growing risk. More remote and cloud infrastructures in the new normal also mean companies will need to grapple with how best to keep themselves secured with integrations of partner security services.

Ultimately, organizations will need to commit to a more agile, business-centric approach to security that doesn’t replace their existing security models but instead places security within the context of the organizational strategy.

5 IoT, Edge, and Blockchain Technology Will Become More Popular. The Internet of Things (IoT) has made tremendous strides over the past two years. It is becoming part of homes, businesses, and cities as people strive to make their lives simpler, streamlined, and more connected.

An IoT ecosystem consists of web-enabled smart devices that use embedded systems, such as processors, sensors, and communication hardware, to collect, send and act on data they acquire from their environments. IoT devices share the sensor data they collect by connecting to an IoT gateway or other edge device where data is sent to the cloud to be analyzed.

With IoT, a considerable amount of information is generated, which is then analyzed by cloud servers to extract only the useful data.  This data is then fed back into IoT to increase its accuracy and relevance.

The truth is, deploying IoT at scale can be a tricky task. Everything looks different. IoT applications, gateways, and smart devices are installed differently and can be scattered across an organization’s physical locations.

As these IoT technologies become more prevalent, so too will connected products that require greater autonomy and speed, and edge computing will help facilitate this by rapidly analyzing their information.

With edge computing, products can immediately process information at its source rather than first divert it through the cloud. This makes technology like autonomous cars possible.

Lastly, Blockchain – a fantastic piece of data regulation technology, will most definitely become more popular in the coming months. When Blockchain technology first appeared on the public’s radar a few years ago, it was often conflated with Bitcoin and crypto currency.

However, while this was happening – the importance of Blockchain technology itself was overshadowed. 2021 will shine a light on the importance of this technology as the focus turns to enable digital trust.
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The reason for this is that Blockchain technology can record transactions between two parties without the need for third-party authentication and is thus often referred to as a digital ledger. The information in this ledger is open and decentralized, which makes it ideal for identity management and tracking sources of assets and data, thus playing a vital role in the identification of information.

Some of the world’s biggest companies, like Amazon and SpaceX, are looking towards space for the future of the Internet. Satellite-based Internet is a nascent enterprise, but analysts believe that broadband Internet beamed to Earth from orbit could be a massive business within the next 20 years, earning hundreds of billions of dollars.

Attention has focused on the “space” part of “space Internet,” with news stories focused on the rocket launches getting SpaceX’s Starlink satellites into space and how Amazon plans to catch up with satellites of its own. But all of these satellites will need transceivers on Earth to send and receive data. Scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Socionext Inc. have built a new one that works with the next generation of Internet satellites.

What are transceivers? Unassuming pieces of technology, they are some of the least-flashy but most important components in history. A transceiver is a device that can both transmit and receive signals, hence the name. Combining a transmitter and a receiver into one device allows for greater flexibility, and since their development in the 1920s, they’ve been used to reach remote locations. One of the earliest transceivers, invented by the Australian John Traeger, was used to help doctors reach remote villages.

The new transceiver, designed for space internet technology, was developed at Kenichi Okada's lab at Tokyo Tech and presented recently at the virtual IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium. The new device has several improvements on both the transmitting and receiving ends of the business. All of these developments are geared toward providing Internet access in rural and remote areas. At only 3 mm (0.118 inches) by 3 mm, the transceiver can communicate with satellites over 22,000 miles above the Earth’s atmosphere.

"Satellite communication has become a key technology for providing interactive TV and broadband internet services in low-density rural areas. Implementing Ka-band communications using silicon – complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology in particular – is a promising solution owing to the potential for global coverage at low cost and using the wide available bandwidth," Okada said in a statement released by Tokyo Tech.

On the receiving end, the transceiver uses a dual-channel architecture. That translates into two receiving channels being able to attain signals from two different satellites simultaneously. If there’s ever any interference, be it from a malicious actor, a satellite breaking down in space, or the odd solar flare, it can effortlessly pick up another signal.

Stopping Interference. It can also handle one of the worst issues to plague any transceiver: adjacent channel interference or ACI. ACI occurs when a signal sent on one channel begins to overlap with another, adding noise and interference. The new transceiver’s dual-channel architecture can stop ACI at the source. Any interference is eliminated by adjacent channels. ACI is the type of problem that can frequently occur in remote areas, and eliminating it allows the device to extend its range even further.

On the transmitting side, Okada says that the device’s “transmitting power was the biggest challenge” for the new transceiver. Not only does it have to work, but it has to be cost-effective for companies like Amazon and SpaceX to show any consideration.

Designers use semiconductors known for the efficiency, as well as transistors made of the little-known compound Gallium arsenide, which has the lovely acronym of GaAs. GaAs transistors are superior to their more common silicon in many ways, and Okada says that getting the semiconductors and GaAs transistors to work together is “the most important technology for the transceiver design.”

Who This Helps. It’s not just space-based Internet that could benefit from the design that Okada and his team have developed. Okada says that balloon-based Internet, the type currently being implemented by Alphabet’s Loon in Kenya, could also use this improved transceiver.

In emergencies with inferior to non-existent Internet, the type that Loon, Starlink, and now Amazon’s Kuiper want to solve, every advantage can count. And now, one of the most significant advantages might come on the ground.