The first manned flights of a fuel cell-powered light aircraft have taken place in Spain. But the tiny plane is dramatically different from the passenger jets we’re used to.

A BUNCH of American scientists reckon they have come up with a “revolutionary” process for converting plant sugars into hydrogen which could be used to cheaply and efficiently power vehicles equipped with hydrogen fuel cells without producing any pollutants.

THERMAL energy is the total potential and kinetic energy associated with the random motions of the molecules of a material. OK, that’s the definition, but what does it mean? Energy’s editor first encountered thermal energy at the age of eight in New Zealand, where the family was living way back in the 1950s. Fairly near the town of Rotorua, which is famous for its hot springs and boiling mud pools, we travelled past what, as it later transpired, was the world’s first thermal energy power station.