A wind turbine does not always face the wind squarely. Wind direction changes, turbulence moves through a wind farm and neighbouring turbines disturb the air. Even when a turbine is constantly adjusting its position, there can be an angle between the rotor and the incoming wind. That angle changes how much power the turbine can produce.

Researchers from MIT, Queen’s University, Princeton University and Penn State University have now measured that effect under controlled laboratory conditions. Their experiments found that the blade-tip speed that produces maximum power changes when a turbine is misaligned with the wind. The finding could lead to different control strategies for turbines already operating in wind farms. But the experiment did not test those strategies on a commercial wind farm or demonstrate additional revenue in the field.

The research, published in PNAS Nexus, addresses a problem that has become more important as wind power has expanded. Global installed wind capacity reached 1,299 GW in 2025, after a record 165 GW of new capacity was added during the year, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. The challenge now is partly about getting more useful electricity from that enormous fleet.

Wind Tunnel Behaves More Like the Atmosphere

Wind-farm experiments are difficult to control. Researchers cannot choose the wind speed or direction, and conditions can change before they have isolated the effect they are trying to measure. A conventional wind tunnel creates another problem: a small turbine operating in normal-pressure air does not reproduce all the flow conditions around a much larger turbine.

The researchers addressed this by pressurising the air. They tested a 15-centimetre-diameter turbine at pressures of up to 240 atmospheres. The increased pressure raised air density by roughly 100 to 220 times, allowing the small turbine to reproduce important aspects of the aerodynamics of much larger machines.

The researchers say the setup represented turbines roughly 15 to 20 metres in diameter, with the potential to represent machines up to 35 metres. Over several weeks, the team tested the turbine at different wind-alignment angles and under different control settings. That allowed them to separate two variables that are usually tangled together in a real wind farm: how far the turbine is turned away from the wind and how fast its blades are rotating relative to the wind.

The Outcome of the Experiment

The central finding was not simply that a misaligned turbine can produce more electricity. The experiments showed that the tip-speed ratio for maximum power depends on the turbine’s yaw angle, or how far its rotor is turned away from the incoming wind. That means a turbine operating at an angle to the wind should not necessarily use the same blade-speed setting as a turbine facing the wind directly.

The researchers changed the tip speed while varying the misalignment angle and observed new points of maximum power. They also examined blade pitch and turbine alignment. This matters because many existing approaches to predicting turbine performance assume ideal alignment. The experiments provide physical measurements showing how that assumption breaks down as the angle to the wind increases.

The study also tested a Unified Wind Turbine model developed by MIT researcher Michael Howland. The model predicted how forces and power would change under different combinations of wind misalignment and tip speed. Its predictions agreed with the controlled experimental measurements, providing experimental validation for the model.

The model is computationally lightweight enough to run on a regular laptop, according to the researchers.

What has not been Demonstrated Yet

The researchers estimate that optimising turbine alignment, blade pitch and tip speed could potentially generate tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue per turbine each year.
It is a modelled economic estimate, not money earned by a turbine during the experiment. The researchers tested a 15-centimetre turbine in a pressurised laboratory; they did not operate a commercial wind farm under the proposed control strategy and measure its annual revenue.

The laboratory experiment therefore establishes the underlying aerodynamic relationship. Whether that relationship can be turned into a sustained increase in electricity generation under real weather conditions remains a field question. Wind farms are much harder environments to control.

In an earlier field experiment, Howland’s team deliberately misaligned turbines for months to study their behaviour. The approach generated useful data, but the researchers had to contend with changing weather and turbulent atmospheric conditions. The pressurised tunnel offers a way to test many combinations of conditions before taking an idea into that environment.

“The big output of the experiments was clearly showing that new power maximums can be achieved when the turbine becomes misaligned with the wind through only changes to the tip speed,” John Kurelek, lead author and assistant professor at Queen’s University, said.

Wind Energy and Its Indian Context

India’s wind fleet provides a substantial real-world setting in which such questions could eventually be tested. The country had 58.52 GW of installed wind power capacity as of August 31, this year, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. It added 2.43 GW during the first five months of the 2026–27 financial year, taking cumulative capacity above 58 GW.

India has also been one of the major markets driving global wind expansion. GWEC identifies China, the United States and India among the leading countries for new wind capacity additions. That makes turbine performance more than a question of designing the next generation of machines. There is already a large installed fleet whose output depends on how effectively turbines respond to changing wind conditions.

But the MIT findings cannot yet be directly translated into an Indian power-generation figure. India’s turbines operate across different wind regimes, terrain and farm layouts, while the experiment was designed to isolate aerodynamic effects in controlled conditions.

The next step is therefore straightforward: test whether the relationship measured in the laboratory holds when turbines have to deal with the shifting, turbulent conditions of an actual wind farm. If it does, the gain would come from changing how turbines operate rather than rebuilding them. For now, the experiment has established the physics behind that possibility. The commercial benefit remains to be tested.

India’s cities generate about 1.62 lakh tonnes of municipal solid waste every day. Of this, around 1.32 lakh tonnes is processed, according to data reported by States and Union Territories on the Swachhatam portal in January 2026. That leaves more than 30,000 tonnes a day outside the reported processing stream.

The scale of the waste stream makes what happens to its biodegradable fraction important. Food scraps, vegetable and fruit waste, cattle dung and other organic material can either add to the disposal burden or be recovered for another use.

India’s new Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026, which came into force on April 1, make this distinction more explicit. They require waste to be separated at source into four streams, including wet waste. Kitchen waste, vegetables, fruit peels, meat and flowers are to be composted or processed through bio-methanation at the nearest facility.

Across India, projects are already using different organic waste streams to produce biogas, electricity, compressed biogas and manure. Their settings range from an educational campus and a vegetable market to a large cattle shelter and a city-scale Bio-CNG plant.

Campus that Replaced LPG with Biogas

At the Shrimati Manekba Vinay Vihar Educational Complex near Adalaj in Gujarat, the kitchen serves more than 500 people every day. Around 250 hostel students receive two meals a day, along with 15 staff families living on the campus.

The campus operates two biogas plants with a combined capacity of 90 cubic metres a day. They use dung from 222 cows kept at the institution’s cowshed, along with kitchen waste and agricultural residue from nearby fields.

The gas meets the campus’s entire cooking-fuel requirement. Without the plants, the campus would have needed around 30 LPG cylinders every month. The process also leaves behind slurry that can be used as organic fertiliser. The arrangement is relatively contained. The waste is generated within or close to the institution, and the resulting gas has a direct use on the same campus.

Vegetable Market Generating Its Own Power

At Bowenpally Vegetable Market in Hyderabad, roughly 10 tonnes of vegetable and fruit waste are collected every day. The waste was previously sent to landfills. An on-site biogas plant now processes nearly all of it. The plant generates around 400–500 units of electricity and 30 kg of biofuel every day. The electricity powers the market’s streetlights, stalls, administration building and water-supply network. The biofuel is used in the commercial kitchen.

The plant has reduced the market’s electricity bill by roughly half, from an earlier average of about ₹3 lakh a month. Five more plants have since been funded at other market yards. The project has also created work for women involved in waste sorting, machinery operation and administration. Here too, the waste source and the main users of the energy are concentrated in one location.

Prayagraj: Multiple Waste Streams Together

The Bio-CNG plant in Prayagraj operates at a much larger scale. It can process 343 tonnes of organic waste a day and produce around 21 tonnes of Bio-CNG. Its feedstock includes wet waste, paddy straw, cattle dung and poultry litter. The plant receives waste from hotels, restaurants and apartment complexes. Daily wet-waste supply has grown from around 7–8 tonnes initially to about 125 tonnes.

Along with Bio-CNG, the facility produces around 28 tonnes of compost each day, which is made available to local farmers. The gas supports city transport. The project is expected to extend piped gas access to around 45,000 households and reduce carbon emissions by approximately 57,000 tonnes annually.

This is a different operating model from the smaller projects. Waste has to be brought in from multiple sources and supplied in sufficient quantities to keep a large facility running.

Gwalior Turns Cattle Dung Into Fuel

At Adarsh Gaushala in Laltipara, Gwalior, more than 10,000 cattle provide the main feedstock for a 100-tonne-per-day CBG plant. The ₹31-crore facility converts about 100 tonnes of cattle dung every day into two tonnes of compressed biogas. It also produces 10–15 tonnes of dry bio-manure daily.

The plant can process vegetable and fruit waste collected from markets and homes as well. The model is built around a large and concentrated source of organic material, with the resulting fuel and manure providing outlets for the products.

Waste Management: The Scale-up Problem Starts with the Waste

These projects demonstrate different ways of using organic waste. They also have conditions that are not automatically available across a city. The Gujarat campus has its own cowshed and kitchen. Bowenpally has a large quantity of similar waste concentrated in one market. Gwalior has access to thousands of cattle. Prayagraj draws from organised sources such as hotels, restaurants and apartment complexes.

Household waste presents a different problem. It is spread across thousands of locations and can contain plastics, glass and other contaminants. Recovering the organic fraction requires consistent segregation and collection. Moving it to a processing facility adds transport costs.

The plant itself is only one part of the system. A facility also needs a dependable supply of suitable feedstock. Once gas or electricity is produced, there must be a user or buyer. Compost and bio-manure need markets as well.

The 2026 rules place greater emphasis on this chain. Four-stream segregation is now mandatory, and bulk waste generators producing 100 kg or more of waste a day are required to ensure that their waste is collected, transported and processed properly. They must process wet waste on-site as far as possible or obtain an Extended Bulk Waste Generator Responsibility certificate where that is not feasible.

What the Projects Tell Us About Waste-to-energy

The four projects provide evidence of what can work when the waste stream, technology and end use are aligned. They do not establish that the same economics will apply across India’s urban areas.

The Bowenpally example, for instance, shows a substantial reduction in the market’s electricity bill, but the available account does not provide enough information on capital expenditure, operating costs or the time required to recover the investment. The same questions become more important as systems grow larger.

There is also a distinction between expected and demonstrated environmental benefits. The approximately 57,000-tonne annual carbon reduction cited for Prayagraj is an expected outcome, not a measured result reported in the source material. And the climate value of these systems cannot be judged only by what comes out of the plant. Collection, transport, processing and the energy source being replaced all form part of the calculation.

India’s waste figures show why the issue matters. More than 1.6 lakh tonnes of municipal waste enters the urban system every day, even as the country reports processing around 81% of it. The opportunity for organic waste lies in what happens before disposal becomes necessary. The challenge is making segregation, collection, processing and end-use work reliably enough for waste-to-energy to become part of that larger system.

An electric car plugged in at night, a heat pump warming a home and a factory replacing a gas-fired process with an electric one may look like separate changes. They are becoming part of the same transformation or some say, the age of electrification. The change is already underway if we look closer. Global electricity demand exceeded 28,500 terawatt-hours in 2025 and has grown by more than 3% a year over the past decade, almost twice as fast as overall energy demand.

The International Energy Agency’s latest Special Report on Electrification points to the same scale of change. Its High Electrification Scenario, or HES, sees electricity rising from 23% of global final energy consumption today to 35% by 2035. The scenario is designed to be compatible with the IEA’s net-zero pathway when combined with measures such as energy efficiency.

That would mean another 1,400 TWh of electricity demand every year through 2035, about twice the annual increase recorded during the previous decade. But are we ready to keep up with this mass consumption?

Jan Rosenow, Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at Oxford University, said the technologies needed for faster electrification are already available, but current progress remains insufficient.

“Electrification is the most important lever we have to build a clean, secure and affordable energy system. today’s report shows the technologies are ready and the economic case is strong, but current progress falls well short of what is needed. We are still in the middle of an energy crisis with crippling oil and gas prices and governments must now act across every sector, from buildings and transport to industry.”

A Rapid Power Build-Out

Much of the new demand is likely to come from activities that currently depend on fossil fuels. The IEA estimates that, using current costs, prices and financing conditions, the share of electricity in final energy use could rise from 23% to around 33% globally through cost-effective opportunities alone. The HES pushes that further, to 35% by 2035.

But that extra electricity cannot simply come from whatever power plants happen to be available. Electricity generated from low-emissions sources accounted for 42% of global generation in 2025, up from 33% in 2015. Solar deployment increased more than tenfold during the decade and wind deployment more than doubled.

At the same time, fossil-fuel generation also increased. Power generation still produces around 14 billion tonnes of CO₂ a year, and global power-sector emissions have not yet peaked. For a net-zero-compatible system, the problem is therefore twofold: generate much more electricity while changing what generates it.

Janet Milongo, Senior Manager Energy Transition at CAN International, said the proposed 35-by-35 target would need to be assessed not only by how much energy becomes electric, but by how that electricity is generated and governed.

“The 35 by 35 target will only represent climate progress if it is powered by sustainable renewable energy. Success cannot be measured simply by how much of the world’s final energy consumption becomes electric. We must ask what generates that electricity, who has access to it, who owns the infrastructure, and whether it is helping countries transition away from fossil fuels. Developing countries must have the resources and capacity to own, govern and shape their electricity systems in the public interest.”

Solar Panels are Only the Beginning

By 2035, annual solar additions would need to exceed 1,200 GW, while annual wind additions would reach around 400 GW. Nuclear power would also expand substantially. This would provide electricity for the new demand created by electrification while replacing part of the fossil-fuel generation already on the system.

If an electric vehicle is charged with electricity produced by a fossil-fuel power plant, the energy system has changed, but its emissions have not disappeared. Electrification can deliver its full climate benefit only as the electricity supplying it becomes cleaner.

The same applies to factories, buildings and other major users. The result is a system that needs to expand generation at the same time as it changes its composition. That makes the transition more demanding than simply replacing one technology with another.

The Problem of Transfering Power

None of the sources of electricity can serve a household or factory without a network connecting generation to demand. The IEA estimates that the global electricity network would need to reach around 115 million kilometres by 2035 under the HES, with network expansion accelerating by about 40% compared with the previous decade.

That is a major infrastructure requirement, particularly because the geography of electricity supply and demand is changing. Solar generation is concentrated in certain hours. Wind output varies with weather. New renewable projects may be located far from industrial centres or cities. Meanwhile, electric vehicles, cooling and heating can create new peaks in demand.

A system built for relatively predictable electricity flows therefore has to become much more flexible. The IEA identifies connection queues, grid congestion and renewable curtailment among the problems that could slow the transition. Building transmission and distribution infrastructure earlier, improving the use of existing networks and speeding up planning and permitting become part of the climate strategy.

The grid is no longer simply the infrastructure that delivers electricity after it has been generated. It becomes one of the conditions for adding more clean generation in the first place.

Demand Side Matters

Storage is one response to this changing system. Under the IEA’s net-zero pathway, battery storage capacity would rise to around 2,900 GW by 2035, almost ten times current levels.

But the report’s picture of flexibility is broader than batteries. An electric vehicle does not necessarily have to charge at the moment it is plugged in. Some industrial processes can be shifted. Heating and cooling systems can respond to changing electricity availability. Water heaters can operate at times when the grid has more capacity.

That means electricity demand itself can become more flexible. This could become particularly important in countries where solar generation peaks during the day while electricity demand rises later in the evening.

India is one example. The country has been adding solar capacity while its electricity demand increasingly extends into evening and night-time hours. A larger solar fleet can increase daytime supply without automatically solving an evening peak.

How much electricity generated can move, store or shift to when people need it?

Richer Countries: Different Problem

In wealthier economies, electricity access is largely established. The challenge is what happens when an existing system suddenly has to serve much more demand and more variable sources of supply.

Electric vehicles, cooling, heat pumps, data centres and industrial electrification can all add load. At the same time, many of these countries have grids and power infrastructure designed around older patterns of electricity consumption. Some networks will need to be strengthened or replaced; others will need better digital controls to manage increasingly complex electricity flows.

There is also a financial problem at the household level. An electric technology can cost more to purchase while costing less to operate. That creates a barrier for households and businesses that cannot afford the initial investment, even when the technology may make economic sense over its lifetime. The IEA therefore sees financing and targeted support as part of the electrification challenge rather than as an issue separate from the energy transition.

India Sits Across Both Worlds

India illustrates how different parts of the challenge can exist within the same electricity system. Electricity demand grew by around 5% a year between 2015 and 2025. The country is also rapidly expanding renewable generation and electrifying transport.

There is significant room to electrify industrial processes. Nearly 30% of India’s industrial heat demand is below 150°C, a range where the IEA identifies substantial potential for electrification. Electric two- and three-wheelers provide another important opportunity.

But the changing timing of electricity demand creates a separate challenge. As solar generation grows during daylight hours, demand continues into the evening and night. That makes storage, flexible demand, electricity pricing and better use of the grid increasingly important. India therefore faces both sides of the global transition: expanding access to reliable electricity and preparing an already large electricity system for a much more electricity-intensive economy.

Test Between Generation and Consumption

The IEA’s proposed “35-by-35” target is ultimately a measure of how deeply electricity could enter the global energy system by 2035. But reaching that level would require much more than a larger supply of electricity.

It would require clean generation to grow fast enough to meet new demand and replace fossil generation. It would require transmission and distribution networks to expand before they become bottlenecks. It would require batteries and other forms of storage, alongside demand flexibility, to manage when electricity is produced and consumed.

Dave Jones, co-founder of Ember, described faster electrification as having benefits across household costs, emissions and energy security.

“Today’s report gives us the evidence we have all been waiting for to show that faster electrification is a triple win. A win for cheaper bills, a win for less emissions and pollution, and a win for cutting the huge fossil fuel import bill many countries face today.”

And it would require very different approaches in different parts of the world. In advanced economies, the priority is largely to transform and expand existing systems. In countries with major access gaps, electricity infrastructure has to grow alongside basic services and economic activity. Countries such as India are dealing with both challenges at once.

The technologies for much of this transition already exist. The harder task is putting them together at the required scale — and making sure the money, infrastructure, skills and institutions move with them.

That is the central question behind a net-zero-compatible electricity system: not simply whether the world can produce more electricity, but whether it can build an electricity system capable of carrying an increasingly electrified economy without carrying fossil-fuel emissions along with it.