Storing Renewable Energy, One Balloon at a Time

Central Sardinia is not generally considered a hotbed of innovation: Arid and rural, some of its road signs riddled with bullet holes made by target-practicing locals, the setting recalls a Clint Eastwood western. Yet in Ottana, on the brownfield site of a former petrochemical plant, a new technology is taking shape that might help the world slow climate change. The key component of this technology is as unlikely…