Interesting Ideas

Ford has unveiled the Transit City, a battery electric multi-purpose van for commercial customers in Europe.

The post Ford Unveils New Battery Electric Transit City Work Trucks For Europe appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The current crisis is costing shipping millions per day, highlighting why we must accelerate the sector’s decarbonisation. The Hormuz Strait crisis is costing the shipping industry €340 million a day,  demonstrating the industry’s vulnerability to oil and gas price volatility. Green measures would reduce the shipping industry’s exposure to fuel ... [continued]

The post Shipping at Risk in the Strait of Hormuz appeared first on CleanTechnica.

SpaceX is on the verge of a giant IPO (initial public offering). Once upon a time, Elon Musk said that he never wanted to take a company public again, because he didn’t like the public oversight and annoying questions from analysts every quarter. But I guess Musk doesn’t really run ... [continued]

The post Tesla Analyst Thinks Tesla Could Merge With SpaceX In 2027 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

National Trust says one year after reintroduction they are enriching habitats and may be having kits this summer

They were released this time last year with fanfare, much hope and also, perhaps, a little trepidation.

Twelve months on, there have been ups and downs for the first beavers to be (officially) reintroduced into the wild in England since the semiaquatic mammals were hunted to extinction 400 years ago.

Strikes on oil facilities burned thousands of tons of stored fuel, producing a pall of toxic smoke

Black rain fell in Iran earlier this month, a grim phenomenon seen previously in other war zones.

Strikes on oil facilities burned thousands of tons of stored fuel. Unlike the clean controlled combustion inside an engine, uncontrolled burning leaves many particles of unburned fuel, producing a pall of toxic smoke over affected areas.

Female named Rounder surrounded by family members when about to give birth to her second calf

Scientists have managed to film a sperm whale giving birth while other female whales worked together to support the mother and her newborn.

A team from Project Ceti, an international effort seeking to understand how whales communicate, was in a boat near a pod of 11 whales off the coast of the Caribbean island of Dominica on 8 July 2023.

This labor-intensive way of eating isn’t for everyone – and I’m not sure it’s for me. It requires planning and flexibility

When I called Robin Greenfield, an environmental activist and author, his assistant answered. “We’re stopped really quick,” Marielle said, adding “he is harvesting a ton of wild onions right now. He’ll be on in just a minute.”

I waited, curious to see his haul and bemused by his willingness to delay an interview for wild vegetables. I had called Greenfield, who wrote Food Freedom about the year he grew and foraged 100% of his food, to talk about how possible, or hard, it is to do just that.

Green hydrogen is beginning to intersect with drone warfare and robotic devices on the ground as well as in the skies.

The post Combat Drones Are Pivoting Into Green Hydrogen Fuel Cells appeared first on CleanTechnica.

EVgo just opened a new EV fast charger hub in San Diego with 28 charging stalls. They add to the over 1,200 new chargers installed by the same company last year. EVgo is building bigger sites to serve more drivers. Our largest public site to date is now open in ... [continued]

The post 28 New Fast EV Charging Stalls Launched In San Diego appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Lots of us aren’t very keen on bats. But the more we find out about them, the more amazing they turn out to be

Bats have a bad rep: in a recent survey by the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT), 46% of people expressed negative feelings about bats. But just look at them! Bat carer Liz Vinson, a volunteer with the BCT, calls them “little furry humans with huge jazz hands. They have individual characters: some are divas; some are bone idle.”

Shirley Thompson, BCT’s honorary education officer, has been championing bats since the 1980s. “I still think they’re magic,” she says. “The more you find out about them, the more you realise what amazing creatures they are.”

Driving fast is in ‘the German DNA’, say lovers of the speed-limit free Autobahn, but support in the country for a restriction is growing

Death-defying thrills are not what draws Lutz Leif Linden to zip down the Autobahn faster than a plane taking off. Instead, the feeling of freedom and an appreciation of technological mastery play a part in his “almost loving relationship” with driving cars faster than most people can imagine.

The top speed he has reached on the road in Germany, the world’s only democracy without a blanket speed limit on motorways, is 400km/h (249mph). “It’s like an airplane,” said Linden, the president of the Automobile Club of Germany (AvD). “You are faster than an Airbus at start.”

I see BrightDrop vans regularly in Vancouver. That is one of the many small pleasures of living in a city that functions as a pocket of the future. Battery buses show up before they are common elsewhere. Heat pumps are ordinary. Public charging is part of the furniture. Electric delivery ... [continued]

The post BrightDrop Died in America, While China Made Electric Vans Normal appeared first on CleanTechnica.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Conserving the watershed of the Tana and improving farming methods is securing water supplies and livelihoods alike in a changing climate

When in 2017 David Nyoro became one of the first farmers to partner with Africa’s first water fund to conserve the watershed of Kenya’s biggest river, he received 180 high-value avocado seedlings. The 67-year-old’s farming methods had been dominated by annual crops that left large sections of his five-acre piece of land bare, increasing soil erosion and contributing to river sedimentation. “We used to lose a lot of topsoil to the river. Such loss of soil nutrients and poor farming practices meant we had less farm produce,” he says.

The avocado seedlings enabled him to grow his farm income to close to 2m Kenyan shillings (about £11,500 at today’s exchange rates), with each mature avocado tree yielding 70kg (154lbs) annually. He introduced cover crops to improve soil health and reduce soil erosion and sediment loads.

Admittedly, I don’t really pay much attention to Tesla’s stock price, or any company stock prices. However, because of the work I do, I see headlines about stock price trends here and there. I didn’t realize until today that Tesla’s stock price has been trending downward for a while, but ... [continued]

The post Tesla Stock Down Nearly 20% in 6 Months — Are People Giving Up On Tesla Robotaxis? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Rena Effendi’s film Searching for Satyrus began with a quest for the endangered insect that bears her family name. Before long, she was reckoning with secrets, lies and the mysterious life of her wayward dad

High in the Caucasus mountains, the photojournalist Rena Effendi is searching for the butterfly that bears the name of the father she hardly knew. It is rocky, bleak, beautiful – and impossible. The grass is fried yellow by the increasingly fierce summer sun, the butterfly’s food has been grazed by sheep and, if it exists at all, Satyrus effendi usually flies only as a single insect across a square kilometre of rock, scree and slope.

A butterfly hunt makes an unlikely subject for a prize-winning documentary, but Searching for Satyrus is a gripping quest that reveals a remarkable part of the world little known to western audiences while examining issues from war and nationalism to global heating and extinction. Ultimately, however, Effendi’s search for her father’s butterfly becomes a moving reckoning with the secrets and lies in her family and the life of her wayward father.

Green measures would reduce the shipping industry’s exposure to fuel price shocks in future, says T&E. €4.6 billion in additional fuel costs since the start of the conflict The cost gap between fossil fuels and e-fuels has narrowed. Efficiency measures, like wind propulsion, slow steaming or electrification, will further protect ... [continued]

The post Iran Conflict Costing Shipping Industry €340 Million A Day appeared first on CleanTechnica.

In March 2026, tanker rates for Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) leaving the Middle East to Asia were the highest since at least November 2005, when data were first recorded. The price increase followed Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz on March 2. The Strait of Hormuz is an important chokepoint, connecting the Persian ... [continued]

The post Middle East Crude Oil Tanker Rates Reached A Multi-Decade High In March appeared first on CleanTechnica.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Today, a group of clean air and water advocates announced the launch of the NC Pipeline Watch to monitor construction of the Southeast Supply Enhancement Project pipeline (SSEP). The NC Pipeline Watch is composed of trained volunteers and staff involved with 7 Directions of Service, Clean Water ... [continued]

The post Environmental Advocates Launch NC Pipeline Watch appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Number fell 23% year on year in 2025 but waste companies say recycling systems still under strain from sheer volume

More than 6m vapes and vape pods are still being discarded every week in the UK, with waste management companies warning the sheer volume continues to strain recycling systems despite the ban on disposable e-cigarettes.

According to research by the recycling campaign group Material Focus, the 6.3m vapes and pods thrown away each week in 2025 represented a 23% reduction from the previous year.