Interesting Ideas

Understanding biodiversity within species is key to our understanding of why nature works the way it does, say researchers

• Words and photographs by Roberto García-Roa

Twelve miles from the heart of Rome, Dr Javier Ábalos pauses his walk, lifts his sunglasses and points. To his right, perched on a rocky wall, sits a beautiful lizard. Its body is coated in charcoal-black tones speckled with striking yellow across a green dorsum, and its head, with a prominent jaw, is splashed with fluorescent blue spots. The reptile basks in the sun, unconcerned by our presence.

About 80 miles (130km) drive farther along the road that connects the capital with the small village of Poggio di Roio, the researcher from the University of Valencia has barely stepped out of the car when he spots another lizard. This one is smaller, with a brownish body and a narrower head crisscrossed by a network of dark stripes.

Researchers fear the common wall lizard of the white morph could be driven to extinction by the arrival of a new variation

There is no end in sight to the pollution caused by a ‘broken’ system. Experts say it could even be getting worse

Sarah Lambert took her usual morning swim for 40 minutes off Exmouth town beach before her volunteer shift helping disabled people get access to the water.

A wheelchair user herself, Lambert’s regular sea swims twice a week between the lifeboat station and HeyDays restaurant were the perfect form of exercise for her disability.

A new mini power station and lithium extraction facility near Redruth are set to bolster green energy and create jobs

Just outside the perimeter fence stand the hulking remains of grand stone engine houses, a testament to Cornwall’s proud tin and copper mining history.

But inside is a shiny new mini power station and lithium extraction plant that is once again accessing rich underground resources in the far south-west of Britain.

Ice Memory Foundation’s specially dug ‘sanctuary’ offers storage for cores, which hold thousands of years of history

Last month the Ice Memory Foundation opened the first ever sanctuary for mountain ice cores in Antarctica, where samples will be stored for centuries to come.

The cores, typically 10cm in diameter and a metre or more long, are stored in a specially excavated ice cave. The first to be laid down came from two Alpine glaciers that are rapidly shrinking.

Wow, time flies. An old article that I loved when we originally published it recently came to mind, and I quickly realized it was much more relevant today than it was back in November of 2014 when it was published. It also blows my mind that the article is more ... [continued]

The post Range Anxiety Anxiety vs. Actual Electric Car Convenience appeared first on CleanTechnica.

We typically report on Waymo and other US-based robotaxi companies, but one of the biggest robotaxi services in the world is Baidu’s Apollo Go. It first launched fully driverless robotaxis in China on July 20, 2022, and was the first company to launch them there. Now we have news that, ... [continued]

The post Apollo Go Reaches 20 Million Trips, 190 Million Fully Driverless Kilometers appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Every time hydrogen is critiqued as an energy carrier for the power sector, the same question reappears. If not hydrogen, where does long duration storage come from? I received it related to my recent critique of Germany’s attempt to force the EU to double green hydrogen and synthetic fuel quotes ... [continued]

The post The System Case Against Hydrogen for Grid Storage appeared first on CleanTechnica.

In early February I had the opportunity to travel to Las Vegas to the AHR Expo. For those of you who have never heard of it, it’s a ginormous 50,000-person expo focused primarily on space and water heating systems, a Mecca of sorts for a heat pump dork like me. ... [continued]

The post 4 Takeaways From The Nation’s Biggest Heat Pump Expo appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Ideology in the US is threatening science education and basic research, which will have long term impacts on the nation for a generation.

The post MAGA Is Making America Stupid. The Effects Will Be Felt For Generations appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The Volkswagen brand has reached another milestone in its electric vehicle journey. It has just delivered its 2 millionth fully electric vehicle. The milestone vehicle was a Volkswagen ID.3 produced in Volkswagen’s Zwickau factory, and then was delivered today to a customer at the company’s Transparent Factory in Dresden, Germany. ... [continued]

The post Volkswagen Reaches 2 Million Electric Vehicle Deliveries appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Local river defenders force U-turn by occupying grain terminal operated by one of US powerhouses of world trade

“A victory for life.” That was the triumphal message from Indigenous campaigners in the Brazilian Amazon this week after they staved off a threat to the Tapajós River by occupying a grain terminal operated by Cargill, the biggest privately owned company in the United States.

“The river won, the forest won, the memory of our ancestors won,” said the campaigners in Santarém when it was clear their actions had forced the Brazilian government into a U-turn on plans to privatise one of the world’s most beautiful waterways and expand its role as a soy canal.

Isley Marsh, Devon: The birdlife is mostly staying still in the downpour, not least these large, striking waders that we’re lucky to have here

Rain washes across the saltmarsh, numbing my lips and fingers. The deluge is unavoidable, as it has been all year. It’s been one of the wettest winters on record and harder to get around. Glimpsing a huddle of white feathers, I try to silence my squelching, not wanting to disturb the sheltering bird. Its wings flare, as though preparing for flight, but the little egret remains in place. It considers the pool at its feet, buffered from the rain by the reeds.

Behind it, the silver River Taw winds into the estuary. Standing on the track, I catch the shimmering white breasts of lapwings at the water’s edge, fluttering like the tail of a kite before takeoff. They ripple but do not fully rise. The only real movement is from the water. Rain sheets in from the side; the river surges with the tide while the rest of us stand, crouch or falter in the murk, unable to muster the same momentum.

As fish stocks dwindle, surf tourism may offer a lifeline to traditional caballitos de totora fishers, whose vessels are thought to be among the first ever used to ride waves

Just before dawn, in a scene that has repeated itself over thousands of years on the north coast of Peru, fishers drag boats made of bound reeds to the water’s edge and, kneeling on them, use paddles shaped from split bamboo to row out into the Pacific Ocean to catch their breakfast. A few hours later, these surfer fishers return with netfuls of their catch, riding waves on the final stretch back to the shore. From the main beach in Huanchaco – a seaside town near the city of Trujillo – the fish are taken to sell at the market or to beachfront restaurants preparing meals for tourists.

The four-metre-long reed vessels – known as caballitos de totora in Spanish, or “little reed horses” – are placed upright on their ends by the promenade on El Mogote beach so that the seawater drains away and they are ready to be used the next morning.

The massive, 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is one of five offshore projects to survive the Trump chopper, adding another 2.6 gigawatts to the nation's clean power profile.

The post Meet The 2.6 GW Offshore Wind Project Trump Tried, And Failed, To Kill appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Falling groundwater, extreme heat and water-intensive farming are accelerating land collapse, forcing a rethink in agricultural practices

Fatih Sik was drinking tea with friends at home when he heard a rumbling sound outside that grew to a loud boom, like a volcano had erupted nearby. From the window, he saw water and mud shoot into the sky, as high as the tallest trees, less than 100 metres away.

The 47-year-old knew what it was, because it is common in Karapınar, Konya, a vast agricultural province known as Turkey’s breadbasket. A giant sinkhole had opened up on his land. Fifty metres wide and 40 metres deep, it had appeared almost a year to the day after a previous one had formed. It was August – the hottest month of the year.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is proud of the sustainability actions it required the host country, Italy, to implement for the 2026 Milano Cortina Games. Measures included minimizing negative impacts on the environment and using the Games’ visibility to showcase sustainable solutions. Protecting biodiversity and managing resources sustainably, the Committee ... [continued]

The post How Sustainable Were The 2026 Olympics, Really? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

When I published my recent piece on Germany’s bid to double hydrogen-based fuel targets to try to justify already built and already stranded hydrogen infrastructure, readers raised important questions about compliance mechanics. One pointed out that the 1% RFNBO subtarget can be met by replacing grey hydrogen in refineries rather ... [continued]

The post How Europe Can Meet Hydrogen Fuel Mandates Without Hydrogen Fuels appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The annual competition draws thousands of entries from across the world and brings together images from below the water’s surface that show the diversity and challenges of subaquatic life

• All photographs courtesy of Underwater Photographer of the Year 2026

Changes threaten ecosystems as flowering falls out of sync with fruit-eating, seed-dispersing animals and pollinators

Tropical flowers are blooming months earlier or later than they used to because of climate breakdown, with potentially “cascading impacts across ecosystems”, according to a study of 8,000 plants dating back 200 years.

Researchers looked at flowers from a range of countries, including Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana and Thailand, home to the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, but also the most understudied.

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, the Sierra Club released the first batch of communications and calendars received from the Department of the Interior in the wake of the organization’s lawsuit following the agency’s failure to respond to public records requests for the documents. The Sierra Club sought calendar items and text and email records between ... [continued]

The post Sierra Club Releases First Trove of Emails, Texts, and Calendars from Trump’s Department of the Interior appeared first on CleanTechnica.