Interesting Ideas

Every once in a while, reading articles at CleanTechnica, I feel an urge to overcome my reluctance to put myself into the spotlight by writing about my own inventions. I am afraid that Steve Hanley, who happens to be one of my favorite CleanTechnica authors, put up the straw that ... [continued]

The post Inventions That Capitalism Fails appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Boston — Today, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled in favor of renewable energy developers, temporarily blocking a number of the Trump administration’s relentless and aggressive attacks on the industry. Since taking office, Donald Trump and his administration have thrown up numerous roadblocks to clean energy ... [continued]

The post WIN: Judge Blocks Trump’s Efforts to Kneecap Renewables appeared first on CleanTechnica.

How to make European ports future-proof in the next review. The maritime sector accounts for 3% of the EU’s total CO2 emissions, amounting to 145.2 million tonnes of CO2 in 2024. Under current policies, maritime emissions could represent one-third of all transport emissions in 2050. Between 5–7% of these emissions — ... [continued]

The post The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation for Shipping appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Sets Two Guinness Global Records A 22-day nationwide electric vehicle expedition led by Wil Dasovich has reinforced the viability of long-distance electric mobility in the Philippines, covering more than 3,500 kilometers across 102 cities and municipalities from the northern tip of Luzon to the southern reaches of Mindanao. The “Drive ... [continued]

The post “Drive Electric, Love Pinas” Campaign Completes An End-to-End Philippine EV Journey appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Analysis of video footage reveals how wave changed as it travelled over mud-rich rice paddies, exerting more force

It is just over 15 years since the devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, killing almost 20,000 people and triggering the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Fresh analysis of video footage of the wave has revealed that the mud-rich coastline made the tsunami far more destructive than it might otherwise have been.

Patrick Sharrocks, from the University of Leeds, and colleagues studied helicopter video footage, along with before and after images from Google Earth, to estimate the speed, shape and power of the tsunami flow front. They found that as the wave travelled over mud-rich rice paddies it changed from a fast-moving, clear-water flow into a thick, gloopy, mud-laden one.

About 500 farmers challenge Green Gen Cymru in high court over alleged disregard for landowners and biosecurity

A group of 500 Welsh farmers have brought a landmark legal claim to the high court over the alleged conduct of a green energy developer planning to build electricity pylon routes across their land.

The court will hear allegations that Green Gen Cymru “unlawfully sought entry to private land, intimidated landowners, and showed disregard for biosecurity and basic rights”, as well as examine laws that force landowners to sell property to utility companies, in a hearing on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Washington, D.C. — Donald Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act to give the coal industry access to potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, even as the industry has been in decline for nearly two decades. This would be in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars the administration has already forced ... [continued]

The post Trump to Give Coal Industry More Handouts While Americans Pay appeared first on CleanTechnica.

St Mabyn, Cornwall: Many apiarists opened their hives this spring to find hardly any sign of life. In Richard’s case, he found nothing at all

Richard Bray’s hives stand in a crooked line at the edge of the apple orchard, beside a low thicket of nettles. Richard was “brought up with” beekeeping here at Haywood farm, and at the peak of his apiary business had 250 hives; today he has seven. This spring, for the first time in 75 years, none of his bees survived the winter.

Richard lifts the lid of the first hive, releasing a sour smell of old wax and honey. “There’s nothing,” he says, “that’s very worrying. You’d expect to [at least] see dead bees in there. But there isn’t a bee anywhere.” An inspector from the National Bee Unit advised that the loss was caused by the varroa mite, a notorious destroyer of bee colonies. “I’ve never had anything like this,” Richard tells me. “Varroa mite? I don’t know.”

Airline ticket prices are soaring as a consequence of the recent crisis in the Middle East. This new analysis shows that European aviation’s dependence on fossil fuels is at the core of this spike in prices. The recent Middle East crisis underscores that European aviation’s greatest vulnerability is its fossil ... [continued]

The post Iran Crisis: A Moment of Reckoning for European Aviation appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Campaigners in Henley say insufficient number of bathers to qualify for status is result of poor water quality

Bathing water rules in England should be improved to help drive a clean-up of pollution at a spot on the River Thames in Henley, campaigners say.

In a letter to the environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, businesses, river users, community groups and civic leaders said poor water quality had been damaging the town and had put public health at risk.

Fiona Harvey tells Nosheen Iqbal why the climate crisis is a threat to national security

“Last October, I and other journalists got quite excited because we thought that we were going to be attending a great event at the Natural History Museum,” the Guardian’s environment editor Fiona Harvey tells Nosheen Iqbal.

“We had been told that there was a major report being launched at this event. And this report was going to come not just from where you’d expect – from the government’s environment department – but also from the joint intelligence committee, and they are the UK’s spy chiefs, MI5, MI6, the intelligence agencies. And they were taking an interest in the climate and biodiversity and the threats that they pose to the UK’s national security.”

NAOMA, West Virginia — Today, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia ruled in favor of Coal River Mountain Watch, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Appalachian Voices, and Sierra Club, blocking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to grant a Clean Water ... [continued]

The post Judge Blocks Clean Water Act Permit for Mountaintop Removal Mine on Coal River Mountain appeared first on CleanTechnica.

To: Ms. Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition; Mr. Wopke Hoekstra, Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth; Mr. Apoltolos Tzitzikostas, Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism. We, the undersigned NGOs, trade unions, industry actors, industry associations and consumer associations, are joining forces to urge the ... [continued]

The post +20 Industry & Civil Society Organisations Call on the EU to Include All Departing Flights in the EU Carbon Market appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The US startup Solx will manufacture new tandem perovskite solar modules in Puerto Rico, with solar cells from Suniva and perovskite glass from Caelux.

The post Puerto Rico Suddenly Emerges As A Perovskite Solar Cell Powerhouse appeared first on CleanTechnica.

As rising gold prices fuel environmental destruction, communities in the country’s biodiverse heartland are passing laws against mining

Mahogany trees tower above Herminio Mamani as he tends his cacao farm in Bolivia’s biodiverse north-west. A former president of El Ceibo, the country’s largest organic cacao co-operative, he says the agroforestry model used by its 1,300 members is vital not only to maintain the quality of the cacao they produce, but also for keeping gold mining at bay.

“We cacao producers would never kill an animal here,” he says, parrots squawking nearby. “The parcels [of land] can never be monocultures – all the crops grow together.”

The idea that a car can run on water has long been treated in the Philippines as a uniquely local story, carried for decades by the claims of Filipino “inventor” Daniel Dingel and sustained by periodic bursts of public interest whenever fuel prices rise. When the Iran war began, fuel ... [continued]

The post Water-Powered Engine Hoax Isn’t Just A Philippine Invention appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Council proposal to use glyphosate to tidy up pavements criticised over potential harm to humans and wildlife

Cornwall is famed for its glorious gardens and verdant landscapes but a bitter row has broken out over a plan to tackle a less glamorous type of vegetation – roadside weeds.

The unitary authority has announced plans to use the controversial herbicide glyphosate to tidy up pavements and kerbsides, after largely phasing out its use over the last decade amid concerns about potential harm to humans and the peninsula’s rich ecosystems.

One way to pay for wildlife conservation is to allow the rich to bag a few animals for high prices. But critics see this approach as an exercise in neocolonialism

You can kill almost anything if you’re willing to pay. Big or small. Land, water or air. Ten a penny or one of the last of its kind. There’s nearly always a way, though it might not make you popular. The Niassa special reserve, a vast reservation larger than Switzerland, stretches for 190 miles along the northern rim of Mozambique, taking in 4.2m hectares of woodland and rivers. The reserve, one of the world’s largest protected areas, is home to elephants, leopards, hyenas, zebras and about 1,000 wild lions.

That word, however: protected. It applies to some, but not all, of its animal inhabitants. Each year, a specific number are set aside for sacrifice, for the greater good. Not long ago,I joined an expedition in Niassa, with one of Africa’s top game-hunting companies.

The country is seeing an increase in human-wildlife conflict as the number of megafauna, including rhinos and tigers, grows. But there are efforts to tackle the problem around Chitwan national park through education and training

The tourists lining the steep embankment buzzed with excitement, phones out, snapping away in the twilight as a wild Indian rhinoceros grazed below the Nepali village of Sauraha. Climbing to the main street, the rhino ambled down the middle of the road.

Local people warned tourists to give it plenty of space. All manner of wheeled vehicles slowed, then passed. The rhino turned its horn at a cyclist passing too close, triggering gasps from the assembled crowd.

A manager uses torchlight to guide a wild Indian rhinoceros through the grounds of his hotel in Sauraha

Unwanted vessels left to decay release fibreglass shards into the water, harming marine life. Steve Green – with his trusty van Cecil – is determined to clean things up

Steve Green, a boat engineer from Cornwall, was pulled over by the police just before Christmas. He was driving a decrepit-looking VW campervan and towing an even more dilapidated yacht up to Truro. He hadn’t broken any laws, but he admits that Cecil the campervan, which runs on donated chip oil from local pubs and has a crane and a winch on the front, “wasn’t quite what VW intended”.

Green (and Cecil) are on a mission to rid the beautiful hidden creeks of Cornwall’s Helford and Fal rivers of 166 abandoned fibreglass yachts, which are leaking plastic and toxins into the predominantly marine waters. Marine biologists have likened the thousands of shards of fibreglass they have found embedded in the flesh of sea-creatures in areas with wrecks such as these to asbestos, a substance known to have a noxious effect on humans.

Green uses a detachable crane system at the front of his van to move around bags of plastic after they have been weighed. Cecil is upholstered in recycled denim