Interesting Ideas

Action began in January, before an all-out strike in March. For locals, the flytipping, vermin, maggots and mess are taking a huge environmental and emotional toll

It’s an icy cold winter morning, and 80-year-old Mohammed Bashir is armed with a broom, tackling the large pile of rubbish that has accumulated outside his terraced house in Small Heath, Birmingham.

This has become an almost daily activity for Bashir since the city’s bin strike started 50 weeks ago and, like many in the city, he is starting to lose patience.

Planet’s oldest bee species and primary pollinators were under threat from deforestation and competition from ‘killer bees’

Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere.

It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest’s long-overlooked native bees – which, unlike their cousins the European honeybees, have no sting – now have the right to exist and to flourish.

Massachusetts has to reach 5 gigawatts (GW) of energy storage capacity by 2030, per legislation passed by state lawmakers. To get going toward that target, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) has conducted its first large-scale energy storage tender. In that tender, it awarded 1.268 GW (1,268 megawatts) of ... [continued]

The post Massachusetts’s First Big Energy Storage Tender Dishes Out 1.3 GW Of Contracts appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Hove, East Sussex: I’ve had to create a halfway house for him, between the rescue centre and the wild. Only, he’s named after an escapologist for a reason

In the dark, a three-legged hedgehog trundles clumsily by, gathering leaves to make his bed more comfortable, although apparently not comfortable enough to hibernate. This may be his eighth winter; hedgehogs lose pigment with age and his bright pink nose suggests he’s well over five – the average age of a wild hog. Except he’s not wild, or not for now. I’ve had to lock him in the garden.

His name is Houdini. He came into my life three years ago, captured on my trail camera with bone exposed from a partially missing leg. I caught him to take to the rescue centre, but he escaped before I got a chance – twice. I finally nabbed him and named him after the great escapologist. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a journey together.

When the hot winds hit Roebourne, as many as 16 people pile into Yindjibarndi elder Lyn Cheedy’s home – one of the few with air conditioning

Few places are more exposed to extreme weather than Roebourne, a tiny cyclone-prone town on the Western Australian coast, where public housing residents endure 50C heat without air conditioning.

Lyn Cheedy, a Yindjibarndi elder, takes her grandson to the pool most afternoons.

Indiana is among the states embedding EV chargers directly into roadways, enabling motorists to top off their batteries while in motion.

The post With EV Wireless Charging, Two Red States Make A Great Case For Electric Mobility appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The United States may be going backward with renewable energy, trying to drag people back into a pollution-filled world powered by coal and other fossil resources, but its neighbor to the south, led by a climate scientist, has just awarded 20 renewable energy projects with a combined total of 3.3 ... [continued]

The post Mexico Awards 20 Renewable Energy Projects 3.3 Gigawatts of Contracts appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Since Zack Polanski took over as leader, the party has doubled its membership and its four MPs want to take on Reform’s anger and build community spirit

“Someone has to be out there making the narrative for social security. Someone has to fight the corrosive attitudes to people on benefits,” says Siân Berry, who has just finished her first year as a Green MP in the House of Commons.

She is speaking to the Guardian in her Brighton constituency office, formerly occupied by the legendary Caroline Lucas who flew a lone flag as the only member of parliament for the Green party for 14 years.

The era of a global free market is quickly dying, leading to a need for more and more core manufacturing within countries’ own borders. Unless leadership in the US changes dramatically, and leadership in the EU changes to some degree, and China and India loosen up their requirements significantly, this ... [continued]

The post T1 Energy Gets 5-Gigawatt US Solar Module Factory From Trina Solar appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Vingroup announced separate strategic agreements in late December to develop urban infrastructure and green public transport networks in Uzbekistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Vietnamese conglomerate signed a trilateral Memorandum of Understanding with the City of Kinshasa and Exposure SARL on Dec. 29 to modernize the African capital’s ... [continued]

The post Vingroup Signs Strategic Agreements for Green Mobility in Uzbekistan & Kinshasa appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Sodium-ion battery development has been a major story in 2025, as Chris Arcus has been especially eager to highlight and explain. In 2026, I think it could be the biggest battery topic. Battery giant CATL, the largest battery producer in the world, is leaning into the topic and made a ... [continued]

The post CATL Makes Big Announcement on Sodium Batteries for 2026 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The BYD Seagull has just been launched in Australia. This global best seller is bound to shake up the market. In Australia, it is called the Atto 1, a surprisingly simply name that identifies where it fits in the BYD lineup. It is smaller and has less range than its ... [continued]

The post Look Out For Your Chips, The Seagull Is Coming! appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Agrivoltaics have been the name of the game in the past few years in the solar power industry. On the surface, it seems simple — find farmland that could benefit from co-location with solar power plants, and then plop some solar panels on areas of the land that seem most ... [continued]

The post Agrivoltaic Company Okovate Acquires Stanford University & Carnegie Mellon Tech Startup appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Species that is critically endangered in Britain is spotted in Mersey, Bollin and Goyt rivers in north-west

Young Atlantic salmon have been seen in three rivers in north-west England for the first time since 2015, marking a “significant environmental turnaround”.

The salmon species was declared critically endangered in Britain in 2023 but fish have been spotted in the Mersey, Bollin and Goyt rivers, meaning they have successfully travelled from the Arctic Circle to spawn.

Attenborough, 99, enthuses about tube-riding pigeons, foxes, parakeets and others in Wild London for the BBC

Filming the wildlife of London requires an intrepid, agile presenter, willing to lie on damp grass after dark to encounter hedgehogs, scale heights to hold a peregrine falcon chick, and stake out a Tottenham allotment to get within touching distance of wary wild foxes.

Step forward Sir David Attenborough, who spent his 100th summer seeking out the hidden nature of his home city for an unusually personal and intimate BBC documentary.

Duke Energy Florida credits solar power with the bulk of a $1 billion savings for ratepayers expected by March of this year, while experimenting with green hydrogen for the long term.

The post Leading US Utility Trolls Trump Over Coal, Solar Power, And Green Hydrogen, Too appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Dry and warm 2025 spring gave glimmer of hope for threatened wild birds but many remain in long-term decline

The warmest and sunniest spring on record this year led to an increase in the breeding of some of Britain’s best-loved songbirds, data has shown.

Scientists said the dry and warm spring had provided a glimmer of hope for threatened wild birds. In the 2025 breeding season, from May to August, there were higher than average breeding successes for 14 species including the chiffchaff, garden warbler, whitethroat, coal tit, blue tit, great tit and robin.

National Trust says these are ‘alarm signals we cannot ignore’ as climate breakdown puts pressure on wildlife

Extremes of weather have pushed nature to its limits in 2025, putting wildlife, plants and landscapes under severe pressure, an annual audit of flora and fauna has concluded.

Bookended by storms Éowyn and Bram, the UK experienced a sun-soaked spring and summer, resulting in fierce heath and moorland fires, followed by autumn floods.

Trump ratcheted up his questionable claims about the environment and how to deal, if at all, with the threats to it

In the past decade at the forefront of US politics, Donald Trump has unleashed a barrage of unusual, misleading or dubious assertions about the climate crisis, which he most famously called a “hoax”.

This year has seen Trump ratchet up his often questionable claims about the environment and how to deal, if at all, with the threats to it. In a year littered with lies and wild declarations, these are the five that stood out as the most startling.

The New York Solar Energy Industries Association (NYSEIA) is leaning into 2026 with some thorough ideas for how Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani could help advance solar power and energy storage in the Big Apple. A week before Christmas, the organization released a “playbook” for what the mayor should do. “The memo ... [continued]

The post How Mayor Mamdani Could Advance Solar in NYC appeared first on CleanTechnica.