Interesting Ideas

The EV2 represents entry into Kia’s fully electric world without compromise The EV2 is designed, developed and soon to be produced in Europe Kia press conference will take place at Kia’s stand, located in Hall 5, Booth 3, on 09 January at 10:40 a.m. Kia will unveil the EV2, an all-electric B-segment ... [continued]

The post Kia EV2 World Premiere Confirmed for Brussels Motor Show 2026 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Pew Charitable Trusts finds plastic pollution will more than double globally by 2040 unless action taken

The 66m tonnes of pollution from plastic packaging that enters the global environment each year could be almost eliminated by 2040 primarily by reuse and return schemes, significant new research reveals.

In the most wide-ranging analysis of the global plastic system, the Pew Charitable Trusts, in collaboration with academics including at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, said plastic, a material once called revolutionary and modern, was now putting public health, world economies and the future of the planet at risk.

Exclusive: Brazil’s environment minister talks about climate inaction and the course we have to plot to save ourselves and the planet

Soon after I returned home to Altamira from Cop30, I found myself talking about dinosaurs, meteors and “ambassadors of harm” with Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva.

No one in government knows the rainforest better than Marina, as she is best known in Brazil, who was born and raised in the Amazon. No one is more aware of the sacrifices that environmental and land defenders have made than this associate of the murdered activist Chico Mendes. And no one worked harder to raise ambition at Cop30, the first climate summit in the Amazon, than her. So what, I asked, had it achieved?

There were over 1.9 million plugin vehicles registered in October, with BEVs (+19% YoY) rising and PHEVs (-5% YoY) falling. Despite the expected hangover in the US market, down almost 50% YoY in October, global plugin vehicle registrations were up 10% compared to October 2024. With the USA market in ... [continued]

The post Global EV Sales Report — Tiny Wuling Mini Beats Tesla Model Y!!! appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The country is the world’s second-largest producer of the popular fish, and the biggest supplier to the US, but its farms are beset by accusations of dangerous labour conditions, antibiotic overuse and ecological harm

Julia Cárcamo López’s house faces the sea, near enough to hear the gulls calling through the salt-encrusted windows. She lives in the small town of Maullín, on the edge of Chile’s Patagonia, an area where almost everyone works in the fishing industry.

Outside, it is drizzling and the sky is darkening as she recalls 1 May 2019, one of the worst days of her life. “Two men knocked on my door and told me they had bad news: my husband had had an accident while working at sea,” she says. Since then, she has discovered that the accident seems to have been caused by negligence.

Data centers need huge quantities of water to cool their servers, but if that water contains pollutants, more pollution may result.

The post Massive Data Centers May Make Groundwater Pollution Worse appeared first on CleanTechnica.

I was debating whether to write this article or not. I discovered the news of NREL’s name being changed from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to the National Laboratory of the Rockies from Michael Barnard’s article about it yesterday. That article is a much more professional look at the situation ... [continued]

The post We Are The Simpsons, Or Worse appeared first on CleanTechnica.

It’s Giving Tuesday, and we have a great opportunity for giving that any cleantech fan could be happy to support. But, furthermore, while happily giving to a good cause, you could also be ordering yourself the best Christmas present you’ve ever gotten if you get a little lucky. The Illinois ... [continued]

The post Perfect Giving Tuesday Idea — Rivian Raffle Tickets To Support Solar appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Fertilising arable land with human waste leaves array of toxins that could re-enter food chain, study finds

More than 520 chemicals have been found in English soils, including pharmaceutical products and toxins that were banned decades ago, because of the practice of spreading human waste to fertilise arable land.

Research by scientists at the University of Leeds, published as a preprint in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, found a worrying array of chemicals in English soils. Close to half (46.4%) of the pharmaceutical substances detected had not been reported in previous global monitoring campaigns.

Banks of servers operating 24/7 generate massive amounts of heat, requiring power to run and cool them

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Datacentre power demand in Australia could triple in five years and is forecast to exceed by 2030 the energy used by electric vehicles.

Datacentres now draw about 2% of electricity from the National Grid, about 4 terawatt hours of power. The Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) expects that share to rise rapidly – growing 25% year-on-year – to reach 12TWh, or 6% of grid demand, by 2030, and 12% by 2050.

In a letter, T&E joins companies and organisations working across the European battery value chain to call for an urgent agreement on EU battery carbon footprint rules in support of Europe’s battery industry. Ahead of the upcoming EU Battery Booster, actors from across the battery value chain and T&E are ... [continued]

The post Call for Urgent Agreement on EU Battery Carbon Footprint Rules in Support of Europe’s Battery Industry appeared first on CleanTechnica.

These delicate cloud systems appear to be seeded by massive atmospheric waves thousands of miles away

Cirrus clouds are our highest clouds; their delicate wispy strands are like an artist’s brushstrokes through the sky. During the day they are bright white and at dawn and dusk they can take on the hues of sunrise and sunset. But how are they made? New research reveals that some cirrus clouds are seeded by storms on the other side of the world, many thousands of miles away. This has implications for global heating as storm patterns shift.

Meteorologists have long recognised two types of cirrus cloud: “anvil” cirrus, which spread out from large storm systems, and “in-situ” cirrus, which seem to form on their own. Telling them apart is tricky, but by applying a new computer analysis to cloud satellite data, researchers spotted that in-situ cirrus emerged in response to major storm systems on the other side of the Earth.

As I’ve written countless times before, Tesla is in or approaching an extreme inflection point again. If the company is able to flip the switch on truly driverless “Full Self Driving” that lets people text, watch movies, work, or sleep while the car drives itself (and Tesla takes on the ... [continued]

The post “Big Short” Investor Michael Burry Says Tesla “Ridiculously Overvalued” appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Regardless of this year’s sharp turn against wind and solar power by the White House, the US renewable energy transition is unstoppable. The killer combo of solar plus storage has been outpacing all other utility-scale forms of domestic energy production in terms of adding new capacity to the grid. Wind ... [continued]

The post Virtual Power Plants Thwart Plot Against Renewable Energy appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Inkpen, Berkshire: Drifting in and out of sleep on the woodland floor, I’m in searing pain, but far from alone

It was nobody’s fault, but here I am, lying on the damp floor of a wood, half a mile from the road. Drifting down with the falling leaves are the voices of two women, too easily accepting of blame. I reassure them and try to sit up, but the high singing in my ears turns to static, the edges of the wood begin to pixelate, and I lie down again before I faint.

Moments earlier, deep into Long Copse, Mum’s one-year-old labrador and my two-year-old collie crossbreed had met a young whippet. A case of the zoomies ensued, and as I turned to warn Mum, there was a sledgehammer blow to my lower leg as one, two or maybe all three dogs cannoned into me. Though I didn’t realise for two more days, my leg was broken before I hit the ground.

Project on ‘very poorly understood’ terrain poses immense geological hazard, endangering fragile ecosystems

When an earthquake in 2002 struck in a remote pocket of Alaska, the shock was the strongest ever recorded in the interior of the state. But, miraculously, an oil pipeline that crossed directly over the fault line was unscathed.

Engineers behind the design of the 800 mile system were prepared. Knowing the high likelihood of seismic activity along the route, which bisected the Denali fault, they constructed sections where the pipeline rested on rail girders, allowing it to sway and shear without snapping.

From the threat of superintelligent AI to the secrets of a longer life; plus the evolution of language and the restless genius of Francis Crick

This felt like the year that AI really arrived. It is on our phones and laptops; it is creeping into digital and corporate infrastructure; it is changing the way we learn, work and create; and the global economy rests on the stratospheric valuations of the corporate giants vying to control it.

But the unchecked rush to go faster and further could extinguish humanity, according to the surprisingly readable and chillingly plausible If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (Bodley Head), by computer scientists Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, which argues against creating superintelligent AI able to cognitively outpace Homo sapiens in all departments. “Even an AI that cares about understanding the universe is likely to annihilate humans as a side-effect,” they write, “because humans are not the most efficient method for producing truths … out of all possible ways to arrange matter.” Not exactly cheery Christmas reading but, as the machines literally calculate our demise, you’ll finally grasp all that tech bro lingo about tokens, weights and maximising preferences.

Deal expected to pave way for further scientific study, boost conservation and open up access to Dorset chalk figure

The mystery of when, how and – perhaps most importantly – why a giant naked figure was carved into a dizzyingly steep hillside in the English West Country has been a source of wonder and intrigue for centuries.

Future generations may come closer to solving the puzzle of the Cerne Giant after the National Trust stepped in to buy 340 acres of land around the 55-metre (180ft) figure.

When attending presentations from XPENG in China, one thing stood out for its absence: they really didn’t talk about their cars being EVs. No selling the audience on the benefits of electrification. They talked about technologies and EV-related systems, but having an electric vehicle was the expectation. I spent a ... [continued]

The post When Electrification Is The Expectation, How Can Automakers Break Through? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

MobED, Hyundai Motor Group Robotics LAB’s first mass-produced mobility robot platform, is designed for diverse industrial and everyday applications MobED debuts an innovative approach to robotics functionality, defined by Adaptive Mobility (H/W), Intuitive Autonomy (S/W) and Infinite Journey (applications) MobED features AI-based autonomous navigation, LiDAR-camera fusion sensors, and an eccentric ... [continued]

The post Hyundai Motor Group Unveils Production-Ready Autonomous Mobility Robot Platform ‘MobED’ at iREX 2025 appeared first on CleanTechnica.