Interesting Ideas

With festivities scheduled in many communities to heighten awareness about the important role that the seas play in our lives, I had several choices for ways I could participate in World Ocean Day. One event stood out, though: I attended the 2026 International Ocean Film Festival at the Harbor Branch ... [continued]

The post Happy World Ocean Day! appeared first on CleanTechnica.

CATL said this week it is developing lithium air batteries that could have an energy density of up to 12,000 Wh/kg.

The post CATL Developing 12,000 Wh Per Kg Lithium-Air Battery appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The SpaceX IPO will happen in a few days. Will it make millionaires of us all or leave many investors in tears?

The post Star Power — Pulling Back The Curtain On The SpaceX IPO appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Elon Musk struggled massively with the pressure of Tesla being a public company. Many see the company as an obvious, insane success — especially as it trades at a P/E ratio of 357.29 — but the stress of getting Tesla to profitability and the difficulty dealing with quarterly financial analyst ... [continued]

The post Elon Musk Said He Wouldn’t Take SpaceX Public — Two Things That Changed His Mind appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Guardian Australia road tests Hornsby Park and explores the history of turning industrial sites into peaceful green escapes in the heart of the city

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I’m a denizen of the inner city, more used to plane trees than eucalypts. But Hornsby Park won me over immediately.

A highlight is the heritage steps, which stretch for about 1km, connecting Hornsby pool at one end and the Great North Walk at the other. Constructed in the 1930s, they traverse through the new park that opened earlier this year at the site of an old quarry abandoned since 2003.

Some Waymo robotaxis are already getting old, at least in terms of miles driven and technological evolution. The company is apparently at the point that it has old, used EV batteries it no longer needs. Now it is going to help community clean energy projects by supplying these used batteries ... [continued]

The post Waymo Sending Used EV Batteries to Community Clean Energy appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Hungerford, Berkshire: In a nearby farm, ever-resourceful birds and bees are getting creative with where they build their nests

There are some unusual nesting spots being utilised in the farm and stableyard, revealed by pauses between chores.

My wheelbarrow trips to the muck heap are attended by pied and grey wagtail pairs that make small aerial assaults on insects, though I’ve yet to locate their nests. The swallows are well-served here by midges and flies swarming around warm-blooded animals, and there is always mud for nest repairs, with the regular slosh of water buckets and hosing down of sweaty horses.

Record numbers linked to warming waters is mixed news for fishers, with shellfish catches down but octopus catches booming

Record numbers of octopuses found off the south-west coast of England last year have now spread as far as Scotland and Wales and are transforming the fishing industry and the marine ecosystem, according to a study.

The surge in sightings of one of the world’s most intelligent invertebrates was first recorded in 2025 off the south coast of Devon and Cornwall.

A couple of months ago, I wrote this article on the new war in Iran’s impact on global auto sales, and today I’m writing this to update those observations. Iran War Update Little has changed in the last two months. We appear to be at a stalemate. The US doesn’t ... [continued]

The post Update On Iran War’s Impact On Global Auto Sales appeared first on CleanTechnica.

‘Twitchers’ rush to coastal Western Australia to see black-headed gull, which usually flies between Europe and Asia

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A lone seabird has caused a stir in the nation’s birdwatching community after landing on the Western Australian coast, thousands of kilometres off its usual migratory flight path.

The black-headed gull, which usually flies between Europe and Asia, has been spotted in the coastal city of Geraldton.

Marine biologist Issah Seidu has found a way for Ghana’s fishing communities to earn a living – and help protect the ancient and critically endangered fish species

Guitarfish are an odd-looking and ancient species, with the tail of a shark and the flattened body of a ray, but their coveted fins have driven populations to the brink of extinction. In west Africa, where their meat is also a local delicacy, many guitarfish species are among the most critically endangered fish in the ocean.

Conservationists at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) describe the slow-maturing ray, which produce young annually, as an “indicator species”, which reflect the overall health of an ecosystem and pose challenges in the way coastal fishing of them is managed. The IUCN red list categorises more than half of guitarfish species as critically endangered.

France has announced a national electrification push that is directionally correct in a way that a lot of energy policy still is not. It is not treating electrification as a side dish to climate policy, a consumer rebate program, or a decorative set of EV chargers beside the real business ... [continued]

The post France Gets Electrification Right, But 2030 Is Doing A Lot Of Work appeared first on CleanTechnica.

There’s a little murmuring going on that BYD could buy Maserati. Hmm…. This stems from BYD Executive Vice President Stella Li recently saying to reporters that brands like Maserati are “very interesting” to the company. Hmm…. In case you don’t follow BYD closely, there are two things here that stand ... [continued]

The post Could BYD Buy Maserati? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Marnie Lovejoy hopes to inspire other women to fish, protect England’s rivers and lift up the ‘beautiful’ grayling

With its iridescent pink scales and elegant dorsal fin, the grayling is known to anglers as the “lady of the stream”, yet the society fighting for its protection has never been led by a woman, until now.

Angling, and fly-fishing in particular, has always been a very male-dominated sport. The fly-fisher’s club in Mayfair, London, where anglers meet to lunch on dover sole and drink fine wine, did not allow women to cross the threshold even as guests until 2024.

Iata boss Willie Walsh blames fuel suppliers, governments and aircraft makers, saying new ‘realistic timeline’ now needed

• Air fare rises ‘inevitable’ as airlines face extra $100bn jet fuel bill

The aviation industry’s landmark pledges to be net zero by 2050 will probably not now be achieved, airline leaders have admitted.

The collective goal to eliminate net carbon emissions was declared by global airlines only five years ago in 2021, with similar pledges made by national aviation industry leaders and governments, including in the UK, in 2020.

Badenoch, Cairngorms: It started with a tiny Scots pine growing out of a huge old birch, but soon I find more examples of this strange magic

The sight pulls me up short. It looks like something out of myth or a book of spells. Here is a miniature Scots pine growing 6ft up, right in the fork of a shaggy old birch. It delights and baffles me in equal measure. In further wanderings, I discover more examples of this strange magic. A rowan and a birch appear to sprout from the same stem, while a holly and a hawthorn are so hopelessly intertwined that I spend ages tracing back down through leaves, twigs, branches and trunks just to figure out how deep this union goes. At the bottom, this odd pairing have drawn a rusted fence into their inter-species embrace.

Investigating, I learn that there are a few wonders at work here. First, trees can grow so closely together that they become entangled and appear joined. Occasionally, though, limbs do repeatedly rub against each other in the wind, wear away the bark and fuse. Some even share vascular systems, passing water and nutrients between them. It is a natural grafting process called inosculation and can happen anywhere from the base of the trunk up to higher branches that form a linking arm. In folklore, it is called “a husband and wife tree”. Mostly occurring within species, it does sometimes cross divides.

Global heating is destroying creeks the crayfish call home. They’re the canary in the coalmine for other species living in the delicate ecosystems

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Nightfall comes early under the dense cloak of the rainforest canopy and Ollie Scully – boots off and barefoot – is wading through the cool water with his torch scouring the rocky bottom of a shallow creek.

We are at an undisclosed spot in the hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. With leeches and trip hazards aplenty, the search has been on for hours.

Shaun Hancox has created scores of ponds for rewilding projects across Britain – and he says there’s a lot more to it than digging a hole

He is known as “the Picasso of ponds” but the tableaux being created by Shaun Hancox in a boggy field in Somerset currently looks more like a building site. An orange and black excavator is rhythmically removing lumpy clay soil and sculpting it into brown banks.

The result looks like a scar of bare earth on what was once green pasture – but the magic happens as soon as rain fills the newly created depressions. Plants seed swiftly, invertebrates and amphibians rapidly find the water, and life explodes.

I recently covered BYD’s monthly sales — passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles — as I’ve been doing for a long time now. However, there’s a sub-story there that I haven’t been covering that seems important to start tracking in more detail. What I’m talking about, of course, is BYD’s vehicle ... [continued]

The post BYD Exports Rose 80% Year Over Year In May appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Mexico has reached another renewable energy milestone. From 600,368 installations across the country, Mexico reached 5,164.98 MW (5.165 GW) of small-scale, distributed solar power capacity by the end of 2025. All power plants under 0.7 MW of capacity reached 5,189.71 MW. There were 600,651 such systems according to the National ... [continued]

The post Mexico Reaches 5 Gigawatts of Distributed Solar Power appeared first on CleanTechnica.