Interesting Ideas

Renewable energy is moving ahead all around the world, while the US sucks its thumb and whines about how good things were in the 1950s.

The post Charting The Changes That Will Lead To Renewable Energy Dominance In 2026 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Seaweed has become a key cash crop as climate change and industrial trawling test the resilient culture of the semi-nomadic Vezo people

Along Madagascar’s south-west coast, the Vezo people, who have fished the Mozambique Channel for countless generations, are defined by a way of life sustained by the sea. Yet climate change and industrial exploitation are pushing this ocean-based culture to its limits.

Coastal villages around Toliara, a city in southern Madagascar, host tens of thousands of the semi-nomadic Vezopeople, who make a living from small-scale fishing on the ocean. For centuries, they have launched pirogues, small boats carved from single tree trunks, every day into the turquoise shallows to catch tuna, barracuda and grouper.

A boat near lines of seaweed, which has become a main source of income for Ambatomilo village as warmer seas, bleached reefs and erratic weather accelerate the decline of local fish populations

US innovators in the green hydrogen space continue to expand their impact on the global decarbonization movement, despite the sudden U-turn in federal energy policy.

The post Industrial Green Hydrogen Is Coming To Europe From The US, No Less appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Provisional figures in government mandate’s first year show 20% shortfall in levels of SAF supplied for UK flights

The take-up of sustainable aviation fuels is on course to fall short of the UK government’s first annual mandate, official figures suggest.

Production data published by the Department for Transport (DfT) covering most of 2025 shows that sustainable fuels (SAF) only accounted for 1.6% of fuel supplied for UK flights – 20% less fuel in volume than the 2% needed to fulfil the requirement.

There are a couple of problems related to AI (artificial intelligence) that have gotten a lot of attention already, but that’s not what this article is about. Just to note them down, though, I’m referring to the fact that AI is often wrong despite sounding authoritative and the unfortunate reality ... [continued]

The post AI Issues Commence — New Tool, New Problems appeared first on CleanTechnica.

XPENG’s Mona M03 has been critical to the company’s EV sales growth and march toward profitability this year. Across the first 11 months of the year, 163,299 units of the Mona M03 were delivered. That’s about 42% of the company’s 391,937 total deliveries. Now, the M03 is getting a refresh ... [continued]

The post XPENG’s Mona M03 Gets Even Better appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Low-cost tech and joined-up funding have reduced illegal logging, mining and poaching in the Darién Gap – it’s a success story that could stop deforestation worldwide

There are no roads through the Darién Gap. This vast impenetrable forest spans the width of the land bridge between South and Central America, but there is almost no way through it: hundreds have lost their lives trying to cross it on foot.

Its size and hostility have shielded it from development for millennia, protecting hundreds of species – from harpy eagles and giant anteaters to jaguars and red-crested tamarins – in one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. But it has also made it incredibly difficult to protect. Looking after 575,000 hectares (1,420,856 acres) of beach, mangrove and rainforest with just 20 rangers often felt impossible, says Segundo Sugasti, the director of Darién national park. Like tropical forests all over the world, it has been steadily shrinking, with at least 15% lost to logging, mining and cattle ranching in two decades.

Mersey Valley Way takes in Manchester and Stockport on its 13-mile route with other walks to be identified in 2026

A new river walk has been announced by the government as ministers try to improve access to nature in England.

The 13-mile (21km) walk will go through Greater Manchester and the north-west of England. There will be a river walk in each region of the country by the end of parliament, the government has pledged.

A Christmas Carol has a timeless message for us all, if we will only open our hearts to it.

The post Ignorance And Want — A Message For Today From Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol appeared first on CleanTechnica.

A handful more partnerships between robotaxi companies and ride-hailing apps have popped out in recent days and weeks. Baidu x Lyft & Uber in London First of all, we’ve got Baidu partnering with Uber and Lyft in London. Uber and Lyft testing of the Baidu Apollo Go robotaxi system is ... [continued]

The post More Robotaxi + Ride-Hailing Partnerships appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The past year of thinking about climate action has increasingly felt like thinking about markets. Not markets in the narrow sense of price signals alone, but markets as arenas where learning happens, capacity is built, costs fall, and political coalitions shift. Reading and in some cases rereading Guns, Germs, and ... [continued]

The post From Guns & Steel to Grids & Batteries: A History-Informed View of Climate Action appeared first on CleanTechnica.

From Copenhagen’s cycle lanes and Vienna’s shared parks to Barcelona and London’s unfulfilled potential, better living is close at hand

The angry rumble of a speeding SUV. The metallic smog of backlogged traffic. The aching heat of sun-dried neighbourhoods baking in an oven of concrete and asphalt.

For most people, the mundane threats that plague our environments are likely to annoy more than they spark dread. But for scientists who know just how dangerous our surroundings can be, the burden of knowledge weighs heavy each day. Across Europe, environmental risks cause 18% of deaths from cardiovascular disease and 10% of deaths from cancer. Traffic crashes in the EU kill five times more people than murders.

DISCLAIMER: Except for the first paragraph, this article is satire. While it references real engineering concepts and locations, SLEIGH operations, reindeer biogas systems, and covert retail refueling networks do not exist. Santa’s actual propulsion system remains classified. On December 24, 2025, President Donald Trump told a child from Oklahoma that ... [continued]

The post CleanTechnica Exclusive: Investigation Reveals Sophisticated Propulsion System Behind Christmas Eve Deliveries appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Toward the end of our visit in Guangzhou, China, we attempted to take an electric river cruise but couldn’t figure out how to get there in time due to road closures from the light festival. Looking at the map for other things to do, we saw a showroom for BYD’s ... [continued]

The post You Can’t Buy This, America: FCB Ti7 4WD Luxury SUV appeared first on CleanTechnica.

We look back over the year’s wildlife photographs, and hand out some much-deserved gongs to brilliant and beautiful creatures around the world

We’ve been logging a handful of big EV statistics lately, but one nearly snuck under our noses. It’s an amazing one, and it also brings us back to a years-long rivalry. But I’ll wait until the end to circle back to that. First of all, thanks to reader Madan Rajan, ... [continued]

The post BYD’s at 20% Share of Cumulative Plugin Vehicle Sales! appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The Marches, Shropshire: Boxing Day has its own more violent customs between humans and animals. That’s not the world I choose to live in

The sparrows are a shuffling, chirruping shadow in the bushes, a static of anticipation. They are waiting for food, calling for it. They have not forgotten what the poet Emily Dickinson describes, in her poem Victory Comes Late, as “God keeps his oath to sparrows, / Who of little love / Know how to starve!” However, sparrows do seem to live in a much more vivid and emotional society than as mere victims of an indifferent nature that is economical at the expense of compassion.

To say they come to the feeding station sounds a bit grand for a small bird table, a few hanging fat balls and a scattering of seed and mealworms in a back yard in Oswestry. The first adventurers edge in, not just to explore the food source but to play in a space of subtle changes that have happened in their place. When the whole host, quarrel or ubiquity move in, there must be over 30 birds. The energy of their performance is contagious.

Armed groups have moved in to the space left by the Farc after the civil war, cutting down rainforest to control land and build thousands of kilometres of smuggling routes

High above the Colombian Amazon, Rodrigo Botero peers out of a small aircraft as the rainforest canopy unfolds below – an endless sea of green interrupted by stark, widening patches of brown. As director of the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS), he has spent years mapping the transformation of this fragile landscape from the air.

His team has logged more than 150 overflights, covering 30,000 miles (50,000km) to track deforestation advancing along the roads, illicit crops and the shifting frontiers of human settlement. “We now have the highest road density in the entire Amazon,” says Botero.

Secondhand tobacco smoke and routine tasks such as operating the stove shown to be biggest emitters of indoor pollution in UK homes

Christmas and New Year is a time when many people will be at home. Being indoors can give us a degree of protection from outdoor air pollution, but it can also trap pollution we produce inside our homes.

Risks from secondhand tobacco smoke are well known and the effect is perhaps best seen by comparison of health data before and after indoor smoking bans. A study of 47 indoor smoking bans in public spaces found hospital admissions for heart attacks decreased by an average of 12%, but people are less aware of other indoor pollutants and how to minimise them.

As part of the Guardian’s Against the tide series, readers aged 18 to 30 share what they love about living in their coastal town, the challenges and why they often choose to leave

Megan, a 24-year-old from the Isle of Wight, is very familiar with saying goodbye. She decided university wasn’t for her and remembers how, one by one, she waved off her friends who left the island to study. Many never came back.