Interesting Ideas

Government announces tougher measures to tackle unlicensed sites as ‘prolific waste criminal’ is ordered to pay £1.4m

A new 33-strong drone unit is being deployed to investigate the scourge of illegal waste dumping across England, the government has announced.

The improvements to the investigation of illegal waste dumping – which costs the UK economy £1bn a year – come as the ringleader of a major waste crime gang was ordered to pay £1.4m after being convicted at Birmingham crown court.

Rivers drained dry to create artificial snow, a forest cut down for the bobsleigh track – IOC’s claims to prioritise sustainability at Milano Cortina exposed

On the foothills of the mountains, by the banks of the river in Cortina, there was a forest. It was full of tall larch trees. Arborists said the oldest of them had been there for 150 years and dendrologists that it was unique because it was unusual to find a monocultural forest growing at such a low altitude in the southern Alps.

The locals knew mostly it was the place where the old wooden bobsleigh run was, where you went on your walks in summer or autumn, or when you wanted to play tennis on the small courts built near the bottom. They called it the Bosco di Ronco and it isn’t there any more.

Transport & Environment’s latest European city bus market report glossed in an article in CleanTechnica caught my attention for a reason that may not be obvious at first glance. Battery-electric buses now dominate new city bus registrations across the EU, and vastly ahead of schedule. That is the headline, and ... [continued]

The post Peak Fuel Cell Bus Deliveries in the EU Occurred in 2025 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The US startup 1854 Motors aims to be the first domestic automaker to introduce sodium-ion batteries in a full sized EV, beginning with the Pierce pickup truck.

The post Cultural Architects, Trojan Horses, And Another EV Startup To Challenge Tesla appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Subspecies driven to extinction by hungry whalers returns after ‘back breeding’ programme using partial descendants

Giant tortoises, the life-giving engineers of remote small island ecosystems, are plodding over the Galápagos island of Floreana for the first time in more than 180 years.

The Floreana giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger niger), a subspecies of the giant tortoise once found across the Galápagos, was driven to extinction in the 1840s by whalers who removed thousands from the volcanic island to provide a living larder during their hunting voyages.

Australian collections of the endangered and notoriously unpredictable flowers have popped off in recent years, as ‘personas’ like Putricia, Stinkerella and Smellanie prove a hit with nosy spectators

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

From little things glorious fetid things grow. Corpse flower blooms, once vanishingly rare, are becoming more commonplace in Australia.

More than a dozen bloomed across the country in 2025, including the infamous Putricia in Sydney, Morpheus in Canberra, Big Betty in Cooktown, and Spud and co in Cairns. But with plants kept in gardens across the country, and blooming more frequently after their first flower, you could catch a whiff of one soon.

A staple in African and Arab communities for millennia, camel milk is now being marketed as a ‘superfood’

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Caroline’s sultry and soulful eyes are hooded and heavy-lashed.

“She’s straight out of central,” Paul Martin whispers, gazing at his star performer with admiration.

Last week, I started writing about blacklists from the US Military that were posted and retracted multiple times or leaked. As they did not stay official, it was a bit of a stop-start, and I was reluctant to finish the article. Like terrorism, these lists are likely intended to create ... [continued]

The post Hegseth’s Blacklists Target Academia & Cleantech, Not National Security Threats appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Using local content criteria in the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) as a lever for public support is the only option on the table to build up a resilient and local battery industry across Europe. 1. The urgency & feasibility of Union content criteria for batteries Access to batteries, their components, ... [continued]

The post How Can IAA Bring Local Cleantech Manufacturing? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

In an edited extract from her latest book, Hazel Sheffield sets out a new blueprint for community stewardship

It was a Saturday in February 2020 when the flood came. It had been a wet winter, so wet it seemed that before the month was out, the brown trout of the River Taff might be washed clean out into Cardiff Bay before the fishing season had even begun. But this is Wales. People are used to a spot of rain. No one realised how bad it would get.

For two days, it hammered on the windows of the houses at the top of the South Wales Valleys, where people tucked in their children before a sleepless night. It poured into the rivers at the bottom. By the time the rain departed again, many people would be standing in water up to their knees.

Romney Marsh, Kent: It’s a family outing, raking the wet sand looking for plump shellfish. Out of everyone, though, I’m the most enthusiastic

The vast tidal flats are empty save for the hunched figures of three black-backed gulls considering a decomposed dogfish, and four humans (one rather small) trudging through the endless silt. A light mist obscures the coast with its string of motley houses and, on the breeze, there is only the distant soughing of shallow waves chasing foam over the sand. There is the piquancy of seclusion and its attendant danger here, perhaps the closest thing Kent has to wilderness.

I’m relishing the long walk in this lonely place, but my children are less enthusiastic about our annual pilgrimage to the cockle beds, a typically cold affair as the quality of shellfish diminishes in spring and summer. We’re travelling well armed, brandishing handmade rakes with formidable tines of six-inch nails, while the youngest carries a hopeful white bucket. About half a mile offshore, our labour begins.

Animal rights activists disagree with authorities on how best to handle boom in primate population near Table Mountain

At the edge of Da Gama Park, where the Cape Town suburb meets the mountain, baboons jumped from the road to garden walls to roofs and back again. Children from South African navy families living in the area’s modest houses played in the street. Some were delighted; some wary; most were unfazed by the animals.

A few miles away, overlooking a soaring peak and sweeping bay, Nicola de Chaud showed photos of food strewn across her kitchen by a baboon. In another incident, a baboon threw one of her dogs across the veranda. In January, a male baboon lunged at her and refused to leave the house for 10 minutes.

Production of the Tesla Cybercab has begun, but there are still many unanswered questions about it and who will be responsible for it.

The post The Tesla Cybercab Is Here. Now What? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Even as weather extremes worsen, the voices calling for the rolling back of environmental rules have grown louder and more influential

In the timeless week between Christmas and the new year, two Spanish men in their early 50s – friends since childhood, popular around town – went to a restaurant and did not come home.

Francisco Zea Bravo, a maths teacher active in a book club and rock band, and Antonio Morales Serrano, the owner of a popular cafe and ice-cream parlour, had gone to eat with friends in Málaga on Saturday 27 December. But as the pair drove back to Alhaurín el Grande that night, heavy rains turned the usually tranquil Fahala River into what the mayor would later call an “uncontrollable torrent”. Police found their van overturned the next day. Their bodies followed after an agonising search.

We hear a lot about sea level rise and the effects it is having on coastal communities. The media sometimes morbidly plays and replays footage of homes collapsing from their high cliff footings into the pounding surf. As someone who is lucky enough to live at the beach, I’ve tried ... [continued]

The post Rethinking Nature As Economic Climate Capital — And A Really Valuable Investment appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Rising temperatures are forcing some ski resorts to close, while leaving others at greater risk of extreme weather

Avalanches kill about 100 people in Europe each year, with vast masses of ice, snow and rock regularly crashing down on hikers and skiers who have been caught unawares.

The structure of the snow, angle of the slope and variation of the weather can dictate whether a gentle disturbance – like a gust of wind or the glide of a snowboard – can trigger a deadly shift in the mountain.

In the second half of 2024, as it became clear Tesla was going to see a year-over-year sales decline, CEO Elon Musk maintained a higher sales target for 2024 than the company ended up hitting, and also indicated Tesla should see a significant increase in sales in 2025. Musk originally ... [continued]

The post Tesla Sales Declined 11.4% in California in 2025 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The Supreme Court’s decision limiting presidential tariff authority should have reduced uncertainty. Instead, it introduced a new layer of it. The Court narrowed the use of one statute for imposing broad tariffs. The response from the administration was immediate. Tariffs would continue under other authorities, and tariffs already collected would ... [continued]

The post From Courtroom to Capital Markets: Why US Tariff Instability Matters appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Equinor’s decision to halt its blue hydrogen project in Groningen is not a story about engineering failure or lack of public support. It is a story about the absence of customers. The H2M project secured support from the EU Innovation Fund and was positioned as a cornerstone of industrial decarbonization ... [continued]

The post Grey, Blue, or Green: The Real Ammonia Math appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The US is bleeding coal jobs again, despite the best efforts of US President Donald Trump to keep old coal power plants up and running.

The post The US Is Still Bleeding Coal Jobs, Trump Or No Trump appeared first on CleanTechnica.