Interesting Ideas

Isley Marsh, Devon: The birdlife is mostly staying still in the downpour, not least these large, striking waders that we’re lucky to have here

Rain washes across the saltmarsh, numbing my lips and fingers. The deluge is unavoidable, as it has been all year. It’s been one of the wettest winters on record and harder to get around. Glimpsing a huddle of white feathers, I try to silence my squelching, not wanting to disturb the sheltering bird. Its wings flare, as though preparing for flight, but the little egret remains in place. It considers the pool at its feet, buffered from the rain by the reeds.

Behind it, the silver River Taw winds into the estuary. Standing on the track, I catch the shimmering white breasts of lapwings at the water’s edge, fluttering like the tail of a kite before takeoff. They ripple but do not fully rise. The only real movement is from the water. Rain sheets in from the side; the river surges with the tide while the rest of us stand, crouch or falter in the murk, unable to muster the same momentum.

Ice Memory Foundation’s specially dug ‘sanctuary’ offers storage for cores, which hold thousands of years of history

Last month the Ice Memory Foundation opened the first ever sanctuary for mountain ice cores in Antarctica, where samples will be stored for centuries to come.

The cores, typically 10cm in diameter and a metre or more long, are stored in a specially excavated ice cave. The first to be laid down came from two Alpine glaciers that are rapidly shrinking.

In this week’s newsletter: The climate crisis is making insurance unaffordable for many – and it should worry all of us, even if we think we’re safe from floods, wildfires and hurricanes

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I’m worried about insurance.

Some homes are becoming uninsurable due to the rapidly escalating impacts of the climate crisis. And that should worry you too, even if you think your home is safe enough.

Under water, in denial: is Europe drowning out the climate crisis?

The Great Olympic lie: untold story of Winter Games’ huge environmental impact

‘It’s more exciting than Tesco’: can traditional fishing lure Cornwall’s young people?

‘Homes may have to be abandoned’: how climate crisis has reshaped Britain’s flood risk

‘Delays, lowballs, outright denials’: how the LA wildfires have exposed the US’s broken insurance industry

The Guardian view on the rising risk from flooding: uninsurable buildings should focus minds on climate adaptation

In early February I had the opportunity to travel to Las Vegas to the AHR Expo. For those of you who have never heard of it, it’s a ginormous 50,000-person expo focused primarily on space and water heating systems, a Mecca of sorts for a heat pump dork like me. ... [continued]

The post 4 Takeaways From The Nation’s Biggest Heat Pump Expo appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is proud of the sustainability actions it required the host country, Italy, to implement for the 2026 Milano Cortina Games. Measures included minimizing negative impacts on the environment and using the Games’ visibility to showcase sustainable solutions. Protecting biodiversity and managing resources sustainably, the Committee ... [continued]

The post How Sustainable Were The 2026 Olympics, Really? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The Volkswagen brand has reached another milestone in its electric vehicle journey. It has just delivered its 2 millionth fully electric vehicle. The milestone vehicle was a Volkswagen ID.3 produced in Volkswagen’s Zwickau factory, and then was delivered today to a customer at the company’s Transparent Factory in Dresden, Germany. ... [continued]

The post Volkswagen Reaches 2 Million Electric Vehicle Deliveries appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Wow, time flies. An old article that I loved when we originally published it recently came to mind, and I quickly realized it was much more relevant today than it was back in November of 2014 when it was published. It also blows my mind that the article is more ... [continued]

The post Range Anxiety Anxiety vs. Actual Electric Car Convenience appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Robert Llewellyn, from the Everything Electric Tech show (as well as Red Dwarf and various other TV shows), recently drove a Polestar to visit a huge solar power and energy storage facility in Australia. The solar power portion has nearly one million solar panels, and there is a huge battery ... [continued]

The post 400 MW Solar Power Farm Has Huge Battery System Too (Video) appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Every time hydrogen is critiqued as an energy carrier for the power sector, the same question reappears. If not hydrogen, where does long duration storage come from? I received it related to my recent critique of Germany’s attempt to force the EU to double green hydrogen and synthetic fuel quotes ... [continued]

The post The System Case Against Hydrogen for Grid Storage appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Ideology in the US is threatening science education and basic research, which will have long term impacts on the nation for a generation.

The post MAGA Is Making America Stupid. The Effects Will Be Felt For Generations appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Changes threaten ecosystems as flowering falls out of sync with fruit-eating, seed-dispersing animals and pollinators

Tropical flowers are blooming months earlier or later than they used to because of climate breakdown, with potentially “cascading impacts across ecosystems”, according to a study of 8,000 plants dating back 200 years.

Researchers looked at flowers from a range of countries, including Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana and Thailand, home to the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, but also the most understudied.

A new mini power station and lithium extraction facility near Redruth are set to bolster green energy and create jobs

Just outside the perimeter fence stand the hulking remains of grand stone engine houses, a testament to Cornwall’s proud tin and copper mining history.

But inside is a shiny new mini power station and lithium extraction plant that is once again accessing rich underground resources in the far south-west of Britain.

With most Scots supportive of reintroducing the wild cat, charities are focusing on those whose jobs could be affected

Could lynx, the elusive wild cat driven to extinction in Britain more than 1,000 years ago, become the new Loch Ness monster? “Whether Nessie’s there or not, she draws tourists,” said Margaret Luckwell, a resident of Moray, Scotland. “It would be the same with lynx. I’d love to see a lynx in the wild.”

Luckwell’s view is a majority one among local people gathering at village halls across the Highlands, as a painstaking consultation slowly gathers momentum for the apex predator’s return to Scottish forests.

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, the Sierra Club released the first batch of communications and calendars received from the Department of the Interior in the wake of the organization’s lawsuit following the agency’s failure to respond to public records requests for the documents. The Sierra Club sought calendar items and text and email records between ... [continued]

The post Sierra Club Releases First Trove of Emails, Texts, and Calendars from Trump’s Department of the Interior appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The annual competition draws thousands of entries from across the world and brings together images from below the water’s surface that show the diversity and challenges of subaquatic life

• All photographs courtesy of Underwater Photographer of the Year 2026

When I published my recent piece on Germany’s bid to double hydrogen-based fuel targets to try to justify already built and already stranded hydrogen infrastructure, readers raised important questions about compliance mechanics. One pointed out that the 1% RFNBO subtarget can be met by replacing grey hydrogen in refineries rather ... [continued]

The post How Europe Can Meet Hydrogen Fuel Mandates Without Hydrogen Fuels appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The massive, 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is one of five offshore projects to survive the Trump chopper, adding another 2.6 gigawatts to the nation's clean power profile.

The post Meet The 2.6 GW Offshore Wind Project Trump Tried, And Failed, To Kill appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Falling volcanic ash has for years been viewed as a nuisance. But a Sicilian project has discovered its agricultural potential and wants to spread the word

In the Sicilian town of Giarre overlooking Mount Etna, Andrea Passanisi, a tropical and citrus fruits producer, uses an unusual fertiliser on his 100-hectare (247-acre) stretch of land: volcano ash.

Like hundreds of farmers and citizens of rural towns perched on the slopes of Europe’s highest and most active volcano, the 41-year-old’s family has had to deal with the nuisance of falling volcanic ash for generations. But it is only in recent years that the quantity of ash has become so excessive that it required an alternative approach.

As fish stocks dwindle, surf tourism may offer a lifeline to traditional caballitos de totora fishers, whose vessels are thought to be among the first ever used to ride waves

Just before dawn, in a scene that has repeated itself over thousands of years on the north coast of Peru, fishers drag boats made of bound reeds to the water’s edge and, kneeling on them, use paddles shaped from split bamboo to row out into the Pacific Ocean to catch their breakfast. A few hours later, these surfer fishers return with netfuls of their catch, riding waves on the final stretch back to the shore. From the main beach in Huanchaco – a seaside town near the city of Trujillo – the fish are taken to sell at the market or to beachfront restaurants preparing meals for tourists.

The four-metre-long reed vessels – known as caballitos de totora in Spanish, or “little reed horses” – are placed upright on their ends by the promenade on El Mogote beach so that the seawater drains away and they are ready to be used the next morning.

Local river defenders force U-turn by occupying grain terminal operated by one of US powerhouses of world trade

“A victory for life.” That was the triumphal message from Indigenous campaigners in the Brazilian Amazon this week after they staved off a threat to the Tapajós River by occupying a grain terminal operated by Cargill, the biggest privately owned company in the United States.

“The river won, the forest won, the memory of our ancestors won,” said the campaigners in Santarém when it was clear their actions had forced the Brazilian government into a U-turn on plans to privatise one of the world’s most beautiful waterways and expand its role as a soy canal.