Interesting Ideas

London Tree Ring project aims to create corridors of plant and animal life around the city to strengthen its biodiversity

Harry Ewing is heaping branches and foliage from the forest floor on to a dead hedge, reinforcing the protective circle around his newly planted trees in Hadley Wood, north London. He is in a glade created by a fallen oak that was previously overrun with thick bramble.

“I feel very happy – the trees are growing already. It’s really nice seeing it when it starts,” says Ewing.

Rivian is in the middle of a big moment in its still fairly young life. It is stepping out of the very expensive portion of the SUV and truck market and into the moderately expensive portion of the market. It is expected to sell a lot more units of the ... [continued]

The post Rivian Pursues Financial Sustainability with Layoffs appeared first on CleanTechnica.

It was just about one month ago that the Team Kentucky EV Charging program announced its tenth Kentucky EV fast-charging site was completed and open for charging. Two new EV fast-charging stations were recently installed and made operational; one in Elizabethtown and another in Shepherdsville. Each new station has four ... [continued]

The post 8 New Fast EV Chargers Installed In Kentucky appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Raymond Tribdino has done a great job for us covering VinFast for us — its grand ambitions, it struggles, and how it is adapting to try to eventually achieve its vision. One of the company’s biggest challenges and failures has been trying to break into the US market. There are ... [continued]

The post VinFast Needs To Work On Its Marketing In The USA appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Almost every child, including those from high-income countries, is now exposed to at least one hazard

Half of the world’s children are exposed to at least three overlapping climate hazards threatening their health, education and survival, according to a Unicef report.

Globally, children face increasing threats from heatwaves, storms, floods and droughts as the climate crisis worsens, with more than one billion facing at least three of these at once.

Last month, BYD announced full damage guarantee for “Urban NOA,” or city driving, on LiDAR equipped cars that have been delivered with their latest 5.0 software or have received the OTA update. This comes in addition to fully covering “intelligent parking” using the advanced ADAS system. BYD indicated that their ... [continued]

The post BYD Taking Responsibility Increases God’s Eye Use & Makes Vehicles Safer appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Residents of West Oakland, which suffers from toxic waste and high pollution rates, rally against a coal export facility

West Oakland, a California neighborhood known for its rich history of Black activism from the Pullman Porters’ union to the Black Panthers, might not seem like the site of the country’s next great coal project.

But that’s exactly what the Trump administration is pushing for – with the injection of $75m to build a sprawling coal export terminal in the nearby port of Oakland.

Nearly every indicator of climate change is flashing red. But we still hold the tools available to bring the planet back into balance

The ocean is running a fever. In 2025, the number of days of marine heatwaves – prolonged spells when the sea turns abnormally, dangerously warm – was more than triple what it was in the early 1990s.

These are not abstract statistics. A severe and persistent marine heatwave bleaches coral reefs, strips away the kelp forests that shelter young fish, empties fishing grounds and – if occurring frequently – can tip whole ecosystems past the point of recovery.

Karina Von Schuckmann is an IGCC author and senior adviser of Mercator Ocean International

Many small-scale landowners now include conservation measures alongside everyday farming. But progress is precarious, and the threat of guerrilla violence and poverty remain whichever candidate wins

Like most people settling in the area, Pablo Peña was seeking to escape violence and make a living from a patch of land when he moved to Guaviare in central Colombia. More than 30 years on, he says his life is now about conflict and deforestation.

Peña first visited Guaviare during his mandatory military service. Years later, in 1994, he settled down to farm in Guaviare’s Calamar, a town in a remote corner of the Amazon.

In another example of how much US solar manufacturing has gone from small potatoes to a giant industry since Joe Biden took office in 2021, here’s a whopper of a stat: solar manufacturing capex in the USA has exploded from $150 million in 2020 to an estimated $2.5 billion in ... [continued]

The post Solar Manufacturing Capex in the USA Exploded from $150 Million in 2020 to $2.5 Billion in 2026 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The US startup Rivian has joined the ChargeScape collaborative, providing its customers with seamless access to utility discounts for EVs.

The post EVs Will Come Roaring Back, Rivian Edition appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Frome, Somerset: This much-maligned midsummer menace has few friends among humans, but look closely and you might find an orgy of eating and mating

Eyes smarting, throat tickling, nostrils dog-wet, I pick my way along a thready footpath up the combe, only half-prepared for the next irritation. Nettles, I am watching you. But not well enough it seems, for a sneaky one hidden under the skirts of encroaching grasses and umbellifers grazes the back of my bare calf. It induces that tingling somewhere between pain and pleasure – one that quickly develops into a needling throb.

It is hard to love a nettle. This much-loathed plant may be one of the first that many children learn to identify, for their own protection. It has a secondhand look, with wrinkly, crinkly jagged hearts for leaves. It has no sheen; it does not shine. Near-invisible fine hairs on the upper surfaces give the dulled green a dusty, soiled appearance.

Maritime fuel debates usually start with the wrong object. They look at today’s bunker fuel demand, line up replacement molecules, and ask whether ammonia, methanol, hydrogen, LNG, biofuels, or synthetic fuels can scale far enough to replace it. That sounds like a practical question, but it skips the larger one: ... [continued]

The post Fossil Fuels Are 40% Of Freight Shipping Tonnage, But Half Its Fuel Use appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Paul Powlesland told he acted illegally after organising volunteers to remove litter, weed and silt from River Roding

A river campaigner who organised a cleanup of his local waterway is being threatened with prosecution by the Environment Agency for acting illegally.

Paul Powlesland, a lawyer and environmental campaigner, organised a team of volunteers to tackle the removal of litter, weed and silt from a section of the River Roding, after repeatedly asking the agency to act.

Sea ice is melting fast, worsening the climate crisis, but a bold attempt to rethicken it is showing early signs of success

‘This would have been a wild dream a year ago,” says Andrea Ceccolini, standing on Arctic sea ice just a 4-mile snowmobile ride from the Inuit town of Cambridge Bay, northern Canada. To his left are sky blue ponds of meltwater created in the last few days by a sun that no longer sets in the high north summer. To his right, the sea ice is still a brilliant white, the light dusting of snow on top continuing to sparkle.

“It’s incredibly different, the boundary – I mean, you can point to it,” he says. The difference is the result of a bold geoengineering experiment being conducted by Ceccolini’s company, Real Ice, funded by the UK government.

‘Saddened, stunned, surprised and haunted’ is how one surfer describes the mood at the popular Sydney beach two days after Leah Stewart was bitten by a great white

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Under a clear blue sky on a Monday morning, Coogee beach in Sydney’s east is quiet.

A few swimmers have ventured into the ocean pools at the northern and southern ends of the beach. Most others sit on the sand, looking towards the water.

The UK is getting ready to rejigger its ZEV mandate to satisfy concerns from automakers and trade unions concerned about the future.

The post UK Plans To Roll Back EV Mandate appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Imagine if Europe chose to spend a half a trillion a year on a dependency that benefits regimes which wish it harm. We don’t have to imagine it. We are doing it right now. By Ariel Brunner, Regional Director, BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, Chiara Martinelli, Director, Climate Action Network Europe, Ester Asin, ... [continued]

The post Europe’s Sovereignty Budget appeared first on CleanTechnica.

In a letter to EU leaders, the group says that rather than lowering ambition, Europe must focus on accelerating electrification. To: Heads of State or Government of the European Union, Dear Heads of State or Government of the European Union, We, a broad coalition representing non-governmental organizations, think tanks, energy ... [continued]

The post The EU Must Reset The Narrative On Vehicle Electrification, Says Broad Coalition Of Industry Groups And Civil Society appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Scientists are returning to a wartime solution that may be more sustainable than the traditional rubber tree

There is a global shortage of natural rubber and dandelions may be coming to the rescue. In the second world war there was such a severe shortage of rubber that the Allies used the Russian dandelion, Taraxacum koksaghyz, from Kazakhstan. Soviet scientists found the dandelion roots produced enough white milky latex to make natural rubber, but when the war ended producers returned to the traditional rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis.

But the demand for rubber is now increasing, with rubber trees suffering from a fungal disease and the impacts of extreme weather caused by the climate crisis. So, scientists are looking again at using dandelions, with the added benefit that they grow in temperate climates, are a sustainable crop that do not need pesticides and lots of water, and don’t lead to the deforestation common in tropical rubber tree plantations.