Interesting Ideas

Lots of us aren’t very keen on bats. But the more we find out about them, the more amazing they turn out to be

Bats have a bad rep: in a recent survey by the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT), 46% of people expressed negative feelings about bats. But just look at them! Bat carer Liz Vinson, a volunteer with the BCT, calls them “little furry humans with huge jazz hands. They have individual characters: some are divas; some are bone idle.”

Shirley Thompson, BCT’s honorary education officer, has been championing bats since the 1980s. “I still think they’re magic,” she says. “The more you find out about them, the more you realise what amazing creatures they are.”

This labor-intensive way of eating isn’t for everyone – and I’m not sure it’s for me. It requires planning and flexibility

When I called Robin Greenfield, an environmental activist and author, his assistant answered. “We’re stopped really quick,” Marielle said, adding “he is harvesting a ton of wild onions right now. He’ll be on in just a minute.”

I waited, curious to see his haul and bemused by his willingness to delay an interview for wild vegetables. I had called Greenfield, who wrote Food Freedom about the year he grew and foraged 100% of his food, to talk about how possible, or hard, it is to do just that.

SpaceX is on the verge of a giant IPO (initial public offering). Once upon a time, Elon Musk said that he never wanted to take a company public again, because he didn’t like the public oversight and annoying questions from analysts every quarter. But I guess Musk doesn’t really run ... [continued]

The post Tesla Analyst Thinks Tesla Could Merge With SpaceX In 2027 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The balcony solar movement has reached the US, as Trump's war in Iraq sends ratepayers scrambling to after clean, local, affordable power.

The post Balcony Solar Is Spreading Across The US appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The world continues to fight wars over oil. Is the conflict in Iran that beginning of a shift away from from fossil fuels?

The post Iran War Is The Beginning Of The End For Fossil Fuels appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Number fell 23% year on year in 2025 but waste companies say recycling systems still under strain from sheer volume

More than 6m vapes and vape pods are still being discarded every week in the UK, with waste management companies warning the sheer volume continues to strain recycling systems despite the ban on disposable e-cigarettes.

According to research by the recycling campaign group Material Focus, the 6.3m vapes and pods thrown away each week in 2025 represented a 23% reduction from the previous year.

Rena Effendi’s film Searching for Satyrus began with a quest for the endangered insect that bears her family name. Before long, she was reckoning with secrets, lies and the mysterious life of her wayward dad

High in the Caucasus mountains, the photojournalist Rena Effendi is searching for the butterfly that bears the name of the father she hardly knew. It is rocky, bleak, beautiful – and impossible. The grass is fried yellow by the increasingly fierce summer sun, the butterfly’s food has been grazed by sheep and, if it exists at all, Satyrus effendi usually flies only as a single insect across a square kilometre of rock, scree and slope.

A butterfly hunt makes an unlikely subject for a prize-winning documentary, but Searching for Satyrus is a gripping quest that reveals a remarkable part of the world little known to western audiences while examining issues from war and nationalism to global heating and extinction. Ultimately, however, Effendi’s search for her father’s butterfly becomes a moving reckoning with the secrets and lies in her family and the life of her wayward father.

So far this year, Leapmotor is the 14th best selling EV producer in 13 European countries, according to data collated by EU-EVs.com. With 11,697 sales, the Chinese EV brand accounted for 3% of this market. Now, the company is planning to bring three more EV models to Europe, doubling the ... [continued]

The post Leapmotor Bringing 3 New EVs to Europe This Year appeared first on CleanTechnica.

In this article, I want to talk about the Iran war and its effects on the global auto industry. I encourage you to read this excellent article by Jennifer Sensiba: “The April Oil Crisis Most Don’t Know is Coming.” The Strait of Hormuz has been closed since the start of ... [continued]

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

Hawaiʻi’s LNG turn was sold as a practical answer to a practical problem. The state has high electricity prices, aging oil-fired generation, isolated island grids, and political pressure to cut bills without creating reliability problems. HSEO’s January 2025 alternative fuels study was built around that frame. It was focused on ... [continued]

The post LNG Won’t Shield Hawaiʻi From the Next Energy Crisis appeared first on CleanTechnica.

National Trust says one year after reintroduction they are enriching habitats and may be having kits this summer

They were released this time last year with fanfare, much hope and also, perhaps, a little trepidation.

Twelve months on, there have been ups and downs for the first beavers to be (officially) reintroduced into the wild in England since the semiaquatic mammals were hunted to extinction 400 years ago.

When you think about the safest vehicles on the road, Hyundai and Kia are probably not the brands that come to mind first. However, perhaps they should be. Hyundai Motor Group received a total of 15 TOP SAFETY PICK+ (TSP+) awards this year from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ... [continued]

The post Hyundai & Kia Stack Up Safety Awards appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Dartmoor, Devon: This one is an early-arriver after spending winter in sub-Saharan Africa, and it’s keen to show off its ‘white arse’

The first signs of spring shine through the shadow of Haytor Rocks, a granite guard of Dartmoor’s natural secrets. The sun’s heat warms the granite, the first bumblebees thrum over the gorse. After months of mizzly rain, it was freeing to be out on the moor again. The trees were awakening, early emergers blackthorn and willow, stalwarts of Emsworthy Mire – an old friend.

With binoculars pressed tight to my eyes, I scan the valley, searching for any sign of returning migrants. Mid-March is too early for some, but the more proactive species love to start the season early. A raven cronks overhead, a sound as welcoming as it is unnerving.

Admittedly, I don’t really pay much attention to Tesla’s stock price, or any company stock prices. However, because of the work I do, I see headlines about stock price trends here and there. I didn’t realize until today that Tesla’s stock price has been trending downward for a while, but ... [continued]

The post Tesla Stock Down Nearly 20% in 6 Months — Are People Giving Up On Tesla Robotaxis? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Driving fast is in ‘the German DNA’, say lovers of the speed-limit free Autobahn, but support in the country for a restriction is growing

Death-defying thrills are not what draws Lutz Leif Linden to zip down the Autobahn faster than a plane taking off. Instead, the feeling of freedom and an appreciation of technological mastery play a part in his “almost loving relationship” with driving cars faster than most people can imagine.

The top speed he has reached on the road in Germany, the world’s only democracy without a blanket speed limit on motorways, is 400km/h (249mph). “It’s like an airplane,” said Linden, the president of the Automobile Club of Germany (AvD). “You are faster than an Airbus at start.”

Conserving the watershed of the Tana and improving farming methods is securing water supplies and livelihoods alike in a changing climate

When in 2017 David Nyoro became one of the first farmers to partner with Africa’s first water fund to conserve the watershed of Kenya’s biggest river, he received 180 high-value avocado seedlings. The 67-year-old’s farming methods had been dominated by annual crops that left large sections of his five-acre piece of land bare, increasing soil erosion and contributing to river sedimentation. “We used to lose a lot of topsoil to the river. Such loss of soil nutrients and poor farming practices meant we had less farm produce,” he says.

The avocado seedlings enabled him to grow his farm income to close to 2m Kenyan shillings (about £11,500 at today’s exchange rates), with each mature avocado tree yielding 70kg (154lbs) annually. He introduced cover crops to improve soil health and reduce soil erosion and sediment loads.

Female named Rounder surrounded by family members when about to give birth to her second calf

Scientists have managed to film a sperm whale giving birth while other female whales worked together to support the mother and her newborn.

A team from Project Ceti, an international effort seeking to understand how whales communicate, was in a boat near a pod of 11 whales off the coast of the Caribbean island of Dominica on 8 July 2023.

A project on Dartmoor to reprofile the landscape aims to return the springy bog – and carbon store – to its natural condition

At one of the most remote spots in southern England, Al West skilfully tilts and rotates the bucket of a small digger, like a giant mechanical hand. He lifts turf, and pats it down gently on to the rich, dark brown peat beneath. Above him, the granite stack of Fur Tor looms above the vast, boggy, wild expanse of northern Dartmoor.

It is repetitive, delicate work, which West carries out with dexterity and care. Within a boundary of white flags, he takes from a borrow pit and fashions a peat embankment across each ditch and depression covering the land, to restore it to its natural smoothness and to stop the rainwater running off down the valley.

The world’s largest EV battery producer in the world, by far, is China’s CATL. Second is China’s BYD. The USA wants to block automakers from using Chinese batteries, but these Chinese companies are basically saying — yeah, good luck with that, hahaha. In fact, the general conclusion is that the ... [continued]

The post #1 Battery Maker in World Says USA Can’t Make EVs without China appeared first on CleanTechnica.

With the support of President Donald J. Trump, the Republican-controlled US Congress rescinded a $7,500 federal EV tax credit, leading to an initial plunge in EV sales. However, the US/Israel war against Iran has reignited demand for electric vehicles and the batteries that power them. Innovations in the EV battery ... [continued]

The post An Update On Electric Vehicle Batteries And Innovations In The Sector appeared first on CleanTechnica.