Interesting Ideas

Austrian capital mulls expanding tram network and park-and-ride car parks in effort to reduce private vehicle use

When Leonore Gewessler hops on the underground trains and street-level trams that run like clockwork across the breadth of Vienna, she appreciates the ease, affordability and time she “gets as a present” instead of idling in traffic. But Austria’s former climate and transport minister is also aware that cars still dominate the capital’s streets. She says good public transport is just the “precondition” to changing how people move around the city.

Vienna’s network of trains, trams and buses have long been the envy of other European cities – let alone car-centric North American ones – but automobiles are still used for a quarter of journeys. In other capitals famed for world-class public transport, such as London, Paris and Prague, even higher use of cars has frustrated doctors and campaigners demanding cleaner air and safer streets.

The Presidio in San Francisco is something of a gem with its open spaces and great views. For some period in its history, it served as a military base, but now it is home to nonprofit organizations, museums, and restaurants. The entire grounds cover 1,500 acres of land near the ... [continued]

The post Electric Buses Are Over Half Of National Park Site’s Bus Fleet appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Removing clear targets for the use of remote sensing would severely undermine its air quality benefits. Dear TRAN MEPs, In April 2025, the European Commission published its proposal to revise the EU Roadworthiness Package, which introduced binding requirements for Member States to use remote sensing technology to screen vehicle emissions and noise. The ... [continued]

The post NGOs & Transport Businesses Call for Maintaining Remote Sensing Provisions in the Roadworthiness Package appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Glyphosate is currently sprayed on cereal and pulse crops to dessicate them and make them easier to harvest

A new trade deal with the EU could lead to restrictions on the use of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate on UK food crops.

The full-spectrum herbicide, which kills almost every plant it touches, is often sprayed on wheat, oats and other cereal and pulse crops shortly before harvest to desiccate them and make them easier to handle.

LAS VEGAS — Today, a group of environmental, health, and environmental justice advocates hosted a press conference outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center during the Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo to highlight the benefits of a rapid transition to electric trucks and call out greenwashing by truckmakers such as Volvo and Daimler, ... [continued]

The post Advocates Host Press Conference Outside Las Vegas Advanced Clean Transportation Expo, Calling for Faster Transition to Electric Trucks appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Powerstock Common, Dorset: I’m hopeful that the mixed habitats here and bright weather will bring them out in their droves – and I’m not disappointed

The recent pulse of warm, sunny weather has encouraged butterflies to fly in large numbers in Dorset. They were everywhere when I visited Powerstock Common: the moment I opened the car door, a brimstone fluttered sulphur-yellow over the parking area, lifted on a stream of blackcap song.

Bright as butter in the sunshine, it’s possible that brimstones are the species that inspired the word “butterfly”. When this one settled on a hazel, its underwings merged green among the new leaves, the colours indicating it was a male. Females are much paler, sometimes almost white. Both sexes have a pair of browny-orange spots on their wings, which are foxed like the page edges of an old book.

Exclusive: ‘Fish sludge’ in coastal waters now has nutrient levels equivalent to those in untreated effluent of country the size of Australia, report finds

Norwegian fish farms are filling fjords and other coastal waters with nutrient pollution equivalent to the raw sewage of tens of millions of people each year, a report has found.

Norway is the largest farmed salmon producer in the world, and nutrients in fish feed are excreted directly into coastal waters. Analysis from the Sunstone Institute found that Norwegian aquaculture released 75,000 tonnes of nitrogen, 13,000 tonnes of phosphorus and 360,000 tonnes of organic carbon in 2025.

In the UK capital, Bomb Crater Pond is full of wildlife, while scientists studying land obliterated by recent Russian blasts 1,500 miles away have seen ‘how quickly nature begins to heal itself’

In February 1945, towards the end of the second world war, a German V2 rocket struck Walthamstow Marshes in east London. The explosion tore a crater into the marshland. Left untouched, it slowly filled with water, sediment … and life. Today, this wartime scar has become a thriving pond.

“It’s small but it really punches above its weight,” says Luke Boyle, a ranger for the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, as he kneels at the edge to examine aquatic plants sprouting their early spring shoots. “We can’t manage the hydrology here, so it is actually a vital part of the ecosystem – it supports a range of plants, insects and amphibians, more than you might expect,” he says.

Seven of Vienna’s ten new hydrogen buses are sidelined because CaetanoBus cannot supply ordinary spare parts. Not hydrogen tanks. Not fuel-cell stacks. Not high-pressure valves. Door compressors and blind-spot monitoring systems. That is what makes the case important for transit procurement agencies. The reported failure is not exotic enough to ... [continued]

The post Vienna’s Hydrogen Bus Failure Is A Warning To Transit Agencies appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Researchers say 481-metre wave in fjord was triggered by rockslide linked to climate crisis

A mega tsunami in Alaska last year in a fjord visited by cruise ships is a stark warning of the risks of coastal rockslides and glacier retreat fueled by the climate crisis, a new study warns.

Scientists recorded the world’s second-tallest tsunami after it struck the Tracy Arm fjord in south-east Alaska last August after a massive rockslide around the toe of a glacier. The tsunami reached 481 metres (1,578ft) in height; by comparison the Eiffel Tower is 330 metres (1082ft).

Wastewater from nearly 40,000 people and businesses pumped straight into sea as territory still has no treatment plant

Raw sewage from nearly 40,000 people and businesses is being pumped straight into the sea because the British overseas territory of Gibraltar does not have, and has never had, a wastewater treatment plant.

For decades, untreated sewage has poured into the Mediterranean from the southern tip of the peninsula at Europa Point, where the government of Gibraltar says there are “high levels of natural dispersion”.

XPENG gave us the opportunity to tour its facilities in Guangzhou, prior to traveling to Beijing for Auto China and to test drive VLA 2.0. One of the most interesting parts was the ARIDGE factory tour and flight demonstration. ARIDGE is a division of XPENG dedicated to electrified, highly automated ... [continued]

The post ARIDGE Land Aircraft Carrier: Modular Electrification Takes Flight appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Intervention for farming and flood risk change the unique systems as communities grapple with how to live alongside the vital waterways

When British settlers started building Christchurch city 170 years ago, they largely ignored the nearby Waimakariri River, which twists from the South Island’s alps towards the eastern shore.

But rain and glacial shifts compelled the braided river – a globally rare form of river with many woven channels – to take on a new shape, occasionally flooding land and depositing tonnes of shingle in its wake.

The author has become acutely aware of how the climate crisis is affecting women – and, in her new book, she argues that it’s time for mainstream western feminists to join the dots

Natasha Walter is halfway through explaining how she came to be politically radicalised when a young woman approaches the cafe table. We two middle-aged women look like “the most trustworthy people here,” she says, so could we watch her baby while she grabs a coffee? Like the solid citizen she is, Walter doesn’t take her eyes off the pushchair parked by the cafe steps for the next five minutes, though all we can see of the occupant is a tiny swinging foot. Sorry, where were we? Ah yes, the groundbreaking feminist writer who famously argued in her 1998 book The New Feminism that Margaret Thatcher had broken down barriers for women was explaining why she no longer really believes it’s possible to be rightwing and a feminist, as Theresa May or Amber Rudd insist they are.

“I can’t support just any woman getting into power, because I think a system that leaves too many women in the shadows – that condemns too many women to poverty or worse – is not a feminist system, and I don’t think you can call yourself a feminist if you’re going to prop up that system,” she says, eyes still glued to the baby for whom we are briefly responsible. “It’s not my kind of feminism.” Her younger self, she admits, would have thought her too uncompromising. But something in her seems to have hardened, facing a world she sees as threatened by the rise of far-right authoritarianism on one hand and a climate emergency on the other. “In the past I always wanted to be a broad church, I always thought any woman can be a feminist, but now I really am feeling … maybe I’ve been radicalised.”

Two California electric utilities have moved to exit long-term contracts to buy power from Ivanpah, a unique first-of-its-kind utility-scale solar tower project that has delivered only around 70–80% of its projected annual generation since it began operating in 2014. The partners, which included Google, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Southern ... [continued]

The post Solar Experts Offer a Solution to Satisfy Both Sides in Ivanpah Decommissioning Battle appeared first on CleanTechnica.

By Dr. Thomas Nann, CEO and Co-Founder of Allegro The biggest constraint facing AI data centre expansion is not generation. It is storage, and not only storage, but the unique way that AI data centre’s use power. As AI-driven data centres scale, the grid challenge is no longer simply how ... [continued]

The post AI Data Centres Need Big Batteries But Lithium Isn’t Fit-For-Purpose appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Aviation’s decarbonization debate spends most of its time in the fuel tank. Sustainable aviation fuel gets the mandates, hydrogen and synthetic fuels get the hype and VC dollars, and batteries get the short-haul hopes. All of those matter, but they share a problem. They are slow, expensive, infrastructure-heavy and constrained ... [continued]

The post Better Flight Planning Can Cut Fuel & Contrail Warming appeared first on CleanTechnica.

As Reform vows to block solar and windfarms, energy leaders say renewables offer most secure future, insulating UK from hostile forces

• UK politics live – latest updates

• May elections: What’s at stake across England, Wales and Scotland?

The defining issue of Thursday’s local elections, feedback from doorsteps suggests, will be the UK’s soaring cost of living. But voters should be told about the links between inflation and the effects of fossil fuels and the climate crisis – or the remedies they choose – may make the situation worse, green campaigners have warned.

Ami McCarthy, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said: “With people’s bills and prices soaring from yet another fossil fuel crisis, these local elections have a global context – driven by the Iran war.

In the lead-up to the first-ever EU truck CO2 target in 2025, major truckmakers have come to increasingly prioritise their shareholders over making the necessary investments in their own clean transition. In doing so, they risk losing out to new competition. The European Union adopted its first CO2 standards for trucks ... [continued]

The post Truckmaking Giants Favour Shareholder Payouts Over-Investing into the Zero-Emission Transition appeared first on CleanTechnica.

While much of the public discussion in the Philippines still revolves around jeepney modernization, Francisco Motors Corp (FMC) is working along a different track. Its upcoming vehicle, the FMC Elektron, is positioned as an all-electric crossover, marking a clear break from the company’s long association with public utility vehicles. Chairman ... [continued]

The post The FMC Elektron Is Now Beyond The Prototyping Stage appeared first on CleanTechnica.