Interesting Ideas

Early spring sightings show colourful insect is a resident species for first time in decades, says conservation charity

The large tortoiseshell – an elusive and enigmatic butterfly that became extinct in Britain in the last century – is a UK resident species once again, with a flurry of early spring sightings.

Britain’s list of native butterflies has increased to 60 with the return of the insect after individuals emerged from hibernation in woodlands in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Cornwall and the Isle of Wight.

I’m preparing to speak to engineers at GE Vernova during Engineering Week at the request of Cornelis Plet, CTO of GE Vernova Grid Systems Integration. It is a useful moment to step back and look at a class of technologies that rarely make headlines but quietly shape how modern power ... [continued]

The post Steering Electricity: How Grid Control Devices Unlock Transmission Capacity appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Many Australians are choosing oat, almond and soy over cow’s milk – but which choice is the most sustainable?

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Oat cap, skinny flat white, almond chai, soy matcha. Everyone has a different milk preference: cow, skim, lactose-free, oat, almond, soy, goat or camel.

Milk choices may be due to environmental reasons, dietary concerns or just taste preferences.

Earlier this week, fellow CleanTechnica writer Larry Evans covered the raw numbers behind BYD’s new 1.5-megawatt Flash Charging system. You can read his full breakdown of the hardware and infrastructure rollout here. He did a great job detailing the insane peak power and the clever grid buffer stations BYD is ... [continued]

The post BYD’s 1.5 MW “Flash” Charging Wasn’t A Gimmick. The Battery Chemistry Behind It Could Change The Industry. appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Self-styled ‘punk’ beer company bought land in 2020, pledging to plant Scotland’s ‘biggest ever forest’

The self-styled “punk” beer company BrewDog sold its Highland estate for a knockdown price after abandoning its efforts to plant Scotland’s “biggest ever forest” there.

BrewDog’s co-founder James Watt claimed its Lost Forest project at Kinrara in the Cairngorms national park would cover a “staggering area” and capture tens of millions of tonnes of CO₂ during its lifetime.

When my father left Utah to go as a Mormon missionary to Austria in 1927, he traveled from Utah County, Utah, by coal-burning steam train in 2 or 3 days to Chicago. There he boarded a Great Lakes steamer traveling through Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario, ... [continued]

The post Evolution of Travel Over the Last 100 Years: + An Adventure in France in 2026 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Jessika Roswall cites Poland and Finland, which have made border areas near Russia or its allies ‘more hostile’ to cross

Countries should look to rewild their land borders as a deterrence to invasion and build up other geographical defences to attack, Europe’s environment chief has said.

Jessika Roswall, the EU’s commissioner for the environment, water resilience and a competitive circular economy, said nature should be used to improve national security. “Investing in nature and using nature as a natural border control is necessary, and actually increases biodiversity. It’s a win-win,” she said.

Heath professionals say changing to daylight savings time comes with health risks. British Columbia thinks it has the answer.

The post Spring Forward, Fall Back. Are Time Changes Bad For Your Health? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

A few days ago, Larry Evans introduced us to BYD’s hot new “Flash Charging,” which is the quickest charging we’ve seen for passenger electric vehicles. In fact, it is a very big deal for multiple reasons. Jennifer Sensiba followed up earlier today to explain some of that, including how electric ... [continued]

The post Is BYD’s Flash Charging Revolutionary? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

After the mixed reactions to trying to install electric vehicle chargers in strata title (condos), I thought it would be a good idea to share a positive story. This comes from Gary Buck, who is based in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria (1000 km south of Canberra). Gary is a ... [continued]

The post A Positive Strata Title EV Charger Story! appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Lower Ouseburn, Newcastle upon Tyne: Under boardwalks, in concrete, on window ledges, seeds borne by water and carried on feet survive

The Ouseburn slides glassily, reflecting clouds, as it moves towards the Tyne. These lower reaches are tidal, once used for loading coal barges, here in the industrial heart of Newcastle. From glassworks, bottleworks, potteries and flax mills, the area is now transformed into waterside cafes, bars and housing. The burn flows through a variety of habitats: a wooded dene beneath a soaring viaduct, past stables, a farm and converted factories, exposed mud and ivied ruins, an evolving cityscape, its plants often overlooked.

We study the ground while joggers and prams go past and progress is slow; there’s so much life here in the footpath margins. James Common has researched the city’s plants for six years and his book Urban Flora of Newcastle and North Tyneside is published on Monday. He found the Lower Ouseburn to be the fifth most diverse 1km square of the 188 he covered, the others being nature reserves and the Victorian park of Jesmond Dene. This vibrancy is the result of movement, of people and industry, animals and ships’ ballast, seeds borne by the river or carried on feet.

Private equity group EQT to take 42% stake as supplier faces scrutiny over environmental record and CEO’s pay

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A leading European investor will pump fresh funding into Yorkshire Water including helping to cover a £600m loan, despite recent heavy sewage fines and a scandal over executive pay at the utility firm.

EQT, a Swedish private equity group, said on Monday it would take a 42% stake in Kelda Holdings, the Jersey-registered parent company of Yorkshire Water, which has 5.7 million customers across Yorkshire and parts of the East Midlands and Lincolnshire.

Developers argue that eco-tourism helps ‘underfunded’ parks but former Greens leader Bob Brown says the idea of wilderness lodges is an ‘oxymoron’

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When the Gardens of Stone in the Blue Mountains was declared a state conservation area in 2022, it should have been cause of great celebration for Keith Muir. Instead, the plans put forward by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) for the nature reserve make him weep.

“The geology is spectacular,” he says of the nature reserve. “The pagoda landforms are sculptured natural artworks, that is the only way to describe them. They are symphonies in stone.”

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Volkswagen Group has just reached 4 million electric vehicle (BEV) cumulative deliveries. It’s a nice milestone to celebrate, and not a lot of automakers can claim to have achieved this, but it’s also far off of the company’s plans from just a handful of years ago. If you’re confused because ... [continued]

The post Volkswagen Group Reaches 4 Million EV Sales appeared first on CleanTechnica.

zack mennell made a costume out of nappies and waded into filthy waterways saying: ‘I’m going to be the parasite.’ The performance artist’s project became more literal than originally intended

On the Deptford foreshore, a ghoulish figure is sinking into the Thames. Performance artist zack mennell (who writes their name in lower case) wades to their belly button as a crowd watches on. As they dip down further, their mutant costume – sewn together from 24 adult nappies – swells with water … and waste.

mennell’s work smears the personal and political across their body. The Thames performance is the finale of a project called (para)site, made in response to revelations of sewage discharge in our waterways and a reaction to the way benefit claimants are labelled as a drain on society. “OK,” mennell thought, “I’m going to be the parasite.” Their taking on of pollution was more literal than they intended; they contracted Weil’s disease from rat urine in the water.

The starting point for evaluating biomethane in Hawaiʻi is the fully electrified Oʻahu energy system that emerged from the earlier Sankey analysis. That work removed overseas aviation fuel, long-distance maritime bunkering, and military energy use from the island energy balance. It also electrified transportation, buildings, and industry while replacing combustion ... [continued]

The post Biomethane for Oʻahu: A Small Reserve With a Big Reliability Role appeared first on CleanTechnica.

A Guardian investigation with DeSmog reveals thousands of tonnes of fish are illegally turned into fishmeal and oil off the coast of Guinea-Bissau

The only ice factory on Bubaque, an island in west Africa’s Guinea-Bissau, is out of service. Local fishers, such as Pedro Luis Pereira, are forced to source ice from factories on the mainland, about 70km away – a six-hour round trip by boat.

“The machines have been broken for months,” Pereira says, as he pulls in his nets on the shore of the island inside the protected Bijagós archipelago. “We’ve alerted the ministry of fisheries, but so far, no one has come to fix them.”

Foreign industrial vessels anchored near the port of Bissau. Photograph: Davide Mancini

If you drive an EV, you probably know this feeling. You drive past a gas station sign displaying $3.41 a gallon (or a lot more these days), and then you look at your charging app showing $0.48 per kilowatt-hour. It feels like comparing apples to binary code. It’s not just ... [continued]

The post A Better Way To Compare Gas & Electric Prices appeared first on CleanTechnica.

It’s been a while since we did a weekly roundup of the top stories on CleanTechnica, but I’m getting back to that again. This past week, the top stories on CleanTechnica were the following: Top Selling Electric Vehicles in the World — January 2026 Did Tesla Just Pull in a ... [continued]

The post Top Selling Electric Cars in World, Cybertruck Order Frenzy, Solar Trumps Trump in Texas — Top Stories of the Week appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Once abundant in California, the white abalone had all but vanished. Now, thanks to an innovative breeding program, it’s staged a remarkable comeback

On a sunny January afternoon in Bodega Bay, some 70 miles north of San Francisco, the White Abalone Culture Lab is humming with activity.

It’s spawning day. Alyssa Frederick, the lab’s program director, invites me into an industrial room full of troughs and tubs of bubbling seawater. The abalone program is tucked away in the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, a research facility devoted to studying ocean and coastal health. The goal is to bring the endangered sea snails, known for their iridescent shells and delicate meat, back from the brink.