Interesting Ideas

Global effort needed to limit effects of pollution, industrial fishing and climate crisis, World Ocean Assessment says

The world’s oceans are under “severe and accelerating” pressure from human activities, with the rate of sea-level rise double that of a decade ago, according to a damning assessment from the United Nations.

The “intensifying” stressors, which include pollution and large-scale industrial fishing, are cumulative, said the report, resulting in widespread biodiversity loss and putting ocean systems under “severe strain”.

The bottom of the ocean has barely been explored, but every journey to the deep reveals wondrous new lifeforms. As underwater mining gains momentum, we risk destroying one of the Earth’s last great wildernesses

On 8 March 2014, at 1.20am, Malaysian Airlines flight 370 veered off its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. An hour later, military radar spotted the plane heading west over the Andaman Sea. Six or seven hours later, it is presumed to have crashed somewhere over the southern Indian Ocean, one of the least studied bodies of water in the world.

Just how little we knew about this part of the ocean became clear during the subsequent search for the missing aircraft. Before a proper underwater search could even begin, a vast stretch of seafloor had to be mapped. Over the next three years, a team of ships from Australia, China and Malaysia scanned the bottom with a combination of submersible robots and ship-borne sonar. Together, they charted a swath of ocean roughly 1,500 miles long and 150 miles wide, encompassing an area the size of France. The maps produced from these scans revealed a lost world, full of undersea canyons, crevasses, volcanic plateaux and a single, enormous cliff taller than the Swiss Alps. Even the abyssal plains, thought to be some of the flattest areas on the planet, were home to previously uncharted hills.

Scaling back the EU’s electric car targets makes the transition to renewables far more expensive to achieve. Europe’s electricity system could be one of the biggest victims of plans to scale back electric vehicle targets. By providing ‘batteries on wheels’, EVs are set to fundamentally rewire the math of the ... [continued]

The post 150 New Power Plants: The Cost of Balancing the Grid If the EU Slashes EV Targets appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Brigg, Lincolnshire: With harvest approaching, we’re putting the glorious long evenings to good use, and both humans and insects are working hard to protect the crops

There’s something magical about the long evenings in June, the warmth and the way the setting sun casts long shadows across the fields. The extra hours are much-needed though as there is plenty to do.

We’re in the run-up to harvest in July, so if the weather is dry we walk up and down the seed crop tramlines, pulling out (rouging) unwanted wild oats, brome and blackgrass. They drop seeds that could contaminate not only our ground, but potentially someone else’s. Strict numbers govern how many of such plants are allowed per hectare in a seed crop, and independent inspectors check the results. Government officials in the Animal and Plant Health Agency will even walk the higher quality seed crops.

Every auto executive across the world must know now that their in a race to offer true door-to-door self-driving capability. While Elon Musk hyped up Tesla robotaxis a decade ago and expected to be a decade ahead of everyone with such capability, what we’re seeing is various automakers and self-driving ... [continued]

The post Stellantis Gets Its Hands-Free, Door-to-Door Driving Partner — Wayve appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The Japanese firm TOYO is adding a $357 million HJT solar cell manufacturing facility to its existing solar factory in Texas, creating 400 direct jobs in the city.

The post Texas Scores A $357 Million Solar Factory As The War On Solar Flops appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Over in its home market of South Korea, the 2027 Hyundai IONIQ 5 has just launched. The popular all-electric model is coming in with a price cut, trying to stay competitive with the ever-expanding BYD lineup. At the same time, the 2026 Hyundai IONIQ 5 has just got exclusive EV ... [continued]

The post 2027 Hyundai IONIQ 5 Launches As 2026 IONIQ 5 Wins Special EV Award In USA appeared first on CleanTechnica.

YouGov poll findings commissioned by E3G, T&E and the Electrification Alliance. New polling data across five major European countries shows strong support for electrification and clean energy investment. These views cut across traditional left-right political divides. Over 6 in 10 (64%) believe that reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels makes ... [continued]

The post Majority of Europeans Back Reducing Fossil Fuel Imports to Make Europe Safer, Polling Shows appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Exclusive: Sir Paul Marshall’s climate views and those broadcast on GB News said to be ‘in direct opposition’ to those of Church of England

The co-owner of GB News, a British TV channel accused of broadcasting climate change denial, has donated £28m to influential Church of England institutions that support climate action.

This raises “serious questions”, say Christian leaders, given that Sir Paul Marshall’s views on the climate crisis and those frequently broadcast on the TV channel are “in direct opposition” to the Church of England, which believes that “responding to the climate crisis is an essential part of our responsibility to safeguard God’s creation and achieve a just world”.

Third of world’s energy needs should come from electricity by 2035, says Murat Kurum, as priorities set out for this year’s UN climate summit

The world should aim to meet a third of its energy needs from electricity within a decade to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the host of the next UN climate summit has said.

While about a third of global electricity generation already comes from renewable sources, other energy-intensive sectors – chiefly transport, heating and industries – have lagged behind. Close to four-fifths of final energy still comes from fossil fuels, as a result.

‘Twitchers’ rush to coastal Western Australia to see black-headed gull, which usually flies between Europe and Asia

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

A lone seabird has caused a stir in the nation’s birdwatching community after landing on the Western Australian coast, thousands of kilometres off its usual migratory flight path.

The black-headed gull, which usually flies between Europe and Asia, has been spotted in the coastal city of Geraldton.

JPMorgan Chase leads 65 banks making decisions incompatible with restraining rising temperatures, researchers say

The world’s largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an “unfathomable” increase in investment locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat, a new report has found.

The surge in new fossil fuel lending, up $64bn or nearly 8% on 2024, shows that the world’s largest 65 banks are making decisions incompatible with international agreements to restrain rising global temperatures, according to the coalition of environmental groups behind the new analysis.

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Trump Administration invoked its so-called “energy emergency” to force the Stanton coal plant in Orlando to remain open beyond its planned retirement at the end of May 2026. The facility, which was scheduled to go into extended cold shut down—meaning it will stop generating electricity and ... [continued]

The post Trump Forces Costly Florida Coal Plant to Run Past Retirement, Raising Costs for Everyday Customers appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Electric vehicles have many benefits that gas and diesel vehicles do not. At the moment, with gas and diesel fuel prices being so high, more and more people may be evaluating the situation and considering replacing an internal combustion engine vehicle with a fully electric one. For those who would ... [continued]

The post Running An Electric Vehicle On Clean Electricity In The Bay Area Peninsula appeared first on CleanTechnica.

A CleanTechnica exclusive, by Ed Darmanin, as told to David Waterworth. Ed Darmanin, a retired electrical engineer from Sydney, is planning to circumnavigate mainland Australia — the world’s largest island continent — on an electric motorcycle. Why? Because no one has ever done it before — and because, as two ... [continued]

The post Ed Darmanin Does the Big Lap around Australia on an Electric Motorbike appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Marine biologist Issah Seidu has found a way for Ghana’s fishing communities to earn a living – and help protect the ancient and critically endangered fish species

Guitarfish are an odd-looking and ancient species, with the tail of a shark and the flattened body of a ray, but their coveted fins have driven populations to the brink of extinction. In west Africa, where their meat is also a local delicacy, many guitarfish species are among the most critically endangered fish in the ocean.

Conservationists at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) describe the slow-maturing ray, which produce young annually, as an “indicator species”, which reflect the overall health of an ecosystem and pose challenges in the way coastal fishing of them is managed. The IUCN red list categorises more than half of guitarfish species as critically endangered.

Pacoima is hemmed in by highways and heavy industry, and its residents are fighting pollution with hyperlocal air quality monitoring

Jose Luis Salas looks up at the ladder. “Are you ready?” he asks Shance Taylor, an environmental project manager who’s holding a white container, about the size of a shoebox, covered with wires and numbers.

Taylor nods and climbs up to reach the side of Salas’s tidy house in Pacoima, a neighborhood in Los Angeles’s north-east San Fernando valley. The curious box in their hands is known as Aeroqual sensor – part of a community air-quality monitoring program run by Pacoima Beautiful, a local environmental group.

A useful paper has landed in the Nature family on the techno-economics of electrifying short-sea shipping, and the result should make the maritime fuel debate a little less vague. The paper does not claim that every ship becomes battery-electric. It does not need to. It finds that by 2030 a ... [continued]

The post Batteries Don’t Need To Electrify Every Ship To Reshape Shipping Fuels appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The species is abundant within the protected archipelago but when they migrate outside the marine reserve to give birth they run the gauntlet of industrial fishing

The unmistakable fluted T-shape of a scalloped hammerhead shark slides by, followed by a diver holding his breath and a metal spear like an extra-long snooker cue. The spear hits the fish behind its dorsal fin and the 2-metre shark darts away, disgruntled but otherwise unharmed.

Carlos Robalino, a marine biologist from the Galápagos Islands, trained as a shark researcher in Mexico but is now back home and working as a junior researcher at the Charles Darwin Foundation. When we meet in March, he is one of the divers on the foundation’s research expedition to Darwin and Wolf, the most northerly islands in the Galápagos marine reserve.

The solar power and battery storage project pipelines are growing in the United States. Even if government support for solar has dropped — in the US as a whole as well as in the #1 solar state of California — the clean electricity option is still hyper-competitive due to its ... [continued]

The post US Clean Energy Can Now Power ~80 Million Homes! appeared first on CleanTechnica.