Interesting Ideas

Users of Birdex get points for each bird they see and can compete with friends, with 200,000 sightings logged so far

A new app has launched that aims to gamify birdwatching by allowing people to collect digital cards of UK bird species whenever they record seeing one.

Users of Birdex accumulate points for each bird they see, with less common and rare species yielding the greatest rewards. It is possible to add friends and compete over bird sightings. The app has got birdwatchers talking online – though it has raised hackles among some for its use of AI-generated artwork.

The governor of New Jersey is pushing programs forward to simplify permitting for residential and community solar.

The post New Jersey Promotes Solar To Lower Utility Bills appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Aftermath of Storm Nils causes chaos across country with flooding under way or expected on Garonne, Maine and Loire rivers

France has issued red alerts for flooding in three départements as the aftermath of Storm Nils causes chaos across the country.

Flood waters have inundated homes and isolated villages after the Garonne River overflowed its banks, with hydrologists warning that rain is falling on soils that have hit record-breaking levels of saturation.

Industry using ‘diversionary’ tactics, says analyst, as energy-hungry complex functions such as video generation and deep research proliferate

Tech companies are conflating traditional artificial intelligence with generative AI when claiming the energy-hungry technology could help avert climate breakdown, according to a report.

Most claims that AI can help avert climate breakdown refer to machine learning and not the energy-hungry chatbots and image generation tools driving the sector’s explosive growth of gas-guzzling datacentres, the analysis of 154 statements found.

Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year is today, February 17. However, the celebration extends further. Public schools are out this week in NYC and there are multiple celebrations in the city. The traditional Chinese New Year greeting above (Gong Xi Fa Cai / Gong Hei Fat Choy) wishes people prosperity and ... [continued]

The post To Chinese Clean Tech Companies: 恭喜發財 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The line at the VinFast booth during the 2026 Chicago Auto Show (CAS) was unexpectedly long, a stark contrast to the skepticism that once trailed the Vietnamese automaker. My only comparison on U.S. soil is last year’s Electrify Expo in Nassau County, New York. For a regular at the McCormick ... [continued]

The post VinFast: From California Dreaming To Midwest Reality appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The charger firm claimed the site operated 24 hours a day, but the parking operator had different ideas

I charged my electric car at the 24-hour Mer EV charging station in my local B&Q car park.

I then received a £100 parking charge notice (PCN) from the car park operator, Ocean Parking. It said no parking is allowed on the site between 9pm and 6am.

Huge project by Norwegian-owned Scottish Sea Farms gets go-ahead amid concerns over the environmental cost of fish farming and threat to traditional way of life

At Collafirth, north Shetland, Sydney Johnson is unloading two-dozen bags of scallops by throwing them over his head like medicine balls to the pier above. Johnson, who has just finished a 10-hour shift on his boat, the Golden Shore, is concerned that plans for a new salmon farm will put fishers like him and his two sons out of business.

“They say it’s just one farm,” says Johnson. “But it’s one farm more. There’s only so much water and we’re at saturation point.”

When KG Motors handed over the first customer MiBots on December 30, 2025, it did more than complete a ceremonial delivery. It quietly placed a fully engineered, road-legal micro-EV into real-world use — and set the stage for a production ramp beginning in April of 2026. In one particular case, ... [continued]

The post Will The MiBot Work In Amsterdam? Here’s A Biased Comparison appeared first on CleanTechnica.

In 1999, Heather Preen contracted E coli on the beach. Two weeks later she died. Now, as a new Channel 4 show dramatises the scandal, her mother, Julie Maughan, explains why she is still looking for someone to take responsibility

When Julie Maughan was invited to help with a factual drama that would focus on the illegal dumping of raw sewage by water companies, she had to think hard. In some ways, it felt 25 years too late. In 1999, Maughan’s eight-year-old daughter, Heather Preen, had contracted the pathogen E coli O157 on a Devon beach and died within a fortnight. Maughan’s marriage hadn’t survived the grief – she separated from Heather’s father, Mark Preen, a builder, who later took his own life. “I’ve always said it was like a bomb had gone off under our family,” says Maughan. “This little girl, just playing, doing her nutty stuff on an English beach. And that was the price.” Yet there had been no outrage, few questions raised and no clear answers. “Why weren’t people looking into this? It felt as if Heather didn’t matter. Over time, it felt as if she’d been forgotten.” All these years later, Maughan wasn’t sure if she could revisit it. “I didn’t know if I could go back into that world,” she says. “But I’m glad I have.”

The result, Dirty Business, a three-part Channel 4 factual drama, is aiming to spark the same anger over pollution that ITV’s Mr Bates Vs the Post Office did for the Horizon scandal. Jumping between timelines, using actors as well as “real people” and with actual footage of scummy rivers and beaches dotted with toilet paper, sanitary towels and dead fish, it shows how raw sewage dumps have become standard policy for England’s water companies. Jason Watkins and David Thewlis play “sewage sleuths” Peter Hammond and Ash Smith, Cotswolds neighbours who, over time, watched their local river turn from clear and teeming with nature to dense grey and devoid of life. Hammond is a retired professor of computational biology, Smith a retired detective, and together, they used hidden cameras, freedom of information requests and AI models to uncover sewage dumps on an industrial scale.

Waymo is scaling up. How much, and how quickly? Those are the questions. We may have a hint at an answer. Reportedly, the self-driving tech leader is looking to purchase 50,000 Hyundai IONIQ 5 electric cars in the next few years, at a cost of about $2.5 billion. The IONIQ ... [continued]

The post Waymo Looking to Buy 50,000 Hyundai Ioniq 5 Robotaxis for $2.5 Billion appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Advisory board member says Europe already paying price for lack of preparation but adapting is ‘not rocket science’

Keeping Europe safe from extreme weather “is not rocket science”, a top researcher has said, as the EU’s climate advisory board urges countries to prepare for a catastrophic 3C of global heating.

Maarten van Aalst, a member of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change (ESABCC), said the continent was already “paying a price” for its lack of preparation but that adapting to a hotter future was in part “common sense and low-hanging fruit”.

President says it is inappropriate for UK to be dealing with Gavin Newsom after Ed Miliband meets governor in London

Donald Trump has vented his fury against a green energy deal between the British government and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a likely future Democratic presidential candidate.

“The UK’s got enough trouble without getting involved with Gavin Newscum,” Trump said in an interview with Politico, using the derogatory nickname he reserves for Newsom. “Gavin is a loser. Everything he’s touched turns to garbage. His state has gone to hell, and his environmental work is a disaster.”

There are some examples of renewable energy success right now in this world. Over 98% of electricity in British Columbia is generated by clean, renewable sources. Norway generates about 98% from renewables as well. This northern European country also leads in electric vehicles, as in fully electric vehicles, not hybrids ... [continued]

The post Electricity Prices Decreased In South Australia Because Of Clean Renewables appeared first on CleanTechnica.

A new round of tidal energy activity is beginning to surface in the US, including a plan to install slim, powerful tidal turbines from the Scottish firm Orbital Marine Power in Washington State.

The post The US Can Still Make Tidal Energy Happen appeared first on CleanTechnica.

From high-end boutiques to housing in disaster zones with beer-crate foundations, the Japanese architect creates with things people throw away. What will his distillery in whisky’s holy land look like?

‘I don’t like waste,” says Shigeru Ban. It’s a simple statement – yet it encapsulates everything about the Japanese architect’s work. He takes materials others might overlook or discard – from cardboard tubes to beer crates, styrofoam to shipping containers – and subjects them to a kind of alchemy, refining rough edges and transforming fragility into sturdiness.

The outcome is a perpetually ingenious and curiously poetic scavenger architecture that finds beauty and purpose in the everyday. From high-end boutiques to housing for refugees, Ban’s buildings blur the lines between eastern and western design traditions, between the luxurious and the ordinary, and between what constitutes a temporary building and permanent one.

Buxton, Derbyshire: From those who planted them, to those who pruned them, to the pollinators and the mosses, it’s a long, collective endeavour

As I prune one of our pears – a black Worcester, incidentally, a British variety from the 13th century – I ponder the linguistic connections that arise from our garden “acre” in a place called “Hogshaw”. The first word derives from Old English æcer, meaning an “acorn”. It was linked to wildwood, where the people would fatten their swine on wild pears, apples and oak mast. An acre of pig woodland (or hog shaw) was probably the land required to feed one beast for the winter. I wonder, therefore, how many pigs were put to pannage in our original Hogshaw for it to have acquired its name permanently?

Another thought arising as I clip away the three Ds – dead, diseased or damaged wood – is how much orchards are founded on connection and sharing. I’m not just thinking of the veilwort (a liverwort) on many branches, nor the bristle moss that gives colour and body to every lovely limb, but also the fact that we relied on previous owners to plant trees and their successors to prune them. We also depend totally for our fabulous pear harvest on pollinators, which I’ve mainly found here to be solitary bees. To date, we’ve recorded 19 bee species.

The hype around artificial intelligence (AI) has reached enormous heights. Everything is AI all the time now. At least, that’s how it feels as someone working in the media who is bombarded by PR pitches mentioning AI. Additionally, though, we see how much money is being put into building massive ... [continued]

The post No, Claude Is Not Conscious appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Global adoption is accelerating, but South Africa’s freight sector must balance innovation with operational certainty as it prepares for an electric future. Electric trucks are no longer a speculative technology. Across major global markets (particularly North America, Asia, and Europe), they are increasingly visible in urban delivery fleets, port operations, ... [continued]

The post Electric Trucking: Why Ecosystem Readiness Matters In South Africa appeared first on CleanTechnica.

A voiceover previewing a new sci-fi movie narrated, “The newcomers had killed their planet, just like we are.” The ominous fiction rings true to today’s reality. US President Donald J. Trump has rejected any gesture of global climate cooperation from allies and has withdrawn the US from the Paris climate ... [continued]

The post Can We Dare To Be Hopeful About Clean Energy? appeared first on CleanTechnica.