Interesting Ideas

Electricity demand is rising as transport, heating, and industry electrify, with additional growth coming from data centers and expanding industrial loads. The transmission network that moves electricity was built over many decades, but expanding it has become increasingly difficult. Building new transmission lines often takes ten to fifteen years once ... [continued]

The post Unlocking Hidden Capacity in the Grid With Advanced Conductors appeared first on CleanTechnica.

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 company.

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.

Britain’s toads have begun their spring migration, putting them at even greater risk than usual. Here’s how – and why – we should look after them

There’s a touch of old magic about toads, those shapeshifters of myth, superstition and folklore. Charismatic creatures with the pleasing Latin binomial bufo bufo, common toads have astonishing copper- or gold-coloured eyes and rugged, textured skin. “People say they look warty, which I’ve always thought is a bit unfair,” says Dr Silviu Petrovan, a conservationist and toad population researcher.

More prosaically, toads are great for your garden. “We say toads are a gardener’s best friend, because they eat all the pests,” says Jenny Tse-Leon, the head of conservation and impact at the British amphibian charity Froglife. Their spring migration is a dramatic event, during which hundreds of thousands of animals travel back to their ancestral breeding ponds. “Like the wildebeest of the Serengeti,” says Tse-Leon. “They’re just a lot smaller than wildebeest.” The males “piggyback” on potential partners: “You see them riding on the female’s back to get a lift to the pond.”

Following North Carolina Approval, Stage Set for Final Merger COLUMBIA, S.C. — A settlement agreement was reached by groups, including the Sierra Club, with Duke Energy on its proposed merger of its subsidiaries in South Carolina. A Sierra Club priority included in the settlement agreement is the commitment from Duke ... [continued]

The post Duke Merger Settlement Agreement Reached in South Carolina appeared first on CleanTechnica.

This may well end up being the year of the robotaxi. Several companies are trying to scale up robotaxi service significantly after early testing and initial rollout. You can count Chinese auto giant Geely and self-driving partner WeRide in that group. Geely Holding Group brand Farizon and WeRide announced today ... [continued]

The post Geely & WeRide Planning 2,000 Robotaxis for This Year 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.

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.

Like Stonehenge, the Australian coastal landmark is first seen from a busy highway – and locals warn charging a fee for safe viewing could make existing congestion worse

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How much is a view worth? The Victorian public is asking itself that question after the state government announced on Monday that it would impose visitor fees on one of its most spectacular landmarks, the Twelve Apostles.

Bookings would be required and a fee payable for parking and access to the $126m Twelve Apostles Visitor Centre, the gateway to the main viewing decks for the famous sea stacks – columns of remnant rock from the eroded Victorian coastline, visible along the winding, 240km-long Great Ocean Road.

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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.

The series examining Oʻahu’s energy transition has followed a consistent structure. It began by defining the island’s fully electrified energy system and stripping away energy uses that do not serve the civilian economy. Aviation fuel for flights leaving Hawaiʻi, maritime bunkering for ships crossing the Pacific, and military energy consumption ... [continued]

The post Demand Shifting in Hawaiʻi: The Other Half of the Energy Transition appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Scope extension, revenue generation and the use of SAF and contrail allowances under the EU ETS. The revision of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) in July 2026 represents a unique opportunity for European aviation. In order to meet the temperature targets set out in the Paris Agreement and ensure ... [continued]

The post Boosting Aviation Decarbonisation Through the Revision of the EU ETS 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.

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.

Following the Olympic closing ceremony, a lot has happened in the world. Trump gave the longest and most incoherent State of the Union address in history. The US started waging war on Iran. In a more encouraging demonstration of higher intelligence, we saw Punch the monkey and his plush orangutan ... [continued]

The post Profiting From Subsidies While Proliferating Trump’s Protectionism appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The U.S. Department of Energy Helped Cordova With Its Local Microgrid. Now the Remote City Is Localizing Its Data Too. For years, the Cordova Electric Cooperative in Alaska has worked to source its energy closer to home. Hydropower and battery energy storage now supply Cordova’s highly seasonal electric demand. This ... [continued]

The post In Alaska, a Data Center Inside a Power Plant, Inside a Microgrid appeared first on CleanTechnica.

China takes another step towards demonstrating a viable global market for green ammonia, produced from green hydrogen and renewable energy.

The post US Farmers Need Green Ammonia, And China Has It appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The new Nissan LEAF has been on a tear, winning award after award after award. It deserves it. The model is a great value-for-money buy. The model has essentially kept the same price it had more than a decade ago — despite all the wild inflation — while massively boosting ... [continued]

The post New Nissan LEAF Wins Another Award — From Women This Time appeared first on CleanTechnica.

A friend of mine — longtime EV evangelists David Havasi — sent me a meme this weekend about EV owners not having to deal with the problem of fast rising gas prices. My first thought was, “Are gas prices really rising a lot?” Because, driving an EV for several years, ... [continued]

The post Are Gas Prices Going Up? 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

Well-intentioned laws designed to safeguard nature frequently have the opposite effect

The importance of protecting nature is not up for debate. One in six species in Britain is threatened with extinction. Since 1970, more than half our flowering plants have decreased in areas where they once thrived. In the 1950s, Britain’s hedgehog population was 30m strong. Now, it is believed to be under a million.

All this demands action. The problem is that a lot of the action we’ve taken – mainly in the form of legislation – fails to target the biggest drivers of nature loss. Instead, it bites when we try to build: wind turbines, solar farms, railways or nuclear power plants, making their construction lengthier, more expensive or, in some cases, impossible.