Interesting Ideas

Airline ticket prices are soaring as a consequence of the recent crisis in the Middle East. This new analysis shows that European aviation’s dependence on fossil fuels is at the core of this spike in prices. The recent Middle East crisis underscores that European aviation’s greatest vulnerability is its fossil ... [continued]

The post Iran Crisis: A Moment of Reckoning for European Aviation appeared first on CleanTechnica.

UK’s Rare Breeds Survival Trust says calf numbers of white park cattle last year were less than two-thirds of 2022 level

An ancient breed of cattle whose ancestors are thought to have accompanied the Celts as they were pushed to Britain’s fringes by the Romans has been designated as urgently at risk by a UK conservation charity.

Publishing its 2026 watchlist on Tuesday, the Rare Breeds Survival Trust moved white park cattle to its “priority” category as new calf numbers sank last year to less than two-thirds of their 2022 level.

NAOMA, West Virginia — Today, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia ruled in favor of Coal River Mountain Watch, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Appalachian Voices, and Sierra Club, blocking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to grant a Clean Water ... [continued]

The post Judge Blocks Clean Water Act Permit for Mountaintop Removal Mine on Coal River Mountain appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The country is seeing an increase in human-wildlife conflict as the number of megafauna, including rhinos and tigers, grows. But there are efforts to tackle the problem around Chitwan national park through education and training

The tourists lining the steep embankment buzzed with excitement, phones out, snapping away in the twilight as a wild Indian rhinoceros grazed below the Nepali village of Sauraha. Climbing to the main street, the rhino ambled down the middle of the road.

Local people warned tourists to give it plenty of space. All manner of wheeled vehicles slowed, then passed. The rhino turned its horn at a cyclist passing too close, triggering gasps from the assembled crowd.

A manager uses torchlight to guide a wild Indian rhinoceros through the grounds of his hotel in Sauraha

Washington, D.C. — Donald Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act to give the coal industry access to potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, even as the industry has been in decline for nearly two decades. This would be in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars the administration has already forced ... [continued]

The post Trump to Give Coal Industry More Handouts While Americans Pay appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Sets Two Guinness Global Records A 22-day nationwide electric vehicle expedition led by Wil Dasovich has reinforced the viability of long-distance electric mobility in the Philippines, covering more than 3,500 kilometers across 102 cities and municipalities from the northern tip of Luzon to the southern reaches of Mindanao. The “Drive ... [continued]

The post “Drive Electric, Love Pinas” Campaign Completes An End-to-End Philippine EV Journey appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Boston — Today, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled in favor of renewable energy developers, temporarily blocking a number of the Trump administration’s relentless and aggressive attacks on the industry. Since taking office, Donald Trump and his administration have thrown up numerous roadblocks to clean energy ... [continued]

The post WIN: Judge Blocks Trump’s Efforts to Kneecap Renewables appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Kerbside wheelie bins have been used in Australia since the 1980s but the recycling rate is stuck at 44%. Will another recycling bin make a difference?

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

There’s no garbage truck in Kamikatsu.

Instead, the Japanese town’s 1,400 residents take their waste to the local recycling centre, or “Gomi station”, and sort it themselves into more than 40 different categories.

Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter

Every once in a while, reading articles at CleanTechnica, I feel an urge to overcome my reluctance to put myself into the spotlight by writing about my own inventions. I am afraid that Steve Hanley, who happens to be one of my favorite CleanTechnica authors, put up the straw that ... [continued]

The post Inventions That Capitalism Fails appeared first on CleanTechnica.

One way to pay for wildlife conservation is to allow the rich to bag a few animals for high prices. But critics see this approach as an exercise in neocolonialism

You can kill almost anything if you’re willing to pay. Big or small. Land, water or air. Ten a penny or one of the last of its kind. There’s nearly always a way, though it might not make you popular. The Niassa special reserve, a vast reservation larger than Switzerland, stretches for 190 miles along the northern rim of Mozambique, taking in 4.2m hectares of woodland and rivers. The reserve, one of the world’s largest protected areas, is home to elephants, leopards, hyenas, zebras and about 1,000 wild lions.

That word, however: protected. It applies to some, but not all, of its animal inhabitants. Each year, a specific number are set aside for sacrifice, for the greater good. Not long ago,I joined an expedition in Niassa, with one of Africa’s top game-hunting companies.

Analysis of video footage reveals how wave changed as it travelled over mud-rich rice paddies, exerting more force

It is just over 15 years since the devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, killing almost 20,000 people and triggering the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Fresh analysis of video footage of the wave has revealed that the mud-rich coastline made the tsunami far more destructive than it might otherwise have been.

Patrick Sharrocks, from the University of Leeds, and colleagues studied helicopter video footage, along with before and after images from Google Earth, to estimate the speed, shape and power of the tsunami flow front. They found that as the wave travelled over mud-rich rice paddies it changed from a fast-moving, clear-water flow into a thick, gloopy, mud-laden one.

To: Ms. Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition; Mr. Wopke Hoekstra, Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth; Mr. Apoltolos Tzitzikostas, Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism. We, the undersigned NGOs, trade unions, industry actors, industry associations and consumer associations, are joining forces to urge the ... [continued]

The post +20 Industry & Civil Society Organisations Call on the EU to Include All Departing Flights in the EU Carbon Market appeared first on CleanTechnica.

About 500 farmers challenge Green Gen Cymru in high court over alleged disregard for landowners and biosecurity

A group of 500 Welsh farmers have brought a landmark legal claim to the high court over the alleged conduct of a green energy developer planning to build electricity pylon routes across their land.

The court will hear allegations that Green Gen Cymru “unlawfully sought entry to private land, intimidated landowners, and showed disregard for biosecurity and basic rights”, as well as examine laws that force landowners to sell property to utility companies, in a hearing on Tuesday and Wednesday.

As the rising number of vessels in the icy waters increases the risk of environmental disaster, scientists are scrambling to find potential solutions

Last winter, inside the subarctic Churchill Marine Observatory in Canada, scientists embarked on an experiment they hoped would result in a gamechanging remedy for polluted Arctic waters. They released130 litres of diesel into an ice-covered pool filled with raw seawater pumped in from Hudson Bayand naturally occurring oil-eating microbes. The technique had been used successfully during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the scientists wanted to see if they could break down oil in colder waters.

The microbes were sluggish in response and the population showed little change after the first three weeks, says Eric Collins, a microbiologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, who led the project. But that did not last. “When we went back eight weeks later, we saw that there was a big change,” Collins says. “One particular bacterium grew to a very high abundance in the tanks and it was clear that it was feeding on the oil.” But two months is too long to wait should an oil spill occur. Time is of the essence.

‘Stone age’ system of booking cross-border rail tickets holding back climate action by consumers, says thinktank

Europe’s “stone age” system of booking train tickets makes it needlessly difficult for travellers to avoid polluting flights, a report has found.

Booking equivalent train tickets is “difficult or impossible” on almost half of the EU’s busiest international air routes, analysis from the Transport & Environment (T&E) thinktank shows.

The US startup Solx will manufacture new tandem perovskite solar modules in Puerto Rico, with solar cells from Suniva and perovskite glass from Caelux.

The post Puerto Rico Suddenly Emerges As A Perovskite Solar Cell Powerhouse appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The idea that a car can run on water has long been treated in the Philippines as a uniquely local story, carried for decades by the claims of Filipino “inventor” Daniel Dingel and sustained by periodic bursts of public interest whenever fuel prices rise. When the Iran war began, fuel ... [continued]

The post Water-Powered Engine Hoax Isn’t Just A Philippine Invention appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Exclusive: Report finds Natural England has created no new SSSIs, which protect areas from development, since 2023

The government’s wildlife watchdog for England is failing to save nature because it has stopped giving protection to rare wildlife and habitats, according to a new report.

No new sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) have been designated by Natural England since 2023. SSSIs are nationally or internationally important places for rare wildlife and habitats. Without the designation, endangered species can be at risk of being lost to development.

While wildlife populations crash globally, research finds designated areas enable recovery of threatened species

Wildlife and humans are thriving within sites recognised by Unesco, research has found, allowing for the recovery of threatened species and habitats around the world.

While wildlife populations have crashed globally by nearly three-quarters since 1970, those within Unesco-protected areas have remained largely stable.

How to make European ports future-proof in the next review. The maritime sector accounts for 3% of the EU’s total CO2 emissions, amounting to 145.2 million tonnes of CO2 in 2024. Under current policies, maritime emissions could represent one-third of all transport emissions in 2050. Between 5–7% of these emissions — ... [continued]

The post The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation for Shipping appeared first on CleanTechnica.