Interesting Ideas

Crops and flowers rely on them for survival, but wild bees are declining – and crucial nutrients will go missing from our diets as a result

There are few ways in and out of Nepal’s Jumla district. The Karnali highway, considered one of the world’s most dangerous roads, provides the only land link, splicing through the Himalayas to connect Jumla’s terraced valleys to the rest of the country. As such, the 120,000 people that live there are almost entirely self-sufficient, with most of them eating and selling what they grow.

It’s a tenuous existence, plagued by food insecurity and malnutrition. In recent years, local beekeepers have bemoaned languishing hives and dwindling honey production, observing that roughly half of their bees seem to have vanished over the past decade. These concerns, however, ignore an even more insidious impact.

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.

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”.

Strawberry Hill, Bedfordshire: After an evening round the campfire, we head into the wonderfully, chaotically alive scrub, to hear the headline act

“Now I walk in beauty / Beauty is before me”. Earlier this evening we learned the simple melody to this Navajo prayer, and sang it as a round in the hawthorn clearing, adding our voices to the chorus of chiffchaff, blackcap and garden warbler. Afterwards we sat for a few moments, listening, newly aware of the beauty before us. Across the meadow, a cuckoo began to call.

Now night has fallen, and all is silent as we follow a narrow track through scrub and young woodland on the 150-hectare Strawberry Hill Wildlife Trust reserve. Our music around the campfire was merely a warm-up to an evening of Singing With Nightingales, and tonight’s event is part of Exeter University’s research into the effects of nature connection on chronic pain.

Leading nonprofit and clean energy advisor collaborate to lower energy costs and reduce carbon emissions in Illinois. Trinity Services and Common Energy today announced a partnership to support five community solar projects across the greater Chicago area. Trinity Services is a nonprofit organization serving over 6,800 adults and children with ... [continued]

The post Electricity Savings for Residents with Disabilities Thanks to Community Solar Power appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Conservationists say cherished creatures such as whales, dolphins and seabirds are being killed in large numbers by fishing tackle

Thousands of Britain’s most charismatic and protected marine wildlife, including whales, porpoises, dolphins, seals and seabirds are being killed as “collateral damage” by fishing vessels every year, according to the first-ever analysis of bycatch data.

The analysis, by the Wildlife and Countryside Link, a coalition of voluntary conservation groups, reveals the devastating toll bycatch, the accidental capture and killing of non-target species by fishing vessels, is having on marine species.

Part 1: The New Establishment The Philippine automotive market has moved beyond asking whether electrification will arrive. At the tenth edition of the Philippine International Motor Show (PIMS), the question was no longer if alternative powertrains would become mainstream, but which technologies, brands, and business models would define the transition. ... [continued]

The post The Year Electrification Took Over The Philippine International Motor Show (Part 1) appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Greenpeace calculates that wealthiest contribute nearly $1tn of damage a year with ownership-based emissions

Ultra-wealthy people zooming across the world on their private jets, lounging on yachts and conspicuous by their Instagrammable consumption are among the most easily identified individual culprits when it comes to the climate crisis – but new research argues that it is not just their heady lifestyles to blame, but also their bank accounts.

Through their ownership of companies and private financial and physical assets, from oil producers to property developments, the super-rich are responsible for an outsized slice of the greenhouse gases that are overheating the planet. The top 1% of people by wealth, through their shareholdings and investments, control about a quarter of global annual emissions in total.

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.

Salt Lake City — The 90-day ordinance adoption period for the Utah Renewable Communities (URC) program concluded on Tuesday, June 2 after the city of Midvale unanimously voted to adopt the program, bringing the total number of participating communities to 16. The first-of-its-kind program that has sparked national attention will bring affordable, ... [continued]

The post 16 Utah Cities Choose to Opt-in to Groundbreaking Clean Energy Program to Bring 100% Clean Energy to Grid appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Targeted vaccination and improved testing planned as part of drive to eradicate disease by 2038

Cattle will be vaccinated against tuberculosis from 2030 as a “gamechanging” part of a new strategy to drive eradication of the disease in England by 2038. In parallel, the last badger culls are expected to end by 2029, with vaccination of badgers expanded.

More than 20,000 infected cattle are slaughtered each year, costing taxpayers £100m and inflicting a heavy toll on affected farmers’ livelihoods and mental health. Mass culling of badgers began in 2013 and has killed about 250,000 animals, at a cost of about £60m.

The US Department of Defense has declared that BYD, Nio, CATL, Baidu, and some other large Chinese manufacturers and technology companies are “Chinese military companies” — they have been put on the Department of Defense’s Section 1260H. NIO, an all-electric vehicle company that sells EVs in Europe and other countries ... [continued]

The post NIO Refutes US Dept of Defense Claim That It’s Linked To The Chinese Military appeared first on CleanTechnica.

I was invited to a GM event in San Francisco on June 9th where GM made three big announcements: GM is activating vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capability for existing customers, with no new hardware required. GM is expanding grid-scale battery storage with a big bet on sodium-ion technology (this article). GM’s new ... [continued]

The post GM Empower Event — GM Announces Sodium-Ion Grid-Scale Battery Storage Developed In The US appeared first on CleanTechnica.

In 2024, the Tesla Model Y was the most sold automobile in the world. In 2025, it was a close second. It sold more than the Ford F-Series, Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, and BYD Song. The grey 2026 Model Y Rear Wheel Drive is the least expensive version at $39,990. ... [continued]

The post New Tesla Purchase? Even the Base Level Model Y Is Incredible! appeared first on CleanTechnica.

I was invited to a GM event in San Francisco on June 9th where GM made three big announcements: GM is activating vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capability for existing customers, with no new hardware required. GM is expanding grid-scale battery storage with a big bet on sodium-ion technology. GM’s new “Energy Pass” ... [continued]

The post GM Energy Pass: One Universal Interface For Public Charging appeared first on CleanTechnica.

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

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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.

The 700 projects include wind and solar farms, battery storage, gas and hydro plans

More than half the renewable energy projects needed to meet the government’s clean power targets by 2030 are now able to plug into the electricity grid after years of delay, according to the system operator.

The National Energy System Operator (Neso) has offered more than 700 clean energy projects in Great Britain a grid connection date since the start of the year, after a two-year process to unblock a bottleneck that threatened to delay projects into the 2030s.

U.S. Exceeds 6 Million Solar Installations Nationwide WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States added 7.8 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity in the first quarter of 2026, surpassing 6 million cumulative installations as solar remained the leading source of new power added to the grid. Despite changing tax policy and ... [continued]

The post Solar & Storage Provide Over 90% of All New Power Added to the U.S. Grid in Q1, Despite Headwinds in Washington appeared first on CleanTechnica.

I was invited to a GM event in San Francisco on June 9th where GM made three big announcements: GM is activating vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capability for existing customers, with no new hardware required (this article). GM is expanding grid-scale battery storage with a big bet on sodium-ion technology. GM’s new ... [continued]

The post GM Activates Vehicle To Grid (V2G) Capability For Existing Customers, With No New Hardware Required appeared first on CleanTechnica.

There is a distinct difference between watching an industrial birth from the clean gallery of a press junket and standing on the factory floor while the machinery runs at scale. Five years ago, I wrote a piece for CleanTechnica outlining six reasons why VinFast could become an electric vehicle superpower. ... [continued]

The post Op-Ed: Back in Hai Phong and the Third Time’s Even More Electrifying appeared first on CleanTechnica.