Interesting Ideas

Can you spot which battery is NMC? The one that looks like a pillow is NMC. The one that looks like a Pop-Tart is not. How do we know this? Because the puffed up battery came from a video made of an NMC battery. It was placed in a bath ... [continued]

The post Ziroth is Wrong: Donut Lab’s Battery Is Not NMC appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Rafael Moreno, whose company has opened demo plant in Brazil, says market is ‘nervous’ as Trump-Xi summit looms

The head of a mining company hoping to supply the EU with rare earths in two years’ time has said it is “paramount” to end China’s stranglehold on the supply of the raw materials used in everything from cars to wind turbines and military jets.

As Donald Trump and China’s president, Xi Jinping, prepare to meet on Thursday in their second summit of the year, Rafael Moreno said it was also “imperative” that they do a deal for Beijing to ease up, once again, on its threat to ban exports of rare earths.

Agricultural spray drones are no longer an emerging technology in China. They are ordinary farm machinery at extraordinary scale. China entered 2026 with about 309,000 plant-protection drones, and those aircraft performed roughly 203 million hectare-treatments during 2025. A hectare treated three times counts as three hectare-treatments, so that figure measures ... [continued]

The post China Is Doing About 30 Times More Agricultural Drone Work Than The U.S. appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Nova Scotia is laying plans for a massive offshore wind project that far exceeds the Canadian province's electricity demand, with a ripple effect on access to clean power in the US.

The post Canada Haunts Trump With New Offshore Wind Project appeared first on CleanTechnica.

After summer’s heatwaves, prepare for winter of storms and heavy rain, with millions of UK homes at risk of flooding

The accelerating climate crisis and this year’s record-breaking El Niño mean that, although the summer’s heatwaves are still fresh in the memory, households in the UK are already being told to prepare for a potentially destructive winter of storms and heavy rain – leaving millions of homes at risk of flooding.

Government action is needed to improve flood defences and build reliance on a national and regional level. But with the UK’s flood season just weeks away, the Guardian spoke to experts to find out what action communities and individuals can take to make their neighbourhoods and homes more resilient, from self-closing airbricks to deflated children’s footballs.

People are increasingly crossing paths with the wild animals as homes ring the outskirts of forests, sparking a new era of coexistence

Every year, as summer draws to a close and fall begins, California’s bears get hungry.

Black bears have long roamed the state, hunting for acorns, ants and pine nuts by the bucketload to pack on calories before hibernation. But increasingly, for every berry and root, there’s an even greater temptation: our trash and the detritus of human existence.

Much of the UK is still officially in drought after its hottest summer on record, but grasslands are slowly recovering their colour

The landscapes of southern England and Wales are slowly regaining their colour after this summer’s extreme heat.

The UK’s hottest summer on record left the south of the country dried out and brown, making the impact of the drought particularly visual.

A veritable bonfire of anticipation is building around the new Elon Musk documentary "Musk," with a generous assist from none other than the King of Publicity, Musk himself.

The post Streisand Effect Goes to Work on New Elon Musk Documentary appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Intensified by this year’s super El Niño, fires in Borneo and Sumatra are emitting toxic air for swathes of the population in Indonesia and its neighbours

For months, parts of Indonesia’s Borneo and Sumatra islands have been ablaze. The fires are sometimes lit illegally as a cheap way to clear land for plantations of oil palm, of which Indonesia is the world’s largest producer.

So prevalent is the technique that it even has a special term: slash and burn.

The world is suddenly full of webs and hairy legs. But why? And what do they belong to? Meet the spiders you’re most likely to encounter, from cardinals to false wolves

Summer is at an end, and suddenly spiders seem to be everywhere – in your house, in your garden, in your hair. Fresh webs hang from doorways, walls, shrubs and fence posts, creating invisible obstacle courses. Where do all these spiders come from, what kind are they and what, if anything, should we do about them?

The short answer to the question “Why are there so many more spiders at this time of year?” is: there aren’t. They are just more obvious. Dave Clarke, an ectotherm (“cold-blooded” animal) specialist at the Zoological Society of London, says: “There are more spiders around in the spring, because that’s when they hatch from their egg sacs, and there are hundreds of babies in each egg sac. But they’re small and not very obvious. They grow up during the summer and, at this time of year, they reach their maximum size.” Their webs are also correspondingly larger.

The electric-aviation contest is often presented as a race between aircraft startups. That is probably the wrong unit of analysis. An airplane that flies once, wins a certification milestone or accumulates a large order book has demonstrated something useful, but it has not demonstrated an industry. What matters is whether ... [continued]

The post China’s Electric Aviation Advantage Is A Transport System, Not A Prototype appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Stanhope, Weardale: I’ve realised in that time that beauty and fascination can lie in the most mundane of plants – in this case, broad-leaved dock

After another exceptionally dry summer, there’s a nagging question lurking at the back of naturalists’ minds: which species will be the winners and losers in our evolving climate?

Throughout summer’s heatwaves and drought, I watched a dense stand of broad-leaved docks, Rumex obtusifolius, thrive while surrounding fields turned the colour of bleached straw. They have promising credentials as drought survivors, thanks to a deep taproot, fast, early spring growth and a long-lasting dormant seed bank in the soil.

Harvard economists calculate that EV sales will accelerate rapidly in the US, despite last year's sharp U-turn in federal energy policy.

The post EV Sales At 32% — No, Make That 38%! — By 2030 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Electric, shmetric. A car is a car, right? You get in, start it up, and go where you need to go. What’s the big deal? That sort of thinking is what nearly killed Hertz after its owners — a couple of B School whiz kids with more money than brains ... [continued]

The post An EV Is Not The Same As A Conventional Car. Who Knew? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Northern Roots is launching Britain’s biggest urban farm and eco-park, in an effort to boost people’s health and wellbeing

Standing in the open green space of Northern Roots, it is hard to imagine the landscape as it once was.

Two cotton mills, two coalmines and an industrial railway once occupied this 65-hectare (160-acre) site in Oldham, Greater Manchester. Later, about 24 hectares became a tip, with much of the space left to nature.

High gas prices and a never-ending wave of new BEVs has allowed August to reach 65% EV market share, a new record! However, while record market share was achieved in the past thanks to strong EV sales, this time, the record achievement is thanks to a significant ICE (internal combustion ... [continued]

The post The Unstoppable Rise of Leapmotor — August’s China EV Sales Report (45% BEV Share) appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Montana may seem like a solidly red state, but its people tend to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic in their views. For instance, Section I of Article IX of the Montana Constitution reads: The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for ... [continued]

The post Montana Anti-Citizens United Bill Is A Form Of Soft Secession appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Trump says he digs coal – but pneumoconiosis cases are at a 50-year high, and sick miners are mired in benefit delays

For 38 years, Josh Armes worked as a coal miner in West Virginia and Virginia.

After retirement, Armes, 74, of Grundy, Virginia, was diagnosed with black lung disease, medically known as coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP), caused by breathing in coal dust over long periods, which irreversibly damages the lungs.

Amid record-shattering heatwaves and popular demand for climate action, why are politicians often timid or in denial?

It was, according to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the “summer of truth”. Climate chaos ripped through Europe and the northern hemisphere, sending heat records tumbling, scorching crops in the fields, burning forests, emptying rivers and reservoirs, warping train tracks, melting roads and killing about 35,000 people in Europe alone.

The EU has estimated the damage at about €180bn, and the full bill is yet to arrive: harvests have been depleted, which will probably raise food price inflation, and expensive repairs to infrastructure have only just begun.

Qualms about Chinese cars seem to have vanished, as prices come down and technology goes up. Meet the Jaecoo J5. The Jaecoo J5 has been a consistent high seller since its debut only a few months ago. We first wrote about it here. As I complied my monthly update of ... [continued]

The post Jaecoo J5 — Value-for-Money Sales Wonder in Australia appeared first on CleanTechnica.