An average of 2.5 additional plants have been found for every 1°C rise in temperature

Brenna Henn had a long-term grant to study the genetic diversity of Africans and people of African descent. Then her N.I.H. funding was cut.

In this week’s newsletter: From geopolitics to populism, multilateralism is under pressure – but climate action cannot succeed in a fractured world

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January might seem a bit too early to propose a word of the year, but I know mine already: multilateralism – the principle that common problems should have common solutions. It rests on the idea that all countries and people have a stake in the future of the planet we share, and that their rights should be respected. That cooperation beats competition, or going it alone.

Multilateralism is what has kept the UN process of climate diplomacy going, but now the principle is under threat as never before, amid a rising tide of populism and conflict. The US, under Donald Trump, explicitly rejects multilateralism, in favour of carve-ups between great powers. But if we are to stave off climate breakdown, only multilateralism will work.

‘Cities need nature to be happy’: David Attenborough seeks out London’s hidden wildlife

EU’s new ‘green tariff’ rules on high-carbon goods come into force

Renewable energy project approvals hit record high in GB in 2025, data shows

Multilateralism faces a toxic brew of debt, climate crisis and war. It’s time for a reboot | Mo Ibrahim

The ‘new world order’ of the past 35 years is being demolished before our eyes. This is how we must proceed | Gordon Brown

Into the void: how Trump killed international law

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New year plant hunt shows rising temperatures are shifting natural cycles of wildflowers such as daisies

Daisies and dandelions are among hundreds of native plant species blooming in the UK, in what scientists have called a “visible signal” of climate breakdown disrupting the natural world.

A Met Office analysis of data from the annual new year’s plant hunt over the past nine years found an extra 2.5 species in bloom during the new year period for every 1C rise in temperature at a given location during the previous November and December. This year’s hunt started on Thursday and runs until Sunday.

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Scientists are uncovering new clues that a cosmic explosion may have rocked Earth at the end of the last ice age. At major Clovis-era sites, researchers found shocked quartz—evidence of intense heat and pressure consistent with a comet airburst rather than volcanism or human activity. The event could have sparked massive fires, blocked sunlight, and triggered a rapid return to ice-age conditions. These harsh changes may explain the sudden loss of megafauna and the disappearance of the Clovis culture.

Oh Lordy, where to begin? On December 22, the Trump administration urgently dropped a stop-work order on not one but five offshore wind farms spanning five different states on the Atlantic Coast, citing an extremely dire national security emergency. Oh, really? How dire? Clear and present danger dire? Not that ... [continued]

The post The Case Against Offshore Wind Is Already Crumbling (Shocker!) appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Our eyes need to be on the environment in 2026. No longer will we accept individual guilt for climate degradation. Yes, changing behaviors is a starting place to protect the environment, but we can only achieve about one-tenth of the emissions-reduction potential that corporations need to adopt, says the World ... [continued]

The post Here Are Some Crucial Climate Actions You Can Take To Protect The Environment In 2026 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

China recently placed a supercritical carbon dioxide power generator into commercial operation, and the announcement was widely framed as a technological breakthrough. The system, referred to as Chaotan One, is installed at a steel plant in Guizhou province in mountainous southwest China and is designed to recover industrial waste heat ... [continued]

The post China Built A Supercritical CO₂ Generator. That Doesn’t Mean It Will Last. appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Texas has emerged as a hotbed of green hydrogen activity in the US, supported in part by know-how borrowed from the oil and gas industry. Now another iconic fossil fuel state, Oklahoma, is jockeying for a piece of the action. A case in point is the Oklahoma City startup Tobe ... [continued]

The post A Green Hydrogen Innovator In Oklahoma Has A Message For Texas: Hold My Beer appeared first on CleanTechnica.

China is supplying low cost solar panels to many African nations, including South Africa. Doing so also increases its political power.

The post Chinese Solar Panels Are Transforming Africa appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The idea of storing renewable energy in a tank of liquid air has been bubbling under the CleanTechnica radar ever since the UK firm Highview Power proposed building one such facility in Vermont back in 2019. That project never materialized, but the dream of air-sourced, long duration energy storage refuses ... [continued]

The post Loads Of Renewable Energy Can Be Stored In The Air (Liquid Air, That Is) appeared first on CleanTechnica.

As the Trump administration derides climate policy as a ‘scam’, emissions-cutting measures are gaining popularity

A group of progressive politicians and advocates are reframing emissions-cutting measures as a form of economic populism as the Trump administration derides climate policy as a “scam” and fails to deliver on promises to tame energy costs and inflation.

Climate politics were once cast as a test of moral resolve, calling on Americans to accept higher costs to avert environmental catastrophe, but that ignores how rising temperatures themselves drive up costs for working people, said Stevie O’Hanlon, co-founder of the youth-led Sunrise Movement.

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The floods that struck last week just before the first anniversary of the January wildfires show how extreme weather is defining life in the L.A. region.

Teenager allegedly threw a firecracker into dry grass.

Everglades restoration was designed to replenish the drinking water supply in one of the fast-growing parts of the nation. The same effort may help save South Florida from climate change.

By Amy Green

There is a place in the world, one that is among the most vulnerable as the global climate warms, where an extraordinary gesture of hope has endured for a quarter century.

Mandates targeting lifestyle choices, such as urban car bans, can provoke strong resistance, even among people who already try to live sustainably, new study warns

For Antarctic veterans and novices alike, the first sighting of an iceberg on an expedition stays “closest to your heart.”

Agreement signed between KP Group and the Government of Botswana MoU targets development of renewable energy projects with nearly 5 GW capacity KP Group to offer 30 annual scholarships for Botswana citizens MATAR (GUJARAT), India — KP Group, a leading renewable energy company, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ... [continued]

The post India’s KP Group to Invest INR 36,000 Crore in Botswana’s Renewable Energy Sector appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Cutting car crashes, injuries, and deaths is a perennial goal in city after city and state after state. Little things get implemented to help, sometimes big things, but it’s never enough. It’s often a case of two steps forward, two steps back. However, the city of Austin seems to be ... [continued]

The post Austin Cuts Pedestrian Crashes At 16 Intersections ~50% appeared first on CleanTechnica.

We learned a lot in 2025 about how the way we eat affects our climate and environment. Many of us started to rethink our food choices in relation to a warming climate. A number of 2025 studies were released that chronicled the intersection of food and climate emissions, and, over ... [continued]

The post Our Biggest CleanTechnica Food & Climate Stories For 2025 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

It took years, but New York City (NYC) finally implemented congestion pricing on January 5, 2025. (That’s 22 years after London first implemented it.) Aimed at cutting pollution in the city, would it work? Yes, it would! Paul Day of Air Quality News shares that a Cornell University study has ... [continued]

The post Wowza — NYC Congestion Pricing Cut Pollution 22% In Just 6 Months! appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Before diving into a reflection on the year, it feels important to start with gratitude. None of this work happens in isolation. Over the past year, an extraordinary number of people took the time to share their expertise, challenge my assumptions, correct my mistakes, and patiently help me understand subjects ... [continued]

The post From Models to Money: Reflections on a Year of Practical Decarbonization appeared first on CleanTechnica.

If you’ve used AI from Google, ChatGPT, or elsewhere to try to get answers to a variety of queries, you’ve probably noticed some odd and incorrect information some of the time. Part of the problem with this, to me, is that the answers are provided in an authoritative way that ... [continued]

The post Google AI Giving Wrong Information On US EV Tax Credit appeared first on CleanTechnica.

When I started covering the solar industry, the largest solar power project in the world had 100 megawatts (MW) of power capacity. This month, the largest offshore solar PV project build in the open sea (not a lake) was deployed, and it’s rated at 1,000 MW, or one gigawatt. Naturally, ... [continued]

The post China Gets World’s Largest Offshore Solar PV Project While USA … I Better Not Speak appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Words have the power to change the world. Here is a collection of thoughts from across time by some of our greatest thinkers.

The post Words Of Wisdom For The End Of A Chaotic Year appeared first on CleanTechnica.

BEVs reach 24% market share! EVs are picking up in Europe, with some 370,000 plugin vehicles being registered in Europe in November, 258,000 of them being BEVs. Overall, plugin vehicles were up 36% YoY. Expect December 2025 to establish a new record score, maybe even above the 425,000 unit mark. ... [continued]

The post What Falling Sales? BEVs Jump 37% YoY in November in Europe! appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Legal action has brought important decisions, from the scrapping of fossil fuel plants to revised climate plans

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris agreement. It is also a decade since another key moment in climate justice, when a state was ordered for the first time to cut its carbon emissions faster to protect its citizens from climate change. The Urgenda case, which was upheld by the Netherlands’ supreme court in 2019, was one of the first rumblings of a wave of climate litigation around the world that campaigners say has resulted in a new legal architecture for climate protection.

Over the past 12 months, there have been many more important rulings and tangible changes on climate driven by legal action.

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CANONSBURG, Pennsylvania — Noble Environmental, Inc. (“Noble”) completed the sale of approximately $34.8 million in Investment Tax Credits (“ITCs”) generated by two of its renewable natural gas (“RNG”) facilities, along with the commencement of commercial operations at three new facilities, two of which were included in the transaction. The three ... [continued]

The post Noble Environmental Announces Sale of $34.8 Million in Investment Tax Credits, and Commercial Operations of 3 New RNG Facilities appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Microplastics in rivers, lakes, and oceans aren’t just drifting debris—they’re constantly leaking invisible clouds of chemicals into the water. New research shows that sunlight drives this process, causing different plastics to release distinct and evolving mixtures of dissolved organic compounds as they weather. These chemical plumes are surprisingly complex, often richer and more biologically active than natural organic matter, and include additives, broken polymer fragments, and oxidized molecules.

Guardian US readers share how global heating and biodiversity loss affected their lives in ways that don’t always make the headlines

The past year was another one of record-setting heat and catastrophic storms. But across the US, the climate crisis showed up in smaller, deeply personal ways too.

Campfires that once defined summer trips were never lit due to wildfire risks. There were no bites where fish were once abundant, forests turned to meadows after a big burn and childhood memories of winter wonderlands turned to slush.

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Longest lightning, the first AI-generated genomes and biggest black hole smashup were among this year’s top science superlatives.

I’ve spent six years writing about environmental justice. The uncomfortable truth is that we’re not all in it together – but people power is reshaping the fight

It’s been another year of climate chaos and inadequate political action. And it’s hard not to feel despondent and powerless.

I joined the Guardian full time in 2019, as the paper’s first environmental justice correspondent, and have reported from across the US and the region over the past six years. It’s been painful to see so many families – and entire communities – devastated by fires, floods, extreme heat, sea level rise and food shortages. But what’s given me hope during these six years of reporting as both an environmental and climate justice reporter are the people fighting to save our planet from catastrophe – in their communities, on the streets and in courtrooms across the world.

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The challenges and strains have been almost too much to take. But in 2025, words of depth and courage have been an antidote to numbness

I once saw a young glassblower in Istanbul, still new to his craft, shatter a beautiful vase while taking it out of the furnace. The artisan master standing by his side calmly nodded and said something that I still think about. He told him: “You put too much pressure on it, you kept it unbalanced and you forgot that it, too, has a heart.”

The year we are leaving behind has been plagued from the start by a series of social, economic, environmental, technological and institutional challenges, all happening with such speed and intensity that we are yet to fully comprehend their impact on our lives, let alone on future generations. As the overwhelming strain of domestic and geopolitical changes continues to build up, I cannot help but remember the man’s words. Too much pressure. Unstable, uncertain and replete with deep inequalities. This could well be the year we forgot that the Earth, too, has a heart. It definitely feels like the year when the world was broken.

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Average December temperatures in Iceland typically range between -1C and 4C

Fire chief says summer, the UK’s hottest on record, was ‘one of the most challenging for wildfires that we’ve ever faced’

Ten English fire services tackled a record number of grassland, woodland and crop fires during what was the UK’s hottest spring and summer on record, figures show.

In total nearly 27,000 wildfires were dealt with by fire services in England during the prolonged dry weather of 2025, according to analysis by PA Media.

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By Caron Whitaker The U.S. Department of Transportation recently announced a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for BUILD grants, making $1.5 billion available based on outlays from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. With grant awards up to $25 million available for projects, this NOFO presents an array ... [continued]

The post $1.5 Billion in BUILD Grants Available for 2026 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

As Steve Hanley explained earlier today, Tesla has published Wall Street analyst estimates of Tesla vehicle deliveries and energy storage deployments for the first time ever on its investor relations site. These are consensus estimates from 20 Wall Street firms combined. When I first saw news of this, I thought ... [continued]

The post Why Did Tesla Publish Wall St. Delivery Estimates? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Tribal utility, localities, and consumer and environmental groups argue tax guidance illegally hurts renewable energy. WASHINGTON, D.C. — A broad array of groups with strong interests in clean and affordable energy sued the IRS and Treasury Department over new rules for tax credits that unfairly and illegally discriminate against wind ... [continued]

The post IRS Sued Over Anti-Solar & Anti-Wind Tax Rules appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Unsurprisingly, projects, jobs, and whole companies have been falling as a result of Donald Trump’s war on renewable energy and electric vehicles. Because he loves pollution so much, and is eager to help funnel more money to his billionaire friends in the fossil fuel industry, Trump has been pulling cleantech ... [continued]

The post Solar Company Spread Across 9 States Shuts Down Shop, Blames Trump’s OBBBA appeared first on CleanTechnica.