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Climate

Why Should You Care About Changes In Atlantic Ocean Currents?

What is causing a critical Atlantic Ocean current system to weaken much sooner than generally predicted? You guessed it: global climate change. Data accumulated in an April 2026 study, published in Science Advances, points to likely catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa, and the Americas as a result of these Atlantic ... [continued]

The post Why Should You Care About Changes In Atlantic Ocean Currents? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

‘Closing the chapter’ on Fema: Trump panel seeks to weaken disaster response amid climate crisis

Council’s plan will leave Federal Emergency Management Agency ill-equipped to respond to extreme weather events, experts say

Sweeping changes may be in store at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the nation’s frontline emergency response coordinator, that experts warned could further erode US capacity to handle disasters as the risks of extreme weather fueled by the climate crisis continue to rise.

Fears about a fundamental overhaul of Fema’s form and function have been brewing since Donald Trump returned to the White House. After castigating the agency over claims that it was too expensive and “doesn’t get the job done”, Trump set to gutting Fema as an early priority for his second term.

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Climate

Inside the Indigenous Fight to Save Alaska’s Bristol Bay

Bound by a common threat, unlikely allies of tribes, commercial fishermen and the conservation community came together to stop a gold and copper mine, and won.

Interview by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood with Alannah Hurley, executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay.

Climate

Ireland’s Energy Poverty Problem Needs Flexible Electric Heat, Not Fabric-First Delay

Ireland’s energy poverty problem is not an electricity access problem. Almost every Irish household is connected to electricity. The problem is whether households can keep a warm, healthy home without cutting back on food, medicine, transport, or other essentials. That makes Ireland different from countries where the main energy poverty ... [continued]

The post Ireland’s Energy Poverty Problem Needs Flexible Electric Heat, Not Fabric-First Delay appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Georgia Public Service Commission Must Protect Ratepayers in Fuel Cost Hearings

ATLANTA — After two days of testimony from experts and advocates, it’s clear the Georgia Public Service Commission must find new ways to protect ratepayers from excessive fuel costs incurred by Georgia Power. In the hearing, three clean energy organizations urged the Commission to reform the way Georgia Power charges ... [continued]

The post Georgia Public Service Commission Must Protect Ratepayers in Fuel Cost Hearings appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Ryanair’s Global Emissions Are Now 50% Higher Than In 2019, The Largest Increase Worldwide

Aviation is the only polluting sector escaping carbon pricing in Europe, with two-thirds of its CO2 emissions not covered by the ETS. Europe’s aviation sector’s 2025 emissions highest ever New analysis by T&E reveals that in 2025, emissions from flights departing from airports in Europe surpassed pre-pandemic levels for the ... [continued]

The post Ryanair’s Global Emissions Are Now 50% Higher Than In 2019, The Largest Increase Worldwide appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

EU Regulator Skepticism Over Tesla Self-Driving Tech

Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is live in the Netherlands at last, the first European country to allow it. Tesla fans there are loving it, and Tesla fans more broadly are excited about the potential for broader rollout and for eventual Full Self-Driving (Unsupervised) — in other words, true full self ... [continued]

The post EU Regulator Skepticism Over Tesla Self-Driving Tech appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Why Is Honda Still Suspending $15 Billion EV Factory in Canada?

Last May, Honda decided to “suspend” a massive EV factory it had planned to build in Canada, a blow to the North American EV market and overall EV transition. But why? “There are challenges with the US tariffs, unjustified tariffs in the auto sector,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said in ... [continued]

The post Why Is Honda Still Suspending $15 Billion EV Factory in Canada? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Volkswagen Celebrates 50 Years of GTI: World Premiere of the Electric ID. Polo GTI at the 24h Nürburgring

50 years after the debut of the original — Volkswagen is now unveiling the new ID. Polo GTI as the first electric GTI model in front of a large audience The challenge of the Nordschleife — three Golf GTI Clubsport 24h will take part in the classic endurance race in the ‘Green ... [continued]

The post Volkswagen Celebrates 50 Years of GTI: World Premiere of the Electric ID. Polo GTI at the 24h Nürburgring appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

China’s Electric Concrete Mixer Boom Is A Warning To Slow Heavy Truck Markets

Battery-electric concrete mixers are becoming one of heavy transport’s more interesting electrification stories, not because they are glamorous, but because they are difficult-looking vehicles that are proving easier to electrify than many expected. In China, they have moved from niche to major new-sales category in five years. Outside China, they ... [continued]

The post China’s Electric Concrete Mixer Boom Is A Warning To Slow Heavy Truck Markets appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Key West And A Sustainability Plan That Could Make The Federal Government Growl

I’ve been traveling in Key West this week. If you haven’t been to this southernmost point of the US, you must — it’s a real treat. With Cuba just 90 miles offshore, Key West stands apart from the rest of the continental United States. It’s authentic Florida: low rise buildings, ... [continued]

The post Key West And A Sustainability Plan That Could Make The Federal Government Growl appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Airline emissions in Europe top pre-Covid levels despite pledge to decarbonise

Promises to cut emissions and use more fuel-efficient planes fail to stop rise, with Ryanair’s carbon footprint 50% up on 2019

Emissions from flying in Europe have now passed pre-pandemic levels, with Ryanair’s carbon footprint 50% higher than in 2019, research has shown.

Total aviation emissions continue to increase despite industry pledges to decarbonise and the introduction of more fuel-efficient planes, driven by the massive expansion of low-cost carriers.

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Climate

Inequality causing 100,000 extra deaths a year from heat and cold in Europe

Findings come after third-hottest April on record globally and amid fears of more brutal European summer weather

Economic inequality adds more than 100,000 deaths to the vast toll from heat and cold in Europe each year, research has found.

Cutting levels inequality to match that of Europe’s most equal region, as measured by the Gini index, would reduce temperature-related mortality by as much as 30%, equating to 109,866 people, the study found.

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Climate

EV Penetration Continues to Grow Down Under — April Update

In April 2026, 25,087 plugin vehicles were sold into the Australian market, out of 94,049 total vehicle sales. This represents almost 27% of the market. Battery electric vehicles achieved 15,459 units sold, and plugin hybrids 9,628. Month on month, BEV numbers appear to have stayed steady, while PHEVs have increased. ... [continued]

The post EV Penetration Continues to Grow Down Under — April Update appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

XPENG Unveils The “World Model Accelerator” X-Cache, Which Requires No Training, Is Plug-And-Play, And Boosts Inference Speed By 2.7 Times

Guangzhou, May 6, 2026 — XPENG (NYSE: XPEV, HKEX: 9868), a leading China-based high-tech company, previously released the X-World technical report and demonstrated the practical value of this technology in XPENG’s autonomous driving. Recently, XPENG once again announced advancements in world model technology, the X-Cache technical report. X-Cache leverages the continuity ... [continued]

The post XPENG Unveils The “World Model Accelerator” X-Cache, Which Requires No Training, Is Plug-And-Play, And Boosts Inference Speed By 2.7 Times appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

SEC Moves Toward Rescinding Climate Disclosure Rule, Retreating Further From Investor Protection

SEC Moves Toward Rescinding Climate Disclosure Rule, Retreating Further From Investor Protection WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission has submitted a proposed rule titled “Rescission of Climate-Related Disclosure Rules” to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review, advancing the agency’s effort to formally rescind its 2024 climate disclosure ... [continued]

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Climate

Space Is Becoming Climate Infrastructure, And China Knows It

Betting against China in space has become one of those comfortable Western assumptions that deserves to be retired. It sits beside earlier assumptions that Chinese solar would remain second tier, Chinese EVs would remain cheap copies, and Chinese batteries would never define global cost curves. The pattern is familiar. Analysts ... [continued]

The post Space Is Becoming Climate Infrastructure, And China Knows It appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Journalism

Semafor’s new AI tool helped boil down its entire flagship conference into nine takeaways

On April 13, more than 500 CEOs and other power brokers gathered in Washington, D.C. to join Semafor World Economy. Across the five-day event, hundreds of speakers took the stage, including Goldman Sachs President John Waldron, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong, and nine sitting U.S. cabinet officials.

In the weeks since the event wrapped, Semafor has been experimenting with how AI models can help produce new insights — and editorial content — about Semafor World Economy. The result is a new AI-assisted editorial product called Semafor Intelligence. Drafted by journalists, the report is based on an analysis by a custom-built AI tool. The first edition boils down countless hours of transcripts from the flagship event into nine key themes about the global economy and where it’s headed.

Each banner topic — including supply chains, the Iran war, and the AI race — leads to a bottom-line analysis and relevant quotes from onstage speakers.

“This is AI doing something that’s really hard for people to do,” Ben Smith, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor, told me. “Even if we weren’t moderating interviews, editing stories, talking to sources, and doing all the things journalists do [during an event], it would be impossible to really consume all the information — all that speech — and walk away with a really clear sense of everything that was said and what the prevailing opinions were.”

Smith is quick to clarify that Semafor Intelligence is not an AI-written product. While the tool initially output more than nine central themes, journalists reviewed, consolidated, and curated the final list. Humans also wrote and edited the copy. Each quote in the report links to timestamped YouTube videos of the event, ensuring accuracy.

“AI tools are incredibly powerful, but we’re also intensely aware of our responsibility to our audience that we’re giving them really high-quality material that is not hallucinated,” said Smith.

In a thread on X, Reed Albergotti, Semafor’s tech editor, said that he built the first iteration of Semafor Intelligence in less than an hour using OpenAI’s coding agent, Codex. That prototype was later refined and tested with help from Alastair Clements, Semafor’s senior director of data and insights. The current version of the tool leans on several different machine learning models, including an embedding model from Voyage, an AI company owned by MongoDB. Embedding models can convert text datasets into vectors — lists of numbers that capture the meaning of each piece of text. For journalists, these vectors make it possible to map out the ideas in that dataset and see which themes naturally cluster together. This process, called “vectorizing,” has been used by other data journalists to analyze giant text corpora, including Elon Musk’s entire tweet history.

Semafor Intelligence screenshot

While these past reporting projects might have taken a team of journalists weeks or even months to conduct, Semafor claims it built its custom tool for Semafor Intelligence in a matter of days. Meanwhile, the whole product pipeline only cost a few hundred dollars to run, according to a more detailed blogpost about the methodology published on Semafor.

“Nobody sat through all 250 sessions, and nobody could have read all 250 transcripts and analyzed them in this way,” wrote Albergotti on X. “AI created a lot more work for us but also allowed us to give readers something valuable.”

The new tool will likely help the newsroom push out more editorial content to support its growing events business. (According to The Wall Street Journal, roughly half of Semafor’s $40 million in revenue last year came from events.) Semafor Intelligence is slated to create similar reports about the next editions of Silicon Valley & The World and The Next Three Billion, the publication’s two other signature events.

“Our audience doesn’t want AI slop, and they also don’t want human slop, which there is also an enormous amount of on the internet,” said Smith. “They expect really high-quality analysis and whatever tool we’re using to get there is secondary.”

Photo of Howard Lutnick and Ben Smith onstage at Semafor World Economy in Washington, D.C. on April 17, 2026 used courtesy of Semafor. Screenshot of Semafor Intelligence’s vector database used courtesy of Semafor.

Climate

Interview: VinFast CEO For ASEAN On The Current Oil Crisis & Electrification

Fuel prices have begun to ease from the spike triggered by the Iran-linked supply shock, but the direction of travel is now widely understood. The peak may be behind us, yet a full return to pre-crisis fuel costs is increasingly unlikely. That shift, subtle but structural, is starting to reshape ... [continued]

The post Interview: VinFast CEO For ASEAN On The Current Oil Crisis & Electrification appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Journalism

News podcasts are, increasingly, something you watch (but The Daily still works best as audio)

Large publishers see video as one big future for podcasts, according to a report out Thursday from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ). They’re certainly not abandoning audio, but they’re aware that many young people hear “podcast” and think “YouTube.”

“The discovery mechanisms for video are much better. Video as a medium is extremely personable and transferrable,” Nina Lassam, vice president of audio and video news at The New York Times, told Nic Newman, the report’s author and a senior research associate at RISJ. “People share clips on Instagram, on TikTok, and on YouTube Shorts. I think the audience is new, and I think it is bigger.”

Many publishers are also prioritizing daily news and conversational podcasts, moving away from expensive, highly produced Serial-type shows. News podcasts have “become more reactive,” Phil Maynard, head of podcasts at The Guardian, said. “Podcasts that were taking two to three days to turn around weren’t necessarily what the audience wanted, or at least, it wasn’t the only thing they wanted. They also wanted reactive stuff, and they wanted the people that they trust most to tell them what’s just happened.” So The Guardian launched The Latest, a daily 10-minute video podcast, as a spinoff of its deep-dive Today in Focus.

“Podcasts fit well into my routine because they allow me to stay informed and entertained without needing to dedicate exclusive time to them,” Ben, a 23-year-old from the U.K., told RISJ.

Does video change that? It’s hard to watch a podcast on YouTube while walking the dog or doing the dishes. In interviews with 50 regular news podcast consumers from the U.S., the U.K., and Norway, RISJ found that people switch back and forth between audio or video depending on where they are, and may primarily be listening even if they have a video of a podcast on. “If I am working remotely from home and don’t have anything going on, I would say that it is definitely about 80% listening to video, the other 20% audio,” Jamie, a 47-year-old in the U.S., said. “And then when I’m working away from home, then I would say the majority of time it is about 80% audio, 20% video.”

Another American, 31-year-old Nathan, said video podcasts let you “see the emotions better” and, because he’s already a heavy YouTube user, defaults to it for podcasts, too. “He knows that podcasts exist on other platforms (e.g. Apple),” the report notes, “but says he has never even explored that option because it is so convenient to have them in the same place as his other favorite content.”

YouTube is not the only platform offering video podcasts. The report notes that “by 2024 there were over 250,000 video podcasts on [Spotify] and half of the top 20 shows, including the Joe Rogan Experience and Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy, are now available in video.” (Apple Podcasts did not begin supporting video until this year.)

Not every podcast works well as video. Notably, The New York Times’ flagship The Daily — which remains the most-mentioned news podcast in the U.S. in RISJ’s research, followed by another audio-first product, NPR’s Up First — remains primarily audio. (Its tagline: “This is how the news should sound.”) “Making The Daily exactly the same in video would be a challenge. The production of the show is established in audio and our listeners have grown to value the relationship they have with that journalism in audio,” Lassam said.

“Whilst we are really interested in and are investing in video podcasts,” said Nicole Jackson, The Guardian’s global head of multimedia, “we are also keenly aware that there is still this huge audio-only audience out there.” That means doing some video interviews even for audio-focused investigations, and creating promotional videos for social media. The Guardian’s Football Weekly now has a full-video version.

“The challenge for the business overall is that we are both trying to maintain discoverability from the collapse of search and the growth of AI, while also maintaining high numbers of highly engaged subscribers,” said John Shields, The Economist’s director of podcasts. “And podcast videos crystalize that dilemma.”

You can read the full report here.