May 25
Solar panels envisioned almost a hundred years ago. Le petit inventeur. January 1929. Children's magazine, cover detail.
Gallica
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Solar panels envisioned almost a hundred years ago. Le petit inventeur. January 1929. Children's magazine, cover detail.
Gallica
Germany has a standing legal commitment to phase out coal by 2038--but is currently on track to complete the phase out by 2032 based on market factors alone.
Monthly Good News Roundup for January! 🎉🩵
Long time no see! 👋🏽 January flew by — but let’s not gloss over some of its good news headlines! Let’s wrap up the first month of 2026 with five good news stories from January! 🎉✨
1. ☀️ Cheap solar power is changing lives and economies across Africa!
With Chinese solar panels becoming increasingly affordable, solar panel usage has been increasing rapidly among businesses and families in countries like South Africa, Sierra Leone, and Chad. Across the continent, solar imports from China rose 50% over the first 10 months of 2025!
🔗 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/climate/solar-south-africa-china.html?smid=url-share
2. 🏳️⚧️ Anti-trans provisions have been removed from federal funding bills in the U.S.!
A series of anti-LGBTQ+ measures have been slashed, which would have implemented limitations for federal funding for gender-affirming care, college trans athletes, and support measures for trans youth in K-12 schools. That’s not all that succeeded with this bill — it also included increased funding for HIV/AIDS programs and initiatives!
The bill is "strikingly clean."
3. 🫎 A project to reintroduce elk to the UK is moving forward!
Once a native species in the UK and a keystone species in UK wetlands, they became extinct 3,000 years ago due to hunting — the project, which has now secured £15,000 of funding, aims to start feasibility studies into the species’ return, a significant step towards reintroduction! With other reintroduction projects having proved successful — beavers, as an example, having returned successfully to the country for the first time in 400 years — wildlife experts aim to see the elks’ return bring similar benefits to the local environment!
Work to assess the feasibility of bringing the species back to the UK is under way.
4. 🌴 Indonesia plans to fine palm oil companies and miners operating illegally in forests!
Identifying $8.5 billion in potential fines that the government could collect, the country’s forestry task force has increasingly cracked down on plantations and mines in forest areas. As a disturbance to the palm oil industry, the task force has already seized over 9.8 million acres or 4.1 million hectares of illegal plantations and mines — an area about the size of the Netherlands!
🔗 https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/indonesia-plans-fine-palm-oil-growers-miners-85-billion-forest-encroachment-2025-12-24/
5. 🏔️ A vast 133,000 hectares (328,000 acres) of Chilean Patagonia have been preserved after local fundraising!
Home to 11% of the last remaining alerce forests on Earth, the wild valley was purchased thanks to a successful grassroots campaign led by the NGO Puelo Patagonia, protecting the ecosystem from logging, damming, and development. Over 380 times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park and 800 times as big as London’s Regent’s Park, the area’s wildlife, waters, and flora (some among the world’s oldest trees!) are now conserved for generations to come! (This story is technically from December – but any good news is good news, right? 😅)
Exclusive: Ancient forests and turquoise rivers of the Cochamó Valley protected from logging, damming and development
Amid rising energy costs, Turning Point went all in on trying to win control of an influential utilities board in Arizona — and came up shor
Apr. 9, 2026, 4:01 PM EDT
By Ja'han Jones
Conservative activist group Turning Point USA suffered an embarrassing defeat this week in a slate of elections involving a relatively obscure utilities board in Arizona.
Turning Point’s involvement in the elections for board members to oversee metropolitan Phoenix’s Salt River Project — the state’s largest public utility company and one of the largest in the nation — added an extra layer of controversy and brought national attention to local elections that, otherwise, may have centered solely on residents’ concerns about rising energy costs.
TPUSA and its sister organization, Turning Point Action, expended significant resources to try to help their preferred candidates win a majority of the board’s seats — and they failed mightily.
While Turning Point-backed candidates won the presidential and vice presidential seats, a group of candidates that campaigned as the “Clean Energy Team” emerged with an 8-6 majority on the board, which has the power to regulate energy costs. As The New York Times explained, the result means “proponents of renewable power will control the utility’s policymaking for the first time.”
Baobab Waterfall, Madagascar by Ahmad Eghtesad,
The island is rich in natural resources and unique biodiversity, yet severe energy shortages leave a vast majority of the population without electricity. This energy crisis contributes directly to economic hardship and rising crime rates, leading to severely overcrowded correctional facilities. This project seeks to address these interconnected crises through a radical architectural intervention that turns a societal challenge into a profound economic opportunity.
The core structural form of the complex is heavily inspired by the native Baobab tree, a national symbol of Madagascar known for its ability to store water and sustain life in the harshest environments. Mimicking the tree’s thick trunk and sprawling, protective canopy, the central building functions as a multi-story administrative and living hub rising high above the tropical landscape.
The floating design proposes a massive and continuous system of deep-ocean waterfalls, generating renewable electricity on a scale akin to natural wonders. By engineering a colossal, circular marine infrastructure, ocean water is funneled directly into subterranean turbines deep below the surface. This dual-function structure acts simultaneously as a highly efficient green power plant and a monument. The sweeping cascades protect a lush, palm-fringed central sanctuary from the open sea, creating a spectacular landmark designed to draw global eco-tourism.
Designed as an entry for the prestigious Jacques Rougerie Foundation competition.
New data suggests tidal turbines play nice with seals and fish.
A new study tracked 1,044 interactions at a tidal energy site and found a 98% safety rate for fish, with ZERO collisions for seals or seabirds. It turns out that marine animals are smart enough to avoid the turbines. This groundbreaking data could unlock the potential of tidal energy to power millions of homes.
ai is smart, but its carbon footprint is not cute
ai feels invisible because you only see the final answer on your screen, not the giant physical system running underneath it. every prompt relies on servers, cooling systems, power grids, rare metals, and nonstop energy use. ai may feel like vapor, but its environmental impact is very real.
ai uses a lot of resources because modern models are so large. training them can take weeks of nonstop computation. this requires electricity, water, hardware, and maintenance. even everyday use consumes meaningful energy because data centers must stay online at all times to respond to billions of requests.
researchers usually agree that ai’s carbon footprint comes from four main areas.
training is the most energy intensive part because the models need to process enormous amounts of data.
inference is the energy used every time someone asks a question or generates content. it is smaller per use but happens millions of times per day.
data centers generate heat and need huge amounts of water and electricity to stay functional, so cooling is required
chips require mining, metals, manufacturing, and shipping.
the energy impact depends heavily on where data centers are located. regions powered by fossil fuels create higher emissions, while regions with renewable energy lower the impact. water usage matters too because many cooling systems rely on evaporative cooling, which consumes large amounts of water each day. ai is not unique in this; streaming, gaming, and cloud storage also use these systems, but ai is growing fast enough to raise sustainability concerns.
carbon markets come into the picture as a tool governments and companies use to reduce emissions. a carbon market lets organizations buy and sell allowances for the amount of carbon they emit. when ai companies participate, it can push them to reduce energy use or switch to renewable sources in order to stay under emissions limits. carbon markets also raise funding for environmental projects that theoretically offset the emissions produced by training and running models. the challenge is that offsets do not always match real-world reductions, and not all carbon credits are equally effective.
making ai more sustainable is possible. there are several strategies researchers and companies are exploring.
designing smaller and more efficient models that require less computation.
powering data centers with renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.
building data centers in cooler climates to reduce the need for artificial cooling.
improving chip design so each unit uses less power during training and inference.
using liquid cooling systems that conserve water and energy.
requiring transparency reports so users know the environmental cost of the tools they rely on.
ai is not going away, so the goal is not to panic, but to optimize. the more aware people are of resource use, the more pressure there is for companies to choose greener options. sustainability is not just a tech problem but a systems problem. when engineers, policymakers, companies, and users all care about environmental impact, ai has a better chance of growing in a way that benefits people without harming the planet.
