First, the good news. On Wednesday, more than 200 countries signed a United Nations resolution to eliminate plastic pollution in our oceans. Now the bad news. China will stop accepting imports of plastic trash from other countries as of Jan. 1. That might sound like a good move for the world’s top ocean plastic polluter. […]
By Andrew Amelinckx Lab-grown meat goes by many names—clean meat, cultured protein, animal-free meat, and so on—and all the various producers, of which there are eight around the world, use the same basic premise. At its most elementary, the process involves taking stem cells from a living animal, say, a chicken, then feeding those cells […]
By Lauri Myllyvirta, Unearthed Earlier this month and without much comment, dozens of huge steel mills in China stopped or curtailed their operations. In northern China cement plants are preparing to shut down entirely before Christmas. The measures are a part of an aggressive action plan that aims to cut wintertime particulate pollution by 15 […]
In an unprecedented crackdown on pollution, the Chinese government has temporarily shut down tens of thousands of factories in an effort to improve air quality throughout industrial regions in the country. Thousands of regulators with China‘s Ministry of Environment have spread across the country to inspect factories for compliance with strict new laws detailing emission […]
Today is International Snow Leopard Day, a global observance commemorating the signing of the Bishkek Declaration on the conservation of snow leopards in 2013. The snow leopard has been listed on the IUCN Red List as “Endangered” since 1986, although it recently had its threat status downgraded to “Vulnerable.” Despite this shift, snow leopards remain […]
By Ben Jervey The growth of solar energy continues to outpace forecasts and this growth, according to a report published Wednesday by the International Energy Agency, (IEA) “is a China story.” While China today is far and away the global leader in solar generation, a decade ago, the country had just 100 megawatts of solar […]
Two of the world’s largest auto companies announced major strides this week in their development of electric vehicles, marking the latest milestone in a significant shift towards EVs in the automobile industry. On Monday, General Motors unveiled plans to roll out 20 new entirely electric car models by 2023, with two of the new EVs […]
By Jing Yan and Lauri Myllyvirta China has more than doubled its end-of-decade solar power target, with new installations dramatically outstripping expectation, according to the government’s energy agency. By the end of July this year, China’s solar PV capacity topped 112GW, after installing a stunning 35GW in just seven months—more than twice as much as […]
Coal power is getting buried in China—both literally and figuratively. Earlier this week, a new floating solar farm went live in the Chinese city of Huainan above a retired coal mine, China Daily reported. The mine was flooded with groundwater after it went out of service, and, rather than simply losing an energy source, the […]