Climate

The world is in a pickle: Human activity continues to dump too much CO2 into the atmosphere, raising the risk of catastrophic global warming. At the same time, the most climate-friendly way to keep using fossil fuels, carbon capture, has hit a rough patch. Only around 40 facilities worldwide are c

It's a scene that plays out in cities and suburbs across America: A tree gets cut down, and instead of being milled into lumber, the whole thing gets shredded. There are a range of reasons why, none of which have sat well with Ben Christensen. Christensen grew up in New Mexico among the state&

Two years ago, oil and gas company Occidental bought carbon capture startup Carbon Engineering. The transaction was hailed as a win-win: A climate tech company scored a significant exit, and a fossil fuel company gained a foothold in a sector that could be worth up to $150 billion by 2050. Now we

The U.S. invested a record-breaking $338 billion in the energy transition last year, according to a new report, but it wasn't quite enough to lessen the country's overall carbon emissions. Solar took the lead, adding 49 gigawatts of new electrical generating capacity in 2024, far more than

Companies developing small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) have raised more than $1.5 billion in the past year, as tech companies hunger for power to train AI models and governments decide to commit to the industry. For example, X-Energy raised $700 million this month, and Paris-based Newcleo rai

Renewable electricity is cheap and clean, but also less predictable than firing up a gas turbine. Turns out that's both a problem and an opportunity. Most solutions to the problem of intermittency involve pairing solar panels and wind turbines with batteries, which store the power for use when

Amazon, Exxon, and Microsoft have joined a new task force to burnish the image of scandal-plagued voluntary carbon markets. The task force, organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, is hoping to improve credibility of voluntary carbon markets, studying the status quo and drafting “po

Nature-based carbon removal startup Chestnut Carbon has raised $160 million in Series B financing, the company told technewss. The startup buys marginal and degraded farmland, plants them with native trees, and harvests the resulting carbon credits. Carbon credits have become a hot commodity, esp

Microsoft has added another 389 megawatts of renewable power to its portfolio as the tech giant scrambles to meet the power demands required to match its AI ambitions.  The additional renewable power spans three solar projects developed by EDP Renewables North America — two in southern Illi

A group of more than 100 organizations has published an open letter calling on the AI industry and regulators to mitigate the tech’s harmful environmental impacts just days before leading industry CEOs, heads of state, academics, and nonprofits descend on Paris for a major AI conference. The

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek stunned the world with the release of its R1 model, which appears to perform nearly as well as leading models from Google and OpenAI, despite the company's claim that it used a relatively modest number of GPUs to train it. DeepSeek's relative efficiency has expe

The massive $100 billion Stargate joint venture will reportedly be powered, at least in part, by solar and batteries. The renewable power installations will be built by SoftBank-backed SB Energy, according to a report from Bloomberg, though they're unlikely to be the venture's sole source

Oil and gas isn't the only source of energy lurking under our feet. Drill deep enough and Earth's temperature stays consistent enough that it can be a source of heating and cooling for homes, offices, and data centers. But in many regions, geothermal wells today bottom out at around 500 fe

One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president was issuing an executive order that could kill the nascent offshore wind industry in the United States. Trump’s order, signed Monday, halted federal leases for offshore wind development on the outer continental shelf — a location far enou