Climate

Recycling today kind of sucks. People are generally confused about what can be recycled and where. As a result, only about 32% of eligible waste actually gets recycled. It would be a lot easier if people could dump everything into one bin and let the waste-management companies deal with it, but th

The globe likely breezed past 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels this year, crashing through the 2016 Paris Agreement's aspirational target. Further warming increases the risk of catastrophic consequences, including more frequent extreme droughts, floods, and fires; stronger hurrican

Nuclear startup Kairos Power received approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to start construction on two test reactors in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The permit marks a significant milestone for Kairos, which in October inked a deal with Google to provide 500 megawatts of electricity for i

Electric passenger boat startup Candela has topped off its most recent raise with another $14 million, the company announced Thursday, and has sold the first of its ferries in the U.S. — bound for Lake Tahoe. Candela makes a series of all-electric hydrofoiling watercraft, meaning the body of the

Billionaire Gautam Adani and several executives at his company, the Indian conglomerate Adani Group, have been indicted over an alleged scheme to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian officials in exchange for contracts to a 12 gigawatt solar power project. The indictment, unsealed Wednes

President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday that he would be nominating Chris Wright, CEO of oilfield services company Liberty Energy, to the post of energy secretary.  Wright has been a big booster of oil and gas. From his perch at Liberty, Wright last year denied that there's a climate cr

Microsoft is in a pickle: It has committed to being carbon negative by 2030, but its emissions have skyrocketed more than 40% since 2020, thanks in part to its booming AI business. The company has bought a bunch of renewable power, but some emissions, like air travel, have been impossible to elimin

When Suzanne Zamany Andersen arranged her trip to greenhouse grower Koppert Cress in the Netherlands, she thought she would just be pitching her startup's device, which turns electricity and air into ammonia, a widely used fertilizer.  Not only did the company agree to test the ammonia pr

Brigid O’Brien has seen her share of pitches from founders, and she has a message for many of them: Not every investor will be impressed by your massive TAM, short for total addressable market.  “Often people are chasing big TAMs, which makes a lot of sense, because we're investing in

Tucked inside a 32-page earnings report, oil and gas giant BP revealed it was killing 18 early-stage hydrogen projects, a move that could have a chilling effect on the nascent hydrogen industry. The decision, along with the sale of the company's U.S. onshore wind-power operations, will save BP

Transaera co-founder and CEO Sorin Grama may not have expected his startup to end up on the roof of a warehouse, but he's happy to have landed there. Over the summer, the company installed a massive ventilation system, known as a dedicated outdoor air system (DOAS), which dehumidifies fresh ai

Eight years ago, Brian Garrett and his partners sensed the ground shifting.  At the time, Crosscut Ventures, where Garrett is co-founder and managing partner, had been investing in early-stage startups in Los Angeles and Southern California for nearly a decade. It focused mostly on software c

If there's anything that came from one of the worlds that was promised to us in “Back to the Future” or “The Jetsons” or innumerable other sci-fi franchises, it's what SpiralWave co-founder and CEO Abed Bukhari showed me on a video call. Purple-tinged waves of white

Solar panels are just about everywhere. There's a good chance one of your neighbors has them on their roof, as does the big box store down the street. As you drive there, you might see a field of them posted up alongside the road. With that kind of ubiquity, you'd be forgiven if you thought