Business

This archive collects stories about businesses — from startups and local enterprises to multinational corporations — taking meaningful action on social, environmental, and economic challenges. These reports highlight moments when commerce and accountability intersect in constructive ways.

Fervo Energy geothermal plant, for article on enhanced geothermal power purchase agreement

World’s biggest geothermal power purchase agreement completed in western U.S.

By / / Good News For Humankind

A Utah geothermal project just secured what developers are calling the world’s largest geothermal power purchase agreement — a 15-year deal to deliver 320 megawatts of always-on clean electricity to Southern California Edison, enough to power roughly 350,000 homes. Fervo Energy’s Cape Station plant uses horizontal drilling borrowed from the oil and gas industry to circulate water through deep hot rock, unlocking geothermal power in places where it was never viable before. First electrons are expected to flow in 2026, with the rest coming online by 2028. For a clean grid that needs to run when the sun sets and the wind stops, this kind of steady, weather-proof power may be the missing piece — and a signal that geothermal is ready for prime time.

Good news for public health, for article on CAB-LA HIV prevention, for article on lenacapavir HIV prevention, for article on HIV infections in young men

New twice-yearly shot to prevent HIV achieves 100% success rate in late-stage trial

By / / Good News For Humankind

Lenacapavir, a twice-yearly HIV prevention shot, protected every single one of 2,134 women who received it in a late-stage trial across South Africa and Uganda — a 100% efficacy result so striking that monitors ended the blinded phase early. The breakthrough matters because daily prevention pills, while powerful in theory, often falter in real life: stigma, forgotten doses, and disrupted routines all chip away at protection. Two clinic visits a year, by contrast, means a full year of coverage. The remaining hurdle is access, with advocates pressing manufacturer Gilead to license generic versions for the regions hardest hit. If that happens, a tool this effective could reshape the global push to end the HIV epidemic by 2030.

Person touching pregnant belly with hands forming a heart, for article on LGBTQ+ fertility coverage

Aetna agrees to provide equal fertility coverage for LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. in landmark settlement

By / / Good News For Humankind

LGBTQ+ couples who were charged a “queer tax” of up to $100,000 for fertility treatment just won a major shift at Aetna, including a $2 million fund to reimburse families who paid out of pocket. The settlement ends a policy that required same-sex couples to fund a year of treatments themselves before coverage kicked in, while heterosexual couples qualified after a simple conversation. It started with Emma Goidel and Ilana Caplan, who drained their savings through multiple rounds of IUI and IVF before suing under the Affordable Care Act’s ban on sex discrimination in health care. Their win creates a template other insurers can follow, and a legal path other families can walk, toward fertility care that treats every family as worth building.

Facility production thick air pollution, for article on Slovakia coal phaseout

Slovakia plans to be coal-free by 2024, six years earlier than originally planned

By / / Good News For Humankind

Slovakia just closed its last coal-fired power station, six years ahead of its original 2030 target. The Vojany plant in the country’s east — once the largest power station in former Czechoslovakia — shut down its final units this year, and the operator says Slovakia’s electricity supply will be free of direct CO2 emissions starting in June. Even better, the site won’t just sit empty: the company is exploring turning it into a solar park or battery storage facility, cleaning up the landfill and sludge pond in the process. Slovakia’s early exit shows that leaving coal behind isn’t just for Western Europe’s wealthiest nations — the economics have shifted faster than almost anyone predicted, opening real possibilities for the global energy transition.

Aerial photography of solar photovoltaic power plants in sunny weather, for article on Khavda Renewable Energy Park

The world’s largest clean energy plant is now under construction in the Indian state of Gujarat

By / / Good News For Humankind

The world’s largest renewable energy facility is rising from a salt desert in western India, sprawling across more than 200 square miles — roughly five times the footprint of Paris. Once complete in about five years, the Khavda Renewable Energy Park is expected to power 16 million Indian homes with clean electricity. Developer Adani Green Energy chose the barren Gujarat site precisely because it offers vast scale without displacing communities or wildlife, removing a common obstacle to major infrastructure. The project anchors India’s push toward 500 gigawatts of non-fossil capacity by 2030. For a country facing the world’s steepest energy demand growth in the decades ahead, Khavda is a hopeful sign that developing nations can leapfrog the fossil-heavy path wealthier countries once took.

Offshore wind turbines with paddler in foreground, for article on offshore wind energy

America’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm is now delivering energy to the grid

By / / Good News For Humankind

Offshore wind power is officially flowing in the United States. New York’s South Fork Wind just switched on all 12 turbines about 35 miles off Montauk, sending roughly 130 megawatts to Long Island and the Rockaways — enough for around 70,000 homes and businesses. Hundreds of union workers across three Northeast ports built the farm, including the country’s first domestically built offshore wind substation, laying the groundwork for a supply chain that barely existed a decade ago. It’s a modest start by European standards, but it proves America can actually permit, finance, and complete a utility-scale offshore project — the kind of foundation every larger clean energy ambition has to be built on.

DSV rooftop solar in Horsens, for article on Denmark rooftop solar

World’s largest rooftop solar power plant to be built in Denmark

By / / Good News For Humankind

Rooftop solar is about to hit a new high in Horsens, Denmark, where a 35-megawatt system will blanket a logistics center spanning more than 300,000 square meters — roughly the area of 42 soccer pitches. Danish firm SolarFuture, known for its tricky install on the curved roof of the Copenhagen Opera, is leading the build, with completion targeted for December 2024. The project shows what becomes possible when warehouses are designed from day one to carry panels, turning ordinary industrial roofs into serious power plants. As corporations around the world look for on-site clean energy, a single rooftop in a town of 60,000 quietly raises the bar for everyone else.

Allegiant Stadium, for article on solar-powered Super Bowl

Super Bowl 58 first to be fully powered by renewable energy

By / / Good News For Humankind

Renewable electricity powered Super Bowl LVIII from end to end, drawing on more than 621,000 solar panels installed across the Nevada desert. Allegiant Stadium runs year-round on solar through a 25-year agreement with NV Energy, so this wasn’t a one-weekend gesture dressed up for the cameras — it’s how the building keeps the lights on every day. The same solar farm produces enough electricity to power around 60,000 homes, easily absorbing the game’s 10-megawatt demand without strain. When the most-watched event in American sports runs smoothly on sunshine, the old worry that renewables can’t be trusted with serious loads gets a lot harder to argue, anywhere in the world.

Aerial view of container ship

Decarbonization containers turn 78% of marine emissions into limestone in new pilot

By / / Good news links

A remarkable pilot project installed on a 787-ft. container ship has proven it’s possible to capture emissions from the smokestacks of cargo ships with 78% efficiency and convert the CO2 into limestone pebbles, which can be offloaded and sold. London startup Seabound, funded by a US$1.5-million grant from the UK Government, partnered up with global shipping company Lomar to install the carbon capture equipment on one of its older and dirtier-burning ships, a medium-sized vessel capable of carrying more than 3,200 shipping containers.

Solar panels installed on rooftops in an African village for an article about Africa solar imports, for article on gigawatt-scale solar farm

Rio Tinto signs contract for Australian grid’s first gigawatt scale solar project

By / / Good News For Humankind

Rio Tinto has signed on to buy all the power from a 1.1 gigawatt solar farm in Queensland — the largest solar project ever contracted on Australia’s main grid. The electricity will flow to Rio Tinto’s alumina refinery, aluminum smelter, and boron plant near Gladstone, some of the most power-hungry industrial sites in the country. Built by Danish developer European Energy, the Upper Calliope farm will deliver clean energy at the scale of a large coal plant when the sun is shining. Heavy industry has long been one of the trickiest pieces of the climate puzzle, so a commitment this big from a global mining giant is a real signal that even the most energy-intensive sectors can start to run on sunshine.