United Arab Emirates

Solar panels and wind turbines generating clean electricity for an article about renewable energy capacity

Renewables hit 49% of global power capacity for the first time

By / / Good News For Humankind

Renewable energy capacity crossed a landmark threshold in 2025, with global installed power surpassing 5,100 gigawatts and representing 49% of all capacity worldwide for the first time in history. The International Renewable Energy Agency reported a single-year addition of 692 gigawatts, led overwhelmingly by solar power, which alone accounted for 75% of new renewable installations. Clean energy now represents 85.6% of all new power capacity added globally, signaling that the transition has moved from aspiration to economic reality. The milestone carries implications beyond climate — nations with strong renewable bases demonstrated measurably greater energy security amid ongoing geopolitical instability.

Solar farm in the desert, for article on Abu Dhabi largest solar plant

Abu Dhabi to build world’s largest solar energy project

By / / Good News For Humankind

Abu Dhabi’s new solar plant will run 24 hours a day, delivering up to 1 gigawatt of steady baseload power even after sundown — something no solar facility has done before at this scale. The secret is a massive 19-gigawatt-hour battery system that soaks up sunshine during the day and releases it through the night and on cloudy days. Once it comes online in 2027, the $6 billion project is expected to power roughly 750,000 homes and dwarf the current record holder, a 3.5-gigawatt plant in China. The bigger story is what it proves: solar can behave like a reliable, always-on power station, reshaping how grid operators everywhere think about renewable energy.

Sahara scimitar Oryx, for article on scimitar horned oryx

North Africa’s scimitar horned oryx becomes first species ever to be downlisted from extinct in the wild to endangered

By / / Good News For Humankind

The scimitar horned oryx just made conservation history as the first species ever downlisted from Extinct in the Wild to Endangered by the IUCN. This pale, curve-horned antelope vanished from the Sahara before the millennium, hunted to zero in the wild. Now a self-sustaining herd roams Chad’s Ouadi Rimé–Ouadi Achim Reserve, a protected area roughly the size of Scotland, rebuilt from zoo populations through nearly four decades of patient international collaboration. Even better, the oryx grazes grasslands open and helps slow the Sahara’s spread, making its return a quiet act of climate repair. For the 94 other species still surviving only in human care, it’s proof that “extinct” need not be the final word.

Solar farm in the desert, for article on Al Dhafra solar power plant

The United Arab Emirates opens the world’s largest single-site solar farm

By / / Good News For Humankind

The world’s largest single-site solar plant just came online in the UAE, and it’s powering nearly 200,000 homes from a stretch of desert outside Abu Dhabi. Al Dhafra generates 2 gigawatts of clean electricity and is expected to cut 2.4 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year — roughly the equivalent of taking 470,000 cars off the road. What makes it really remarkable, though, is the price: the project locked in one of the cheapest utility-scale solar tariffs ever recorded, around 1.32 US cents per kilowatt-hour. That number sends a signal far beyond the Gulf, showing sun-rich countries everywhere that large-scale clean power is now genuinely affordable — and that even oil-producing nations can help lead the transition.