United States

This archive collects solutions-journalism stories and milestones from the United States — covering policy wins, community-led efforts, scientific advances, and social progress happening across the country. Each entry highlights what’s working and why it matters.

Human eye, for article on whole-eye transplant

New York surgeons perform world’s first successful eyeball transplant

By / / Good News For Humankind

Whole-eye transplant surgery has been performed successfully for the first time, with a team at NYU Langone Health spending more than 20 hours combining a donor eyeball, a partial face transplant, and a stem cell infusion into the optic nerve. The patient, Aaron James, lost much of his face in a 2021 electrical accident, and surgeons had carefully preserved his optic nerve in anticipation of exactly this kind of operation. Doctors say the transplanted eye is healthy and blood is flowing to the retina, though James has not regained sight. Restoring vision may still be years away, but this opens a real door for people with catastrophic eye injuries — proof that something once considered impossible is now a starting point.

Offshore wind farm, for article on offshore wind capacity

Biden-Harris administration approves largest offshore wind project in U.S. history

By / / Good News For Humankind

Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, approved by federal regulators in 2023, could power more than 900,000 homes once its 176 turbines start spinning about 23.5 nautical miles off Virginia Beach. By late October that year, the first eight monopile foundations had already arrived at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal — a tangible sign the project had moved from paperwork into steel. Dominion Energy also committed to fishery mitigation funds and vessel speed limits to protect whales, sea turtles, and Atlantic sturgeon during construction. Alongside four other approved projects, CVOW is helping seed an offshore wind industry that barely existed in American waters a decade ago, with Hampton Roads positioning itself as a lasting hub for the clean-energy supply chain.

Solar farm, for article on U.S. electric grid investment

U.S. announces ‘largest ever’ investment in its electric grid to advance climate goals

By / / Good News For Humankind

A $3.46 billion federal investment is rewiring America’s electric grid, spreading across 58 projects in 44 states to make power more reliable and ready for clean energy. The projects are designed to bring more than 35 gigawatts of new renewable energy online — roughly half the country’s utility-scale solar capacity as of 2022. They’ll also fund 400 microgrids, giving hospitals, neighborhoods, and rural communities a way to keep the lights on when storms take down the main grid. Each project had to direct benefits toward communities historically hit hardest by outages and pollution. For a clean energy future to actually reach everyone, the wires connecting it all matter just as much as the panels and turbines — and this is what modernizing with equity in mind looks like.