Today (2017 C.E. - 2025 C.E.)

This archive spans the years 2017 through 2025, a period marked by rapid advances in clean energy, medicine, technology, and social equity. It collects documented breakthroughs, policy wins, and scientific achievements from the present era. If you want evidence that progress is real and ongoing, this is where to look.

Wind turbine, for article on renewable energy record

South Australia smashes renewable record using 100% solar and wind for full week

Renewable energy powered all of South Australia for seven straight days at the end of December 2023, the longest 100% clean run the state has ever recorded. Wind turbines did most of the heavy lifting, while rooftop solar on homes across Adelaide and the coast chipped in nearly a third of the total. The Hornsdale Power Reserve, a giant lithium-ion battery built in just 100 days back in 2017, kept everything steady when the wind eased or the sun dipped. Skeptics have long asked whether a modern grid can really run on wind and sun alone, without coal or gas waiting in the wings. South Australia just spent a week answering yes — and other regions are taking notes.

Front of GMC truck, for article on electric truck manufacturing

GM makes largest-ever investment, spending $7 billion on EV manufacturing capacity

GM’s $7 billion bet on electric vehicles is the largest single investment in the company’s 116-year history, and it lands squarely in Michigan. The plan upgrades an assembly plant near Detroit to build battery-powered Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, while a new facility in Lansing will produce the battery cells to power them. Together, the two sites will create more than 4,000 jobs and the capacity to build 600,000 electric trucks a year. Pickups are America’s bestsellers and among its heaviest emitters, so electrifying them at this scale shifts the emissions math of the country’s roads — and signals that the question for legacy automakers is no longer whether to go electric, but how fast.