Clean & renewable energy

This archive tracks real progress in clean and renewable energy — from solar and wind expansion to grid upgrades and policy wins. Each story focuses on what’s working, where, and why it matters for people and the planet.

Aerial view of Shanghai traffic, for article on global EV sales

10% of global car sales were electric in 2022 for first time ever

Electric vehicles crossed a quiet but enormous threshold in 2022, making up one in every ten new cars sold worldwide for the first time. Roughly 7.8 million fully electric vehicles found buyers that year, even as overall car sales slipped. China led the charge, with EVs accounting for nearly a fifth of new cars sold there, while Europe wasn’t far behind at 11%. Behind the numbers is a deeper shift: battery prices have fallen dramatically over the past decade, and major automakers are doubling their EV output even as their broader sales decline. Ten percent is the moment a technology stops being niche and starts reshaping an industry — a hopeful signal for the global push toward cleaner transport.

Wind turbines in a field, for article on clean energy investment

Global investment in clean energy matches that in fossil fuels for the first time ever in 2022

Clean energy investment hit $1.1 trillion globally in 2022, matching every dollar spent on fossil fuels for the first time ever. Electric vehicles led the charge, with spending jumping 54 percent in a single year to $466 billion. Wind, solar, batteries, and heat pumps all set records too — this wasn’t a fluke driven by one hot sector, but money moving across the whole clean economy. China poured in nearly half the total, sparking a kind of race that tends to push costs down for everyone. Parity isn’t the finish line — the world still needs to roughly quadruple this pace to hit net zero by 2050 — but it’s the moment the global energy story quietly flipped.

Electric buses, for article on Kenya electric buses

Kenya is producing its first electric buses

Electric buses are now being assembled in Kenya for the first time, marking a genuine shift in how East Africa thinks about clean public transit. A Nairobi startup called BasiGo partnered with a veteran Mombasa assembler to build 1,000 electric buses over three years — creating over 600 jobs in manufacturing, maintenance, and charging. What makes this especially promising is BasiGo’s pay-per-kilometer financing model, which makes electric buses as affordable upfront as diesel for everyday operators. Kenya’s already-clean electricity grid means these buses will run on genuinely green power. It’s a hopeful template other African cities could follow.