The European Union pumped out 8% less carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels it burned in 2023 than it did in 2022, pushing these emissions down to their lowest level in 60 years. The fall is the steepest yearly drop on record behind 2020, when governments shuttered factories and grounded flights to stop the spread of Covid-19, according to analysis from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Miami-Dade county is set to receive nearly $20 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to help cover the costs of 50 new electric school buses and 16 DC fast chargers, bringing the public school district’s total to 100 electric buses. Miami-Dade county is one of four school districts selected to receive a total of $33,175,000 through the EPA’s first Clean School Bus Program’s Grants Competition.
Over the past several years, U.S. cities and states have passed hundreds of policies restricting the sale and distribution of single-use plastic bags. A new report – copublished by Environment America, U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, and Frontier Group – says these laws have largely succeeded in their goal of reducing plastic bag use. New Jersey’s ban alone has eliminated more than 5.5 billion plastic bags annually.
Mining company Rio Tinto has signed a contract to buy all the electricity from what will be the biggest solar project on Australia’s main grid – a 1.1 GW facility near Gladstone in Queensland. Rio Tinto is seeking up to 4 GW of wind and solar to provide clean power to and guarantee the future of its three main assets in the region – the Boyne Island aluminium smelter, the Yarwun alumina refinery, and the Queensland alumina refinery. All three assets are now supplied by coal.
A landmark test of beaming solar power to Earth from a satellite has concluded successfully after a year-long mission. Led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology, the mission completed all three of its primary experiments to test key technology for such an endeavor. They included a new origami-inspired solar panel structure, different cell designs, and a microwave transmitter.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledged to end deforestation by 2030 when he took office a year ago.
Preliminary data from national space agency Inpe showed 5,153 sq km of the Amazon were cleared in 2023, down from 10,278 sq km in 2022. Rainforest destruction had surged to a 12-year high under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
Building on a previously announced 2.5GW module supply agreement signed in January 2023, Qcells will supply Microsoft with 12GW of solar modules over an 8-year period. Equivalent to powering more than 1.8 million homes annually, the solar modules will be produced in the United States at a fully integrated solar supply chain factory in Cartersville, Georgia.
Paulina Hennig-Kloska, who was appointed climate and environment minister in December 2023, said that the half-year moratorium in forests across the country was the first step to limiting logging. The government promised in its coalition agreement to protect 20% of the country’s forests.
Biotech researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) say the new method could feed livestock much more efficiently than natural plants, while using a1/1000th as much land as farming.
The U.S. Department of Energy has announced that four additional heat pump manufacturers successfully produced heat pump prototypes as part of the Residential Cold Climate Heat Pump (CCHP) Technology Challenge. Launched in 2021, this initiative brings together public and private sector stakeholders to address technical challenges and market barriers to adopting next-generation cold-climate heat pumps—a key clean energy technology that can potentially save households $500 a year or more on their utility bills while also slashing harmful carbon emissions.
