The climate crisis demands action — and action is happening. This archive tracks real progress: policy wins, clean-energy milestones, community resilience, and scientific advances that show meaningful change is possible. Stories here come from every corner of the world.
Landowners with oil palm trees in designated production forests will be allowed to continue growing the crops after paying fines, while plantations found in protected forests will have to be turned over to the government for reforestation. Companies that grow oil palms illegally after the Nov. 2 deadline will be subject to legal action.
This funding will also support thousands of local clean energy jobs, help achieve President Biden’s goal of lowering energy costs for all Americans, as well as help Puerto Rico achieve its goal of 100% renewable energy by 2050. The first installations are slated to begin in Spring 2024.
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.
High-speed rail just arrived in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, with Indonesia’s new Jakarta–Bandung line cutting a three-hour trip down to 46 minutes. Trains glide along the 142-kilometer route at around 350 km/h, linking two cities home to nearly 14 million people on one of the most densely populated islands on Earth. Plans are already in motion to extend the corridor to Surabaya, which could turn an eight-hour journey across Java into a two- or three-hour ride. Beyond the convenience, electrified rail is the cleanest way to move people long distances, and tends to pull travelers off short-haul flights. For the wider Global South, it’s a hopeful sign that world-class low-carbon transport isn’t reserved for wealthier corners of the map.
New York is investing in a massive 6.4 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy, made up of three offshore wind farms and 22 onshore clean energy projects. It’s going to be enough to power 2.6 million New York homes and deliver around 12% of the state’s electricity needs once it’s all online.
In just a span of five months since EO 21 was issued, the number of offshore wind energy service contracts awarded to qualified investors went from 38 to 78. The biggest growth in terms of gigawatts and allocation happened between August to October when the number of rose from 63 to 78 contracts with a total of 61.6 GW.
The Benban Solar Farm near Aswan, Egypt, is now the largest solar park in Africa and the fourth largest solar farm globally. At least 20,000 jobs were created for the construction of the park and 6,000 permanent jobs were created for maintenance and management.
The legislation creates a registry for carbon credit projects within the National Directorate of Climate Change to serve as the official record of every carbon credit program active in Paraguay and ensure that land isn’t being registered more than once — a common problem in the global carbon credit market.
Researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology have developed an incredibly efficient way to recycle metals from spent batteries, and at the same time minimize the loss of valuable raw materials such as nickel, cobalt and manganese. No expensive or harmful chemicals are required in the process.
The seed collector networks are the base of the ecological restoration chain and will play an essential role in enabling Brazil to reach its goal of restoring 12.5 million hectares (30.9 million acres) of native vegetation by 2030 — vital in the fight to avoid climate breakdown.
