When the Vietnam War finally ended on April 30, 1975, it left behind a landscape scarred with environmental damage. Vast stretches of coastal mangroves, once housing rich stocks of fish and birds, lay in ruins. Forests that had boasted hundreds of species were reduced to dried-out fragments, overgrown with invasive grasses.

Fifty years later, Vietnam’s degraded ecosystems and dioxin-contaminated soils and waters still reflect the long-term ecological consequences of the war. Efforts to restore these damaged landscapes and even to assess the long-term harm have been limited.

Although the war spurred new international treaties aimed at protecting the environment during wartime, these efforts failed to compel post-war restoration for Vietnam. Current conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East show these laws and treaties still aren’t effective.

Farming has always been at the mercy of the weather, but recent years have seen unprecedented swings in temperature, rainfall, and storms. Droughts dry up fields, floods wash away seeds, and heatwaves scorch crops. These shifts don’t just threaten harvests—they destabilize farm incomes. Solar energy offers a much-needed anchor. By capturing sunlight, a constant even when the weather is wild, farmers can generate reliable electricity regardless of the season. This newfound consistency helps them weather financial storms even when nature is unpredictable.

Recognizing the benefits of clean energy, many governments now offer attractive incentives for solar adoption. These include grants, low-interest loans, and tax breaks designed to lower upfront costs. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s REAP program covers up to 50% of solar installation costs. Such support makes the switch to solar not just appealing, but financially feasible for small and large farms alike. It’s a win-w

Enter the Evertop, a portable IBM XT emulator powered by an ESP32 that doesn’t just flirt with low power; it basically lives off the grid. Designed by [ericjenott], hacker with a love for old-school computing and survivalist flair, this machine emulates 1980s PCs, runs DOS, Windows 3.0, and even MINIX, and stays powered for hundreds of hours. It has a built-in solar panel and 20,000mAh of battery, basically making it an old-school dream in a new-school shell.

For his Abu Dhabi-set science fiction graphic novel Solarblader, Emirati writer Mo Abedin focuses his speculative fiction on renewable energy, inspired by the initiatives happening in the current-day UAE. Dubbing the new subgenre "solarpunk", due to the reliance on solar energy in his version of the future, he hopes to inspire a new trend.

Sandstorm debuted the first volume of Abedin’s graphic novel titled Solarblade at this year's Middle East Film and Comic Con, which ends today. Set in an alternate-universe Abu Dhabi in 2525, it imagines the UAE capital fully reliant on solar energy, bolstered by alien technology that helps harness the full power of the sun.

The Bright Green Futures: 2024 anthology is a collection of short solarpunk stories from guests of the Bright Green Futures podcast, where we lift up stories to build a better world. These hopeful climate-fiction stories include clicky space centipedes, sentient trees, a flooded future Rio de Janeiro and characters trying to find their place in a climate-impacted world. Each story imagines a way for us to survive the future, together.

On a beautiful spring day in Gaza, Adli and Mansour are in need of a new pair of shoes. Their economic backgrounds are quite divergent, but they have been close since their schooldays. They pull up on their shared motorcycle outside a local shoe shop and make their way inside on their crutches. Both are excited to try on the latest styles and quickly settle on a pair they both love. They split the cost. Adli pays for the left shoe, which is all he needs, and Mansour pays for the right.

They love that they have the same taste in shoes and the same-sized feet, and they laugh and joke with the shop owner, who has never before seen two customers come in to buy a single pair of shoes.

They tell him about a chilly afternoon when Adli noticed Mansour’s shoe looked worn out. He offered to give Mansour his other sneaker, since he didn’t need it, and they had lost opposite legs in successive Israeli attacks. Mansour was hesitant, but Adli assured him they had the same shoe size and that the sh

The last of 75 turbines has been installed at the biggest wind project yet built in South Australia which will help edge the state closer to its 2027 target of reaching 100 per cent net renewables.

The 412 megawatt Goyder South wind project, near Burra, is being built by Neoen Australia and is also the largest wind project in its 10 GW of renewable energy projects currently operating, under construction or in development.

The Goyder renewable energy zone is expected to be one of the biggest renewable energy hubs in the world, combining multiple gigawatts of wind, solar and battery storage – with the final capacity likely to depend on the success of new green industries in the state, and its green hydrogen prospects.

Technologies that can power our lives and jobs while doing less harm to the global climate — wind, solar, batteries, etc. — are getting cheaper, more efficient, and more abundant. The pace of progress on price, scale, and performance has been so extraordinary that even the most optimistic forecasts about green tech in the past have turned out to be too pessimistic. Clean energy isn’t just powering our devices, tools, and luxuries — it’s growing the global economy, creating a whole suite of new jobs, and reshaping trade.

And despite what headlines may say, there’s no sign these trends will reverse. Political and economic turmoil may slow down clean energy, but the sector has built up so much momentum that it’s become nigh unstoppable.

Here is the direct comparison, clearly stated once more for emphasis: Solar generates approximately 2 kilograms of inert, recyclable waste per megawatt-hour. Coal generates around 90 kilograms of highly toxic ash per megawatt-hour along with nearly a tonne of CO₂. Gas generates roughly half a tonne of CO₂ per megawatt-hour, along with the attendant methane leakage upstream. By any sensible measure, solar panel waste is trivial by comparison. The ongoing attempt to frame solar waste as a crisis or even an issue is not only misplaced but actively counterproductive, distracting us from the far more urgent issues of climate change and fossil fuel pollution.

A new study led by Tulane University backs up that view, revealing stark racial disparities across the U.S.’s petrochemical workforce. Inequity was especially pronounced in Louisiana, where people of color were underrepresented in both high- and low-paying jobs at chemical plants and refineries.

“It was really surprising how consistently people of color didn’t get their fair share of jobs in the petrochemical industry,” said Kimberly Terrell, a research scientist with the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. “No matter how you slice or dice the data by states, metro areas or parishes, the data’s consistent.”

Toxic air pollution in Louisiana’s petrochemical corridor, an area often referred to as “Cancer Alley,” has risen in recent years. The burdens of pollution have been borne mostly by the state’s Black and poor communities, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The U.S. clean-energy industry is on pace for record growth this year. Wind energy makes up about 10% of the U.S. electricity mix — the largest single source of renewable energy.

But while the offshore wind industry was expecting to see important new projects this year like the Vineyard Wind 1 project in Massachusetts and the Revolution Wind project in Rhode Island, Ohleth says all offshore wind projects are now in jeopardy.

By 2020, the global capacity of PV energy had climbed to 760 gigawatts. Much of this came from installations in leading regions like Asia, Europe, and North America. Most systems were built on open ground—often farmland—stirring concern over their effect on food production and ecosystems.

The widespread use of agricultural land for solar farms has sparked fears of shrinking crop yields and harm to biodiversity. Rural communities have voiced worries too, pointing to risks like fewer farming jobs and increased depopulation.

To ease this tension, researchers have turned to agrivoltaics—an idea that dates back to 1982. This dual-use method allows solar panels and crops to share the same land. Early designs let sunlight reach the plants underneath, preserving growing conditions.

The math is not adding up for the global green hydrogen industry. The electrolyzers that push hydrogen gas from water are expensive, and they also have a water problem. They can’t use just any old water. They need clean water, and that puts the industry up against an estimated 4 billion people who already lack adequate supplies of potable water. That’s where seawater comes in….

Pakistan has joined the ranks of the world’s leading solar markets, importing 17 gigawatts of solar panels last year alone, according to the Global Electricity Review 2025 by Ember, an energy think tank in the UK.

This surge represents a doubling of the previous year’s imports, and makes Pakistan one of the top global buyers of solar panels.

The scale of Pakistan’s imports is particularly striking because it is not driven by a national programme or utility-scale rollout.

Instead, the majority of the demand appears to come from rooftop solar installations by households, small businesses and commercial users looking to secure cheaper and more reliable electricity in the face of frequent power outages and rising energy costs.

On March 25, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will release grant money through REAP and two other clean energy programs partly supported by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. But there appeared to be some fine print.

In the announcement, the USDA also invited grant and loan recipients to voluntarily revise their proposals to align with Trump’s executive order by “eliminating Biden-era DEIA and climate mandates embedded in previous proposals.”

In an email, a USDA spokesperson said that people who had already been awarded funding could voluntarily “review and revise” their plans within 30 days to more closely align with the Trump administration’s executive order. If recipients confirm in writing that they don’t want to change anything about their proposals, the USDA said “processing” for their projects would continue immediately. If recipients don’t communicate with the USDA, “disbursements and other actions will resume after the 30 days,” according to the statement. But

Let's spin a tale about our clothing, as they tell a story interwoven with identity, class, and self-expression. We'll unravel the stained truth about fashion’s impact and stitch together a future that mends our broken connections.

Heat pumps are essential for ditching fossil fuels. The appliances are many times more efficient than even the best gas furnaces, and they run on electricity, so they can draw power from renewables like wind and solar.

But the very thing that makes them such an amazing climate solution is also their biggest challenge. A common refrigerant called R-410A pumps through their innards so they can warm and cool homes and offices and anything else. But that refrigerant is also liquid irony, as it can escape as a greenhouse gas over 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. (This is known as its “global warming potential,” or how much energy a ton of the gas absorbs over a given amount of time compared to the same amount of CO2.) Leaks can happen during the installation, operation, and disposal of heat pumps.

But this year the industry is rolling out alternative refrigerant formulations like R-454B and R-32, which have around 75 percent less global warming potential. That’s in respons

As renewable energy installations multiply across the globe, the first generation of solar panels, wind turbine blades, and lithium ion batteries is reaching the end of its lifespan and coming offline. With a tidal wave of waste potentially slamming landfills worldwide — is it true that these technologies are un-recyclable? Or that these green initiatives are maybe worse for the environment? Or could emerging recycling and upcycling technologies redirect this flood of waste into a new generation of photovoltaics, wind turbines, and battery banks designed to be continuously recycled and regenerated? Just how close are we to “closing the loop”?

Verso’s introduction to Solarpunk was inspiring and uplifting. As someone fairly new to the sub-genre, it was easy to understand its principles and history. Verso outlines when the sub-genre was born, where it was made popular and how it contrasts from both cyberpunk and steampunk. I can safely say now that I am convinced. Solarpunk Short Stories from Many Futures is a remarkable, much-needed anthology in the current state of the world that speaks of a future with renewable energy, de-urbanisation and biomimicry.

New York Harbor was a haven of incredible underwater biodiversity—until centuries of pollution turned it into a cesspool. Today, an alliance of architects, restaurateurs, scientists, and high school students is working to restore the harbor and protect the city from climate change. At the heart of the effort is a tiny creature with an outsized talent for cleanup: the extraordinary oyster.