Earth and Energy
Frankfurt Airport has switched on the world’s first “solar fence” – a 2,800-metre run of 37,000 vertically mounted PV modules along Runway 18 West that powers terminals and EVs while letting the soil beneath keep breathing.
Wärtsilä has run the world’s first large-scale engine on 100% pure hydrogen, supplying Spain’s national grid and showing fossil-free, grid-connected generation is viable at scale.
CATL and Changan have unveiled the world’s first mass-produced sodium-ion EV, a 248-mile car that keeps most of its range at minus 40C, a potential turning point away from lithium.
CATL is chasing lithium-air batteries with a theoretical energy density of 12,000 Wh/kg, roughly that of petrol, a leap that could obliterate the range gap between EVs and combustion cars.
A new UN report warns that AI data centres will drink as much water as 1.3 billion people by 2030, and that judging AI by carbon alone badly understates its true environmental cost.
Researchers in Japan have built a WiFi receiver that survives 500 kilograys of radiation – thousands of times what space electronics endure – paving the way for untethered robots to decommission reactors like Fukushima without trailing tangled cables.
The IEA says 2025 was the first year of solar’s dominance, with the largest single-year generation rise ever recorded for any source — pushing the world into what it calls the Age of Electricity as clean power finally outpaces demand growth.
Physicists at CERN are preparing to truck a trap of antiprotons around their campus in the first demonstration of a portable antimatter delivery service for laboratories across Europe.
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